February, 2001

Ashcroft Nomination

The longer one lives the more one appreciates the old Greek's statement that "there is nothing new under the sun."
     During the confirmation hearings of Senator Ashcroft for Attorney General the Salt Lake Tribune carried an article about the Senator with the headline: "Democrats Zero In on Ashcroft Speech Referring to Jesus as King of the U.S."
     This is a typical example which demonstrates how public opinion is manipulated, because a fair number of readers just glance at headlines and then go on to the sports pages unless they have already read those first. Politics is not their bag and that is why they don't bother to vote. The article, authored by Libby Quaid, and carried by the Associated Press, deals with Ashcroft's "six paragraph address" before the students and faculty of Bob Jones University which is a Fundamentalist Christian institution. The article quoted Ashcroft as saying "Unique among the nations, America recognized the source of our character as being godly and eternal, not being civic and temporal. And because we have understood that our source is eternal, America has been different. We have no king but Jesus." The article did admit that Ashcroft had said earlier that the "American colonists routinely told emissaries from the king of England, 'We have no king but Jesus' when they were asked to pay taxes." The fact that the audience was profoundly Christian does put the comment into a different context which tends to be missed when one only reads the headline.
     For Christians Jesus is indeed their king and this got Cardinal Innitzer of Vienna in October of 1938 into deep trouble when he had the audacity to tell this to Catholic university students who had gathered for the annual mass at the beginning of the school year. From the pulpit of St. Stephen's cathedral he told his audience:” we will especially at this time [5 months after the Nazis had taken over Austria] assert strongly and resolutely our faith; to testify for Jesus our Fuehrer and master, our king and his church." Predictably the Nazis did not take kindly to this affront because there was only one Fuehrer of Greater Germany and his name was Adolf Hitler. What the Nazis did, thereafter, can be found in War and Mayhem.
     Have some of our Democrats now stepped into the shoes of the Nazis? Are they also determined to stamp out this "mischievous superstition" as Tacitus had called Christianity?





March 2001

Whither Zionism?

     Whither Zionism? is now at the publisher and ought to be available within a month or so. It presents the historical basis of the current Middle East conflict from the Greco-Roman era until today. But don't worry, it is written in simple language that even our politicians and "public opinion makers" can understand. Furthermore the information is condensed into only a little over one hundred pages. This was done on purpose so that the people in charge of our lives have no excuse of being too busy for reading the material. The Arab-Israeli conflict is nothing else but a replay of ancient history with America having assumed the role formerly played by Rome. Since our tax dollars are used for arms and ammunitions in that part of the world, and since the oil spigot can be turned off at a moment's notice, the history of that region is not an idle academic exercise but vitally important to all of us. One of my goals in life has always been to deprive myself of excuses and now is the time to do this to our policy makers. Ignorance is not bliss, it leads to disasters.





April 2001

Arab-Israeli Conflict

Whither Zionism? is now available through www.trafford.com/robots/01-0067.html. The site also provides the Introduction and the Conclusion of the book. Additional excerpts are available here. In view of the deteriorating situation in the Middle East the book is exceedingly topical and not only provides the reasons for the conflict but also makes some concrete suggestions. If these were followed further escalation of the fighting could be prevented and some degree of stability might be achieved.



Since neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians will be able to disengage themselves from the current level of violence the suggestion is made that the United States agree that a fact-finding commission, appointed by the United Nations, be dispatched to the Middle East. This commission ought to consist of members from countries who are truly neutral in the conflict. A White Paper should then be published which presents the world with the facts as they currently exist but without casting blame. The commission's recommendations should then be publicly discussed and a reasonable compromise between the wishes of the opposing parties may become possible.



The Israeli government may oppose such a commission as outside interference into what are regarded as internal concerns. Nevertheless the precedent for such "interference" has been set in the recent "non-war" with Yugoslavia. Kosovo was and is part of the national territory of Yugoslavia but NATO under U.S. leadership felt obligated to bomb the country in defense of human rights. The "West Bank" is not part of Israel proper but represents occupied territory. The American people do not have full information on what transpires in the area because Israeli military censorship prevents it. Complete disclosure is, therefore, essential so that a solution which provides justice for both sides can be arrived at.



The American Jewish community will have a vital role to play now. If the leaders of major Jewish organizations support a commission as suggested above and bring their influence to bear on the Knesset towards a just and peaceful resolution of this tragedy, they will have provided great benefits to America, Israel, and the world at large. They will have shown that Jews really mean it when they say that the task of Judaism is to be "a blessing to the world!" If the American Jewish community simply abstains from making comments this will be taken as tacit support for current policies by the powers in Jerusalem, and the slaughter will continue. If the American Jewish community were to openly oppose the suggested commission and force the United States to veto a resolution in the Security Council for sending an unarmed fact-finding, rather than peace- keeping, commission to the area they would lend active assistance to chauvinistic circles in the Israeli government. Under those circumstances a major war in the area with disastrous economic world-wide consequences may well be impossible to avert.

Official American Jewish circles are very concerned about a re-emergence of anti-Semitism in this country and are actively soliciting funds to combat it. Money cannot solve the problem; only honesty and good will can do so! This means, however, that first of all one has to listen to the other side and reason has to take precedence over passion. If Jewish passions (understandable as they might be) were allowed to overrule reason, anti-Semitism would erupt in full bloom.





May 2001

Today's Vienna

This was a rather busy month taken up by attempts to promote Whither Zionism?, a trip to Vienna with a side-tour to Munich, and the dispatch of a manuscript entitled Satan to First Things.

The results of the efforts in regard to Whither Zionism? will be discussed in the June segment and the trip to Vienna had a dual purpose. The timing had been dictated by testimony in a court case but there was also the intent to use the occasion to get some publicity for War and Mayhem in my native city. The side-trip to Munich was made in order to meet a colleague and his wife for scientific purposes and subsequently another physician couple who had expressed interest in translating War and Mayhem into the German language.

Apart from this official program I had also looked forward to the trip in order to visit with old friends, enjoy the Viennese cuisine and one of the highlights was supposed to have been a visit to the Burgtheater. Anyone who has read War and Mayhem will recall my fondness for this institution of classic theater performances. It is Vienna's answer to the Comédie Francaise in Paris. The building has been restored from the war ravages to its former glory and Weh dem der luegt by Grillparzer (Austria's most famous poet and dramatist) was on the program.

Grillparzer has always intrigued me, not only out of local patriotism but also on account of some of the verses which stayed in memory. For instance in Der Traum ein Leben (The Dream a Life) Rustan, a simple boy, dreamt that he was king; but in achieving this exalted station and in the execution of his office he had to commit several outrages. Upon awakening in the morning Rustan was exceedingly grateful for his lowly stature in life and prayed on his knees: Eines nur ist Glueck hienieden. Eins: des Innern stiller Frieden und die schuldbefreite Brust! Und die Groesze ist gefaehrlich. Und der Ruhm ein leeres Spiel; Was er gibt sind nicht'ge Schatten, Was er nimmt es ist so viel! (The only happiness here below is inner peace and the heart which is freed of guilt. Greatness is dangerous, glory a pointless game, what it gives are merely shadows, what it takes away is oh so much). In 1849 Grillparzer expressed his feelings about the previous year's revolution in the guise of Emperor Rudolf's II words during the 30 years war. In the drama the dregs of society had risen up and demanded equality, to which Rudolf answered: bis alles gleich, weil alles niedrig (till everything is equal because everything is base)! Our current society is also doing its best to erase distinctions of any kind bis alles gleich, weil alles niedrig!

The timelessness of classic literature was also driven home to me during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. I had a vague feeling of having been aware of a similar situation but didn't realize the close parallel until I re-read Grillparzer's Die Juedin von Toledo (the Jewess of Toledo). It's all there except that our friend Bill did not require much seduction and the ending was different. Rahel-Monica gets killed by infuriated friends of the Queen, rather than ending up with book contracts, and the King goes off to fight the Moors, instead of traveling around the world making money by giving speeches to one and all. Those were some of my associations with the Burgtheater and the reason why I looked forward to the evening.

Unfortunately past memories where the classic plays were performed in appropriate period decor and where, even during war time, people were dressed in their Sunday best when they went to the theater, had to remain locked in the brain and could not be revitalized by what was going on in the audience and on the stage. I had never seen nor read Weh dem der luegt (Woe to him who lies) previously, and as author of "thinkruth.com" was ready for an interesting morality play. Unfortunately post-modern deconstructionism has also hit Europe and what was offered on the stage was a disaster. All one could say was: poor Grillparzer; he really didn't deserve that.

The stage setting ranged from primitive to absent e.g. the entire first and fifth act had only the huge empty stage with the three walls adorned by flowery wallpaper. I found out subsequently that the scene was to have taken place in a garden. Apparently the wallpaper was supposed to lead one to that conclusion! In the other acts the setting was equally primitive and gave no hint to the uninitiated as to what the author's intent had been. As far as the rest of the performance was concerned, there was open display of nudity, the purpose of which eluded one and rock noises emanated intermittently from loudspeakers which drowned out what the poor actors were trying to say. In the final act where the play calls for Christian forgiveness of the enemy and secure passage for those who had surrendered we were treated to an attempted rape and a gruesome killing where the perpetrator seems to tear open the adversary's innards and then smears himself with the blood of the victim. All this on the stage of a theater which prides itself as the epitome of German language culture. At the end I had no idea what the play was really intended to be all about. I vowed then and there that I would no longer visit the Burgtheater unless they present classic material in timeless form.

In addition, not only were the actors dressed shabbily so was the audience. Sweaters, T- shirts and Levis were in and the dark suit I wore was out. Grillparzer was right: bis alles gleich weil alles niedrig! Unless you can play to, and for, the lowest instincts and you profane whatever has been held holy you no longer belong to the world of art and culture. You are simply "not with it."

I thought that this particular performance may have been a temporary aberration and an isolated event but as my friends and colleagues assured me this is in fact what is regarded as art even in Vienna, which used to be a beacon of culture. The Opera has also been infected by this "modernity," as I was told. In Beethoven's Fidelio the helpers of the evil Pizarro wore SS uniforms! Why were they not presented as GPU commissars or even more modern as Castro's henchmen? Is evil from now on limited to Nazis? These are cheap propaganda tricks which detract from the performances rather than enhance them. I had, and still have, no use for the Nazis but the current so called art scene does smack of "entartete Kunst" (degenerate art).

Even in Austria the intellectual elite is thoroughly leftist, sees itself as the vanguard of the future and from all the newspapers there is only the Kronenzeitung which gives vent to the real feelings of the common people and, therefore, has the largest circulation. This is also the explanation of the Haider phenomenon. It has nothing to do with Nazism and everything with a revulsion against the incessant Marxist "avant-garde" drumbeat. Society has to be reformed in their image. The common folks don't like it, but they are intimidated similar to Nazi times, and the children are indoctrinated. The color has changed from brown to red and there are no concentration camps but genuine free speech and open investigations of the Nazi era, specifically of the Holocaust, are not permitted. There are laws against it and one can be jailed The book is closed and must remain so.

Having come from the U.S., a still relatively open society (the reason for the qualification will become apparent in the June update), I expected that opinions on history which do not engage in the good vs. evil polemic could be openly presented in democratic Austria. Free speech is, or at least should be, the hallmark of a democracy. That this is not so I found out when I thought it might be a good idea to organize a public discussion of War and Mayhem as part of a book promotion. I was, however, advised by well meaning friends against it because anything that presents both sides of the coin and which might possibly be construed as not rendering sufficient emphasis on specifically Jewish suffering during WWII would risk an outcry by Jewish organizations.

As a result of the coalition government between the People's Party and the Freedom Party with the exclusion of the Socialists, Austria is currently on probation and foreign observers watch every move. A few weeks prior to my arrival there was a mini uproar in the country over a demand by the Chief Rabbi of the Kultusgemeinde for Austria to admit 10.000 Jews in order to revitalize Jewish life in Vienna. In addition he wanted Austria to assume the debts of the Kultusgemeinde which apparently are considerable. Schuessel - the chancellor- said in so many words he would take about 500 people but the country could not be held responsible for debts which it did not incur. Since this answer was regarded as inadequate and Haider could not resist the temptation to add his two cents of populist rhetoric by making a pun on the Chief Rabbi's name, the feelings between official Jewry and the population are somewhat tense at the moment.

Since I did not want to feed ill-feelings I abstained from the planned book promotion but regard it as terribly unfortunate that the people in charge of official Jewish organizations don't seem to realize that incessant demands will not be met with heartfelt endorsement and that they thereby tend to encourage anti-Jewish sentiments. These are, of course, not allowed to be voiced in public and one hears about them only privately.

Jewish feelings were, however, only one part of the aborted book promotion. The wind blows from the left, as has repeatedly been mentioned and, contrary to what happens in sailboat regattas, port tack has right of way over starboard tack. Protest against the right is currently de rigeur and Widerstand (resistance) is the key word for youngsters and elitists. On buildings one could see banners Kultur ist Widerstand or Kunst ist Widerstand. That this cheapens the genuine sacrifices the Austrian resistance movement made during the war, where Widerstand resulted in KZ and/or death, these new generations (we are after all grandparents for some of them already) cannot or do not want to comprehend. I was told that every Thursday afternoon youngsters march for a while along the Ringstrasse shouting such edifying slogans like "Widerstand, Widerstand, Schuessel, Haider an die Wand" (resistance, resistance, Schuessel, Haider against the wall). That one is to be shot when lined up against a wall goes without saying. Thus the mob hasn't changed, neither have the slogans, and the only difference is the perceived enemy. For the Nazis it was Juden und Pfaffen (Jews and clergy) who were to be hanged. I had intended to watch one of these processions but illness in the family required a premature departure from Vienna and return to the States.

That youngsters are getting a dose of indoctrination in favor of the left became apparent when I was invited by the authorities of my former Mittelschule, from which I had been thrown out by the Nazis as "an abscess on the body of the German people" in 1941, to hold a discussion with the students of the fourth as well as subsequently the seventh and eighth grade. In Austria one attends Mittelschule from age ten to age eighteen and there are, therefore, eight grades. I was warmly welcomed by teachers and students and the discussions, in form of questions by the pupils, went well. In contrast to my time there, the school is now co-ed and it was the girls who participated more actively than the boys. One key question stuck in mind: "How can we prevent right wing extremism in the future?" It was appropriate in the context because we were talking about Nazis but I felt it important to explain that left wing extremism is just as dangerous and has to be exposed with equal vigor. This is where the danger lies today The students were receptive but it seemed to be a new concept because they tend to get mainly one-sided information. Nazi crimes get the exclusive attention but other outrages which had occurred during and in the aftermath of WWII are never mentioned. This is not meant to excuse the behavior of the Nazis, which is inexcusable, but history should be presented from all sides and not just one.

There were two other surprises. Learning by rote and reciting the classics has become a lost art. This is unfortunate for two reasons. One is that memory is no longer challenged and trained; the other is that one builds thereby a reservoir of information into one's brain which, just like songs, can be tapped in hours of boredom or crisis to banish unwanted idle or frustrating thoughts. The other surprise was the non-existent dress code; sloppiness of attire by the students is just as marked as it is on our schools. Whether or not they still stand up when the teacher enters I don't know. These may be regarded as minor points but lack of attention to attire does imply lack of respect for others. Yet, from lack of respect a good many of the other unwanted consequences, including poor study habits, flow. On the other hand there have to date been no shootings or knifings in Viennese schools which is a plus.

Now to other positive aspects. For Americans a trip to Austria and Vienna can be heartily recommended. Unless one wants to go to the Burgtheater, which is at this time not advisable anyway, no language skills are necessary because practically everybody speaks English and the people have retained their friendliness. In Jewish circles there may be some concern about the proverbial anti-Semitism of the Viennese but this is not warranted because it does not apply to individuals. Anybody, regardless of ethnic or religious background is being treated politely unless the person claims special privileges or throws his weight around. Under those circumstances one can expect either sullenness or a flash flood of verbal insults, but at no time is there any physical aggression.

The public buildings have been sandblasted, look practically new, and even the private apartment houses are steadily cleaned from the soot of bygone ages. The city looks impressive, the abundant parks are well kept, flowers are in bloom, and the public transportation system is excellent. Do not attempt to drive a car in Vienna, except for getting into or out of town. Even if you have been there before you are bound to get lost in the maze of one-way streets. The city simply wasn't built for today's traffic. But you really don't need a car because, as mentioned, public transportation with trolleys, subways and buses is excellent and there are also numerous taxis. The cabbies may be from Africa, Turkey, Bosnia or other assorted places but most of the time they do find their way around. Some, especially the Viennese ones, may ask you if you have a preferred route to your destination but even if you do, decline the offer because he/she knows better and will not take advantage of you.

Here is a typical experience. I am not only handicapped on account of gait problems but also by my Viennese accent. Everybody in Vienna automatically assumes that I have been living there all along and when I have to ask for directions or if I make suggestions to a cabbie which may not be appropriate due to changed circumstances I get peculiar looks or even "the lip." Two years ago I had to go to mother's lawyer on account of the estate settlement and his office was on the Mariahilferstrasse, which is a rather broad and busy thoroughfare. The lady took me from the Ringstrasse up the Mariahilferstrasse but the problem was that the lawyer's office was on the other side of the street. Since I wanted to minimize my walking because of serious hip pain where every step felt like hitting a sore tooth (the hip joint has been replaced in the meantime with excellent results) I suggested that she go up the Gumpendorferstrasse instead and then come down on the proper side of the Mariahilferstrasse. This elicited a totally unexpected flood of anger and it was apparent that she had what's referred to here as "a bad hair day." I realized what was going on and instead of biting back I patiently explained my dual handicaps. The result was totally surprising. She did stop on the wrong side of the street, subsequently insisted that I take her arm (although I wasn't that crippled), led me across the busy street, gave me a hug on the other side, kissed me on both cheeks, and wished me well. Now that is what is known as the goldene Wienerherz (the golden Viennese heart). If you treat people right they will do so also and a possible flash of sudden anger, caused by whatever, disappears right away.

It is also advisable to take a more leisurely approach during your stay then let us say in New York. Rather than just rushing around from one of the cultural sites to the next and taking one's leave within a day or so, visit the Vienna Woods with their numerous small restaurants and hotels. The Tulbingerkogel, for instance, is only half an hour from town and you find yourself in pristine nature with an unimpeded view over the countryside, while you can indulge in your favorite cocktail and subsequently enjoy a perfectly prepared dinner from a large menu. If you do not have friends with a car a taxi will take you and the prices are reasonable. Rax, Schneeberg and Semmering can also be reached by car within an hour and one gets there an idea of the real Austria unaffected by foreign influences. In sum and substance visit Vienna and her environs whenever you have a chance to do so, you will enjoy it.





June 2001

Metaphysical Guilt

As mentioned previously April and the early part of May were also devoted to get Whither Zionism? into the hands of people who control our fate. I am a scientist and have few illusions about the behavior of my fellow human beings, especially of those who are in power. But scientists love experiments, even when they think they know the outcome. Whither Zionism? was such an experiment. Everyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear must know that the current Middle East policies are doomed to failure and bound to lead to disaster.

In the February update I mentioned that there is nothing new under the sun, when it comes to human behavior as exemplified by the allegations against Senator Ashcroft during his confirmation hearings. On p.36 of Whither Zionism? there is a quote from Josephus in regard to events just prior to the onset of the Jewish war against Rome which had the result that: "many of the most eminent of the Jews swam away from the city [Jerusalem], as from a ship when it was going to sink [II 20:1]." The June 5, 2001 issue of the Salt Lake Tribune carried an article headlined "Moderates Fleeing Middle East" The article starts with: "Worn down by eight months of violence that shows no sign of easing, many Israelis and Palestinians are packing their bags for the United States or Canada...." Two millennia have made no difference in that part of the world.

The question arises, therefore, what is the responsibility of the individual citizen both here and in Israel in order to bring about a degree of sanity in that troubled land. We Americans will be held responsible, whether we like it or not, because it is no secret that Israel is our client state. Why does this bother me personally? Because, as a former citizen of Austria and subsequently the Greater German Reich, I am told that I bear personal guilt for Hitler's atrocities! This is no exaggeration. Karl Jaspers, the renowned German existentialist philosopher wrote a booklet in 1946 during the Nuremberg trials Die Schuldfrage. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Frage.(The question of guilt. A contribution to the German Question). In it he explained that there are four types of guilt. 1. Legal guilt for criminal behavior, 2. Political guilt for allowing a repressive regime to come to power or when in power to tolerate it, 3. Moral guilt for personal misconduct, even when under orders, and 4. Metaphysical guilt which flows from the demand that every human being is co-responsible for all the wrongs and injustices which are being perpetrated in the world when one knows about them and simply stands by without taking action. Ergo in relation to the Nazis I am absolved from criminal or moral guilt because I didn't do anything bad but I am supposed to have political guilt because I had to live under them and did not volunteer for an act punishable by death or concentration camp. I am also supposed to be co-responsible for their criminal acts on the metaphysical plane. Jaspers writes of himself : "Dasz ich noch lebe, wenn solches geschehen ist, legt sich als untilgbare Schuld auf mich" (the fact that I am still alive I carry with me as inexpungeable guilt). Please note the term untilgbar - inexpungeable. Whatever one does after the fact is irrelevant for this particular form of guilt and one Jewish author has proclaimed that the German people have been stamped with the mark of Cain on their foreheads for eternity. This has, of course, practical uses because German as well as Austrian citizens can now be collared for financial retributions in perpetuity. Inexpungeable guilt!

There is obviously some hyperbole in Jaspers' exposition. If one were to follow his thoughts to their logical conclusion one would have to say that all the citizens of the former Soviet Union had political guilt for allowing Lenin to come to power and for submitting to Stalin's crimes. All the millions of Cambodians whom Pol Pot drove into the rice paddies and who didn't die were guilty for having survived. The more than a billion Chinese are guilty of still tolerating the communist regime, not to speak of the North Koreans, Vietnamese, or the Cubans who have to make do with Castro on their island. These are just a few examples for the difference between philosophic ideas and the harsh realities of this world.

Nevertheless, Jaspers is correct that when one sees a catastrophe in the making, shrugs ones shoulders and says I can't do anything about it anyway, one may incur a degree of metaphysical guilt. In a closed society the individual is severely limited in his options, but what possibilities exist in the so-called free world? To explore these Whither Zionism? was written and distributed to all the members of the Bush administration, as well as all the members of the House and Senate: International Relations Committee, Armed Services Committee and Appropriations Committee.

In addition, review copies were sent to all the major daily newspapers in the country and the major TV pundits. The Wiesenthal Center, the Holocaust Memorial in Washington and the Anti-defamation League also got copies. Furthermore, Steven Spielberg is known for his interest in the fate of the Jewish people and I thought that the reasons for the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple when depicted accurately, rather than from a propaganda point of view, could provide an excellent lesson for chauvinistic hotheads.

The result was, of course, predictable. DreamWorks returned the book with the comment that they have a policy to reject all unsolicited material and, therefore, the book is being returned unread. I can't even use it any more for anybody else because it carries an autograph to Spielberg. There were no replies from any of the magazines, newspapers or TV personalities. As far as politicians are concerned there was also mostly silence apart from eight notable exceptions where I received polite form letters or cards, including one from Dick Cheney's office who thanked me and wished me well On the other hand our National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice was too busy to even ask her staff to reply, although she was contacted on repeated occasions.

During the Easter recess I tried to get in personal touch with my senators but got no further than their secretaries. They are just too busy to bother seeing constituents. In olden days you could get an audience even with the emperor or give Caesar a personal petition, but no more when "the people" rule! The irony is that the senators I did vote for didn't give me time of day but my Congressman, Jim Matheson, for whom I did not vote, was willing to lend me his ears and I could put the book personally into his hands. He is new on the job, not yet infected with the disdain for the constituents who pay his salary and obviously wants to get re-elected. The senators have nothing to fear, their secretaries who shield them know it, so why bother?

Thus, we have a very effective censorship in this country for ideas which do not emanate from well known public figures. In the first instance a "reputable publisher" will not take your manuscript because a) the editor may not agree with the contents and possibly more importantly b) it won't bring in huge quantities of money. In our free country one can then take the self-publishing route which gets the book in print but that's the end. Papers will not review it and even if you want to give it to your local library one lady told me in regard to War and Mayhem after leafing through it in a cursory fashion: "We only take books from reputable publishers." Therefore, unless one has the good fortune to be a member of the old boys, or gals for that matter, network your chances of getting heard or read are astronomically small.

The same applies, of course to this website. Who in, literally, all the world is going to find it, even when it is submitted to all the search engines. There is just too much stuff on this "information superhighway" and its bumper to bumper traffic.

So, what has been accomplished? I have shared my "metaphysical guilt" with the movers and shakers of this world and deprived them of excuses. To read a hundred pages is no chore but to disregard them is a mistake. The Middle East continues to drift into chaos and the Mitchell Commission recommendations - although well meant - have predictably been rejected by both sides. Youngsters who aspire to heaven via martyrdom cannot be restrained by anybody and to make their disappearance the precondition for negotiations is a lame excuse. So is the necessity for continuing to expand the settlements. Since the relations between the U.S. and the UN have soured considerably in the past few month a UN commission as suggested in Whither Zionism? may at this time not have much chance of coming into being but some unimpeachable third force seems to be the only hope for letting intellect overcome passion.

In conclusion I might mention some thoughts of a revered icon of the twentieth century on the topic of Palestine which can be found in Churchill and the Jews by Michael J. Cohen. Although Churchill had been early on an outspoken supporter of Zionism he had begun to develop second thoughts later on. There may also have been personal reasons involved for his change of mind. His close friend Lord Moyne, Minister of State Resident in the Middle East, was murdered in November 1944 by a Jewish terrorist organization led by Menachem Begin, who later became Prime Minister. At the end of WWII during his last weeks in office Churchill said:

"I do not think we should take the responsibility upon ourselves of managing this very difficult place while the Americans sit back and criticise...I am not aware of the slightest advantage which has ever accrued to Great Britain from this painful and thankless task. Somebody else should have their turn now..."(p.260).

America has assumed Britain's burden and is now saddled with "managing this very difficult place" but the prospects for bringing stability to the area by the U.S. are no better than they were for the Brits, or the Romans for that matter.

In 1946 Churchill said in the House of Commons:

" The idea that the Jewish Problem could be solved or even helped by a vast dumping of the Jews of Europe into Palestine is really too silly to consume our time in the House of Commons this afternoon" (p.327).

Well it did happen, the migration was unavoidable, the state of Israel came into being and people of good will are now forced to spend considerably more time than just an afternoon to deal with the consequences of this "silly idea."





July 2001

Palestinians. Homosexuality

To start out on a positive note it is a pleasure to acknowledge Alan Caruba's kind review of Whither Zionism? In the May installment of his bookviews.com Caruba wrote that "Rodin asks and brilliantly answers the title question in a way that will prove astonishing and insightful to any reader, particularly in light of the present problems in the Middle East." I am mentioning Caruba's comments here because they are especially relevant for what follows.

The syndicated columnist Cal Thomas usually writes sensible reports but on June 5 there appeared an article of his in the Salt Lake Tribune headlined: Peace Solution: Israel must rid itself of the Palestinians Once and for All. Thomas is clearly sufficiently intelligent to realize that this plan cannot be executed; nevertheless he concludes the article by saying "The current model of 'land for peace' is not working, nor can it work given the objectives of Arafat and Israel's other enemies. Eviction is a better avenue of stability. Will it happen? Probably not. Should it ? Yes."

There are two aspects to this article which require comment. One is that expulsion of the Palestinian population from the occupied territories was advocated as "The Only Solution" by rabbi Meir Kahane in the 1980's. He lost his seat in the Knesset, his political party was forbidden and Kahane was murdered soon thereafter by a Muslim fanatic. The other aspect is that the headline could have come with slight modification from any issue of the Voelkische Beobachter during the late 1930's as "Germany must rid itself of the Jews once and for all." When one knows the history of those years one is aware that the Kristallnacht in November of 1938, which was universally deplored and removed the last vestige of doubt about Nazism's malignancy, was preceded by the deportation of Polish Jews from Germany in October of that year. The Poles did not want this influx of her former citizens either and, among others, young Herschel Grynszpan's family was caught in no man's land. When Herschel received word from his sister about their unhappy circumstances he vowed revenge. Since he was in Paris at the time he wanted to make a statement by shooting the German ambassador but when this wasn't possible he made do with Counselor Ernst vom Rath. The latter was mortally wounded and when he died soon thereafter Goebbels unleashed the pogrom in Germany as "the just revenge of the German people." Further details of the affair are in War and Mayhem. Since Mr. Thomas seemed inadequately informed about the history and complexity of the Middle East problem I sent him a copy of Whither Zionism? but as expected didn't hear back.

Another long article which appeared in a Sunday edition of the Tribune was also of considerable interest. It was written by a Professor of Educational Psychology and carried the headline: There is no evidence that homosexuals can change, only evidence of deception. In the article the professor took issue with some church leaders, as well as other psychologists, that some homosexual individuals can stop this "lifestyle" and adopt instead a heterosexual one. In spite of his academic credentials the professor, who shall remain nameless, is likewise inadequately informed on this subject. The fallacy in his argument is that he accepts an either-or stance and lumps all people who engage in homosexual activity into one group. This is biologically unsound and serves only political purposes. Homosexual activists need large numbers to exert political pressure and, therefore, anyone who may have had one or two homosexual contacts in their lives is counted among their flock.

The evidence that homosexual individuals comprise a spectrum with the more or less effeminate "born homosexual" person on the one hand and others who adopt this lifestyle for a variety of reasons comes, strangely enough, from the Nazis' concentration camps. Let me emphasize that I harbor absolutely no fondness for the days I had to spend under Hitler's rule but the experiences gathered during that era should not be disregarded either. While I do not advocate the methods which demonstrated that some homosexual persons can indeed change their behavior, the fact should not be denied.

The data are presented in the autobiography of Rudolf Höss who became infamous as commandant of Auschwitz, and his notes were penned while in a Polish prison awaiting execution for war crimes. Some "revisionist" historians take issue with a number of the statements he made because they were supposedly extracted under torture but this is irrelevant for the current topic because Höss had nothing to gain from making the points listed here. The book is published in German under the title Kommandant in Auschwitz. Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen des Rudolf Höss An English version is available under Death Dealer.The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz at amazon.com.

Höss had led a rather interesting life. At age 16 he managed to enlist as a volunteer in the German army during WW I and served in Syria and Palestine, of all places. He rose to the rank of sergeant and after the collapse in 1918 he led his cavalry platoon on a highly adventuresome trip back home. He managed to arrive with his people three months later in Germany without having been taken prisoner of war, although they had to traverse enemy territory. Subsequently Höss became involved in right wing paramilitary activities and, for participation in a political murder, was sentenced in 1924 to a Zuchthaus term, which was at that time the most severe form of jail. He remained there for four years and this stay taught him two things. One was that the worst you can do to a prisoner is to leave him totally unoccupied, without any benefit of books, writing materials or whatever. Work, any kind of work, but especially something which had a constructive purpose was welcomed, because it relieved the mind of useless ruminations about one's fate. When he was finally given some work to do he breathed a sigh of relief and the slogan "Arbeit macht frei" (work liberates) was born in his mind. Later on it "graced" the entrance of the concentration camp in Auschwitz. Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that before the war the concentration camps were indeed labor camps for "reeducation" as they exist, for instance, today in China, and good behavior could earn you a discharge. Even Nazis preferred tax payers over tax burdens. The second lesson was in regard to homosexuality which tends to become rampant when young males are cooped up together.

After the Nazis took over in Germany, Höss volunteered for the SS in 1933. From 1934-1938 he was deputized first as Block- and subsequently Rapportfuehrer to Dachau; from 1938-1940 he served as Adjutant and Commandant of the KZ Sachsenhausen, and from 1940-1943 he was in charge of Auschwitz. When Höss arrived at Dachau the homosexual prisoners were already a problem, although initially they didn't matter numerically. According to Höss the camp commandant of Dachau had thought it a good idea to distribute the homosexual prisoners throughout the camp in all barracks. Prior to the Olympic Games of 1936 the Nazis wanted to put their best foot forward and cleansed the streets not only of beggars and vagrants, who were sent for "education" to work houses and concentration camps, but the cities and spas were also cleared of the multitude of prostitutes and homosexuals. They were also to be educated for useful work in the concentration camps. By the way, it seems likely that the Chinese will follow the example if they are awarded the Olympic Games for 2008. Let us now read what Höss had to say about the situation Dachau.

"It didn't last long until reports came in from all quarters about homosexual relations. Punishment didn't change anything, the Seuche (contagion) increased. On my suggestion all the homosexuals were now concentrated in one block and they received a supervisor who knew how to deal with them. They were also segregated from the other prisoners during their work details. Thus they pulled for a long time a Straszenwalze (steamroller but pulled manually).

All of a sudden the plague was eradicated. Even when on occasion these unnatural relations persisted, they were isolated events. In the barracks the homosexuals were supervised so that there was no opportunity....In Sachsenhausen they were immediately segregated in a special block."

After further descriptions of the type of hard labor the prisoners had to perform, regardless of weather in winter and summer, Höss wrote the following informative passages

"The result of hard labor which was to make 'normal' individuals out of them depended upon the difference among homosexuals. It was most effective and immediately apparent in the Strichjungen (male prostitute youngsters)...they were not truly homosexual it was merely their profession...several of them could be discharged without relapsing into their former behavior. This particular lesson was sufficient. There was also a group who had become homosexual - bored by sexual relations with too many women, who wanted new thrills in their parasitic existence - who could likewise be educated in this manner, and made to give up their vice. This did not hold, however, for those who had by inclination been too deeply imbued with this depravity. They were the same as the genuine homosexuals (aus Veranlagung) but those were few and far between.

For those individuals there was no help regardless of hard work or strict supervision. Wherever there was an opportunity they were in each others arms. Even when they were already in poor physical shape they continued to pursue their vice. They were also easily recognizable. With a soft girlish affectedness (Zimperlichkeit) and mannerisms...they were immediately distinguishable from those who had rid themselves of the vice and those who were in the process of doing so, whose step by step progress could be readily observed.

While those who were willing to change endured the hardest labor, the others succumbed. Inasmuch as they could not or would not desist from their vice they knew that they would never see freedom again...this accelerated the physical deterioration. When in addition there was the loss of the "friend" through illness or death one could foresee the end. Many committed suicide. The "friend" meant for these individuals everything in this situation. It happened several times that two friends committed suicide together."

Höss also said that Himmler had devised a method in Ravensbrueck to find out which of the homosexual prisoners had really been "cured" by bringing them together in an informal setting with prostitutes. Those who had been "reeducated" readily succumbed to the charms of the ladies while the


"Incurables didn't pay attention to these women at all. If they made advances they turned away with disgust ....The ones who were to be discharged were once more given the possibility for homosexual relations but they refused the advances of the genuine homosexuals. There were, however, borderline cases who used both opportunities. Whether or not one can call them bisexual I can't judge. To be able to observe the life and habits of the homosexuals of all varieties, in connection with their incarceration, was highly informative for me."


While I, obviously, do not approve of the methods used by the Nazis to effect this change in sexual behavior it is nevertheless clear that some homosexual individuals can be motivated to abandon this "lifestyle." I sent the Höss information in a letter to the professor but he was apparently to busy to respond and seemed to follow the rule: My mind is made up, don't bother me with facts.

As mentioned earlier, like most everything else which involves human behavior there are gradations in the expression of a given trait and to deny those can only serve political purposes rather than lead to an understanding of the underlying condition. Numbers translate into votes and this is all that counts, never mind the facts. This attitude has also led to the medical absurdity that HIV-AIDS which is for all practical purposes, in this country, a preventable disease by simply abstaining from unhealthy practices, is actually the only politically protected infectious disease for which a cure must be found immediately. Since research money is limited this stance comes at the cost of removing valuable financial resources from other truly unavoidable and more common illnesses. Currently the AIDS epidemic in Africa is receiving a great deal of attention and the solution is also to be billions of dollars for research. But even in Africa the epidemic is caused by promiscuous sexual behavior. The plague could be eradicated worldwide by abstention from homosexual practices, by engaging in heterosexual intercourse with one partner only, and avoidance of intravenous illicit drug use. In contrast to nearly all other diseases AIDS (with few exceptions e.g. children of infected mothers, or recipients of tainted blood transfusions) is self-inflicted and preventable by adhering to a healthy life-style.

These verities are, of course, highly unpopular. Therefore, an attitude is fostered by the political and media establishments where even the use of the term homosexual is frowned upon and the word "gay" has been substituted. This is truly a perversion of language. Hardly any one of us, regardless of sexual orientation, is gay in the true meaning of the word for any length of time. Life has too many vicissitudes to allow us "gaiety" for more than short periods. To dignify sexual practices, which involve acts that are distasteful to the majority of people in our culture, with this euphemism is unconscionable. Homosexual activists may call themselves whatever they want but the much larger non-homosexual community should not be swayed by this misuse of language and call the behavior by its proper name.

Nevertheless even here a caveat is in order. To label somebody " a homosexual" as if this were the "be all and end all "of the individual's life, is just as uncalled for as using other potentially pejorative terms without some qualification. For instance, when I started my professional neurologic career it was common practice to talk about "the epileptic" or "the schizophrenic." I abolished these terms from my personal vocabulary because they are adjectives and should not be used as nouns. Instead I talked and wrote about patients (by the way, even this term has lost its meaning, because nowadays physicians, just like lawyers, tend to have "clients") with epilepsy or schizophrenia, or whatever the condition was. This retains the personhood of the individual and allows for a change in the condition, which can and does occur at times. I had to disagree with one of my professors early on whose favorite dictum was "once an epileptic always an epileptic." The statement was not only pejorative but simply factually wrong. I am glad indeed that my terminology, which was news in the fifties and sixties, has now been generally adopted by my colleagues.

This brings me to one of the major pitfalls in the thought processes of the human race and is clearly illustrated by the two mentioned newspaper articles. It is the inappropriate use of the "all or nothing," principle as it is called in neurophysiology. The law refers to the propagation of the electrical activity in a nerve. Once an impulse is strong enough to be propagated, the size of the response, and the speed of its conduction will be independent of the intensity of the original stimulus. Once fired up the nerve gives its all. This is how the peripheral nervous system works. But we also have a central nervous system which allows us to give graded responses before we put our nerves into action. In the present context for Mr. Thomas there are apparently only monolithic Palestinians who have to be expelled and for the professor of educational psychology there are only homosexuals who are incapable of changing. This is the same type of thinking which declared "the Jews" enemies of the German people, and which condemned "the Germans" as "the Nazis" when in fact only a small subgroup in these categories had engaged in undesirable or even outright criminal activities. Unless we stop thinking in terms of classes of people and hold only individuals responsible for their actions there will be no end to hatred in this world with concomitant injustices.





August 2001

Stem Cells

Apart from the continuing violence in the Middle East, which was reported occasionally, there were three items the American media obsessed over during the past month. One was "The Case of the Missing Intern," another was Global Warming, and the third Stem Cell research.

As far as the first item is concerned the fate of Ms. Chandra Levy and that of her paramour Representative Gary Condit has become a boon to cable news channels, because there is too much air time to fill and the genuine news are not sufficiently sensational. The entire story can be summarized in a few sentences. Ms. Levy has been missing for about three months. Nobody knows her or her body's whereabouts and it becomes increasingly likely that her case will end up like that of Jimmy Hoffa's, who also vanished without a trace. Mr. Condit on the other hand failed to obey the Prime Directive which ought to govern human behavior. Simply put it states: Whenever you find yourself in trouble tell the truth immediately and fully, without making excuses. Qui s'excuse, s'accuse (whoever excuses himself, accuses himself) the French say and they are right. This is the sum and substance of the story over which TV newscasters, hosts and guests drool endlessly for hours day in and day out.

The discussion of Global Warming will be postponed for another update. At any rate it is supposed to stay with us for at least another hundred years, so what's the hurry? I am currently in the process of gathering my own data in regard to temperature forecasts and these will be published in due time.

The third item on the agenda, stem cell research, does merit discussion today because President Bush is being pressured by the media to immediately release federal funds for embryonic stem cell research. The media bolster their argument by promising the general public the blue from the sky about the benefits the human race will reap from this type of research. The moral and religious pro and con arguments are endlessly hashed out but the legitimate medical issues which can be raised for or against embryonic stem cell research have, to the best of my knowledge, never been aired by the public media to the extent that they should have been. We are only being told that this research might lead to cures for Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes and a host of other chronic degenerative illnesses. With other words we are finally on the way to realize Ponce de Leon's dream. The fountain of youth is around the corner and embryonic stem cells will relieve us from all the burdens associated with aging. The key word in all of this, which by the way this type of propaganda shares with Global Warming, is the word "might." It is not being taken merely as some faint hope, which springs eternal, but is regarded as "will" and action must be taken now, immediately, and by the federal government or an irretrievable chance will be lost.

In order to find out what the implantation of embryonic stem cells really does in the human being I searched the medical literature on the Internet and came up empty handed. There are no data! As a neurologist I was, of course, most interested in Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease but even the animal data are so far exceedingly sparse and inconclusive. It just so happened that the July issue of Neurology Reviews had a lead article entitled: "Shooting for the Moon. Bolstered by a New Research Agenda, Parkinson's Researchers Aim High." In this article, which will also available on the web in due time under www. neurologyreviews.com, the several techniques which are currently under investigation are discussed. These are: transplantation of a) neural tissue, b) embryonic stem cells, c) adult stem cells, and d) xenotransplantion. Before explaining these terms further in everyday language some fundamental facts about Parkinson's disease must first be presented.

The condition results from a loss of nerve cells (neurons) in certain regions of the brain which produce a critical chemical called dopamine. This discovery, in the early sixties of the past century, led to a Nobel Prize because dopamine could be produced in the laboratory and patients could take the drug in pill form. The early results were exceedingly exciting but, as everything else in life, first love wears off, and the "fine print" becomes noticeable only after some time. Although improvements in the compound in form of levodopa (L-dopa) were made, which is the current preferred form of treatment; there are still a great many problems. Not only does the effect of the medication wear off after some time but some patients also develop uncontrollable writhing movements especially of the head and limbs (dyskinesias or dystonia) which make their lives miserable. For this reason the search for "the cure" continues.

Hippocrates, "the father of medicine" who plied his art on the island of Cos in the Aegean around 400 B.C. wrote in his aphorisms: "What medicine [drugs] cannot cure, the knife [surgery] will cure, what the knife cannot cure fire [radiation] will cure, and what fire cannot cure is wholly incurable." Genetic modification of the organism could not be imagined at that time but on the whole the dictum still holds. Since L-dopa failed to live up to its promise neurosurgeons began to practice their art by destroying certain structures or pathways in the brain with their knives, or by targeted radiation. This led to some good and some bad results. At any rate the disease remained for the most part progressive and only long term follow-up of ten years or more would allow one to speak of an arrest or even cure of the disease. This brings us to the article in Neurology Reviews and stem cells. The whole purpose of the exercise is to create neurons which produce dopamine in the patient's brain not only in the right amount but also nothing else. This statement alone should give one pause, because the problem is obviously far from trivial. The solution will not only require funding but equally or even more importantly time, measured not in years but decades! Let us now look at the upside and downside of the mentioned research programs.

Neurontransplantation. The good news according to Dr. Dunnett of the Brain Repair Group at Cardiff University in Wales is that "There is convincing evidence that fetal tissue grafts can have a functional effect in animal models of Parkinson's disease" and "When such cells are implanted they survive, grow, connect with denervated [have lost their functional connections] areas, and alleviate some of the simpler motor deficits associated with Parkinson's disease. This provides proof of the principle that dopamine deficiency can be restored by transplanted dopaminergic [dopamine producing] cells."

So far so good. Now comes the fine print. The study involved an "animal model" rather than the human disease and in contrast to the human illness Dr. Dunnett's model produced acute rather than chronic effects. Furthermore, he stated that "Fetal cell transplants can work with dramatic efficacy in some cases but can also seriously go wrong." Even when the method worked it should be noted that the beneficial effect on the symptoms of the animal, rather than on the brain slices at autopsy, improved "some of the simpler motor deficits." This leads one to assume that some of the more complex motor functions on which we depend, were not alleviated.

As far as human results are concerned there is only one relatively long term scientifically controlled study mentioned in the article. This involves the work of Dr. Curt Freed at the University of Colorado. Dr. Freed's team transplanted precursors of dopaminergic cells from 6-10 week old human fetuses into the brains of 19 patients with severe Parkinson's disease. These patients were compared with others who had been sham operated where only burr holes were placed in the skull. The study was "double blind" which means that neither the patient nor the team of examining physicians knew whether or not the patient had received a transplant. The result of the follow-up of "up to three years," which means that this was the maximum and most patients had shorter observation times, was that a "statistically significant 28% improvement over baseline" was observed. This held true for the total group, when the patients were not taking their morning dose of medications. When the group was subdivided between older and younger patients it became apparent that a 38% improvement (highly significant statistically) had occurred in the younger individuals while it was only 14% in the older group, and as such not statistically significant. Furthermore, even in those patients who had benefited the total effect was only comparable to about half the effect of their usual morning dose of levodopa. Now comes the bad news. Fifteen percent of transplant patients had a recurrence of disabling dystonias and dyskinesias in the second or third year after the operation. All of these patients were 60 years or younger and had experienced these symptoms when on levodopa but now had the problem even when the medication was discontinued.

Inasmuch as review articles might be slanted I obtained subsequently Dr. Free's and colleagues' original paper which was published in the March 6, 2001 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. While the review as cited above was in essence correct, the full article did provide additional information. Embryonic tissue was obtained with the consent from the mother during elective abortions seven to eight weeks after conception. There were initially two groups of 20 patients each in the transplant and in the sham operation (placebo) group. One transplant patient died in a car accident when a tree fell across the road during a storm and the outcome of the operation could, therefore, not be evaluated at the one year final comparison point. Although some patients were followed for up to three years, the figures cited above refer to the one year outcome after the code was broken. At that point the sham operated patients were given the option to have transplants and 14 patients of the placebo group consented. Thus, the figure of up to three years follow-up covers 33 rather than 19 patients. Apart from the development of dyskinesias, which occurred later than the first year, and in some younger patients, there were also during the 12 months of follow-up 9 serious adverse events. Although these were in all probability unrelated to the transplants it is noteworthy that eight of these occurred in the transplant group and only one in the placebo group. Percentage wise this would give a difference of 40 percent vs. 5 percent. The investigators realized that inasmuch as the operation benefited only patients under 60 years of age and that younger patients tended to develop intractable dyskinesias, they did not suggest the operation to the last 6 individuals of the remaining placebo group.

We are, therefore, confronted with these facts: Embryonic neuronal tissue containing dopaminergic neurons can be transplanted into key regions of a recipient's brain. They grow, multiply, and establish connections with surrounding tissue, regardless of the age of the patient. The growth of these cells is, however, not directly reflected in improvement of the patient’s symptoms because only younger patients benefited, and the maximum effect tends to be essentially only half of what would have been accomplished with a full dose of levodopa. The late occurrence of uncontrollable dyskinesias, even when levodopa is no longer given, represents a serious and disabling complication. The amount of tissue to be transplanted and the best brain region for the transplants to be inserted will be the task for the future.

Embryonic stem cells. In contrast to embryonic tissue containing dopaminergic neurons, the embryonic stem cells have been called "omnipotent." This means that these cells, taken from the earliest stages of human development, can develop into any type of tissue. With other words they can become liver, brain, bone, heart or whatever. It should be noted that embryonic stem cell studies have so far been performed only in rodents. There are no data on higher animals or, of course, humans. While these cells can develop into neurons, there is no guarantee that they will do so, especially dopaminergic ones. In Petri dishes they have so far produced other types of neurons as well as glia cells which are the other main cellular structure of the nervous system. Dr. Mc Kay of the National Institute of Neurologic Disorders and Stroke whose work is quoted in the article stated that "we are trying to improve the efficiency of differentiating to dopaminergic neurons ...in animal studies... [but] we need to demonstrate that the cells we make will actually work in animal studies." This is indeed all that is known about the effectiveness of embryonic stem cells to cure diseases. Thus, the entire media circus is about a gleam in the eye of some researchers based on hope and faith. Are our promoters of public information, who urge immediate action for embryonic stem cell research, aware of this paucity of facts? Do they also know that these omnipotent cells, when implanted into a brain, might just continue to grow and produce tumors? Once implanted they will do whatever they like and neither Federal Money nor Federal Regulations will be able to control them. Quite apart from moral and ethical considerations this is another Pandora's Box which we are about to open.

Adult stem cells. Neural adult stem cells have been harvested from nasal passages of cadavers up to 18 hours after death as Dr. Roisen's group from the University of Louisville has demonstrated. The disadvantage of using adult stem cells is that they get old after some time and lose their potency, although they did live longer when taken from an 11 month old infant. Whether or not any of these Petri dish neurons could be coaxed to become dopaminergic is not yet known. The other argument against the use of adult stem cells is that the supply is not as plentiful as for embryonic stem cells. But as long as we are dreaming, and this is really what all of stem cell research is about at this time, one could readily foresee a scenario where we donate in our youth some of our nasal neural stem cells and keep them in a freezer until the time comes when we might need them.

Xenotransplants (use of adult animal tissue) have become commonplace to repair human heart valves and dopaminergic pig cells have already been transplanted into human Parkinson patients. Studies about their effectiveness are currently under way in Tampa, Atlanta and Boston. This might bring up an interesting religious question. Since orthodox Jews as well as Muslims refrain from putting pork into their mouths and stomachs would they be willing to have pieces of pig brain inserted into their own?

Additional work is being carried out on Neuroprotective agents which are supposed to stop the progression of Parkinson's disease and thereby obviate the need for implants of any kind. It is, therefore, obvious that Parkinson research is alive and well. It will continue to prosper around the world, without federal tax dollars and federal regulations. Not only is there another Nobel Prize in the offing but drug companies are likely to reap a financial bonanza. There is still the question whether government should control the research or private industry? The answer is obvious from past history. All major advances in medicine were achieved through private initiatives and personal ingenuity which can only flourish in a free society. Those of our citizens who believe that government is the answer to all of mankind's woes should really take a good look at the "achievements" of the defunct Soviet Union, even in the medical field, and compare them with what the Free World has accomplished. Furthermore, money is not unlimited. If tax dollars go to stem cell research other investigations will inevitably have to be curtailed, although they may actually have more immediate prospects of success. The argument is also made that only government can enforce ethical rules. This is another fallacy. Universities and drug companies, the only places where work of this type can proceed, are already tightly regulated and in case of serious untoward outcomes there are armies of malpractice lawyers chomping at the bit to get a piece of the action.

So what is really at work here with this entire stem cell hullabaloo? The overriding goal seems to be politics and expansion of government. President Bush is to be maneuvered into a position where he can be attacked regardless of whatever decision he takes. He has to be tarred and feathered; his administration has to be turned into a failure because, according to some of our Democrats, he didn't deserve the presidency anyway. The current interregnum which the Left reluctantly has to put up with needs to be crippled by a democratic congressional landslide next year. Subsequently George W. can be returned to Texas in 2004 and we are all assured of a socialist government for the subsequent eight years. This will then finally usher in the real millennium and bring us in line with those European socialist governments who currently hate our guts and call us names. The reason for their dislike of America is simply that at least some of us still regard ourselves as free citizens who want to live and work under our own initiative and thereafter enjoy the fruit of our labors, with minimal government interference. Unfortunately the Bush administration seems to be singularly inept in explaining the rationale for its actions and is thereby leaving the field to its adversaries. As far as stem cell research is concerned the facts are really quite simple and if the President's spokespersons were to present them to the media, in a manner similar to what is outlined above, even the most hostile critics might have to concede that it would be useful not to rush in where angels fear to tread.





September, 2001

What is Truth?

President Bush has made his decision on embryonic stem cell research and has tried to find some middle ground. His directive that federal funds can be used only for those research projects which utilize existing cell lines, rather than newly created ones, has found some praise by his partisans but unhappiness continues to exist on both ends of the political spectrum. Nevertheless the entire argument is rapidly becoming obsolete because, as expected, private industry is jumping into the breach. There is big money to be made from selling embryonic tissue, which is readily available at the abortion mills around the country, and its subsequent cloning. It is probably only a matter of time until new stem cell lines will be auctioned off on the Internet. The Left will have to find another line of attack but the shrinking estimated budget surplus, the faltering economy and the prospective "raiding of the Social Security Trust Fund" will give them ample ammunition.

The main item for this month's agenda was occasioned by a comment from one of my sailing buddies. He is computer savvy and surfs the net. I therefore encouraged him to visit thinktruth.com but he didn't quite know what to do with the title. So I explained "think truth, that's what you're supposed to do anyway all the time!" Whereupon he replied "ok, but there may not be any." Thus we are back at Pilate's question: What is truth?

When I chose this particular URL for the website I had obviously underestimated the relativism which has invaded our culture. For me the situation was quite simple. The truth which is discussed on these pages is not absolute or ultimate truth in the philosophical sense but simply that aspect of our daily lives which is objectively verifiable by independent observers. It is the opposite of the lie where the individual deliberately misrepresents facts as known to the person. Right now lying is, of course, making headlines on account of Gary Condit's behavior. The majority of Americans who have seen his interview with Connie Chung on TV don't believe that his account has been truthful. Even if the Congressman were to sincerely believe that his answers were forthcoming and complete, a simple check with the Levy family or the Washington DC police can establish what the facts were. It may be argued that this amounts to a "he says, she says" situation but this is not the case. Police records of his interviews exist, they are potentially available for public scrutiny and objective data can be established.

President Clinton wagged his finger at us a few years ago and told us emphatically: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." Well, we had to take him at his word until the famous blue dress appeared, which had not gone to the cleaners in the meantime, and provided objective evidence for his activities. Clinton subsequently amended his statement by trying to imply that Miss Lewinsky had sex with him but not he with her or that oral sex does not constitute a sexual relationship. But anybody who is not blindly partisan or devoid of all common sense is likely to see this as excuses rather than the truth of the matter. The ex-President even lied under oath because an oath demands: to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. There is good reason for this because the most vicious and most common lie is the deliberate withholding of relevant information. The fact that Mr. Clinton was impeached but not convicted sent a signal that even an oath need not to be taken seriously provided you are sufficiently powerful and can afford superb lawyers.

Mr. Condit seems to have drawn an inappropriate lesson from the Clinton affair. Stonewalling worked for Mr. Clinton, in my opinion, because the Democrats did not want to lose the Presidency and the Republicans were afraid to face an incumbent Al Gore in the upcoming 2000 elections. It was assumed that a seriously damaged Clinton would be so much easier to defeat than an untarnished Gore. That the election turned into such a cliffhanger anyway they would not have predicted even in their worst nightmares. Thus all the phraseology of "popularity" of the President and not having committed perjury anyway was pure politics. The Senate trial was a sham as Schippers has documented in Sellout: The Inside Story of President Clinton's Impeachment.

But as far as Mr. Condit is concerned this situation does not apply. He is neither rich nor does he have sufficiently powerful friends who will defend him regardless of morals or ethics. Furthermore the Democrats can afford to lose a congressional seat, if worst were come to the worst and he had to resign; it is not the Presidency after all. On top of it we have the missing Chandra Levy and her parents are not going to give up their search as well as their efforts to have the Congressman come up with the full story and thereby the truth about his relationship.

Telling the truth is, therefore, not just some intellectual exercise for philosophers but has very practical consequences for our daily lives. In my personal opinion Mr. Condit did have, in all probability, a sexual relationship with Miss Levy but I sincerely doubt that he had contracted for her disappearance. Had he immediately informed the parents and the police voluntarily and completely of everything he knew he would not be in such dire straits today and the case might have been solved. Adultery is, unfortunately, a "so what" situation today, so is casual sex to which we are treated every night on TV. Nobody would have been particularly upset apart, perhaps, from Mr. Condit's wife. But she, like Hillary Clinton might also have become inured over the years to her husband's constant philandering and not lost any sleep over it.

There is a reason why I have become so concerned about truthfulness in our daily lives. As is apparent from War and Mayhem I had been an expert liar during my childhood and had frequently suffered the consequences. When lying was literally beaten out of me by my stepfather I not only learned that telling the truth is morally right but it can save you not only grief but even your very life, as is also documented in that book. Currently our society is steadily being weaned from the truth. We are lied to by politicians, the media, advertisers and other assorted folks to such an extent that it has practically become the norm. The truth as an intellectual concept seems to have vanished. Truth has become personal and is what I believe regardless of what you think.

There is an ancient precedent for this which was quite unknown to me until a few days ago. My next book The Moses Legacy, which deals with the problem why Jews have been persecuted since biblical times, has not yet found a publisher. But while Moses keeps wandering through the offices of various publishing houses I am using the time to polish a few paragraphs here and there. In so doing I was puzzled that in Heschel's book A Passion for Truth he described an Abraham who bears hardly any relationship to the person we know from the Bible. For instance Heschel stated that "This is what Abraham did. He forsook community and deception to live with Truth in solitude." This was news to me because the Bible tells us that he moved with his whole clan from Haran to Canaan, subsequently to Egypt and back, had a vigorous sex life, was engaged in wars and commerce etc. This is hardly what one would expect from an individual who lived "with Truth in solitude." The problem is that the relatively recently deceased Abraham Joshua Heschel was, and still is, highly respected as one of the most eminent orthodox Jewish scholars.

The question arose, therefore, how to resolve this discrepancy. The key word, obviously, is Truth. For this reason I looked up the definition of Truth in McKenzie's Dictionary of the Bible because we are, after all, dealing with biblical information. The result was highly surprising. Mc Kenzie states "The difference between Hb [Hebrew] and Gk [Greek] speech is clearly exhibited in the idea of truth; Hb has no distinct word for true and truth. These ideas are expressed by 'emet and cognate words which are treated under FAITH." The entire subsequent passages are too long to be reproduced here but will show up in The Moses Legacy. In essence McKenzie points out that the real, or truth, was personal for Hebrew-speaking people while truth and faith were clearly differentiated by the Greeks. We used to follow in the footsteps of the Greeks where truth is objectively verifiable while faith is subjective and personal. It was this difference which made scientific progress possible.

It seems that we are now turning our backs on this fundamental distinction. Inasmuch as a theory of relativity exists which pertains to cosmic phenomena everything else can also be regarded as relative. This sort of thinking undermines society at all levels. Law is no longer based on long established practices but represents an opinion by a judge, or groups of judges, at a given time rather than as what it has been understood for centuries. These opinions, although binding for a while can, however, readily be overruled by other judges because they are, after all, only personal opinions, regardless of how precedents have to be massaged in order to make them appear to be reasonable. As explained in The Moses Legacy this type of thinking is directly derived from the Talmud, where Moses' laws were not only questioned but underwent personal interpretations. When "Talmudic thinking" (the term is not my invention) moves from religious to civil and criminal law, as has happened in our country during the past few decades, problems are bound to arise. When all the established customary landmarks for decent behavior are being removed chaos must inevitably result. Is this really the direction we want to go, in this new century and millennium? Or should we not return to some reasonable and firm rules of conduct the majority can agree on, and which can be adequately enforced? Inasmuch as thinking precedes language we have to scrutinize first our thought processes so that we can then express our ideas in clear and unmistakable language.

What prevents us from thinking truthfully and speaking the truth? Fear! What are we afraid of? The myriad of untoward events which might befall us and which imagination magnifies out of all proportions! "Du fürchtest alles was nicht trifft" (you are afraid of everything which doesn't come to pass anyway) said Goethe, and he was right. But even if society removes "the ancient landmarks," to use biblical language, the individual does not have to do so. The Lord has given us strength and the ability to adapt to adverse circumstances, if and when they arrive. Instead of being fearful of what might or might not happen in the future let us be grateful for whatever we have in the present. With this attitude towards life, and its vicissitudes, lying becomes superfluous.





October, 2001

September 11th





On September 11 the world changed for all of us in an instant. There is hardly anyone who was not affected to some extent by the catastrophe which unfolded within the space of a couple of hours. The stunning simplicity of the idea to turn our own jetliners into lethal bombs which destroyed the World Trade Center totally, and the Pentagon partially, has brought home to us how fragile our lives are. Only the heroic acts of passengers on another doomed jetliner prevented a further disaster of untold proportions.

Osama bin Laden - if it was indeed his network - has brought our country literally to its knees and the country turned to God in prayer. The bitter, and in part irrational, fight waged by some for separation of Church and State had become irrelevant. The leaders of our country bowed their heads in prayers led by Christian, Jewish and Muslim clergymen. The much vaunted multiculturalism which pitted our citizens of various ethnic and religious backgrounds against each other was shown up as a charade as all of us became simply Americans rather than hyphenated ones. The problems discussed in the August and September updates: Congressman Condit's affair, federal funding of stem cells research, the disappearance of the budget surplus, raiding of the social security trust fund have all passed, at least temporarily, from our TV screens as we were shown over and over again the pictures of the jets crashing into our symbols of superpower status.

Nevertheless the current unity of our people and the high approval rating of the President's handling the disaster may evaporate when media pundits will begin to clamor for drastic actions with immediately visible results. This is the danger because the enemy is not only outside but inside our borders and we simply cannot "nuke 'em," as has been proposed. There are some "journalists" who appear daily on our TV screens who seem to be unable to grasp the simple concept that you have to investigate the causes of terrorism in order to achieve a permanent cure. It is tragic that when some well-meaning relatively prominent people advance this idea they are being insulted as "peaceniks," "incompetents" or worse. It is these journalists who need to be educated in the fundamentals of life before they fuel the flames of hate and revenge.

The tragedy, apart from loss of life and property, is that some of our "public opinion molders” actually help the terrorists to achieve their objective by spreading fear among our citizenry. Life is a precious gift but we are doomed to die the moment we are born. This is an incontrovertible fact. The only question is what we do with the span of years which is allotted to us. We can fritter them away in the "pursuit of happiness" or we can endow our lives with meaning. Unfortunately the type of meaning which we give to our lives differs considerably depending upon our life experiences and upbringing. But let there be no doubt: the people who hijacked the planes and those who organized this crime firmly believed that they were doing God's will.

All three major religions involved in this tragedy profess to believe in the One God of the universe Who is just, loving and merciful, Yet in actual practice individuals tend to believe in their tribal deity who will aid or avenge them as the case may be. Even Hitler believed he was doing God's work when he persecuted the Jews. In Mein Kampf he wrote "So glaube ich heute im Sinne des allmaechtigen Schoepfers zu handeln: Indem ich mich des Juden erwehre, kaempfe ich fuer das Werk des Herrn" (I, therefore, believe today that I am acting in accordance with the intention of the Almighty Creator: By defending myself against the Jew I am fighting for the work of the Lord). The Second World War was portrayed as a battle between good and evil on both sides. This seems incredible in retrospect but the German soldiers fighting on the Eastern Front were convinced that they were saving Western civilization from Bolshevism, and on the Western front they hoped to defeat Jewish-Capitalist interests which would enslave the fatherland. At the same time the Americans and British were saving that same Western civilization from Nazism. At Placentia Bay, before the signing of the Atlantic Charter in August of 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" while the Wehrmacht was fighting the atheistic Soviet Union. To portray a struggle in apocalyptic terms makes good propaganda on both sides because it fires the emotions but it fosters hate rather than reason. We clamor for justice but most of our pundits fail to see that justice is, or at least should be, indivisible. By aligning ourselves unequivocally with the policies of the state of Israel we have turned a blind eye to the injustices which are being perpetrated against the native Palestinians in the territories conquered during the 1967 war.

Samuel Johnson wrote in regard to the American War of Independence, which he thoroughly disapproved of, that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. The winner writes history. Had George Washington lost he and his most prominent followers would probably have been hanged. So it is with terrorism. Yesterday's terrorists can become Prime Ministers if the struggle succeeds but remain condemned if they fail. Terrorism is the ultimate weapon of the dispossessed and I am sure nobody wants to be reminded that Prime Minister Begin as well as Prime Minister Shamir started their political lives as terrorists against British rule (see Terror out of Zion. The Fight for Israeli Independence by J. Bowyer Bell). The axiom that the end justifies the means is still adhered to, by both sides, although one doesn't want to put it that crudely.



During the past two months I read, among others, three books which are highly á propos. One was Barbara Tuchman's March of Folly, Gloria Whelan's Angel on the Square and Die Rache Gottes. Radikale Moslems, Christen und Juden auf dem Vormarsch by Gilles Kepel. Tuchman eloquently described how nations have acted against their best self-interest by simply persevering on a given course when it had become obvious that it would lead to disaster. She closed her book with the example of the Vietnam War but had she lived longer she might have added a chapter on the policies of the state of Israel since the 1967 war. Whelan's book is aimed at adolescents to teach them the rudiments of the causes for the Russian revolutions of 1917 and shows exquisitely how the leading upper crusts of Imperial Russia utterly failed to recognize the intensity of the storm which was beginning to brew in their midst. The relevance to today's events is that we are likewise blinding ourselves to the anger of the dispossessed masses in the Muslim world which finds its outlet in religious fury.

Kepel's book was originally published in French under the title La Revanche de Dieu Chretiens, juifs et musulmans a la reconquete du monde and it is now available in English as The Revenge of God: The resurgence of Islam, Christianity and Judaism in the Modern World. It is perhaps noteworthy that the French word reconquet would best be translated into German as Wiedereroberung, rather than Vormarsch, which means advance, and in English as re-conquest rather than resurgence. More important is, however, the fact that the book was originally published in 1991. I had bought it in Vienna in the early nineties but did not take it very seriously at the time. September 11 immediately brought the chilling contents back to memory and I re-read key sections. In short the author documents the return to biblical or Koranic Fundamentalism as a protest movement against the secular society the United States is regarded as promoting world wide. Yet all three groups have different goals. Evangelical Christians, steeped in the Revelation of St. John the Divine, want to help the Jewish state to build its Third Temple which in turn would herald the arrival of the Antichrist and subsequently Jesus' second coming. Fundamentalist Jews want the Temple built on the original site which would bring the Jewish Messiah who, obviously, would have no use for the return of an "avenging Jesus." Fundamentalist Muslims despise the presence of Christians as well as Jews in the Middle East which they regard as their patrimony. Thus the battle lines are drawn among Fundamentalists of any of the three versions. There cannot be any compromise because all of them are acting in the name of God. The last sentences of the book when translated from the German version read: "In the short run the parallel development of these religious movements, all of which want to re-conquer the world, has to lead to confrontation. As such the conflict between the 'believers’, who make the resurgence of their religious identity a yardstick for their exclusive as well as limited truths, is preprogrammed."

It is obvious that a war of ideas of this type cannot be won by bombs, rockets or invasions but only by another idea which unites rather than divides humanity. The Sharon government insists on meeting terror with terror and wants to enlist us into this spiral of ever escalating violence. Seductive as the idea is it should be resisted because Israel has tried this strategy for the past thirty years at least and is nowhere nearer to a degree of peace. While Arafat is far from blameless for the impasse to place the entire burden on his shoulders, as is currently popular here and in Israel, is not necessarily justified. We are told over and over again that not only did he walk away at Camp David from the most wide ranging concessions ever offered by an Israeli Prime Minister but in addition answered them with Intifada II showing thereby that he does not want to coexist with a Jewish state. This opinion was most recently emphasized again by Norman Podhoretz in the October issue of Commentary.

Yet, let us be honest with each other, Podhoretz concedes that no minutes of the Camp David sessions have ever been published and we have, therefore, no idea what Arafat rejected and why. Was the Palestinian state as envisaged by Israel and the U.S. viable or was it an assortment of Palestinian and Israeli enclaves in what was supposed to have been the state? We simply don't know but we should insist on seeing the documents because there does not seem to be any reason for secrecy in regard to a failed meeting in our free society. The policy of creating settlements, in the occupied territories which has been pursued by all Israelis governments since 1967 has led to a such a patchwork quilt that it is extremely difficult to see how national sovereignty could be established in that area. One glance at the map published on page 104 in Whither Zionism? clearly shows the tremendous difficulty of establishing a viable truly independent state in the area even if the partners in the peace process were to proceed with the best of intentions. Podhoretz does not address the problem and seems to believe that Israel can just continue with its past policies and in the long run the Palestinians will see the errors of their way. September 11 changed the outlook irrevocably. The entire world has been affected economically and the genie is literally out of the bottle. If Prime Minister Sharon wants to "go it alone," as he has promised, he can do so but under these circumstances America should not be held hostage to failed and failing policies.



What is to be done now? In order to formulate a correct strategy we must first of all understand what each side to the conflict really wants. But In order to do so we must see ourselves through the eyes of the adversary. We will disagree with his perception but that does not make it less real for the perceiver. Osama bin Ladin, as the symbol of radical Islam, sees the United States as a decadent country bent on the pursuit of material happiness in disregard of the moral laws of God, and controlled by Jewish interests. America supports and props up the state of Israel as a colonial outpost in an area of the world which, apart from the Crusades' era, has always been Islamic. Jewish secular culture perverts established morals and customs while political Zionism strives for an enlargement of their state. In order to rid the land of Palestine from Infidels the power of the United States must be broken. This is best achieved by involving America in a drawn out war especially in Afghanistan where other superpowers of the past (Imperial Great Britain and the Soviet Union) have ground out their eye teeth. In addition the Muslim masses who hate their non-elected secular regimes, as stooges of the Great Satan, must be mobilized, especially, if and when an Islamic country is invaded by foreigners. The disenfranchised young people in the Muslim countries are sufficiently restless to yearn for change and Islamic revolutions on the model of Iran are to be brought about. Therefore, major military action by the United States is a requirement to bring this plan to fruition and continued provocation through a variety of terror attacks is the only way to accomplish this objective.

What does Israel want? Here the answer is less clear because there are too many factions in the country. The majority of the people just want to live in peace with their neighbors but this is at present difficult to achieve. We, therefore, have to ask what the leadership wants. Obviously it also wants peace but there are considerable differences of opinion as to how this can be accomplished. The governing Sharon faction believes that only a hard line military approach will succeed while the Peres group has not yet given up on a negotiated settlement. In addition the country is quite divided as to what kind of state it is supposed to be. Is it to be a secular democracy with majority rule or a Jewish state governed by ancient Jewish law? Ever since the creation of the state there were two major factions which co-existed uneasily. These may be called political Zionism and religious Zionism. Political Zionism, which founded the country, was secular in nature and as such opposed by religious Zionists who felt that the state was illegitimate because only the Messiah can bring about the ingathering of the dispersed and the erection of the Third and Final Temple. Over the years political and religious aspirations were fused by some visionaries in the attempt to create a Greater Israel beyond the UN established 1948 borders. For them it is not Israel which is the intruder onto Muslim lands but Israelis are simply reclaiming their inheritance, promised by God, which they had lost temporarily. This goal has not yet been abandoned as the settlement policies of the various Israeli governments prove. Although the settlements have considerable popular approval, the problem what to do with a relatively large and probably hostile minority Arab population within the Jewish state tends to be ignored. There are, however, some fanatics who envision a Final Solution (to use a well known phrase) which in their eyes will ensure a permanent peace. The autocratic governments of neighboring Arab states such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and may be Jordan have to be toppled and regimes favorable to Jewish values installed. This can only be accomplished by war with the help, or at least the tacit approval, of the United States. To achieve this end terrorism against the United States can be silently welcomed because it is expected to lead to an intensification of hatred against Arabs in the U.S. and thereby a further identification of America's goals with those of Israel. America's current war on terrorism is to be not only fully supported in its present stage but needs to be expanded to other Muslim "rogue" states. With America fully occupied and radicalized by subsequent further acts of Islamic terrorism Israel can then finally achieve its borders promised to Abraham.

Let me make it unequivocally clear that the overwhelming majority of Israelis do not harbor such Machiavellian fantasies and are genuinely distressed about the loss of innocent lives on September 11; but it is also dangerous to ignore the latent streak of fanaticism in a small minority which pursues only its goals regardless of the costs to others.



What does America want? There is absolutely no doubt that the vast majority of the population just wants to be left in peace to pursue its own personal goals in freedom. This why most of us came here in the first place. Even our leadership does not want war but to get the economy moving and to work for global prosperity. Nevertheless in spite of the current unity the country's opinion makers are split on how to set things right in the world. On account of the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition (a term which, by the way, is rejected by observant Jews), there are strong emotional ties to Judaism and the state of Israel. Powerful military action is urged by the majority of journalists. Currently in the minority is another group which regards war as folly but has as yet no strong support from the media. This is bound to change if and when body bags were to arrive in larger numbers.

For these reasons a major war against Islamic states is not in the best interest of the United States but serves only the purposes of Radical Muslims and proponents of a Greater Israel. The Eye for an Eye policy which has been tried by Israel for decades is inappropriate for the United States and a paradigm shift has to take place. Our country is made up not only of evangelical Christians and Jews but of a wide variety of individuals with other belief systems which our political leadership needs to take into account. While simply turning the other cheek is not an option, judicious pursuit of policies which do not pour fuel on the flames is called for and our leadership has indeed resisted to be stampeded into precipitous action.

We can be very grateful that the September 11 attack fell into the first year of the Bush presidency rather than the last year of Clinton's tenure. Politics would have dictated a war, Al Gore would, in all probability, have won the election and the country would have had a Jewish vice-President. This is not to impugn Senator Lieberman's patriotism but some further tilt to the Israeli side would have been unavoidable. President Bush is in the fortunate position of not having to worry about re-election at this time and even if there were to be no second term it would not be a personal disaster for him. He truly serves the country rather than political ambition and the same goes for his wife Laura, which is welcome contrast to our previous leadership. Thus Mr. Bush and his cabinet can act in a statesman-like manner rather than in a purely political one. Let me re-emphasize, therefore, in my opinion America has nothing to gain by major military actions but only a great deal to lose. We will not only lose lives and property but most of all our soul as a free and peace loving people. We will foster further hate which in turn begets hate and events are likely to spin totally out of control.



What is required of us now in these most difficult circumstances is steadfastness of purpose with the goal of bringing a degree of peace as well as hope for a better future to the impoverished Muslim masses. It is obvious that the perpetrators of the crime should be found, through international efforts, and brought to justice, but this is only one step. We have to convince the minds of the people in the region that we are indeed determined to bring justice to all the people in the area and not just some. America is still the world's best hope and if we combine our economic resources with those of the other developed nations we can change the current image of the Great Satan. The road is difficult indeed but what we need to do as individual citizens is to keep our heads, don't give way to irrational fears and pray that our leadership will continue to show forbearance and wisdom.



10-7-2001



The update as it appears above was written between October 5 and 6. Today the world has changed again and as may be apparent, from my point of view, not for the better. Nevertheless, the sentiments expressed above are, to my mind, still true and this is why I am not changing the contents. The bombing campaign against Afghanistan which began today will have consequences which are as yet unforeseeable and we can only pray that eventually reason will prevail over passion.





November 1, 2001

Hawaii; Afghanistan war; Judeo-Christian tradition; Ariel Sharon



Since the purpose of these entries is to provide contemporary documentation of American life or Zeitgeschichte, as it would be called in German, you are being treated in this installment not only to opinions on current events but also to some personal information.

In order to escape from the incessant war- and scare-mongering of the national media my wife Martha and I decided to heed the President's advice, go on with our lives and stimulate the economy. Since flying and cruising is somewhat cheaper right now we thought it a good idea to take a long postponed cruise through the Hawaiian Islands on the good ship Independence of American Hawaiian Cruises.

We booked our flight tickets separately (to get the cheapest fares) and paid for the ship with my credit card. One week before going came the call from the travel agency that the company had fallen victim to bin-Ladin's efficiency and declared bankruptcy. An immediate call to Merrill Lynch brought the good news that the $2435 had not yet been cashed and the transaction was red-flagged so that no money would be paid out. This left us, however, with the discounted airline tickets which were, of course, non-refundable. Instead of writing off the six hundred dollars we thought we might as well spend the money, Osama had saved us, on a hotel in Maui, where we could enjoy nature and converse with the birds and fish. The Kaanapali Beach Hotel fit the budget with $1200 for the two of us for one week, which left the other $1200 for food, drink and excursions. When all was said and done we actually came out ahead by about $300.

The hallmark of airline travel was that, although Delta provided us with excellent steaks coming and going across the Pacific, the safety considerations demanded that we had to eat with plastic knives and forks. Trying to cut a steak with a terrorist-prove small knife which bends in all directions is a feat which Martha was unable to accomplish with finger joints ravaged by age, so she had to return to the ways of our ancestors; simply wrap up the thing and eat it from her hand. About 500+ years of civilization was gone for reasons of "security." To enhance our security even further we had, obviously, to be at the airport two hours earlier but fortunately Salt Lake City and Maui as well as Honolulu still had curbside check-in, which avoided interminable lines. Contrary to our media pundits’ opinions people are still fond of flying and the planes were full.

On the return trip we would have to have left the hotel at 4 30 in the morning to make a 7 55 flight from Maui to Honolulu in order to catch the 10 a.m. flight to LAX. Since this did not correspond to my idea of a vacation we opted to take a noon flight from Maui to Honolulu one day earlier (I wanted to see Waikiki beach and Diamond Head anyway) and leaving the hotel at 7 30 am would have given us ample time for catching our plane to LA. This was not to be. The hotel to the airport shuttle people insisted that we have to leave at 7 a.m. in spite of the fact that the trip takes only 25 minutes. We had to submit to the rules and when we got to the airport 20 minutes later we found people patiently and uncomplainingly waiting in line to go through inspection for plant and animal material one might have wanted to bring along as souvenirs. Surprisingly enough there was no movement of that line and inquiry revealed that they don't open this inspection counter until 8 a.m. Such are the joys of today's travel. The civilized ways of former days are gone for good in our "Do it yourself" society which is strictly geared to the young and vigorous.

Mind you I am not complaining, I am simply stating a fact that we are going backwards in our civilization rather than forwards. On the other hand Maui was charming and one of my colleagues who had told me before going "you won't want to come back" was absolutely correct. Sitting on the beach looking out on the Lahaina Roads (stretch of water between Maui and the island of Lanai) watching the surf come in, visiting with the tropical fish and turtles on Black Rock beach, and eventually seeing the sun set behind Lanai more than made up for the follies we are currently being subjected to by the people who control our fate.

The contrast between the beauties of nature and human behavior was magnified when we turned on CNN after dinner and were treated to a daily dose of bombing Kabul, Taliban positions and anthrax scares. One asks oneself where is Homo sapiens - man the wise - when one sees conduct which is strictly contrary to all good sense. In September when President Bush was quoted as having said that he wouldn't send a million dollar cruise missile to hit a mud hut and kick a camel in the butt, I applauded him for his foresight. Media and other pressures made passion prevail over reason and we are now doing what he said we wouldn't.

Our Media hounds - and I really have no other word for them - constantly tell us what the "American people" want. Well, I am one of the American people and I don't want to bomb mud huts and camels. I also don't want our commandoes to go on ill defined missions with no adequate information on where the supposed targets, be they Osama or Mullah Omar, are really hiding. Our boys are sent into potential death traps and they deserve better. Some media commentators were surprised that the Taliban are fighting well. What's the surprise? It's their country and they have been doing nothing else but fight for decades, if not centuries. The arrogance, as well as ignorance, of some of these pundits is staggering. The British fought two wars in Afghanistan during the nineteenth century and left both times with a bloody nose, the Russians tried it recently and got out after ten years with the Soviet Union in shambles. For that I am grateful because I had no use for their system of government. But why in all the world should we be more successful? Because we are a high-tech superpower? Have we forgotten that the ridiculed black pajama-clad boys with a minimum amount of equipment, no air power but an indomitable will to succeed, kicked us out of Viet Nam? Does anybody really believe that Afghans will be any easier to defeat when we come to introduce our ideas of how the country should be run?

The American people I talk to are not particularly keen on this war either, but nobody asks them. I haven't found anybody who has been subjected to one of the famous public opinion polls. I miss especially a poll which would ask all of the 5000 or so families who have lost one or more of their members in the tragic events of September 11 whether or not they want a war with Afghanistan. They are the ones who have suffered and they should be heard. Fragmentary and anecdotal information seems to suggest that they don't want an eye for an eye. Gandhi has been credited for saying that the policy of "an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind" and that is also the truth.

What are we dropping bombs for? Ostensibly to get rid of the Taliban and with their demise Osama would have no place to hide, except possibly Iraq, Libya and other assorted "rogue states" whom we would bomb thereafter. The world would then be safe from terrorism and in the words of the fairy tales "everybody would live happily forever after." This is so naive that I cannot believe anybody in government really believes this. I was born a European, have lived under Goebbels, and became American by choice. I am, therefore, sufficiently skeptical of propaganda and even a cursory knowledge of history shows that most wars and revolutions had ulterior motives. This gets me back to Hawaii. The revolution in 1893 was fomented by American sugarcane growers who saw their profits disappear unless the islands were annexed by America. The official reason was, of course, the undemocratic behavior of the Queen who threatened the lives of the American settlers. The Spanish-American war in 1898 was ostensibly to rid Cuba of cruel Spanish dictatorship; to extract revenge for the sinking of the Maine and to bring Christianity to the forsaken natives in the Philippines. The fact that the Filipinos had been Christians for centuries was disregarded. Also disregarded was the fact that the Spanish had absolutely no interest in fighting America and, in all probability, had nothing to do with the Maine disaster. The Spanish had to be driven out, not only from the Western Hemisphere but also the Pacific, because after Hawaii had been digested it was America's Manifest Destiny to bring good government to most everybody in the Pacific. In 1917 along came President Wilson who believed, with religious fervor, that the world must be made safe for democracy which could only be achieved by entering the war on the Allied side. The fact that the Allies were deeply in debt to America for all the arms they had to buy and that this debt could never be collected if the Central Powers had won the war, was obviously irrelevant. That the world did not become safe for democracy, as Wilson had so devoutly hoped and prayed for, and that instead another war, even more horrible than the first one, resulted from it, is ignored. So is the fact that the current Arab-Israeli turmoil also goes back to WWI and the subsequent division of the spoils among the victorious Allies. That the British promised, at that time, the same piece of real estate to the Arabs as well as the Jews nobody wants to be reminded of either.

When Arabs resist the values of Western culture and are feeling left out from the benefits which globalism is supposed to bring, when they see that the poor get poorer and the rich richer they cannot be expected to become enchanted forever with the carrot which is being dangled before their noses. If they try to assert themselves they get the stick in form of bombs or rockets as Saddam Hussein has found out. Increasing social unhappiness by the masses is bound to lead to unrest and there will always be educated people to provide leaders. Let us not forget that the leadership of the proletarian revolutions during the nineteenth and twentieth century was never in the hands of the working class but in those of intellectuals (Marx, Engels, Lassale, Liebknecht, Lenin, Trotsky, Adler to name just a few) who took pity on the downtrodden and promised them the blue from the sky in form of a socialist utopia. After the demise of the Soviet Union, socialist dreams have temporarily lost some steam and in its breach stepped religion which has always been useful to mask imperial aspirations.

Deny it as we might the current war against "terrorism" is indeed a religious war of ideas and, as mentioned repeatedly, it cannot be won by bombs or even ground troops in Afghanistan, Iraq or other places around the world. Even if the Taliban were to be defeated and a pro-Western government installed in Kabul, fundamentalist-nationalists would simply melt into the mountains and guerilla warfare, accompanied by terrorist tactics, would continue ad infinitum. It pains me to say so but Osama bin-Ladin has so far succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. A $200.000 investment in martyrs (which was recouped anyway by selling assets on the stock market before its expected crash) has produced, and continues to produce, billions of dollars of losses to the American economy, fear is being spread by the media and if we are to believe our politicians we are engaged in an Afghan war with a projected duration of several years. Even if we kill bin-Ladin now he will be a martyr (which is what he wants anyway) who goes to paradise and his image will spur on other fanatics to continue with his work of creating hatred for America in the Islamic world.

Even we in America are apparently fighting for religious principles because we have been told that this is a war of good against evil. Jesus' words: "Whoever is not against us is with us" have been turned into: "Who is not with us is against us!" There can be no neutrals now we are told; the world has to be strictly polarized. This is what the "Judeo-Christian tradition" apparently means. That Christianity and Judaism are supposed to operate on different premises can no longer be openly acknowledged. Jesus was a Jew we are told and, therefore, adhered to the Jewish religion to the bitter end. The fact that he changed Judaism fundamentally the moment he told the parable of the Good Samaritan in answer to the question: "who is my neighbor?" is not taken into account. This question of the scribe, as reported by Luke, was not rhetorical because Jews did distinguish very carefully between themselves and others. Jews were to help each other but they were to shun contact with foreigners. When Jesus told the scribe that your neighbor is anyone in need of help, even a despised Samaritan, he violated one of the most sacred taboos. In addition he had the audacity to tell the Jewish religious leaders that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath; to eat with "sinners," thereby abrogating the sanctity of the dietary laws; and ultimately going after temple money by overthrowing the tables of the money changers. This clearly put him beyond the pale of Jewish religious authorities and required a death sentence. We are now told by some that Jesus was a fanatical zealot and that is why the Romans crucified him. But this is only an attempt to exonerate the Jewish ruling circles of Jerusalem at that time and to foster harmony between Christians and Jews. But a harmony which is based on a wrong premise can never be lasting.

We must openly admit to the differences between the Jewish and Christian religion before we can agree on common principles. Judaism was and for true believers still is, essentially tribal in its nature. This may sound harsh but the disapproval of intermarriage, the insistence by rabbinical authorities on separateness and fear of assimilation are facts of life which cannot be denied. Careful reading of the sayings by the prophets makes it also undeniably clear that they were nationalists. The redemption of this world was to be brought about by Jews and the Law, to which all nations will have to subscribe, will come from Zion. The famous beating of swords into plowshares in Is. 2:4 is preceded by "people going up to the mountains of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law; and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge the nations and shall rebuke many people." While Christians may read this symbolically, fundamentalist Jews tend to think in terms of the here and now. It is the earthly, rather than the heavenly Jerusalem, to which all nations will have to flow and it will be the God of Jacob rather than the Heavenly Father of Jesus who will lay down the law! These statements may come as a surprise to those who believe that "Jews are just a quirky Protestant sect" as Stephen Feldman has put it in Please, Don't wish me a Merry Christmas. But while that book is clearly polemical, the one by Rabbi Neusner Jews and Christians. The Myth of a Common Tradition is scholarly, well reasoned and ought to be required reading for evangelical Christians of the Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell genre. They also ought to visit the website of a steadily growing subset of Orthodox Judaism at www.noahide.com. This should dispel any notion that Judaism and Christianity are simply variants of one common religion like Catholicism and Protestantism.

Where does this leave our Christian leadership which is engaged in this "Crusade" against terrorism as President Bush has unfortunately called it. I said "unfortunately" deliberately because the word has a bad connotation in the minds of Muslims. The Crusaders did not behave like followers of Jesus' teachings: they murdered, raped and plundered not only Jerusalem but even Christian Constantinople. The Muslim hero of the Crusades is Saladin, who soundly defeated and permanently crippled the Christian Crusaders at the battle of Hattin (A.D.1187). It is his example Saddam and Osama are trying to follow. I sincerely doubt that some of our fire-breathing media pundits have ever heard of this epoch making battle and the difference in the treatment of the inhabitants of Jerusalem first by the Christian and then the Muslim conquerors. The latter let the population of the city live while the former "put them to the sword," as the saying goes, regardless of what religion they belonged to. I am not extolling the virtues of Islam over Christianity, I am simply recounting historical facts and when it comes to politics Christianity has never been tried ever since it became the official state religion in the Roman Empire.

The reasons are obvious. Jesus' teachings such as: love those who hate you, when struck turn the other cheek and my kingdom is not of this world; have no place in power politics. Jews and Muslims are more honest in this respect because they make no such demands on the adherents of their faiths. Therefore, let us leave religious-moral sloganeering out of American propaganda and concentrate instead on actions which prove to the world at large and Muslims in particular that Americans, regardless of what faith they profess, do care for others who do not share their belief system. The month of Ramadan would be an excellent opportunity to do so. Instead of continuing to bomb and send commandoes we could use the money and the troops to feed and clothe the starving hundreds of thousands of Afghans in the refugee camps in Pakistan and in those areas of Afghanistan which are not under direct Taliban control. Dropping food from the air, as well as bombs, makes good propaganda but has little practical value. The impoverished Afghan people will have difficulty getting to it and when they are successful the Taliban can always confiscate it "for the good of the country." In addition, while the ordinary Afghan will have to walk or get to the drop points - wherever they are - by mule, donkey or camel, the Taliban who have trucks can get there first.

There is nothing we can do for the people who live under Taliban control at this time but we have a great opportunity to show our compassion - not through some nebulous relief agencies but through our troops - by helping, those who have escaped, with food and half-way decent housing for the upcoming winter months. That would be a display of genuine Christian charity. Although an effort of this type would probably be derided by Osama's followers as a propaganda ploy, the people whose lives we save rather than destroy would be grateful and the news networks including Al-Jazeera would broadcast the good news far and wide. It will not deter the likes of Osama but would-be followers might be persuaded that there is a better way than bombs and killing. To those who argue that this proposal is unrealistic I can only say: yes, as long as you don't try it! Actions always speak louder than words and we are judged by what we do rather than what we say.


Two years ago at Thanksgiving I wrote the final words for War and Mayhem and it is appropriate to repeat them in part at this time: "The challenges of the next century, let alone millennium, are going to be enormous. Will our 'opinion makers' and politicians conduct themselves any wiser than in the past? Will we be able to resurrect a universal moral code and live by it? Will we be able to meet criticism and differences of opinions without demonizing those who think differently and try to understand why they do so? Will we be able to look beyond generalizations to the individuals who make up the groups and deal with them according to individual behavior rather than preconceived notions which supposedly characterize the group?" I went on to say that if we could answer these questions affirmatively there is hope for mankind but if not we are going to slide into an abyss the magnitude of which can hardly be imagined at this time.

Our response to the September 11 tragedy does not bode well for the future and the current November issue of Commentary contains chilling information. The lead article by Daniel Pipes: "The Danger Within: Militant Islam in America," depicts a nightmare scenario of Muslim forces taking over our government and turning us into an Islamic Republic on the model of Iran. One may laugh about this but Pipes is serious and provides documentation for his opinion. The second article by Mark Helprin: "What Israel Must Now Do to Survive," is equally eerie. Not only does Helprin advocate that Israelis need to arm themselves to the teeth now but he also asks: "Is it not obvious that now is the time, when American and Israeli interests plainly coincide, for Israel to destroy [emphasis added] the laboratories [of weapons of mass destruction], reactors, processing plants and depots where untold terror might arise?" Helprin concludes "Such a thing seems perilous, and it is, but hardly more perilous than its alternative." It seems that it was this type of thinking which caused Secretary of State Colin Powell to immediately reverse his criticism of the Sharon government at the time it sent tanks back into Palestinian territory and to call him “a dear friend" (Salt Lake Tribune, October 25,2001).

The American "public opinion molders" and our politicians who react to their pressure tend to be remarkably poorly informed about foreign affairs. This leads to government from crisis to crisis without a long range steadily pursued goal. This is outright dangerous. When Prime Minister Sharon said recently that Israel will go it alone if the U.S. does not condone his actions we have to keep Sharon's life history in mind. It is even more important than Arafat's. The ill-fated invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was planned and executed by Sharon. The Reagan peace plan, thereafter, was rejected by him and the massacre in the Sabra-Shatila Palestinian refugee camp, although carried out by Christian Lebanese Phalangists, was clearly condoned by Sharon. He was severely criticized for it by concerned Israelis and lost his job as Defense Minister. The details of this affair, as well as other injustices against Palestinians which have over the years been perpetrated by a succession of Israeli governments are well documented in Noam Chomsky's book: The Fateful Triangle. The United States, Israel & The Palestinians. The book was published in 1983 and should be required reading for everybody in government and the media. It is absolutely tragic that no attention has been paid to this book although the concluding paragraph states: "Meanwhile, at least this much seems clear. As long as the United States remains committed to an Israeli Sparta as a strategic asset, blocking the international consensus on a political settlement, the prospects are for further tragedy: repression, terrorism, war and possibly even a conflict that will engage the superpowers, eventuating in a final solution from which few will escape." The first part of the prophecy is a fact of life now and with Sharon's finger on the trigger of Israel's nuclear devices the last words are no longer far fetched either. If Israeli politicians were to feel themselves pushed against the wall The Samson Option, as it has been called by Seymour Hersh in his 1991 book, may well become attractive. Furthermore, if Israeli scientists were to have, in the meantime, perfected a neutron bomb which kills only people and animals, rather than destroy property, the world could be in dire straits. The vital oil installations might remain viable and could switch from Arab into Jewish hands. What a temptation for any government if it were to feel that its survival is at stake. The backlash which would subsequently ensue against America would be both vicious and interminable.

It is in this context that the third article of the current Commentary issue: "The Wages of Durban" by Arch Puddington needs to be seen. The UN World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) had concluded a few days before the September 11 catastrophe. The conference was marred by anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish polemics, as well as demands for reparations for slavery and colonial misconduct, by a variety of delegates. Nevertheless it was only Israel and the United States who walked away from the conference demonstrating to the world that: whatever you say or do we don't care we go our own way together! If our fate is truly irrevocably linked to actions initiated by the government in Jerusalem rather than Washington our war on terrorism is bound to fail. If we were to win but lose in the process the freedoms we still enjoy the victory would be a hollow one. What use is it to gain the whole world if you lose your soul?, the biblical writer asked. Yes indeed! I personally wish the Jewish people, both here and in Israel, well but as I said on previous occasions justice is indivisible and, difficult as it is, justified grievances by the Palestinians must be addressed now. Time is running out.







December 2001

War On Terrorism



The collapse of the Taliban in northern and central Afghanistan took everybody by surprise and made the Ramadan suggestions of the previous month's installment irrelevant. This success was so stunning that "On to Baghdad" and let's get rid of Saddam once and for all is now a common theme in our media. That American air power was an essential aspect of the Taliban's defeat is undeniable, but the territory was taken on the ground by Afghans. Furthermore, nobody, apart from a few fanatics, liked the Taliban even in the Muslim world. The situation may not be as easy in Iraq.

It is true that most Iraqis are fed up with Saddam and would rather live in a democratic society. We should help them to attain this objective; but bombs or rockets can achieve this goal only if there are ground forces in place that do the actual fighting. Let us not forget that the "Northern Coalition" was available in Afghanistan to do the dirty work, but whether or not this type of insurgent army is available in Iraq remains to be seen. Thus, unless we can engineer a relatively bloodless coup d'etat in Baghdad, we are likely to have a tough row to hoe. Even as far as Afghanistan is concerned the job is far from finished. Taliban fighters are beginning to melt into the abundant mountains and the new mujahadeens may harass any government in Kabul for a long time to come. For the Northern Alliance to suddenly give up the idea of translating their military power into political gains - out of the goodness of their hearts - would also be a first in world history.

We are told that our government is split in terms of how to proceed next. The hawks, whoever they may be, don't want our military assets, which sit in the Persian Gulf, to simply declare "mission accomplished." I am reasonably sure that our reservists and National Guard units who are engaged there now would be very happy to be home by Christmas, but who is going to ask them?

The "doves" in the administration, whoever they may be, tend to think about long term political goals and propose strategies where bombs and rockets are the last rather than first resort. They also listen to responsible Arab leaders like President Mubarack of Egypt who warned in no uncertain terms that the current coalition in our war on terrorism cannot hold together if we attack Iraq without providing convincing evidence for a direct link between September 11 and Saddam's government. Germany, and most members of the EU, have voiced similar concerns as well as most other nations of the world. A war on Iraq simply does not have the same popularity in other countries, apart from Israel, as the one on Afghanistan had.

Sergei Khrushchev headlined his article in the current November/ December issue of American Heritage with "Finding the Killers Is the Easy Part." He stated that the fight against extremism needs to be pursued on three levels:



The simplest is the police level: finding the terrorists specifically responsible for the events of September 11. The second level is the police-plus-intelligence one: cracking the whole terrorist network. But all that will be useless if we don't reach the third level: fighting to eliminate the extreme dissatisfaction within the [Muslim] society. Without that, the Arab world will see our actions as an attack against all of them and their religion, and if we catch Osama bin Laden, he will be replaced by someone else. What is essential is strong pressure on both sides, on Israelis as well as on Arabs, much like the pressure we exerted in the former Yugoslavia. Without that, all thoughts of stopping terrorism will be useless.



Mr. Khrushchev is a senior fellow at the Thomas J. Watson Institute of International Studies, at Brown University and that his views coincide with those I have expressed previously in these pages was gratifying. The gangrenous sore of Palestinian-Israeli relationships must be addressed if we want to achieve a modicum of peace in that part of the world and thereby reduce the threat of terrorism. Let us not forget that modern terrorism started with Palestinians hijacking planes and the massacre of Jewish athletes at the Munich Olympic Games, in 1972. Thirty years later the creation of a viable internationally recognized Palestinian state will not necessarily stop all terrorist acts in the world but, as mentioned previously on these pages, would remove at least one point of friction.

The American people, at large, are remarkably poorly informed about the Middle East. On the Opinion page of a recent Sunday edition of the Salt Lake Tribune there was an extensive article, which covered nearly half the page, entitled: U.S. Guards Its Interests When It Takes Israel's Side." In the article the lady chided one of those "peaceniks" and wrote "Permit me to give you and the nation a lesson in history and the future." In so doing she informed us that Israel protects the Suez Canal and sees to it that it does not fall into the hands of the enemies of freedom. Since we have given control over the Panama Canal to the Chinese we should follow the example of the British who sent their fleet half way around the world to retain the Falkland Islands and thereby guard the route around Cape Horn.

Since this history lesson conflicted profoundly with my information I sent immediately a letter to the Public Forum page of the Tribune in which I explained tat the Suez canal has been in Egyptian hands since the spring of 1956 and that the British - French -Israeli war against Egypt in November of that year, with the goal to retake possession of the canal, had to be abandoned as a result of severe pressure by the United States and the Soviet Union. This was the final end of British-French colonial ambitions. The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces), which had performed brilliantly in regard to territorial gains (all of the Gaza strip and the entire Sinai Peninsula), also were forced to withdraw as a result of a 65 to 1 vote in the UN. The lone dissenter was Israel; England and France abstained from the vote. Ben-Gurion was furious. He knew now that he could not rely on America under all circumstances and embarked full steam, with the help of France, on arming Israel with nuclear weapons. This was the outcome of the Suez war and what we are now confronted with. I also informed the readership of the Tribune that the documentation for these statements can be found in Righteous Victims. A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict. 1881 - 1999 by Benny Morris and The Samson Option. Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy by Seymour Hersh.

This correct version of history was not palatable to the editors of the Tribune and the article was never published. Nevertheless it was helpful for me to refresh my memory and re-read aspects of the two mentioned books. In the November installment of Hot Issues I hedged my bets in regard to Israel's possession of neutron weapons but this is no longer necessary. Seymour Hersh states unequivocally in the Epilogue of The Samson Option: "By the mid-1980's, the technicians at Dimona [Israel's nuclear facility] had manufactured hundreds of low-yield neutron warheads capable of destroying large numbers of enemy troops with minimal property damage. The size and sophistication of Israel's arsenal allows men such as Ariel Sharon [who was out of power at that time] to dream of redrawing the map of the Middle East aided by the implicit threat of nuclear force. Israel has also been an exporter of nuclear technology and has collaborated on nuclear weapons research with other nations, including South Africa." Hersh is not some fly by night journalist but he knows his facts and has won more than a dozen major journalism prizes. The book was published ten years ago and there is hardly any doubt that Israel has in the meantime continued to improve on its nuclear capability. Granted that Israel's nuclear arsenal is for defensive purposes, but why should Arabs, for whom the existence of Israel's capability is no secret, not be concerned and develop their own counterweight? Why do we read about the threat of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) only in relation to "rogue regimes" like Saddam Hussein and there is not a single word either printed in the papers or mentioned on TV?

Whom does Saddam really threaten? Is he going to ship to us numerous batches of Anthrax or other disease germs? Is he going to send us nuclear bombs? What would be the purpose? His regime would vanish over night and he knows it. His first goal is to hang on to his power and this cannot be accomplished by needlessly provoking the U.S. His second goal is to guard himself against Israel. Does he want to attack Israel first? This does not seem particularly likely because he knows full well that American retribution would be swift and devastating. Whatever else he is, he is not particularly suicidal. Thus, if we start a major war against Iraq we are not serving primarily America's interests but those of Israel.



While checking my facts in Benny Morris' book (he is Professor of History at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba) about the British and French Suez canal debacle, which by the way coincided with the Hungarian uprising against the Soviets, I came upon a passage which is also highly á propos. At a funeral service on April 29, 1956 for the assassinated security officer Ro'i Rothenberg of Kibbutz Nahal-'Oz on the edge of the Gaza strip, Moshe Dayan delivered a eulogy which goes to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian problem:

Yesterday at dawn Ro'i was murdered. The quiet of the spring morning blinded him, and he did not see those who sought his life hiding behind the furrow. Let us not today cast blame on the murderers. What can we say against their terrible hatred of us? For eight years now, they have sat in the refugee camps of Gaza, and have watched how, before their very eyes we have turned their land and villages, where they and their forefathers previously dwelled, into our home. It is not among the Arabs of Gaza, but in our own midst that we must seek Ro'i's blood. How did we shut our eyes and refuse to look squarely at our fate and see, in all its brutality, the fate of our generation? Can we forget that this group of youngsters sitting in Nahal-'Oz, carries the heavy gates of Gaza on their shoulders?

Dayan continued with an admonition for Israelis to be forever vigilant: "We are a generation of settlement, and without the steel helmet and the gun's muzzle we will not be able to plant a tree or build a house." He concluded with "This is the fate of our generation. This is our choice - to be ready and armed, tough and harsh - or to let the sword fall from our hands and our lives be cut short."

Forty six years later and in another generation Americans are now supposed to "shut our eyes and refuse to look squarely at the fate of Israelis "in all its brutality." Since 1956 Israel has enlarged its territory and thereby harvested more hatred, which has now spilled over onto our shores. The refusal by our media to accept a connection between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and our current terrorist problem is indeed self-inflicted blindness. At the time of this writing two American mediators are in the Middle East. Their mission seems to be doomed because Israeli newspapers and Television stations have already complained that the person in charge, retired Marine General Zinni, is not Jewish, had close ties with the Saudis and is, therefore, biased in favor of the Palestinians. In addition Pat Buchanan's column of November 20 on WorldNet Daily stated that 89 senators had sent a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell with the request not to pressure Israeli towards a peace settlement.

This development was utterly predictable and this why I had suggested in Whither Zionism? that the only possible hope for a diminution, if not resolution, of this conflict could come from the United Nations Commission and the Security Council. If we veto the resultant implementation of their recommendations we have doomed our children and grandchildren to an endless "War on Terrorism." The Israelis, in the words of Dayan, have made a choice to live by the sword. If our government forces us to follow their example we can also expect to die by the sword. Advocates of peace are currently not only derided as "peaceniks" but also by Michael Kelly in his most recent editorial as "peacemongers!" I gladly accept this title and intend to introduce myself to the Lord in this fashion when I meet him in the not too distant future. Unless He is still a "jealous God (Ex. 20:5)" who "will make Mine arrows drunk with blood, And My sword shall devour flesh (Dt.32:42)" I don't expect any problem on that account.





January 1, 2002

THE HOLY LAND -
PROPAGANDA AND REALITY



With the beginning of every New Year one tends to be filled with hope that things will be better than in the past. The stunning and it must be admitted unexpected, phenomenally rapid successes of our military forces which resulted in the removal of the Taliban as a government raises hopes for future successes on the world stage. Our armed forces and their leadership deserve full credit and applause for a job well done. Afghanistan is in the process of being pacified, which may, however, still take some time because the various factions within the Afghani people have different ideas on how the country should be run. Whether or not they will continue to listen to our well meant advice is another question.

More troubling is, however, that America still seems to be unwilling to realistically address one of the root causes for our War on Terrorism, the Middle East. The Holy Land continues to be mired in chaos and we seem to have hitched our wagon firmly to Prime Minister Sharon's vision of the future. 'War Has Been Forced on Us' Sharon Says was the headline in the Salt Lake Tribune after a spate of suicide bombings committed by Palestinians in Israel. The slaughter of innocent civilians is indeed reprehensible and measures must be taken to reduce these acts of random violence to a minimum. But an expectation that they can be stopped altogether, even by means of the most intense security measures and repression, is unrealistic and should not be fostered.

For me Sharon's words cited above evoked an eerie memory of the Third Reich. Der uns aufgezwungene Krieg - the war which has been forced upon us - was the favorite phrase of Hitler after the victory over France, when he made a feeble peace offer to England which was rebuffed, until the bitter end in 1945. The war was not Germany's fault it was Britain and France who had declared war on the Reich and which led to all the subsequent events, was the official propaganda line. That Hitler had started the war with his invasion of Poland and that the Western Allies were duty bound to stand by their guarantees, of which Hitler had been fully aware, the German people were supposed to have forgotten.

Any historical similarity must be viewed with caution but it does behoove us to look at the facts which have led Israelis and Palestinians to this dreadful impasse. Mortimer Zuckerman, Editor in Chief of the prestigious U.S. News and World Report, kept repeating in a recent editorial that Arafat is a hate-filled terrorist who has never kept a promise in his life. It is he who has instigated all the Palestinian terrorist attacks of the past and who continues to do so now. Zuckerman wrote:

"When Arafat, ejected from Jordan and Lebanon, finally left his stopping place in Tunis to come to Gaza, he was essentially given a choice: either a state or terrorism. Perversely, Arafat said yes to terrorism and no to a state. We saw it again last year at Camp David. Arafat would not accept the huge concessions offered by then Prime Minister Ehud Barak and endorsed by President Clinton. If he had, a Palestinian flag would be flying today over a sovereign, independent, internationally recognized Palestinian state, and there would be no Israeli occupation."

This is not idle rhetoric but a firmly held belief by Mr. Zuckerman to which Americans should now subscribe or appear unpatriotic.

Let us examine dispassionately some of these statements. The most important aspect is that if Israel had withdrawn the occupying forces from the areas conquered in the Six Day War, as demanded by the Security Council Resolution 242 of 22 November, 1967, the problems we see today could, in all probability, have been prevented. The Resolution, which was passed unanimously, demanded "Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territory occupied in the recent conflict." Israel ignored the Resolution. After the peace agreement with Egypt in 1979 Israel surrendered the Sinai Peninsula and considered its commitment in regard to Resolution 242 fulfilled because the Resolution did not contain the words "all territory"but only "territory." It was actually the word "all" over which bitter haggling had ensued and its omission prevented an American veto of the Resolution. That the right wing of the Israeli public, most prominently represented by Likud under Prime Ministers Begin, Shamir, Netanyahu und now Sharon, had absolutely no interest to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza is exemplified by the party's manifesto for the 1977 election as cited in The Iron Wall by Avi Shlaim

"The right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel is eternal, and an integral part of its right to security and peace. Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank] shall therefore not be relinquished to foreign rule; between the sea and the Jordan, there will be Jewish sovereignty alone. Any plan that involves parts of Western Eretz Israel militates against our right to the Land, would inevitably lead to the establishment of a 'Palestinian State,' threaten the security of the civilian population, endanger the existence of the State of Israel, and defeat all prospects of peace."

The goal was to create a "Greater Israel" which was not limited to the armistice frontiers after the 1948 wars. The term "Western" Eretz Israel is, therefore, potentially highly meaningful. Revisionist Zionism, of which Likud is the offspring, always wanted to incorporate areas to the east of the Jordan River into the Jewish state. Although further military expansion into Jordan was unrealistic in 1977 the hope to ultimately bring this dream to fruition, has not yet died. In the meantime the territories conquered in 1967 were to be colonized with Jewish settlements. To attract settlers state subsidized housing would be provided at substantially reduced rates. Palestinian land would be expropriated and the civil rights of the Palestinian population in these areas were not regarded as worthy of attention. The aim was to create facts on the ground, including in East Jerusalem, which would mute any question of withdrawal. Palestinians who objected by violent means were jailed or expelled and the rest of the people had to submit to military rule. The consequences of this policy were, of course, utterly predictable. Yeshahayu Leibowitz (Judaism, Human Values and the Jewish State) stated in an article, published in 1988 and entitled Forty Years After:

"What many call 'the undivided Land of Israel' is not, and can never be, the state of the Jewish people, but only a Jewish regime of force. The state of Israel today is neither a democracy nor a state abiding by the rule of law, since it rules over a million and a half people deprived of civil and political rights. That a subjugated people would fight for its freedom against the conquering ruler, with all the means at its disposal, without being squeamish about their legitimacy, was only to be expected...We call the acts of the Palestinians 'terrorism' and their fighters 'terrorists.' But we are able to maintain our rule over the rebellious people only by actions regarded the world over as criminal. We refer to this as 'policy' rather than 'terror' because it is conducted by a duly constituted government and its regular army."

Leibowitz called for a voluntary withdrawal of the occupation forces but "the conscience of Israel," as he was referred to, was ignored. So were numerous UN resolutions which condemned the continued occupation and the settlements on occupied territory as being illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention which regulates the rights and obligations of an occupying power. Israel felt free to disregard the Convention because in the views of its leadership there is no occupation of conquered land. All of it is Eretz Israel, and whoever does not like it is simply wrong. The treatment of the Palestinian population is Israel's internal affair. The fact that this view is not grounded in international law but simply in a biblical interpretation and therefore a religious one is not being conceded.

When one reads Shlaim's book, as well as the one by Benny Morris which was mentioned in the December installment, it is absolutely amazing how the American public has been misled about the real facts. Was it really only Arafat who had deliberately sabotaged the Oslo peace process, as Mr. Zuckerman and a great many others insist on? The answer is: No! Right-wing Israeli politicians among them Benjamin Netanyahu have been firmly opposed to the Oslo Accord. Shlaim headed a sub-chapter of his book with "Declaration of War on the Peace Process." In it he lists the basic guidelines of the government as outlined by Prime Minister Netanyahu in his inaugural speech to the Knesset in 1996. To quote from Shlaim's book:

"Those who expected the Likud leader, once elected, to start blunting the edges of his opposition to the peace process, found no comfort in this document. The guidelines were those of an ethnocentric religious-nationalist government. The chapter on education promised to cultivate Jewish values and to put the Bible, the Hebrew language, and the history of the Jewish people at the center of the school curriculum. The foreign policy guidelines expressed firm opposition to a Palestinian state, to the Palestinian right of return, and to the dismantling of Jewish settlements. They reserved the right to use the Israeli security forces against terrorist threats in the areas under Palestinian self-rule. They called on Syria to resume peace talks without preconditions but at the same time ruled out any retreat from Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights. The assertion of Israel sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem was explicit and exhaustive. So was the commitment to continue developing settlements as 'an expression of Zionist fulfillment'. And for good or bad measure, the guidelines made no explicit reference to Oslo or Cairo agreements."

Is Mr. Zuckerman and those who write similar articles, merely unaware of history or does the rule: "I've made up my mind, don't confuse me with facts!" hold? Another aspect of Netanyahu's speech is noteworthy: "His call on Syria for talks without preconditions [while having made a precondition himself] was widely seen as an attempt to dissociate himself from the verbal promises made by his predecessors. But there was also an implied warning that Israel would act not only against terrorists but against the sponsors of terror [emphasis added]." What was implied in 1996 in Israel has become official policy of the United States in 2001. President Bush may now remove any government we do not like, either by bombing a given country into submission or by fomenting internal upheavals. That this merely smacks of American Imperialism dressed up in humanitarian language ought to be obvious to any unbiased observer of the international scene.

Let me re-emphasize that I have never had any sympathy for the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's followers. I also have deep compassion for the victims of the September 11 attack and want to prevent future disasters of this type. But if we merely seek justice for the victims and the prevention of future attacks we do not have to antagonize a great many other countries. We should rely on Interpol as well as coordination of the various government security agencies around the world instead of massive bombing. The fact that bombing worked in Afghanistan, is no guarantee that it will do so in other circumstances. If the Bush administration persists in the belief that all governments who have harbored terrorists need to be eliminated we have a massive job ahead. We will not only have to install a new regime in Baghdad but also in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lybia, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, China and various other places around the globe, while we condone and support at the same time a repressive government in Israel. Under these circumstances there will be nothing but war, human suffering, and further hatred of American policies.

An objective observer must admit that the Israelis and their supporters in the United States have done a superb propaganda job while the Arab-Palestinian side has shown a great deal of incompetence. This brings me to the oft repeated statement that Arafat had walked away from the 2000 Camp David peace plan and chosen terrorism instead. At no time have our government, the Israelis, or the Palestinians published a transcript of the sessions and what the conditions were that Arafat was supposed to have accepted. What type of state should he have signed on to? Was it truly independent and contiguous or was it supposed to have been a group of isolated cantons where the access is patrolled by Israelis and water as well as power supplies are in Israeli hands? We have not been shown these documents and, therefore, simply don't know. The Palestinians are being chided for not having presented a peace plan of their own. Theirs is actually rather simple. It says to Israel: obey the Security Council Resolutions, dismantle the settlements on the West Bank and Gaza, withdraw your armed forces to the pre-June 1967 borders and allow refugees to return. Since Israel is unwilling to do this the blame for the breakdown of talks has to be shifted onto the opponent. One cannot fault the Jews for this strategy because it works, but American citizens who morally and financially support Israel's policies should be given the facts. There does not seem to be any reason why the minutes of the Camp David meeting are being withheld from public view. What is our government afraid of, and why do Congress and our media not demand factual answers? As long as we do not have these answers we will be bombarded by propaganda on the one hand and conspiracy theories on the other.

Why have Israeli politicians proven to be so intransigent towards genuine peace? The major reasons were already present in 1948 and 1949 when Ben-Gurion felt in no hurry to conclude peace with the neighbors, because he believed that time was on his side. Every peace treaty would inevitably involve some territorial concessions, and the return of the refugees into the Jewish state would create a major political problem. It was preferable, therefore, to wait until the world would get used to the existing borders and eventually forget about the Palestinians. He was correct in this assumption as far as the world was concerned, but the Palestinians refused to be forgotten. An annexation of East Jerusalem (as was done), Gaza and the West Bank (which is still hoped for) obviously makes good military sense because the current borders are quite illogical. It would lead, however, not only to condemnation by the rest of the world, but more importantly to profound changes in Israeli society. Israel cannot remain a "Jewish" state for Jews when it has to harbor more than three million Arabs as full fledged citizens. The question Israel has avoided throughout its existence for more than 50 years is what kind of a state do the Jewish inhabitants really want?  Is it to be a secular constitutional democracy with equal rights for all citizens regardless of religion and ethnicity, or a Jewish state by and for Jews? Throughout their history Jews have been masters at avoiding either-or questions and opted for the as-well-as route but sooner or later a choice will have to be made. Unless this fundamental question is answered there can be no peace, and as long as the U.S. continues to veto Security Council Resolutions which demand justice for Palestinians we invite further acts of terrorism on our own people.

Gloria Borger recently (U.S. News & World Report, December 31, 2001/January 7, 2002) quoted one of President Bush's aides as having commented "What he says in private these days is very often what he says in public." This is a laudable trait and would be a welcome change from some previous presidents. On the other hand if President Bush really thinks in the terms the Jerusalem Post has reported in its December 21, 2001 edition, America and the rest of the world may have little to rejoice about in the coming year.

"In a meeting last week with seven leading Jewish donors, including veteran Republican Max Fisher, and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice present, George W. Bush reportedly said that if he had been Ariel Sharon he, Bush, would have acted the same way the prime minister is acting in the face of the Palestinian war of terror. Quoted without attribution by the highly reliable Nahum Barnea of the Yediot Aaharonot daily, Bush also said that Arafat is weak and his regime close to collapse. Proceeding from there to the broader Arab world, Bush said that unlike Sharon, who was democratically elected, Saudi King Fahd was not elected and it is unclear just who exactly he represents.

One participant in the meeting told Barnea that Bush also spoke disparagingly about his own State Department, which he said is 'irrelevant,' and whose Arabists' 'games' the President now intends 'to bring to an end.' Finally Bush personally reiterated, according to the report, what other American officials said in recent weeks, namely that Hamas and Hizbullah were terrorist organizations, and that if Syria and Lebanon are harboring them, they are no different than the Taliban.

Be the accuracy of this report what it may, it is clear in Jerusalem that Bush has lost all patience for Arafat, whom he now clearly, and irreversibly, sees as a liar and terror-supporter."



That Sharon is likewise a terror-supporter, against whom a criminal investigation is under way in Belgium for his behavior in Lebanon, is deemed to be unimportant and not reported by our mass-media. Sharon seems to have been given the green light to proceed as he pleases and America will have to pay the bills not only in the financial sense of the word. Arafat has many strikes against him but the most serious is, for the American public at least, that he is neither telegenic nor articulate. The suave American educated Netanyahu, who is likely to be Sharon's successor if Likud remains in power, can outtalk any Palestinian any day. As long as the American public is satisfied with glib one-liners and glamor rather than a basic understanding of complex issues we will continue to be treated to self-serving propaganda rather than facts.

When Sharon prevented Arafat from visiting Bethlehem on Christmas Eve, which Arafat had done regularly since 1995, Sharon showed himself to be a petty hate-filled individual whom we have every reason to distrust. This type of fanaticism reminds one of the Taliban's destruction of the ancient statues of Buddha and tells the world that no other religious sentiments except one's own are tolerated in the "Holy Land."

If the Jerusalem Post article, as quoted above, is indeed correct the hopes which I had pinned on the Bush administration in Whither Zionism? might well have been misplaced. But it is not yet too late. Therefore I'd like to offer this New Year's prayer for our President:

Please oh Lord look kindly upon George W. Bush and his wife, grant them the ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood; let them not be misled by propaganda which serves ulterior motives and leads to actions which do not conform to the principles America was founded upon. Prevent the President from succumbing to Hubris which tends to afflict people in their success and heralds their downfall. Let him act with wisdom and foresight, rather than expediency, to the benefit of America and the world. Thank you Lord.





February 1, 2002

THE GREAT SATAN



The Ayatollah Khomeini bestowed the title "The Great Satan" on us after his successful Islamic revolution in Iran. Although Khomeini is dead his spirit lives and our media as well as politicians have never stopped ridiculing the notion. There is good reason for the rejection of the idea because "We" as individual citizens are really basically good natured and don't want to harm anybody else. Most of us will, therefore, regard the term as slander. But there are policies, which are carried out in our name which, although well meant, not only impinge on the lives and belief systems of others but affect them adversely. Let us, therefore, not be too hasty and examine the Ayatollah's term somewhat more closely.

Baudelaire is credited with having said: "Satan's greatest victory was when he convinced the world that he doesn't really exist." Yes indeed! Our secular society, which has expelled God from public schools, surely does not have any use for His counterpart either. Although we bemoan the existence of evil the causes are usually sought in externals and when people are involved it is "the other" who foments evil. One's own contributions usually are not considered and if one tries to do so during our current war on terrorism one risks being labeled as unpatriotic. Nevertheless I invite you for the next few minutes to look at the splinter in our own eye and not only the beam in others. Was the Ayatollah totally wrong when he rejected America's values and their seductive influence? It is, after all, values we are really talking about and supposedly fighting for at this time. Let us look, therefore at our current society, not the way we want it to be, but the way it actually is and as we are seen by others.

If one were to publicly proclaim that the pillars our society rests on, and the forces which shape its course, are thoroughly satanic one would either be laughed at, or confined to a lunatic asylum if one were too insistent about it. Yet, this merely betrays the ignorance which has come to pervade our public lives inasmuch as the Greek word satanas means nothing else but adversary. This puts the entire discussion into a different perspective. Our legal system prides itself that it operates on the "adversarial principle." Truth and justice are no longer the overriding goals but rather the largest possible settlement in civil cases. In criminal law suits the outcome may depend on who can hire the most expensive legal team. Our journalists and media pundits take pride in their adversarial stance, where all sides of a given issue have equal merit regardless of the truth involved. All members of society are encouraged to take positions against each other. Even women have to fight men and vice versa; everyone has to fight for some "right" and if the presumed justice is not forthcoming it can be pursued on an individual or better yet, a "class action basis" where vast sums of money can be extracted. Fight as well as Rights have become the key words, while responsibility and cooperation are relegated to the backbench. Thus the spirit which motivates our culture at this time is thoroughly adversarial in nature. Advocates of peace and understanding are not much sought after.

In addition the quest for financial gain is paramount. Our culture as represented by Hollywood, with its emphasis on nudity, sexual licentiousness, and physical violence is geared to the lowest instincts of the human race because that is where most money can be made. Even when a program which airs what I still regard as genuine culture, rather than the smut we are exposed to on the major commercial networks, the viewer's enjoyment is constantly interrupted by advertisements. A glaring example might be the following. A few weeks ago ABC presented a film "Immortal Beloved." I did not immediately recognize the significance of the title, expected the usual graphic sex scenes, and would not have bothered had I not read the name Beethoven. The movie dealt with one of the two most famous notes ever written by the composer. In The Heiligenstadt Testament Beethoven expressed his distress over his impending deafness while in the letter to the Unsterbliche Geliebte he poured his heart out to "My Angel, My All, My I" over the fact that they would probably never be able to be joined in union as man and wife. The letter bore neither address nor where it was written, and the date was given only as July 6 without a year. Speculation has been rampant ever since who the intended recipient was. In the film she was identified as the woman who, through mistaken assumptions, had become his brother's wife instead of his. Her son was not Beethoven's nephew but actually his own offspring. This was clearly poetic license without any grounding in reality but be that as it may. The story was depicted tastefully and what made the film great was the skillful interposition of Beethoven's music with his life's events. But as soon as one experienced a genuine emotion of appreciation one was interrupted by five minutes or more of commercials. Imagine for a moment: the final bars of the 9th symphony are played, the chorus sings Brüder überm Sternenzelt muss ein guter Vater wohnen (brothers above the starry tent there is bound to live a good father), the picture shows the star-studded sky then fades to the orchestra and the deaf Beethoven who when the music has ended has to be turned to see the standing ovation because he can't hear the applause. It was profoundly moving, but without missing even a heartbeat the station cut immediately to selling beds, pain killers and other paraphernalia. This was truly jarring on account of its incongruity and we were immediately confronted by the commercialism which runs our lives. It may be argued that we have to pay the piper, we do, but we don't have to do it in this obnoxious manner.

Salt Lake City is now eagerly looking forward, with some trepidation, to the upcoming Olympic Games. The papers are full of information on the events and the massive security preparations. A recent Sunday edition showed on the front page a picture of one of America's favorite downhill racers as he jumps over a section of the Hahnenkamm course in Kitzbühel as part of the qualifying events. What attracted my attention was not merely his good form but his ski suit was plastered with advertisements. On his right arm he sold VISA in addition to other unidentifiable companies, on the left leg Chevy trucks, on the right leg Holland-America line and Sprite. The ear band had another logo and so did the band which held his goggles in place, his back could not be seen properly but from what could be discerned was also plastered with ads. This type of commercialization of the sport is not limited to Americans but has become widespread and important international sailing regattas also display numerous ads on boats and sails. The remarkable aspect is that hardly anyone notices this commercialization any more, which penetrates all levels of our society, and has become accepted as the norm. Jesus had advised us that we cannot serve God and Mammon. It seems that our society has opted for Mammon.

Thus, to tell the truth, when the Ayatollah Khomeini called America the "Great Satan" - a rallying call which has now been taken up by other Muslim fundamentalists - he was not necessarily totally wrong. The culture we display and export through our media is indeed inimical to Islamic (as well as Christian) values. It is thoroughly understandable that Khomeini did not want his country to be swamped by this tidal wave of smut. When our media ridiculed the Ayatollah's notion they simply betrayed their ignorance of what he was talking about. Trained to look only at the most obvious in material terms they failed to see the deeper significance.


Let us, therefore, study Satan for a moment. How the concept has evolved, what the main properties are and what the individual can do in order not to succumb to temptation. To understand the satanic it behooves us to go back to the very beginning of the Bible and Eve's encounter with the snake. In Christian theology it is called the original sin while Jews put a different interpretation on it but this need not concern us here. What is important to remember is that it was Satan, in the form of a snake, who blessed us with "The Knowledge of Good and Evil." Since good and evil are antonyms one cannot exist without the other. What was the motivation of the mythical Eve to yield to temptation? She heard only "good" as well as "You will be like God" and jumped at the idea. It was not just disobedience but the impulsive act towards satisfaction of a desire without giving a second thought to possible consequences. This type of behavior has been reenacted by the human race ever since. The excuses are also typical. Some writers simply abbreviate the name of the forbidden tree to the "Tree of Knowledge" and insist we should be grateful to the serpent because by eating the tree's fruit we became scientists while God had intended to keep us ignorant. That is not so, it was only the knowledge of good and evil, i.e. moral judgment, which was withheld. There may have been good reasons because as the subsequent history of mankind shows, what is or is not moral has become a major bone of contention.

But there is more to the story. It tells us something about the nature of the satanic lie. The warning to Adam was: "in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." The prohibition was specific "you must not eat" but either Adam, or Eve had embellished it and she replied to the serpent that she wasn't even allowed to touch it. Why do I make such a point of this? Because it is a classic example that human beings don't hear what is said but what is perceived by the recipient's brain and that is what counts. Anyone who has either published or given lectures knows that what people tell him he has written or said bears at times little relationship to what was presented. Poor Eve was now in a quandary. This was the first time a choice had to be made. Should she or shouldn't she follow the serpent's coaxing? To make a long story short she did and persuaded Adam to follow suit. After he had eaten something drastic happened. Their "moral" eyes were opened to their nakedness and they realized that this was not an advantage. In addition they had developed a guilty conscience and the blame game started. "The woman you [emphasis added] gave me" made me do it. Don't we hear this over and over again? Not only is it Eve's fault that Adam took a bite but it is God's! He should have known better and not have given him a gullible Eve in the first place for his "helpmate."

We now come to a key question: did the serpent lie? Ergo what is a lie? Answer: The deliberate misrepresentation of the truth as known to the individual. The serpent said that they would not die, and they did not "in the day thereof." Their "eyes would be opened," which was also correct and they now knew good and evil. So where is the lie? It resides in what was not said. It was the deliberate attempt to mislead by withholding information. This is the reason why an oath demands :"To tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" and why ex-President Clinton's lame excuse "it depends upon what the meaning of 'is' is," doesn't wash. This is also the reason why I became quite concerned when I read an article in a recent issue of the Jerusalem Post entitled the "Jewish Millennium." The author stated that the American people expressed "Jewish values" when they continued with high approval ratings for Clinton's political conduct and that he was not removed from office. Economic well-being took precedence over morality and as far as the author was concerned rightly so. If these are truly the values endorsed by the majority of our population, and not only some members of its Jewish segment, we are in deep trouble. Other countries may not appreciate the export of these "values."

Let us consider now what our mythological ancestors could have done? Eve might have said to the serpent: "Wait a minute, I don't understand, are we going to be like God in all respects or just in regard to good and evil? What is this good and evil anyway?" If the serpent had remained truthful and explained what evil meant, Eve would have cut short the conversation. Thus the deliberate use of the half truth constitutes the satanic lie. It is the most vicious, most effective, and most frequently used lie throughout the ages by propagandists, unscrupulous politicians, and other individuals who regard themselves as being in an adversarial position. Words taken out of context is also one of the most common techniques to smear someone whose views one disagrees with. I don't want to be hard on Eve because it was Adam who also thoroughly failed us. It would have been his job to say: "Evie, what in all the world  have you done? I don't know what's going to happen, so let's find God and ask Him what to do now." That would have been the rational approach. But we, just like Adam, are frequently not capable of thinking rationally when the "forbidden fruit" is dangled before us. In the numerous generations since that story was written we surely should have learned better.

In the Christian religion the devil used to be depicted as a hoofed, horned, furry creature which actually bore a close resemblance to the ancient Greek god Pan. Apart from his other characteristics he was mischievous and used to frighten people who wandered into the woods. Thus we owe the word panic to him. This picture of the devil was thoroughly repudiated during the period of the Enlightenment. We did away with all the ghosties and ghoulies and long legged beasties and things that go bump in the night from which the good Lord was to protect us. Nevertheless, they still bring in the cash in the form of horror movies and outer space creatures. But these are not Satan's essence. Among the various mistakes our materialistic society makes the one most relevant in this context is what may be called the pars pro toto attitude. The term is used in grammar when one word stands for a sentence. The part is taken for the whole. This is what we are doing continuously in our lives whenever we judge something or someone. We don't know the whole, so we go by the part we can perceive and deal with it as if this were all there is. What we cannot grasp with our senses is regarded as non-existent. Goethe's Faust provides an excellent example:

Doctor Faust had been followed by a poodle on his Easter holiday walk and when he returned to his study to continue translating the Bible, the animal grew unhappy and kept interrupting him. Finally the poodle morphed into Mephisto, which led to the famous saying "Das also war des Pudels Kern" (so, this was the poodle's essence). Faust then asked for the name of the person who stood in front of him. The devil initially just poked fun at the question because names are really no longer meaningful but eventually he answered: Ich bin ein Teil von jener Kraft die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft (I am one part of that force which forever desires evil and always produces good). Faust was perplexed and asked: what do you mean with this riddle? Mephisto answered: Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint! Und das mit Recht: denn alles, was entsteht, ist wert dasz es zugrunde geht . . . so ist denn alles, was ihr Sünde, Zerstörung, kurz das Böse nennt, mein eigentliches Element (I am the spirit who always negates and rightfully so, because everything that comes into being is worthy of perishing...everything you call sin, destruction or in short evil, is my true domain). Faust is still unsure and says: you call yourself "one part" and yet you stand in front of me as one whole being? Mephisto: Weil doch der Mensch die kleine Narrenwelt sich immer für ein Ganzes hält (because the human being, this foolish little world, always considers himself to be an entirety). This is the pars pro toto type thinking mentioned earlier. We always regard that part of whatever we can apprehend, conceive of, or desire, as if it were the whole. This is especially true of God but also of Science written with a capital S, because apart from Mammon it is likewise the current god.

When Goethe credited the devil with wanting evil but nevertheless achieving good he had paraphrased Milton who actually was less charitable in his Paradise Lost:

To do ought good never will be our task,

But ever to do ill our sole delight,

As being contrary to his high will

Whom we resist. If then his Providence

Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,

Our labor must be to pervert that end,

And out of good still to find means of evil;

Which oft times may succeed, so as perhaps

Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb

                                     His inmost counsels from their destined aim.



The German language has another word for the devil that is quite fascinating: der Leibhaftige. It is used by the common people especially in the countryside when they don't want to "paint the devil on the wall." There is no single word in the English language which captures the meaning; therefore, it has to be explained. The word is a composite of Leib (body) and haftig, Haftig comes from the verb haften which can be translated as: to cling to, to stick to, or adhere to. The inherent wisdom of the people has thereby created a word which indeed provides the devil's essence. While God is in the German language also referred to as the Himmelvater (heavenly father), a term which encompasses the material and spiritual realm, the devil is thoroughly and exclusively wedded to bodies. The Leibhaftige has no room for the spirit which has to be denied, and the acquisition of material goods is to be the overriding objective.

While the Leibhaftige is German, there exists in the English language the word Mephistophelean which is defined as: cynical, crafty, sardonic, or fiendish. Thus, we do not have to look far for its presence among people. The challenge we face as human beings lies in the recognition that when we lie, cheat, or hate we create an adversarial environment and thereby help to keep Satan alive. It is from the lie that all the other evils spring. He who lies to himself will inevitably lie to others and trust, which can only be gained by truthfulness, has been destroyed. Without trust, societies cannot function, regardless of how many laws are invented. But trust has to be earned, it cannot be demanded, and it requires honesty. In our present-day society this is hard to come by. We are being lied to on an unprecedented scale by politicians, the media and commercial enterprises.

So how do we know the truth of a given statement? In science we are dealing mainly with relative truth as available at the moment. Science, in contrast to religious faith, is work in progress and new information can readily invalidate previous concepts. Science is important for technologic and hygienic progress but every scientist knows that the fundamental questions: "why are we here?" and "what is our purpose?" do not lend themselves to scientific investigation. Philosophical or religious truths are also subject to modification as time goes on and conditions change but in spite of this there is an inner core of reality which defies time and is readily discernible when one reads literature which originated several centuries or millennia earlier. This core can be found in all religions regardless in what part of the world they originated. The names with which phenomena are described differ but the substance and the message are always the same. Because human behavior has remained constant over the ages so has the advice for achieving contentment in life. Faith in the ultimate goodness of God, perseverance with planning for the long range goal rather than immediate gratification, kindness, helpfulness, friendship, honesty, resisting anger and hate, but fostering instead a spirit of gratitude are just a few of the virtues human beings have always been told to aspire to. I have deliberately avoided the word love. When "making love" means having sexual intercourse and the word is being equated with lust, which disappears upon gratification, we have left the eternal for the temporary. Furthermore since love is an emotion, it must arise spontaneously and cannot be produced on command. "Love thy neighbor as thyself" goes beyond the capacity of human beings as history has amply proven. We have to be more modest and simply aspire to treating each other with kindness and consideration.

A fundamental difference between the satanic and the divine is that God has time! God's truth is still true after millennia while Satan's is fleeting. Satan constantly urges us that we must act now, immediately, lest we lose out either on revenge or on a tremendous advantage. We are thus coaxed to repeat the original sin. By recognizing that Satan is within us, just as the kingdom of God is, we can a turn a deaf ear to seduction. We don't have to hate Satan, and what he stands for, because hate is an unhealthy emotion and would serve his purposes. Instead, when we recognize the inner voice of seduction all we have to say is: "Thanks, but no thanks" and concentrate on the task at hand. If we hanker after, or stew over, an imagined past or a fantasized future, which will never happen the way it is imagined, we open the door to Satan's realm. But if we can stare the adversary in the face and can say: "no, there is a better way" we have achieved the victory which a simple denial of his existence cannot provide.

A few years ago our daughter, who knows of my interest in comparative religion, gave me for Christmas The Dhammapada which is part of the Sacred Writings Series. I already had a fair amount of other Buddhist literature so I wasn't immediately interested but in our "time of war" I picked it up again and found it rather useful. The book contains the essence of Buddhism in English translation as well as in the original Pali with explanations. In the context of the current topic verse number I: 5 is most appropriate:

Not by enmity are enmities quelled,

Whatever the occasion here.

By the absence of enmity are they quelled.

                                                    That is an ancient truth.


Isn't this what Jesus meant when he told us not to resist evil?


On September 12, 2001 our leadership had a choice. We had been viciously attacked and a response was needed. The entire world was with us in stunned grief at the outrage which had been committed. A wise government which had no ulterior motives in mind could have limited itself to promising: 1) with the help of international police and intelligence services we will track down and bring to justice the perpetrators. 2) For the families who have lost loved ones we will appoint a supervisory agency that sees to it that they do not suffer financial hardships in addition to their grievous emotional loss. 3) We will renew and redouble our efforts to seek justice for the oppressed in this world - wherever they are - and try to bind up wounds rather than create new ones.

This is what could have been done. Instead we have announced rather than declared war, which as it turns out now is a crucial difference because captured enemy personnel are not regarded as prisoners of war, with the rights they would be entitled to. We have bombed a country which was already devoid of infrastructure and we have destroyed the Taliban government but not the idea behind it. Although there is a pro-Western interim government in Kabul at this time its authority does not exceed the city limits. The rest of the country is in anarchy; people are starving and dying of exposure. International relief agencies still cannot get to the people who desperately need help because of marauding bands that steal and rob.

If we go through with plans to bomb other countries, whose policies we do not like, we will indeed continue to play Satan's role. Our current political conduct is likely to create more enemies rather than friends abroad. This in turn will hamper the primary goal of our mission: to find and disable terrorist networks around the world. For this we need the international community. Unless and until America returns to the ideals our country was founded upon and heeds the wisdom of Washington's Farewell Address, where he counseled us to avoid foreign entanglements, we are likely to glory in momentary ephemeral successes but lose our integrity. The leaders of our society seem to have struck a Faustian bargain: material well-being for the loss of our soul. The rest of the world is supposed to do so likewise. That some members of Islamic countries will not merely passively accept this idea but rebel was to be expected. What would be most helpful now is, instead of widening the war, to reflect on our ultimate aim of bringing peace to this world even if we thereby have to give up some pet notions that military might, and/or money is the answer to all problems.

We have been blessed with a wonderful country let us, therefore, not destroy it by continuing in an adversarial spirit at home as well as abroad. Let us cherish our diversity by learning about and from each other. Instead of adversarial conduct let there be cooperation even if we disagree at times on philosophical or religious abstractions. If we were to move forward on this basis we would have far fewer enemies and a great many more friends.



The article as it appears above was written about a week prior to President Bush's State of the Union speech on January 29. It contained an enumeration of American values all of us can heartily agree with, including the goal "to seek a just and peaceful world beyond the war on terror." On the other hand I felt quite concerned about the methods - seemingly mainly military - through which this goal is to be reached. The President also stated that this war will occupy at least the next three years of his presidency and may extend beyond it. This will involve considerable expenditures for external as well as homeland defense. He believes that we can keep at the same time the economy growing and the budget deficit under control. The last president who had tried the guns and butter approach was Lyndon Johnson and he failed on both counts. There seems little reason to believe that Mr. Bush will do better but time will tell.

Earlier in this update I failed to mention another hallmark of Satan namely pride. Our government seems determined to believe that only its ways are the correct ones regardless of the viewpoints of other nations. In the State of the Union address we received a "pep talk" the consequences of which, once the fine print is revealed, may not be to the liking of the average citizen whose life is going to become increasingly less free on account of "security" regulations which will increase geometrically. What is happening currently here in Salt Lake City on account of the Olympics, which are upon us, could well be a harbinger of what the future may be like.





March 1, 2002

THE MORMON OLYMPICS



All of Utah and especially the East as well as West side of the Wasatch front is breathing a collective sigh of relief. Thank God it's over and nothing seriously untoward has happened. When Salt Lake City was originally awarded the Games there was jubilation which turned into dismay and distress when a letter was leaked which showed that the Salt Lake Organizing Committee (SLOC) had greased the palms of International Olympic Committee (IOC) members. We had not won the nomination on merit alone, although we had surely been better qualified than Nagano to which we had lost out. Rumor had it that IOC members had been slipped notes by abortion activists prior to the final vote not to award the games to Utah on account of its anti-abortion stance. Our "bribery scandal" made headlines all over the world as if this sort of behavior had not been routine in the recent past. Apparently one should do these things but not talk about them. What made the matter worse was that, in the land of the Saints of all places, not only scholarships were given to some children of African dignitaries but "escort services" were provided for some of the delegates, who fancied that sort of thing. Inquiries were held, and the mayor as well as the governor strongly denied any knowledge of malfeasance, although this is somewhat difficult to believe since especially the mayor had been heavily involved in the bid process. The two individuals who had done most of the work for getting the bid were not only sacked and disgraced but also criminally prosecuted, although there was never any evidence presented that they had personally enriched themselves. Nevertheless the case is still in court. To top it off we found out that the whole affair was massively under funded and SLOC was deeply in the red a year and a half before the Games were to take place. We, as good citizens of Utah, had happily paid for the extravaganza with an increase in sales taxes, but apparently that was far from enough to cover costs.

To the rescue came Mitt Romney, son of the former governor of Michigan George Romney, a good Mormon, or more correctly, Latter Day Saint. The official designation of the Church (in Utah when one says Church everybody knows what one is talking about) is "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" and this name should also clarify the question whether or not Mormons are Christians. Since they are firm believers in Jesus Christ as our Savior they obviously qualify, in spite of some notions which might strike outsiders as quaint. The Church obviously couldn't tolerate this disgrace of its home state and drafted Mr. Romney who lived in Massachusetts. When God calls there are no choices. He came to town, worked like a beaver and drummed up the necessary funds from sponsors. The fact that he is not only articulate but also immensely telegenic was an additional plus. Our two senators and the congressmen also did a yeoman's job in Washington to obtain funding for the necessary infrastructures including highway improvements and the construction of a light rail system to deal with the anticipated traffic congestions.

By September 10 of last year we were well on our way to stage a happy and successful event. The morning of the next day changed the equation. The country was attacked, counter strikes were deliberated, eventually a war against the Taliban was decreed and since this was not enough we also had to declare War on Terrorism per se so that we could at least bomb any country in the world which might harbor terrorists. In as much as one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter the field is now wide open to do away with anybody we don't like. Anthrax spores were sent through the mail to senators, and the media were acting as if the end of the world were at hand. America as we know it had ceased to exist and from now on we were to be in a perpetual state of war. A director of homeland security was appointed, although it is far from clear what powers were delegated to him, and the panic that gripped the media could be likened to ancient Rome when Hannibal was ante portas or, more recently as if we were in London of 1940 when the Blitz started. This was the climate in the waning months of last year and there were serious discussions whether or not it was appropriate to hold the Olympics under these circumstances.

But we live in the land of the Saints where the firm belief is held that the Lord will never forsake His own, so there was never a question of quitting. SLOC under Mitt's guidance ignored the media tumult and quietly continued with its work. But there was also the additional problem of how to secure the various venues. Osama's boys would surely be tempted to wreak vengeance for having been thrown out of Afghanistan. They would poison the water, blow up the Toelle army depot, which is only about 30 miles southwest from us and contains more toxins than Saddam could ever dream of, disable the electricity grid (which would actually be quite simple), and bring suitcases full of nuclear devices in order to kill as many people as possible. Therefore a massive, elaborate, and unprecedented security system was put in place. We were visited by Mr. Rich, the homeland security chief, Mr. Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, and numerous other dignitaries who dished out over $200 million for security measures. Special attention was, of course, placed on airport safety. New baggage inspection devices had to be installed and Salt Lake was to become the prototype for airport security around the country. Since the rest of the country and especially the world at large do not boast anywhere near the safety we now possess, we have the paradoxical situation that theoretically anybody could bring in his lethal goodies but he couldn't take them out. But this is, of course, irrelevant. Eventually Timbuktu airport will also meet our standards. The consequences of this policy became apparent on Monday after the games were over; but let me not jump the gun. Saddam can now be happy that Salt Lake had also become a no-fly zone during the Games. Unauthorized private jets with visiting diplomats, or officials, were to be met by a pair of F16's who would politely escort them out of the area. During opening and closing ceremonies the airport was to be completely shut down for four hours. Even the hot air balloon operators who had hoped to attract some business to properly show off our fabulous vistas had to close shop for the duration of the Games.

Before the media ever arrived here they dubbed the 2002 Games the "Mormon Olympics." Apparently the journalists and TV pundits expected dark suited missionary boys to track them every step of the way, hand them a copy of the Book of Mormon, politely take their cigarettes from their mouths, and if they wanted a drink they would be told that it is not healthy for them. They should have Hawaiian Punch instead and for good measure also a dish of green mint jell-O (a favorite taunt Mormons have to endure) which would keep them in harmony with nature. The supposed inability to get a drink in Utah, and the fear of succumbing to proselytizing were apparently uppermost in the minds of reporters. There seemed to have been also some latent fear by lady journalists to be drafted by a roaming army of polygamists, while their male companions might actually have relished the thought of joining that "peculiar institution" as it was referred to in the 1890's.

I was not privy to the deliberations of the Church as to how to deal with this emergency when the world arrived and when it was confronted by Utahns who are not necessarily intrigued by "cultural diversity," which translates into "anything goes." Ours is a conservative state, where the gospel song of: "Give me that old time religion, It was good for our mothers, It was good for our fathers and It's good enough for me " is not being preached but practiced. President Hinckley, who is also the Prophet, Seer, and Revelator of the Church, received a revelation as to how to solve this dilemma. An edict came down to the faithful, who comprise about 80% of the population of the state, that there was to be no proselytizing and the liquor laws would be relaxed for the 17 days in question, so that booze could flow more freely than usual. In addition he probably told them: "don't worry what other people think about you, don't put on any airs of defensiveness, just be your usual friendly, cheerful selves and all will be well. And indeed it was.

When the opening ceremony started in the refurbished Rice-Eccles stadium 25,000 volunteers of all ages were on hand at the various venues to greet and help the visitors. In addition there were thousands of national guardsmen in their camouflage suits around plus other security personnel who remained unobtrusive. The Lord also contributed His share to the success. The high winds and inclement weather we had in the morning cleared up by the afternoon and all the floats, which had been so meticulously prepared, could safely be launched. Had we had one of our usual February storms which can dump about a foot of snow within a few hours, chaos would have erupted. But all went well except for some display of super patriotism, which lingers after September 11, and which some of us felt wasn't quite necessary. The fact that President Bush officially opened the Games not from the podium above the entire crowd but in the midst of the American team was a departure from custom foreigners might have winked at, but when he also altered the official text and said: "On behalf of a proud and determined nation I declare the XIXth Olympic Winter Games opened," some eye brows went up. The host shouldn't brag, was the feeling. When you invite somebody to your house you don't want to start out with showing the guests the pictures of your children and grandchildren. But everybody knows that he is from Texas, where everybody is proud to be a Texan, and that he may yet have to learn the fine art of diplomacy from his father. On the other hand, how would people in the West have reacted if Hitler had opened the Berlin games in 1936 with: On behalf of a National Socialist Germany, risen from the ashes of defeat, I declare etc. It'll be interesting to see what the President of China, whoever he may be at that time, will say in Beijing in 2008. Will he take his cue from George W. and say: On behalf of the mighty and determined People's Republic of China, the most populous nation on earth, I declare....? But Americans are different from other people. Would a Chinese equivalent of figure skater Sharon Cohen call her mother on the cell phone and when she answers say: "Hi mom, here's the President, talk to him!"?

This momentary glitch in protocol, as well as the parading of the tattered flag which was rescued from the World Trade Center rubble, to demonstrate that America can also rise like the Phoenix from catastrophe, was commented upon but no harm was done. The media people were amazed by the friendly smiles of the crowd, the stunning backdrop of the Wasatch Mountains and they even got their drinks. About seventy thousand people congregated every night downtown for concerts and medal distributions. Office hours for the average "working stiff' who still had to be on his/her usual job in the downtown area were shortened so that the employees could leave in the early afternoon in order to ease the anticipated evening traffic congestion.

There were, of course, complaints which included even the Great Salt Lake. "It stinks!" Of course it does on the shore. Decaying brine just doesn't smell good but the nose is a marvelous organ and the sense of smell adapts much faster than all the others. Within a few minutes you don't smell it any more, even on shore. Once you are just a tad away from shore and the wind blows, as usual, from the north you don't smell anything at all. But I think the biggest surprise and media hit was Gordon B. Hinckley, President of the Church. This 91 year old spry, upright, grand fatherly truly gentle-man impressed everybody with his natural grace and sincerity. When a visiting journalist was amazed at how mentally sharp he was at his advanced age, a bystander told him: "You should have seen him when he was eighty!" That's what clean living and having family values, rather than just talking about them, does.

As an aside I might mention that a few days before the Games, on Valentine's Day, I gave "my Bonnie" a treat and took her to the Home Buffet. It isn't that I was stingy but she likes the salad bar there, the food is good and inexpensive, so that's where she prefers to go and after fifty years I don't argue any more. We went there early to avoid crowds but were surprised that there was already a fairly long line. The reason soon became obvious. When we came to the counter the cashier girl asked us how long we were married. When we declared fifty years she smiled, congratulated us and we were told that dinner was on the house. They also took our photograph. Subsequently we found out that this is a custom on Valentine's Day for this nation-wide chain. But I bet that the corporate planners in New York or wherever hadn't figured on the cash loss of Utah. Here fifty years of marriage is nothing to be marveled at, it's the rule unless one or both die first. When somebody asks me how many grandchildren I have (nobody asks do you have grandchildren?, that's a given) I answer somewhat embarrassed: "I can't compete, only six." With a minimum of six or eight children, thirty five and more grandchildren tends to be the rule. We were told that we could pick up our photos the next day and when we came again a few days later for dinner a whole wall was plastered with couples who had stuck it out for fifty years or more with each other. That's Utah!

The athletic events proceeded smoothly until the pairs figure skating. We watched it at home on TV and felt that the Canadians had skated flawlessly and deserved the gold medal. The Russians had made a minute misstep but they got the gold and the Canadians the silver. This injustice enraged the crowd and when it was rumored that the French judge had made a deal with the Russian judge as a quid pro quo for the next competition a few days later the outrage was palpable. For the rest of the week all the other competitions were overshadowed by the scandal, over which the media literally drooled. The Canadian Figure Skating Association protested and Olympic President Dr. Jacques Rogge was put under intense pressure to nullify the judgment. There was talk of exchanging the medals where the Russians would give the Canadians their golden one and the Canadians would reciprocate with the silver but even Putin would have objected to that, so a Solomonic decision was taken. The baby was not cut in half but there were two golden babies. In addition the French judge was removed from the panel. The outrage subsided but the Russian Federation was unhappy, although the four athletes themselves behaved marvelously and, at least on the surface, there were no hard feelings.

When I viewed the brewing scandal I was immediately reminded that there is truly nothing new under the sun. Several decades earlier I had read a story in Herodotus which is highly á propos. The Greeks, during the fifth century B.C. were upstarts and the ancient civilization of Egypt was regarded as the repository of wisdom. You may be surprised that even Moses cribbed from the Egyptians, not only in regard to the essence of the Ten Commandments but also with other wisdom literature which is attributed to him. At any rate, Herodotus tells us that a deputation of proud Greeks from the state of Elis went to Egypt and boasted that their Olympic games were the best and fairest of all. They thought that even the Egyptians would have to admit to that. But the king of Egypt called his council of wise men together and when the Greeks had presented their case they asked the Elians if their citizens were permitted to enter the competitions. The Greeks replied: Of course, the games are open to all Greek citizens, whatever state they belonged to. Whereupon the Egyptians declared: "If this were so they departed from justice very widely, since it was impossible but that they would favor their own countrymen and deal unfairly by foreigners." If they wanted to have true justice the Elians must not be allowed to compete when the games are held in their country. It's obvious that the human race has not changed in twenty five hundred years and is not likely to do so, barring some genetic engineering, in the foreseeable future. Judging of competitions is inherently subjective and thereby potentially unfair. Another precedent has been set here in Salt Lake and protests may become run of the mill. We may also have opened the door for the legal profession to ply its trade on behalf of disadvantaged individual athletes or their national federations. Will the judges now have to buy malpractice insurance in case they might get sued for their personal worth? In our day and age where money rules, nothing is too outlandish to contemplate.

Other incidents of suspected doping caused further unhappiness on part of the Russians who at one point even threatened to leave the Games. But President Putin put his foot down and told them to forget it. As our son Peter declared: "Putin wants to watch the hockey game too." Unfortunately for him his Russians lost but he could take solace in the fact the American winning team had three Russians on their roster. Peter who still lives in the Detroit area, home of the fabled Red Wings hockey team, told us that they had given their players a three week vacation from the ongoing season so that they could compete within their own respective national teams in Salt Lake. Thus it was in part Red Wings against Red Wings. To be precise: of the eleven Red Wing players who participated in the Games three played for Russia, two for the U.S.A., one for the Czech Republic, two for Sweden and two for Canada. Now that's the true Olympic spirit! The numbers come from the official website of the team www.detroitredwings.com. The South Koreans were also unhappy about what they judged as bad manners by Apolo Anton Ohno who had snatched the gold medal from their speed skater. Feelings ran so high that he got hundreds of life threatening letters. These were turned over to the FBI; Ohno had to move out of the Olympic village to undisclosed hotels and was given a special state trooper to accompany him at all times.

While Park City and Deer Valley teemed with crowds of visitors, our two boys who had come with their families for this once in a lifetime event found perfect ski conditions in Big and Little Cottonwood Canyon. Brighton, Solitude, Snowbird and Alta were practically deserted. No lift lines, beautiful sunshine and occasionally even a foot of powder provided a perfect vacation. Since even the youngest of our grandchildren is already an accomplished skier, at the tender age of five years, I feel that bringing my skis with me from Austria in 1950 was one of the best ideas of my life.

As far as NBC's TV coverage is concerned I had mixed feelings. They obviously concentrated mostly on the American athletes but I would liked to have seen, instead of some of the fireside chats by the commentators, other events where Americans were not so prominently represented. It was the world after all we wanted to see perform. In addition, some of the commercials were obnoxious. Every company from Chevrolet through Coca Cola was a "proud" sponsor of its ads. Pride is currently a greatly overworked word in this country. Everybody must feel proud! That pride comes before the fall hasn't sunk in yet. At the end of the closing ceremony the entire foothills of the Wasatch front exploded in a brilliant display of fireworks. Instead of waiting for its beginning the station had to cut back to "proud advertisers" but thankfully we could see part of it on the evening news. Since some of the grenades were launched from right in front of the Hogle Zoo there was concern that the animals might not take kindly to all that noise and stampede. But the Zebras, Polar bears, elephants and the other members of the animal kingdom who live there merely got a little nervous, took it in their stride and calmed down when it was all over.

All's well that ends well, as the saying goes. Our kids left on Saturday and that was smart. The people who departed on Monday were in for a huge disappointment. They were told to come to the airport four hours before flight time - security and baggage check in - but even so some missed their flights and they had to stand in line for up to six hours. The volunteers were on hand again distributing hot chocolate, bottled water, gold wrapped chocolates and tried to entertain the waiting crowd with song and dance but this could do little to assuage some angry feelings. There was nothing SLOC or the city could have done about it because the airlines are a law unto themselves. But all in all the games were a success and Utahns are so happy that they want the world to come back again some time in the future. We ended up in the black and were even promised that we will get some of our tax money back. But I won't hold my breath for that to happen. Credit for the success must go, apart from the athletes, to Mitt Romney and SLOC who have done a terrific job, to Olympic President Dr. Rogge for defusing a potentially problematic situation, to the Church who by staying in the background immeasurably improved its image and that of the state, but most of all to the 25,000 volunteers. These people were on their assignments for up to ten or twelve hours a day, regardless of weather, for the entire period. They received no pay, meager food but were simply happy and grateful that they were allowed to show the world in what kind of place we really live and what kind of people Utahns really are.

Congratulations and Thank You volunteers, you deserve all the praise you can get! You made it the Mormon Olympics in the best sense of the word.





April 1, 2002

PALESTINIAN STATE OR ISRAELI PROTECTORATE?



This installment was prepared prior to the suicide bombing in Netanya, the subsequent Israeli destruction of Arafat's headquarters, and his virtual imprisonment in his office building. Nevertheless, I am leaving the original text unimpaired because it does not conflict with the unfolding events and I shall merely add two paragraphs at the end.

The past month was an anniversary of sorts and unfortunately a sad one. Hope springs eternal and this why I had Whither Zionism? published last March and why I sent it to all the members of the Bush administration as well as to the Chairmen and members of all the relevant committees in the House and Senate. As documented previously in these pages this was, of course, a forlorn hope and the book was ignored. A few days ago I received a phone call early in the morning (we are two hours behind Washington time) from an aide to one of the senators who thanked me for the "gift" and asked me what the senator was supposed to do with it? At first, benumbed by sleep, I wasn't sure what he was talking about but then he told me that they have "just received the book" and blamed the anthrax scare for the delay. Unless it went via the North Pole and Antarctica it should certainly have arrived prior to September 11. His question also puzzled me. What is one supposed to do with a book, especially when there was an explanatory letter included, but to read and act on it?

I am not sufficiently conceited to imagine that had the suggestions contained in Whither Zionism? been taken up, and had the U.S. placed the Arab-Israeli conflict before the Security Council in the spring of last year, the tragedies of September 11 and their aftermath would have been avoided. I do believe, however, that the ever increasing spiral of violence in the Mideast could have been reduced. Still permeated by the hope that if the American people were to be told the truth about the reasons why Arafat had rejected the Camp David II plan with its "unprecedented" offer to return about 96 per cent of the West Bank to the Palestinians, I wrote in January of this year an article for the Salt Lake Tribune, in which I outlined the reasons for the rejection and a plan that could bring some semblance of sanity to the area. It took several communications with the Editor of the paper until the article was published in full (!) and unedited (!), except for a change in the headline, by the Tribune. Obviously the Tribune is neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post but the individual citizen and taxpayer have no other recourse except at the "grass roots" level. Once it was published I faxed it to our President, Secretary of State Powell, and Condoleeza Rice. It probably ended up in the proverbial circular file.

In essence the article gave the reasons why the Palestinians had to reject the Israeli-American proposal for the Final Settlement. They were abstracted from the documents section of www.mideastweb.org and the updated edition of The Israel-Arab Reader by Laqueur and Rubin. The most important features for rejection were:

1) Israeli settlements would remain in the proposed Palestinian state, albeit concentrated in three blocks; but access roads would be under Israeli control.

2) Israel would continue to control the water resources of the Jordan River and an Israeli security zone would exist along its west bank. Israel could deploy its troops in the Jordan valley at any time if it felt itself threatened from the East.

3) The proposed state would not have had contiguous borders but would have consisted essentially of a series of unconnected municipalities.

4) The Palestinian areas of Jerusalem which Israel was willing to cede would likewise not have had contiguous borders but would have remained islands within the Jewish city.

5) Border crossings with Jordan and Egypt would be under Palestinian control but under Israeli supervision.

6) The Palestinian state would be demilitarized and alliances with other countries would be subject to Israeli approval.

7) Israel would accept some refugees from previous wars but the rest would have to be absorbed elsewhere.

In sum and substance Arafat would have become the mayor of several unconnected municipalities within an Israeli protectorate. Since this plan falls far short from the creation of a viable independent state the Palestinians rejected it. If these conditions had been presented by the U.N. in 1947 to the Jews in Palestine, for their state, they would also have rejected it.

Prime Minister Sharon, with a flair for the dramatic, has recently evoked the analogy of Israel being placed into the position of Czechoslovakia because the Munich agreement which led to the dismemberment and subsequent disappearance of the state was reached over the heads of the Czech government. This is the fate, Mr. Sharon announced, which would befall Israel if it were to accede to a truly autonomous and viable Palestinian state. The irony of this statement seems to have eluded him. It is not the Palestinians who are armed to the teeth with the most modern weapons, but it is the Likud government and its sympathizers who want a "Protectorate of Judea and Samaria." It would have essentially the same rights and privileges Hitler had arrogated to himself over "rump Czechoslovakia" which became the "Reichs-protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia." Hitler's ostensible reasons were security because he didn't want Soviet planes using Czech airfields. For the Israeli government security is also the reason put forth for its demands although there is no army in the area which can succeed against Israeli conventional and nuclear might.

These are no secrets but the Israeli and especially the American public have to be told that Israel is in mortal danger of being wiped off the map, by the combined Arab forces if it were to make any concessions which would be interpreted as weakness. Let's face it this is propaganda because the Arabs simply don't have the wherewithal and if they tried they would be annihilated by America. What is behind this scare-mongering? The status quo has to be retained and somehow or another the Palestinians should just disappear, or at least give up their suicidal behavior.

Even one of our currently most esteemed Newscasters endorses this principle. Bill O'Reilly repeatedly states on his "No Spin Factor" that he is "not interested in causes" he simply wants Palestinians to stop killing Israelis during suicide missions. As a physician this stance strikes me as strange. If Mr. O'Reilly, and those who think like him, were to suffer from a chronic cough and the physician would say "I don't care why you cough, just stop it because you're spreading germs," the answer would be a malpractice suit! This also reminded me of my psychiatric training at the Mayo Clinic where I was taught the principles of psychoanalytic thought. Among these was the admonition that "everything is always the opposite from what it appears to be." For instance a good natured jolly, obese person is really consumed by deep hatred and depression. In addition we were told that a patient with some type of undesirable behavior, be it alcoholism, a sexual obsession, or whatnot, would first have to give up his compulsion and then could be taken into treatment. In my naiveté I thought to myself that if the patient can do it voluntarily why does he need years of psychoanalysis?

Little did I know, in the early nineteen fifties, that psychoanalytic thought would enter world politics. Suicide bombings must stop before treatment of the reasons for these disasters can begin, is not only Israel's but America's stance! Like everybody else I don't condone suicide bombings but when young women join their ranks one really should look at the depth of despair which drives these people. What they need is not the stern words of "stop it" by our President but the ingredient without which people cannot live and that is genuine hope for a better future in freedom and dignity.

Unfortunately this may not be in the cards as the Beirut meeting has shown where they were put on the table for everybody to read. Sharon threatened Arafat with not letting him return if he said one word Israelis could disapprove of. This killed the Saudi "vision" as far as Israel was concerned. But the Arabs also tipped their hand. They did not allow Arafat to address the meeting live through remote TV hookup but only via a taped recording. Thus the Arabs showed themselves far from united in giving aid to the Palestinian cause. Finally it became clear that President Bush was not seriously interested either in a genuine attempt to resolve the conflict. He could have authorized General Zinni to put Arafat in a U.S. helicopter, take him to Beirut, and then bring him back again to Ramallah. This would have been statesmanship. But this course, which would have shown the world that America means business and is indeed an "honest broker," would have annoyed Sharon and since he is "our friend" we must not do so.

Thus the Saudi plan, is probably doomed and so is my own suggestion contained in the Tribune article. Sharon will take the Arab disarray and the tacit approval of his policies by the U.S. as a green light to go ahead with re-occupation of major portions of the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians will have to live under military law and those who don't like it will be shot. The Arabs are not likely to answer militarily, because they can't win, but they will use the only weapon they have - their oil. A boycott of exports to America would have serious repercussions on our economy, which still reels from the aftershocks of September 11 in form of increased defense spending both at home and abroad.

But even if the Israelis were to annex Judea and Samaria, as some like to call it, as well as the Gaza strip, what is to be done with the people? Contrary to Golda Meyer's opinion of "there are no Palestinians," they do exist and will continue to blow themselves up while taking as many Israelis as humanly possible with them. For "security" the Israelis will give up all hope for peace and will end up even more beleaguered than they are now. Even if they were able to expel the Palestinians from the occupied territories, which is not likely to be condoned by the rest of the world, they would have their own Arab citizens within Israel to deal with who may create even worse havoc in the state.

My own suggestion as to how to prevent the disasters, we seem to be inexorably sliding into, was quite simple. Only a complete separation of Jews from Arabs in separate states with internationally guaranteed borders has any chance of preventing future catastrophes. There are about five million Jews in Israel at this time and about 15 million in the world. Even if one were to assume a phenomenal birth and immigration rate, which is not likely, and the country's population were to swell to about ten million in the next decades this would still amount only to the population of Rio de Janeiro. Furthermore, how much land do ten million people who are predominantly urban in character really need? Theoretically it would be entirely feasible to create a purely Jewish state as a garden megalopolis which extends along the Mediterranean shore from Nahariya in the North to the Gaza strip in the South. The eastern border could be fixed along the hill country. This would still give the Jewish state the high ground for defensive positions and the state would receive international guarantees for its existence. The settlements would have to be disbanded because they will always be a point of friction. The Dimona nuclear plant could be reconfigured to peaceful atomic energy production which would make Israel largely independent of Arab oil and desalination plants on the Mediterranean could provide the needed water resources. For Jerusalem the initial U.N. idea of a corpus separatum could be enacted. The rest of the current state of Israel could become the Palestinian state which could under those circumstances absorb the refugees from the previous wars. A connection between the Gaza strip and the rest of the Palestinian state could be established by the creation of a tunnel from the south end of the West bank to the north end of the Gaza strip. A tunnel is preferable to a road which would have to traverse Israeli land and could be disrupted at any time. With a tunnel entry as well as exit would be under Palestinian control and contiguity of territory would be preserved. Although a tunnel would present an engineering challenge a precedent exists in form of the "chunnel" which connects Calais with Dover. The Golan Heights would return to Syria and the remaining enclaves of Lebanese territory which are still held by Israel would go back to Lebanon. This would immediately produce peace treaties with Syria as well as Lebanon and the major friction points, which threaten to ignite the Mideast would disappear. There is little doubt that all the Arab states as well as the Palestinians would accept a solution of this type. Israel will oppose it because it involves significant concessions. Neither Israel nor the Arabs can be expected to come to a meaningful lasting agreement. The car is stuck in the mud of mutual hatred and it needs AAA to pull it out. Only the United States can do so. If the Bush administration were to bring a plan of this type, with appropriate input from experts for details, to the Security Council it would in all probability be adopted because the rest of the world wants an end to this conflict, which threatens the welfare of all of us.

Could America bring about a genuine peace solution as suggested above? Yes, if the will were there. But the will is obviously lacking!

As mentioned in the beginning, the situation in the West Bank is currently in flux. Nevertheless a picture begins to emerge. Arafat may not survive very long and we may never hear the truth as to how he died. The Palestinians will probably say that he was murdered by the Israelis, while the Israelis may announce that he has committed suicide. But that does not matter. With his death Sharon will have achieved his goal of plunging the Palestinian Authority into chaos, which will foreclose any peace negotiations. He does not want a Palestinian state, and neither does his likely successor Netanyahu. By creating chaos in the occupied territories the Israeli government can then appoint "Quisling" type mayors of the various municipalities in the West Bank and Gaza who will cooperate with the occupation. This, of course, will not stop fanatic young Palestinians of either sex to continue with guerilla warfare against the "Quislings" as well as the Israelis. Terrorism will abound and since America not only has done nothing to prevent this situation, but obviously supports Sharon, we will be targets also. This much seems reasonably predictable.

In the United States there is currently only hand wringing by the media with "but what can we do?" The signals Secretary Powell and President Bush are sending are inane. To tell Sharon that his actions are correct and Arafat, who is virtually imprisoned, must call off suicide attacks is not a serious policy. These statements are designed to placate the media and the American public, but are otherwise useless. The U.N. Resolution which calls on Israel to withdraw its forces has no teeth and can be complied with, on a token basis, by Sharon. The United States need to introduce a Resolution which in principle conforms to the Saudi plan, or to that of the mentioned Tribune article, and subsequently tell the Israeli government that if they do not accept it, there will be no further aid from the United States or NATO countries. An action of this type seems to be the only way to prevent further disasters and is in the long run the best chance for Israelis to live in peace with their neighbors. The reason why America is not taking constructive action will be discussed in the next installment.





May 1, 2002

THE UNHOLY ALLIANCE



In the April installment I mentioned that it was up to America to enforce a just settlement of the Mideast conflict. We boast that we are the only remaining super-power which projects its influence throughout the world, yet we allow a small country with a population of less than six million people to determine our foreign policy. Surely this should give rise to thought.

Ostensibly the fight between Israelis and Palestinians is over land which both sides regard as their own but behind it is the Bible. The conflict is at its root religious on the Jewish, Christian and to some extent the Muslim side. I am qualifying the Muslim contribution because in Palestine the struggle is for national liberation and as such still secular in its origin. Nevertheless the "martyrs" believe they will enter paradise which adds religious fervor. Even at the beginning of Zionism in the 19th century there was an alliance between secular Jewish intellectuals and Christian Protestants in German and British high society. This enabled Herzl to gain support for his dream of establishing a "Jewish homeland." The rationale for Protestant politicians to pursue a policy which more sober-minded people knew would lead to permanent bloodshed in the Mideast, was a misinterpretation of biblical prophecies, especially the one in the Book of Revelation, more commonly known as the Apocalypse.

This nightmare vision of an unknown Christian-Jewish author of the late first century is now driving decisions two thousand years later in America. If this does not stagger the minds of rational people I don't know what will. St. John the Divine, as the author of that unfortunate book is called, wrote for the people of his own time who were persecuted by a number of Roman emperors. The disasters he "foresaw" had been stock in trade for hundreds of years in Jewish apocalyptic literature. They had gained increased importance during Jesus' time because the Jews who lived under Roman occupation believed that the end-times were near. A Jewish Messiah from the seed of King David would appear, he would rout the "idolaters," the unjust world order would collapse, and the kingdom of God, with its capital at Jerusalem, would be established under Jewish rule forever and ever more here on earth.

But then came Jesus. In accord with the emotional climate of the time he was also imbued with millennial expectations and taught that the Kingdom of God was imminent. Furthermore he believed, like everyone else, that biblical prophecies were indeed forecasts of the future. He did not know, and could not have known, what Bible scholars have demonstrated during the past two centuries that these "prophecies" were not predictions of the future but the work of theologians in order to justify the past. The Bible, as we know it, was not written in the dim past but came into being some time after the Jews were allowed to return from the Babylonian exile. The earliest complete text was written in Greek, albeit based on earlier Hebrew texts, at some time around 250 B.C. in Alexandria. What has never been properly appreciated is that the biblical authors and editors had not intended primarily to write a history of their nation, although they followed the example of Homer, Herodotus and Thucydides, but to reveal God's plan for "His Chosen People." To do so the past disasters, which the Jewish people had been subjected to, had to be explained and some facts from the past were projected into the future as if the prophets had actually predicted them. In this way credibility was achieved. Thus the Bible is not only a religious, but also a political document.

Jesus had no way of knowing this. He took the prophecies at face value and so did his disciples. By applying the verses of the "Suffering Servant" from, what is nowadays called, Deutero Isaiah he believed that by his death he would usher in the kingdom of God. With other words because biblical prophecy existed it needed people to make past predictions come true This is how the Word became Flesh, to use the terminology of the fourth gospel. Jesus' little band of followers kept believing that the second coming was just around the corner and only as the decades went by without change did they feel the need to put his words on paper which became the gospels. Since the majority, if not all of them, were written after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. the words which have been put in Jesus' mouth in this respect are not necessarily historical either.

This brings us back to our own time and the imminent arrival of the apocalypse which some Christian as well as Jewish circles so ardently want to bring about. Jesus had based his prediction of the events surrounding the end-times, and the arrival of the Son of Man in glory, largely on the book of Daniel. What was not known then, and is not openly admitted to now by Evangelicals, is that this book had nothing to do with the era of Persian rule, but was written in the second century B.C. by an unknown adherent to apocalyptic thought. The events which were projected into the future reflect those which had happened previously during the reign of Antiochus IV and the Maccabean revolt. The "abomination of desolation" was the statue of that Greek ruler which had been placed in 167 B.C. on the altar of the temple. The duration of persecutions also fits precisely the actual time during which the Jewish religion had been forbidden.

The purpose of the book of Daniel had been to bring hope to the Jews of Greco-Roman times and the same applies to the Apocalypse of St. John the Divine The churches in Asia Minor had been persecuted under Domitian and needed to be strengthened. Babylon the "mother of harlots . . . drunken with the blood of Saints" equaled Rome and the beast whose number was 666, or in some early manuscripts 616, was Nero, depending upon how the name and his title were spelled when Hebrew letters were used as numbers. The author's vision was couched in classical Jewish apocalyptic language so that any interpretation of other details is limited only by the fantasy of the reader.

How did these ancient "prophecies" become popular in our age? In 1998, the fiftieth anniversary of modern Israel's birth, Timothy Weber explained the situation in an article for Christianity Today "How Evangelicals Became Israel's Best Friend." It is available on www.christianitytoday.org. The article is quite long but deserves to be printed and read carefully. The intervening years, and especially the current situation, have only strengthened Weber's analysis. He pointed out that not only do evangelical Christians love the land of Israel because this is where Jesus lived and died, but also because of the anticipated end-game in which Israel plays a pivotal role. In order to reconcile the conflicting ideas of who was going to rule the post-apocalypse world: Jesus or an as yet unnamed Jewish terrestrial king, an Englishman, John Nelson Darby, came up in the mid 1800's with the ingenious idea that the Lord had two distinct plans. One for the "earthly people" (Israel) and another for the "heavenly people" (the church). This idea which has been called dispensationalism means that some prophecies apply to one and some to the other group. For both groups the return of the Jewish exiles from the Diaspora is essential. For this reason Protestant Christians were initially far more eager to embrace the Zionist idea, than even Jews themselves because the ingathering of the dispersed was the fundamental sine qua non to fulfill God's plan. Dispensationalism began to be popular in the U.S. during the 1870's but the real success had to wait until the 1920's and especially until after 1948 and the 1967 Six-Day war.

The dispensationist belief system includes:

1) After the "times of the Gentiles" are finished and the Jews have returned to the Holy Land civilization as we know it will unravel. Moral standards, including those of the clergy will suffer irreversible setbacks. Wars, political and economic unrest, natural disasters including catastrophic weather changes will abound and whatever is done to reverse the situation is doomed to failure.

2.) Since God had decided to work with only one of the two mentioned groups at a time there will then occur during these times of trial what has been called the "Rapture." Jesus will physically remove his faithful from earth to heaven so that God can then concentrate on the Jews.

3) After the rapture of the church a charismatic leader - the Antichrist - will appear and head a confederation of ten European states. Israel will join and rebuild the temple.

4) In spite of the Antichrist's inordinate power and the help of a False Prophet other nations will rise up against his coalition and eventually he will be defeated at the battle of Armageddon. During the battle Jesus and his saints will arrive and ensure the final victory. The surviving Jews will accept him as the Messiah and he will then rule from Jerusalem for a thousand years.

I have omitted several details which can be found on the mentioned website but it suffices to show the mind-set of a segment of Christians who devoutly believe these prophecies and who now devote their best energies to make them come true at the soonest possible time. One may argue that evangelical Christians are a minority in the United States, just as the six million Jews, but this would seriously underestimate their superb organization and the resulting political clout. For evangelicals, just as for Jews, the Palestinians stand in the way and have to disappear somehow. A peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians is unthinkable because it would run counter to God's plan. There can only be one state of Israel which encompasses all the biblical lands. This has also always been the goal of the Likud party and is why Netanyahu told an audience of predominantly evangelical Christians in April of 1998, "We have no greater friends and allies than the people sitting in this room." This occurred during the Clinton era and President Bush is expected to toe the line also. If he goes against these combined Jewish, neo-conservative and Christian coalition votes he is being told, by his advisors, that he might as well forget about reelection. Members of the House and Senate receive the same message that their chances in the upcoming midterm November elections are quite dim unless they resolutely support the policies of the Jerusalem government.

But this is not all. The American public at large must be indoctrinated that Israel is in mortal danger unless the Palestinians become either adjusted to perpetual Israeli sovereignty or are eliminated in some form or another. This propaganda has been remarkably successful because even pillars of the community such as Jeane Kirkpatrick and William Bennett keep repeating the mantra that Arafat has rejected the most generous peace offer ever, and that Israel must be supported in the battle for its very life. President Bush also seems to have accepted this propaganda ploy. After the visit of Crown Prince Abdullah he announced that America will not allow Israel to be "crushed." But let us look at the facts. How can some desperate suicide bombers "crush" a country which is armed to the teeth with nuclear and conventional weapons? It is the Palestinians who are getting crushed. As of mid-April the death count was 440 Israelis versus 1620 Palestinians and by the end of the month their civilian infrastructure lay in ruins. But this toll of human suffering does not seem to concern our "Christian" evangelicals

This brings me to the problem of terrorism. When an army of a duly constituted state creates havoc upon the civilian population of a conquered territory by imposing unreasonable strictures on everyday life this is acceptable. When some of the oppressed, who have no heavy weapons with which they could resist, resort to suicide attacks on Israeli citizens they are terrorists. It is argued that they attack innocent civilians while soldiers limit themselves to military targets. That this is clearly not the case has been shown recently by the events in Jennin and elsewhere on the West Bank. Why do Palestinians use suicide tactics? I believe that if they had bazookas they would prefer to disable Israeli tanks and other military equipment but that option is not available. Since they cannot get to military installations they go after the civilian population. But let us not forget that WWII forever obliterated the distinction between military and civilian targets. The carpet bombing of entire cities affected the civilian population much more than the war effort. An airman who releases bombs from a height of thousands of feet upon cities is regarded as a hero, even if there are no enemy planes or antiaircraft guns to hinder him. On the other hand desperate, disgusted individuals who try to draw attention to the plight of their people by blowing themselves up in an attempt to take as many as possible of their enemies with them are regarded as murderers. Let me emphasize that I do not condone suicide bombing but I can understand why people resort to it and they should not be forced to persist in this behavior by misguided U.S. policies, which clearly favor Israel.

Let us now look at the result of Sharon's reoccupation of the West Bank. The declared goal was to remove the infrastructure of terrorism. But to produce suicide belts one does not need an infrastructure. They can readily be made in basements or garages. Hamas, Islamic Jihad or the Al Aqsa brigade also won't have to worry any more about recruiting for suicide missions. Enough hatred has been generated to fill their ranks for years to come. Furthermore let's look at the demographics. Of the 6 million people who live within the pre 1967 Israeli borders there are about 5 million Jews and the rest are Arabs. The occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza contain an estimated 3.2 million people and their birthrate exceeds by far that of secular Israelis. But even today the 5 million or so Israeli Jews are confronted with somewhat over 4 million Arabs who are thoroughly exasperated. What Sharon and people who think that a military solution is the only way for Israeli security don't seem to realize is that Israeli Arabs may soon join their Palestinian brothers and sisters, with far better weapons than are now available in the occupied territories. Sharon seems to be impervious to this simple fact and he may well continue to extend his destruction of "terrorist infrastructure" to the Gaza strip at the earliest pretext, thereby creating even more hatred. This is precisely the reason why this strategy must be resisted and Israel must be made to pull back now if she wants to have peace.

We have at present in the U.S.this incredible unholy coalition of secular Jewish Zionists, Jewish religious fanatics and Christian evangelicals. The basis is a promise God was supposed to have made to Abraham in the distant past and biblical prophecies which can be interpreted in any way one wants. Although the evangelicals, in their idealism, envision a different final outcome, Jews whose feet are firmly planted on this earth are happy for their support. Once all the land is theirs they are not going to be unduly worried about Jesus and his heavenly host. I would like to strongly urge our Evangelical Christians to visit www.noahide.com in order to get a better perspective on some orthodox Jewish thoughts.

President Bush is now in the unenviable position that he must choose between a policy which demands equal justice for both sides of the conflict, and the pressures from Jewish as well as Christian groups who tell him that he must stick with Sharon no matter what. This accounts for all the zig-zags of the President's public utterances during the past month which make our foreign policy so totally ununderstandable to the rest of the world.

There is nothing holy about what is going on in the Holy Land right now and all the parties to the conflict Jews, Christians and Muslims are using the Lord's name in vain when they pursue earthly material goals rather than moral improvement. During the election campaign President Bush told us that his "favorite philosopher" was Jesus, but the essence of Jesus' message, which might be summed up in the Golden Rule, seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle. American policy should neither be based on biblical prophecies nor on concerns about elections but on a rational approach which benefits all rather than some.





Memorial Day 2002

WE TOO WERE SOLDIERS



The last Monday of May is traditionally dedicated to honor and remember America's soldiers who have been killed in the various wars the country has been engaged in. This is good and proper but we should not only remember those who had given their lives, but also those who had to live on with serious and at times massively debilitating injuries. These soldiers who had laid their lives on the line and had been spared the fatal bullet should also be remembered and equally honored.

But there exists among the living another generation who had faced the fury of war and either succumbed to it or emerged in a severely battered state. Not only is this generation of soldiers not honored but it is regarded as, brutes, murderers, and wanton killers especially of Jews. I am talking, of course, of the German Wehrmacht.

When I read the newspapers it is common to find us, and I mean us because I was one of "them," referred to as Nazi soldiers, and the Wehrmacht as the Nazi army. It is true that we served in the German army, and the country had at that time a national-socialist government but it is not true that we, therefore, agreed with Hitler's policies or automatically hated the enemies of the country. Goebbels did his level best to instill this hatred into us but he failed because soldiers, especially the front line troops, don't hate. They are too busy saving their skin. It's "shoot first before you get shot" and every soldier who has ever been in a war will recognize this as a fact of life.

Let me now go back sixty years. At the end of May 1942 I was still in High School but my brother, who is two years older, was already in the Wehrmacht deep inside the Soviet Union and his outfit was on the way to the Caucasus to get at the badly needed oil wells. His job was not to kill Jews or other undesirables but to change the wide track Russian railroad tracks to the usual European ones, which was back breaking work. He was also a kid, drafted as soon as he got out of high school, and not yet nineteen years old. Fortunately he got a bad case of hepatitis in Maikop, at the edge of the Caucasus, which saved his life. He was transported back home and received a desk job after his recovery. By the time his fiftieth high school reunion rolled around in 1991 there was no reunion because he was the only survivor of his class. The vast majority had been in the Sixth army which was wiped out in Stalingrad, and whoever survived tended to be in bad health which did not allow for longevity.

Now fast forward to Vienna 2002. My brother still lives there and earlier this spring there was an exhibit on the Wehrmacht. It was a replay of another one which had toured Germany and Austria some years before and which had painted the entire German army as a "murder machine." The previous exhibit had aroused a great deal of indignation by ex-soldiers of my generation because faked pictures and documents had been used. In the current one some corrections had taken place to avoid the obvious pictorial distortions but the tenor was the same. The "Nazi" soldiers had been evil and such atrocities which had then been committed by them must never be allowed to come to pass again. My brother went to see the exhibit and saw that hordes of school children had been brought by their teachers to this educational display. When some of the kids saw my brother standing there viewing the pictures they came up to him, because of his obvious age, and asked him what thought of it. He then proceeded to tell them of his personal experiences and that they were being indoctrinated with propaganda which bears little relationship to what had actually happened. He was soon confronted with an irate teacher who obviously knew better, having been born several decades after the war had been over, and who thoroughly believed the current party line. She shooed her flock away from this fuddy-duddy who obviously must have been a Nazi. Thus the new generation is being brainwashed in current political correctness just as our generation had been more than half a century earlier.

But I said "we" in the title because I was also one of these "evil ones;" "one of the Nazi beasts" who wanted to destroy Western civilization. The summer of 1942 was spent working on a farm because youngsters had to do productive work, for the final victory, the Endsieg, which was just around the corner. Your opinions were neither asked for nor valued so the smart thing to do was to keep your mouth shut and do what you were told. My army life started in 1943 and I must admit that I even volunteered. Now this surely must have stamped me, in some eyes, as a devoted follower of the Führer. On the contrary, it was Realpolitik. I knew that I would be drafted as soon as I had graduated, because that was a given, but it was also obvious that I would, in all probability, have been assigned to the infantry. This was a fate I wanted to avoid like the plague. I never enjoyed hiking long distances, and for living in muddy foxholes I had no taste either. First I thought I'd volunteer for the Luftwaffe because I had always wanted to learn to fly. But my grandfather, who had been dead already for more than a decade, stood in the way. He had been born a Jew. That made me a Mischling and as such ineligible for this elite outfit. The fact that Goering's second in command, General Milch, was also a Mischling didn't matter because it was Goering's privilege to choose whomever he wanted for whatever he wanted. Goering had also expropriated the phrase "I determine who is a Jew." It had been coined by the former Mayor of Vienna, Lueger. Before becoming mayor Lueger had reveled in antisemitic slogans and when he was confronted by adversaries that he really shouldn't have Jewish friends he uttered that previously mentioned memorable phrase. Lueger had another one which is highly á propos today and I have quoted it in War&Mayhem. Lueger dropped his antisemitism after his election because that was, after all, also Realpolitik.

Since the Luftwaffe was out I was at odds with what to do with myself. Then fate sent me one of my school friends, during a stroll in the city, who said that he was going to volunteer for the Panzer. Now there was an idea. Everybody was enamored with Rommel’s daring and here was another elite outfit for which I might have been eligible. As must be obvious by now, I have nothing whatsoever against elitism, provided the status is earned. For me it is not a dirty word, as for some whom I have had the opportunity to run into in this country, and who accused me of it. So both of us volunteered and were accepted. In the fall of 1944 I was on the front in Hungary where the Russians had come to meet us, but I was spared the battle for Budapest, for reasons that were related in War&Mayhem. Earlier this year I received as a gift John Lukasz's Confessions of an Original Sinner who experienced it from the other side. But the point to be made is that we did not kill any civilians, Jewish or otherwise, and we behaved like soldiers do in all armies, which included even an occasional looting of a watchmaker's store. Looting was strictly forbidden in the Wehrmacht and when caught one could get court-martialed. This happened in fact to my tank commander but after I had already been ordered out.

Now comes the next irony. Not only was I in the Wehrmacht but even in the SA, which obviously might stamp me now, in some eyes, irrevocably as a Nazi. Well to quote the Gershwin opera: "It ain't necessarily so." After the assassination attempt on Hitler in July of 1944 the army was discredited and had to be Nazified. So my Panzer Grenadier Division was stripped of its number and was called instead the Panzer Grenadier Division Feldherrnhalle. We were also given a brown, relatively narrow, armband which proclaimed SA Feldherrnhalle. This we had to stitch onto the lower end of the left sleeve of our uniform jackets. We were also told that the Russians had a head price on the wearers of this band, just as for the Waffen SS. I suppose this was meant to stiffen our will to fight. I wouldn't have been necessary because we were determined to fight anyway. Our division was completely destroyed during the Budapest siege. There were somewhat over 16.000 men in our division when Budapest was encircled and 291 of them were eventually able to break through and make it back to the German lines. Thus more than 98 per cent were either captured or killed. After the war I met two of my comrades. One had lost a leg; the other had shown an enterprising spirit after his capture and had joined the Red Army on its march to Vienna. If the choice is between Siberia and heading where you want to go anyway, the choice is not all that hard.

This brings me to the oft asked question. "But if you weren't a Nazi, then why did you fight for Hitler?" The answer is simple: we didn't fight for Hitler, or the Nazis, we actually wanted to get rid of them. You may not want to believe this but we were also fighting to save Western civilization. The threat had come from the "Asiatic hordes," "the Soviet beasts," and the "Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy" which had dragged the Western world into the war against its own will. At least that was the party line at the time. We who fought in the East had a clear goal. It was to keep the Soviets at bay long enough so that the Americans and Brits could get to Austria and Germany first before the Russians had a chance to get there. What we wanted to avoid at all costs was to live under Soviet occupation and for this we were willing to give our lives. Just as the Russian soldier did not fight for Stalin or communism, but in defense of Holy Mother Russia, so did we defend the Vaterland and not necessarily its regime. On the Western front the ideological situation was more complex because many Austrians did not want to fight the Western Allies. It was simply the wrong war. For us the enemy was not capitalism but communism. If I had been sent to the Western front in the summer of '44 I would have made every effort to throw my rifle away, sneak to the American lines, put up my hands and say "Hi folks, do you need an interpreter?" But why did Germans and other Austrians fight on the Western front when the war was obviously hopelessly lost?

There were two reasons. One was that the army's oath encompassed not only "to defend the country" but also Hitler in person. In those days an oath, even when extracted under duress, was meaningful and a lame excuse that "it depends on what the meaning of is, is" would have been unthinkable. In addition there were Roosevelt's favorite phrase of "unconditional surrender" and the Morgenthau plan which would have destroyed Germany forever. Neither of these facts emanated from Goebbels' brain but was official policy of the Allies at the time. It was these policies which unnecessarily prolonged the war and cost additional millions of lives. Why did FDR promote them? One reason was that he simply hated Germans and he also wanted desperately to please Uncle Joe who might otherwise have made separate arrangements with Germany. The Soviet Union had to be kept in the war to spare American lives and to get rid of Hitler who was regarded as the main menace. We wanted to get rid of Hitler too and had the Western Allies taken the peace feelers of the anti-Hitler group in Germany seriously numerous lives, including those of Jews, would have been saved.

But the problem was not really Hitler and the Nazis in the minds of Western politicians at the time. The problem was the existence of Germany per se. As Vansittart had put it: "Hitler is the symptom, Germany is the disease," to which FDR and his group readily subscribed. To paraphrase Marcus Cato, Germaniam esse delendam, Germany must be annihilated. The fate that had befallen Carthage two thousand years earlier was now to be meted out to the Germans. Nazi or not didn't make a difference! Even Eisenhower succumbed to this doctrine. When the Wehrmacht surrendered in the millions in the spring of '45 the soldiers were no longer treated as prisoners of war but as "disarmed enemy forces." This DEF, rather than POW, status allowed Eisenhower to circumvent the Geneva Convention and to perpetrate a disaster of massive proportions on the soldiers who had thought that the Americans would treat them in a humane fashion. All of us are more than familiar with the horror pictures from the liberated concentration camps, where prisoners had died like flies from starvation and disease. But as yet I have not seen a single documentary about the conditions German soldiers were exposed to in American and French camps between August 1944 and December of 1945. Being a volunteer by nature I avoided this fate and discharged myself with a friend from the Wehrmacht on May 4. We simply threw our gear away and started walking home. Another friend of mine who had sat for six years next to me in school was not so lucky. He had been taken prisoner by the Americans, was then given to the French for more than two years of slave labor before he was eventually discharged. He had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had become a number among millions. I have mentioned earlier that at the time of the fiftieth High School reunion my brother was the only one still living. For us, born two years later, the situation was different. We had lost only somewhat over fifty percent of our class rather than one hundred percent. Accidents of where and when you were born, for which no one can be held responsible, do make a difference.

This chapter of WWII is largely unknown in America and we owe it to James Bacque's Other Losses to have brought this tragedy to light. But since WWII was a war of "good versus evil" his book, which exposes evil on the good side, must not become widely known, let alone serve as a basis for a TV documentary. Myths must not be shattered. The same applies to John Sack's Eye for an Eye which documents the behavior of some former Jewish inmates of concentration camps in Poland, when they had become supervisors and guards of imprisoned Germans. Lest I be misunderstood let me make it quite clear that I do not deny that some members of the Wehrmacht had in fact committed war crimes especially in Russia and the Balkans where they were confronted with a guerilla war which is notoriously brutal. "Reprisals" were the norm then and they still are, but these acts do not justify the slander of millions of ordinary soldiers who had served their country in the Wehrmacht, let alone the rest of the civilian population who had lived under the Hitler regime.

Thus when we celebrate this and other Memorial Days we should also remember all the other victims of wars Americans have fought in regardless of nationality. The real enemy all of us face is hate rather than a given nation or regime. Hate will always surface under different names, be it a Hitler or the currently popular ones: Yassir Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Ladin or any other member of the "axis of evil." What we fail to realize is that hate when met with hate will only generate more hate. While Hitler had to be defeated and Osama, as well as Saddam have to be neutralized, the methods to do so should not exceed the essential minimum to achieve this goal. In our present war on terrorism we are in the process of losing precisely some of those freedoms Americans have fought and died for in the past. For the sake of "security," restrictions are imposed upon our lives which were unimaginable only a few years ago. Surely the goal of all wars past and present should be peace. But if this peace is achieved by hate, and punitive measures, all past and future sacrifices of lives and property will have been in vain. The cycle will merely go on. The names of the adversaries will change but hate, with all its consequences, will persist.





July 1, 2002

MORAL CLARITY



William Bennett, former Secretary of Education in the Reagan administration, Co-Director of Empower America, and author of numerous books, has for quite some time been regarded as the moral conscience of America. He has now published a new book Why We Fight. Moral Clarity And the War On Terrorism, which is the subject of this installment.

Bennett makes the point that the September 11 tragedy brought about a moment of "moral clarity" in America when all people felt a renewed sense of patriotism and justified anger at the outrage which was committed against us. He then warned that this anger must not be allowed to be replaced by questions as to why we fight this war on terrorism America is engaged in. We must persevere until final victory is achieved. Patriotism, which in his view, rules out any questioning how our government conducts its foreign and domestic policy, also precludes questions how we got into the current war in the first place. Well, this is all fine and good because Mr. Bennett is entitled to his opinions like anybody else but he then infuses the anger, which by now has largely dissipated, with a moral purpose. He points out that Jesus was not a pacifist, had no objections to war and that the Catholic Church condones a "just war,"which is what we are waging because we have undoubtedly been attacked.

Let us now take a look at how Mr. Bennett arrived at his opinion. He admits that Jesus said "love your enemies," as well as "all who take the sword will perish by the sword," and that these words "in their unequivocal aversion to the use of force have resonated down the centuries with a clarion purity." Now comes, however, the "but" which Mr. Bennett condemns when used in relation to our current policies."But as so much in the Bible, they are not the only or last words on the matter; they are not even Jesus' own last words on the matter." As examples Bennett cites Jesus praising the Roman centurion "a soldier and a man of violence," who had requested the healing of his servant. Furthermore, that Jesus said he had "not come to bring peace to the earth but a 'sword;'" that "at Gethsemane" he had said "'The one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one'." In addition Peter was rebuked from fighting with the people who had come to arrest Jesus not because Jesus was averse to violence but because the arrest was necessary to fulfill the will of the Father.

This was the best Mr. Bennett could come up with, but the context in which the mentioned words were uttered is all important. As far as the Roman centurion, "a man of violence" in Bennett's words, is concerned the story occurs twice in the New Testament. A short version was provided by Matthew in chapter 8:5-10, and an expanded form by Luke in chapter 7:2-10. In Matthew, Jesus marveled at the faith of the centurion who believed that a single word spoken by Jesus would heal his servant and there is no comment as to what kind of person he might have been. Luke gives us a fuller picture. While in Matthew the centurion had come in person to ask for help, in Luke's version the centurion had asked Jewish elders to intercede with Jesus on behalf of the sick servant. These elders convinced Jesus that the centurion was a worthy man who "loves our people, and it is he who built a synagogue for us [7:5]." Thus Luke makes it clear that it wasn't the centurion's profession which raised Jesus' compassion but that he was a good person.

When Jesus said that he did not bring peace but a "sword" to the world, Bennett admits that it was meant metaphorically. The subsequent statements that families would be torn apart on account of Jesus was simply a recognition of reality and did not require a great deal of foresight. A teaching which breaks with the established order, tells people that they must follow him even to the point of forsaking their families is bound to be disruptive. Some family members converted to the new faith, while others did not with resulting discord. But this has nothing to do with condoning war.

In regard to Luke's passage that the disciples should buy a sword the context is again all important. Contrary to what Bennett wrote, the mentioned words were spoken at the end of the Last Supper after Peter had declared his fidelity. As we are all aware, Jesus had to tell him that before the cock crowed Peter will have denied knowing him three times. Subsequently

He said to them. 'When I sent you out without a purse, bag, or sandals, did you lack anything?' They said 'No, not a thing.' He said to them, 'But now, the one who has a purse must take it and likewise a bag. And the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you the scripture must be fulfilled in me. 'And he was counted among the lawless,' and indeed what is written about me is being fulfilled. They said 'Lord, look, here are two swords.' He replied, 'It is enough.' [Lk. 22:35-38].

This surely puts the situation into a completely different light from what Mr. Bennett wanted us to believe. Jesus' aversion to the use of violence is also attested to by his reaction at the time of the arrest

While he was still speaking, suddenly a crowd came, and the one called Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him but Jesus said to him, 'Judas is it with a kiss that you are betraying the Son of Man?' When those who were around him saw what was coming, they asked, 'Lord, should we strike with the sword?' Then one of them struck the slave of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said, 'No more of this!' And he touched his ear and healed him [Lk. 22:47-51].

Thus if one wants to find justification for war other sources than the words and deeds of Jesus need to be used. The same applies to the teachings of Paul which were also used by Bennett to bolster his case. After having mentioned Paul's admonition "'Do not repay evil for evil, but take thought of what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible live peaceably with all. Believers, never avenge yourselves.'" Bennett goes on "'the authority does not bear the sword in vain' but is rather 'the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer.'" Thereafter Bennett quotes from "the first letter of Peter, where that disciple reminds his recipients that human institutions are 'sent by [God] to punish those who do wrong and praise those who do right.'"

Now let's look what Paul said in Romans 13 from which the quote has been taken out of context. The first four verses are:

”Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgement. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive approval; for it is God's servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer [13:1-4].”

Thus the context is not a justification for war by a ruler but an admonition to individual Christians for proper every day conduct. The same applies to the first letter of Peter. Chapter 2 verses 13-15 are the relevant ones, "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme, Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. For it is God's will that by doing right you should silence the ignorance of the foolish." It takes again a wide leap of imagination to get from personal conduct to the right to wage a war by rulers. I have used The New Greek-English Interlinear New Testament for the biblical quotes. The reason is explained in my forthcoming book A Jesus for Our Time.

Now let us consider what has become the scriptural excuse, and I use the word advisedly, for the idea of "just war." The concept was first formulated by St. Thomas of Aquinas' in his Summa Theologica. The Summa are an enormous treatise by this eminent thirteenth century theologian and Peter Kreeft's A Summa of the Summa contains over five hundred pages of text. The "just war" concept was, however, not deemed important enough by that author to be included. One is required to look in the total Summa, which take up over eighteen hundred pages to find the three and a half which deal with war. I was aided in this search by Darrell Cole's "Good Wars" in the October 2001 issue of "First Things" who provided the reference. In article 1 of Book II Part II under Question XL Whether it is Always Sinful To Wage War? [Emphasis in the original] St. Thomas wrote :

”We proceed to the first article: It seems that it is always sinful to wage war...

On the contrary, Augustine says in a sermon on the son of the centurion: 'If the Christian Religion forbade war altogether, those who sought salutary advice in the gospel would rather have been counseled to cast aside their arms, and give up soldiering altogether. On the contrary they were told: 'Do violence to no man ... and be content with your pay!' (Luke 3. 14). If he commanded them to be content with their pay, he did not forbid soldiering'.”

St. Thomas had made the servant into a son but that is immaterial. He then listed three conditions which allow "for a war to be just." They are: the authority of a sovereign, rather than of a private individual; a just cause and a right intention by the belligerents. It is not my purpose here to question whether or not these conditions are currently met, but rather to explore the gospel authority on which all the rest hangs. As repeatedly mentioned context is everything and when St Augustine (354-430 A.D.) said "he commanded them" one would immediately assume that the bishop had referred to Jesus. This was not the case. The words came from John the Baptist! After he had called people who came to be baptized "you brood of vipers [Lk. 3:7]," they asked him what they should do to be saved. The full quote of the relevant section is :

”Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him 'Teacher what should we do?' He said to them, 'Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.' Soldiers also asked him. 'And we, what should we do?' He said to them, 'Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages' [Lk. 3:12-14].”

This is all any of the gospels say about the duties of soldiers and there is no evidence that Jesus had ever addressed the issue of war. His kingdom was not of this world and his name is being misused when political issues, apart from paying taxes, are supposedly condoned by him.

As far as righteous anger is concerned, of which Mr. Bennett seems so fond, I would suggest to him the books by Seneca On Anger, which are available in Seneca. Moral and Political Essays by Cooper and Procopé. Seneca, a stoic philosopher, was for several years Nero's tutor and conscience but eventually had to pay with his life for this thankless task. As is apparent from the content of the books Seneca concerned himself mainly with lingering resentment which turns to hate, rather than the sudden surge of anger all of us intermittently experience. This is why his thoughts are so important for today. Seneca wrote:


”Now look at its consequences and the losses which it [anger] occasions. No plague has cost the human race more. You will see slaughter, poisoning, charge and sordid counter-charge in the law-courts, devastation of cities, the ruin of whole nations, persons of princely rank for sale at public auction, buildings set alight and the fire spreading beyond the city walls, huge tracts of territory glowing in flames that the enemy kindled [1:2,1].”

What accounts for it?

”{Anger is 'a burning desire to avenge a wrong' or, according to Posidonius, 'a burning desire to punish him by whom you think yourself to have been unfairly harmed' [1:2,3]. There is no need to chastise in anger if error and crime are to be repressed. Anger is a misdemeanour of the soul and one ought not to correct wrong-doing while doing wrong oneself [1:16,1]. Reason gives time to either side, and then demands a further adjournment to give itself room to tease out the truth: anger is in a hurry. Reason wishes to pass a fair judgment: anger wishes the judgment which it has already passed to seem fair [1:18, 1]”

”If we wish our judgment to be fair in all things, we must start from the conviction that no one of us is faultless For here is where indignation most arises - 'I haven't done anything wrong,' 'I haven't done a thing!' On the contrary you won't admit [emphasis in the original] anything! We grow indignant at any rebuke or punishment, while at that very moment doing the wrong of adding insolence and obstinacy to our misdeeds [2:28, 1].”

How is it, then, that wrongs by enemies provoke us? Because we did not anticipate them, or certainly not on that scale. This is a result of excessive self-love. We consider that we ought not to be harmed, even by enemies. Each of us has within him the mentality of a monarch; he would like carte blanche for himself but not for any opposition. So it is either arrogance or ignorance of the facts that makes us prone to anger [2:31, 3].”

”'But there is pleasure in anger - paying back pain is sweet.' Not in the slightest! The case is not like that of favors, where it is honorable to reward service with service. Not so with wrongs. In the one case, it is shameful to be outdone; in the other to outdo. 'Retribution' - an inhuman word and what is more, accepted as right - is not very different from wrongdoing, except in the order of events. He who pays back pain with pain is doing wrong; it is only that he is more readily excused for it [2:32, 1].”

How about this moral clarity Mr. Bennett? Was this stoic pagan not more of a Christian than those of us who carry Jesus on their lips but ignore or pervert his real message?

But let's face it what is really behind most of the hatred against us? Is it not also in part our unqualified support of the state of Israel regardless of the conduct of its politicians? Even if it were just an excuse by the Arab world for their hatred of American policies (mind you they don't hate us, but merely what is done in our name), should we not remove this excuse from them rather than perpetuate it? Mr. Bennett had this to say about the state of Israel after he had on a previous page placed our "one-sided" support of that country in quotation marks, as if he really thought we were even handed in this matter. In the chapter "The Case of Israel," Bennett wrote :

”I want to put it positively. Our essential human kinship with Israel is something like our kinship with Great Britain, but it is also more particular and less blood-related than that. It is a deep-rooted feeling of linked destinies, a feeling that echoes back to our founding and to the earliest conceptions of the American experiment itself, that new birth of freedom which our fathers identified with the Biblical Israelite's emergence from the darkness of bondage. And I believe it also has to do with an understanding, almost religious in nature, that to our two nations above all others has been entrusted the fate of liberty in the world. That - the survival of liberty - is precisely what our efforts to eradicate terrorism are all about.

 Keeping faith with the people of Israel in their still unfinished confrontation with evil is, to me, a species of keeping faith with ourselves; breaking faith, a species of self-negation. It is exactly that simple, and exactly that difficult, and exactly that consequential.”

These are deeply disturbing passages, from a chapter which is full of them, especially when they come from a person who is widely respected and listened to by our administration. I don't believe that most Americans feel a "kinship" with the state of Israel, they might with the people, but not necessarily the state. Americans may also love the country, for biblical reasons, but this does not imply that they, therefore, have to endorse the policies which are carried out in that country at the present time. To link our "destiny" with the policies of a foreign state strikes me as absurd. The Bible should not be our guide to foreign policy, just as it should be impermissible to use the Koran for that purpose by some Arab fanatics. I also have a feeling that Mr. Bennett, who seems to be so enamored with the ancient Israelites, is unaware that the honor for having carried out the first jihad in recorded history belongs to Moses! Wars have, of course, always been with the human race but the ancients were more honest about them. They fought either to enlarge their lands, take prisoners for labor purposes, and enrich themselves; or in self defense. The introduction of religious war, ostensibly for the sake of religion, was Moses' idea.

In the book of Numbers we can read that there was serious discontent in the Israelite camp about intermarriage and the introduction of the worship of Baal. Moses' authority was challenged by a highly regarded individual, Zimri, who had married a Midianite wife and was loath to divorce her just on Moses' say so. Zimri and his wife Cozbi where then killed by faithful Phinehas who has subsequently become a role-model for religious zeal. Thereafter Moses launched a full scale attack against the Midianites. A fuller version of the dispute between Zimri and Moses can be found in Josephus' The Antiquities of the Jews. It would seem, however, that the punitive expedition had the additional purpose of diverting the people's attention from the internal problems and concentrating it on an external enemy. This is, of course, still common practice today when politicians are in trouble. Although Moses himself had been involved with at least two foreign women, the "Cushite" and Zipporah, this did not matter. Moses was in charge and intended to remain so. One may also wonder whatever happened to father-in-law Jethro - the priest of Midian - who had treated Moses so hospitably, when the latter had been a refugee from Egypt where he was wanted for homicide. This war was not against some foreign enemy whose land one wanted to conquer, but against Moses' in-laws and seems to represent the first purely religious war. It was fought with appropriate fury as Numbers 31: 1-18 testify to. First the Israelites killed every male. The cities were burned and the "spoil," which included women and children, as well as all the property, was brought before Moses. Instead of being pleased he was incensed: "Have ye saved all the women alive?" Those were the ones that brought on the trouble in the first place "now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." Thus the pattern for religious persecution was established and has been followed ever since. Mohammed used the Arabic word for "holy war," but the practice had been established and endorsed by the Jewish religion more than a millennium earlier.

And how does Prime Minister Sharon see the future of his country? Bob Novak, a conservative commentator, wrote in the National Weekly Edition June 24-30, 2002 of the Washington Times an editorial headlined, "Sharon rivets senators with his take on the Mideast." The Prime Minister "Speaking off the record to mostly uncritical American politicians, the old soldier-statesman was even more blunt. Mr. Sharon pointed to no Israeli-Palestinian deal for at least 10 years and talked of a hundred years struggles with Arabs. Warning of Egyptian and Saudi duplicity, he informed the senators that removal of Saddam Hussein from Iraq would be the best way to deal with the Palestinians." Sharon wants to keep the West bank and Gaza, because they were promised to the Israelites by God, expand the settlements therein and for that purpose hopes to get one million Jewish immigrants from France, Russia and Argentina. This is precisely the scenario I outlined in Whither Zionism? and why I wrote the book in the first place. It is updated in the January and April 2002 installments on this website Whatever Mr. Arafat or any newly elected Palestinian leaders may want or do is irrelevant and to be used only as a smokescreen for perpetuating and expanding Jewish presence on Palestinian soil. Americans are not only to condone this program but finance it as well.

There's moral clarity for you Mr. Bennett! You want us to fight this war on terror until victory is achieved, but you fail to define what this victory consists of. Since the war is also regarded as between "good and evil," there can be no end because evil and good are intermixed in every human being. You have condemned our children and grandchildren to an interminable religious struggle on foreign soil while we are losing our religious freedom here. Grade school children must not be exposed to the word "God" by their teachers, although they can be instructed in the joys of sex! This is the Western civilization we seem to be defending.

From one Catholic to another I would like to ask you Mr. Bennett please reconsider your stance, for the sake of God and our children. Go to the occupied territories, talk with Hanan Ashrawi, read her book This Side of Peace, spend a week with ordinary Palestinians, listen to them, and then write another book in the light of correct information rather than being swayed by religious sentiment and Israeli propaganda. You are a decent, intelligent person and can serve our country better than with the opinions expressed in Why We Fight.





August 1, 2002

GOD UNERWÜNSCHT



After Hitler had annexed my native Austria in 1938 one could see signs at public beaches, resort hotels, restaurants and other assorted places "Juden Unerwünscht," Jews not welcome. It seems that this fate is now to befall God in America. The phrase "one nation under God," in the Pledge of Allegiance, has recently come under attack because the word God when uttered at public functions supposedly violates the Constitution. Yet anybody who has bothered to read the Constitution and more specifically the First Amendment, which is the excuse for banning God from the "Public Square," knows that this a fraudulent claim, regardless how many judges agree with it. Here is the full text of the First Amendment

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Since Congress has not passed a law that forbids: school prayer, singing songs at graduation ceremonies which contain the word God, or any other mention of God at public functions, it is difficult to see why these activities should be "unconstitutional." On the contrary when one forbids the use of the word God one violates the First Amendment by preventing "the free exercise thereof," and "abridging the freedom of speech."

How has this perversion of the intent of the framers of the Constitution come about? It is quite recent and the article by Alan Mittleman From Jewish Street to Public Square (First Things, August-September 2002) is most enlightening. As some Jews became progressively more "secular" and left the confines of Jewish enclaves in the major cities for the suburbs the old traditional bonds were broken. But suburbia brought along other problems. Discrimination in terms of housing, private clubs, admissions to universities existed and had to be confronted. Three organizations were the most active in this respect: the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress and the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith.

It is generally agreed that discrimination on basis of sex, color or creed is patently unfair and should not be tolerated in a country which prides itself in its Declaration of Independence "...that all men are created equal..." Had the laudable efforts of the mentioned organizations stopped at the point where equality had been achieved we could all have lived happily for ever after and would indeed have become a model for the rest of the world. But some Jewish intellectuals simply didn't know when to stop. They still carried the long history of persecution in their backpacks when they came from Europe, and wanted to achieve not only equality but "safety." To accomplish this goal there were three possibilities: full assimilation, conversion of the country to Judaism, or the abolition of all religious sentiments from the public sphere. Complete assimilation was not desirable because it would threaten the survival of the ancestral belief and to expect that Judaism would become the majority religion was, of course, unrealistic. Therefore the third option was chosen. In a fully "secularized" country, which is a euphemism for atheistic, there could be no threat to Jews as Jews, anti-Semitism would vanish and the Messianic age would dawn. This was the ideal to be worked towards. To quote from Mittleman's article

"It was from the [American Jewish] Congress and particularly from its lead attorney, Leo Pfeiffer, that a stream of test cases and friend of the court briefs on crucial church-state cases would issue. The Congress learned from the NAACP and the ACLU that the courts could effect radical changes more swiftly and elegantly than legislatures...It is no exaggeration to say that the shaping of the church-state separation regime of the post-war period cannot be understood without Leo Pfeiffer's activism."

Mr. Pfeiffer was, of course, not alone and anyone who is really interested in how God was expelled from public schools and other public functions should read also Stephen Feldman's book Please don't wish me a Merry Christmas. In this book Feldman also shows why America has to be secularized. The predominant religion of the country is Christian and as such automatically antisemitic. This may strike one as strange but Dr. Feldman is a law professor and here is his definition of anti-Semitism

"the intentional or unintentional, conscious or unconscious, hatred, dislike, oppression, persecution, domination, and subjugation of Jews qua Jews for whatever reason or motivation, whether it be religious, cultural, ethnic, racial or political."

Feldman explains

"My critical narrative, told from the viewpoint of an American Jew, reveals the constitutional principle of the separation of church and state to be a highly complex social phenomenon that flows primarily from and helps reproduce the Christian domination of American society and culture."

Ergo what should Christians do? Since they are by nature at least "unconsciously antisemitic," as Feldman declared, it seems the only way out of the dilemma is that they would have to renounce their Christian faith and become atheists. Even if they merely continue to go to church on Sundays, their antisemitism will be reinforced, which they will carry over into their professional and social lives. Am I exaggerating or is this the logical conclusion which is aimed at, but obviously, and for good reason not voiced?

Lest one believes that I am making too much out of Feldman's book here are excepts of the reviews from the back cover, "a wild ride." "Clearly a superb work of scholarship...the historical sweep of the book is impressive." "His ability to understand and discuss difficult nuances of doctrinal history is impressive." The conclusion from a review in Booklist states

"At a time when debate rages around issues associated with the establishment clause of the First Amendment - including school prayer and public displays of Christian religious symbols - and at a time of resurgent antisemitism, Feldman's carefully reasoned and meticulously documented case is particularly welcome."

It did not seem to have occurred to the reviewers that the book is profoundly anti-Christian and that the relentless pursuit to banish God from public functions is bound to lead to a backlash. These "intellectuals" fail to consider the law of unintended consequences and do not realize that their efforts are likely to produce precisely what they wanted to avoid: a resurgence of anti-Semitism. Let me emphasize, however, that it was not only "non-Jewish Jews," to use Deutscher's terminology, who were responsible for this slide of our society into "secularism." Nevertheless that they were in the vanguard of the effort is readily demonstrable.

Let us now look at what this relentless drive towards a secular society has achieved. Inasmuch as Freud has abolished a conscience, with its concomitant sense of responsibility to a higher power, and even the so-called super-ego has given way to "do your own thing," we now have a "culture," which no longer deserves the name. When a "joke" by Woody Allen that "the brain is my second most favorite organ” is heartily approved of; when public education and the media gear themselves towards the lowest common denominator, one should not be surprised that even the President of this country is reported to have derived a great deal of pleasure from a current Austin Powers movie which revels in gutter humor. If America were a little island somewhere in the ocean all of this would not matter very much. But we are the self-proclaimed "Leader of the Free World", "Defenders of Western Civilization" who broadcast this smut far and wide. Responsible people should, therefore, take cognizance and try to return America to the principles the country was founded on.

What the American Jewish Congress has accomplished on the domestic front, AIPAC (American-Israel Public Affairs Committee) has achieved in regard to our foreign policy. The committee has been, and still is, working exceedingly hard to ensure that Congress does not pass legislation which might be construed as harmful to the interests of the state of Israel. Seemingly unlimited financial resources and a dedicated corps of volunteers make sure that only those candidates for election or re-election to public office gain the needed number of votes who are firmly committed to a pro-Israel line. This holds true even if a given government in that country adheres to policies which are not in the best interests of the United States. Whenever this happens, as for instance currently in regard to the Palestinian issue, the American people have to become convinced by media pressure (let me not use the dirty word propaganda) that Israel is our most reliable and best friend. Alternative voices to this view can only rarely be heard.

Let me make it explicit at this point that I do not blame the mentioned Jewish organizations and other members of the Jewish community to pursue their self-interest vigorously with all legal means. They deserve to be congratulated to their success and for having shown how a small minority can use the democratic process to thwart the wishes of the majority. To remedy the situation those of our citizens who are not in favor of how the domestic and foreign policy of the country is being conducted, should look in the mirror and say mea culpa. But mea culpa is only the first step. Effective organizations would have to be created, which are neither anti-Semitic nor neo-Nazi, but are led by responsible citizens from the entire spectrum of the American people who say: thus far and no further. The envelope has been pushed to the limit and it is time to put the real interests of all the citizens of this country to the fore, rather than those of special interest groups whoever they are. We have a genuine crisis of confidence in government as well as the financial system which has deliberately defrauded millions of our citizens which needs to be rectified.

The proposed answers to the problems of: homeland security, financial scandals and the dry rot of our culture are more money and more laws. Neither of these can solve the problems. There is not and cannot be total security for anybody regardless where the person lives. Man-made and natural disasters have always occurred and will continue to do so. While reasonable precautions can be taken, the creation of a police state is not the answer. Not only is it inimical to the American spirit but in the long run it will financially and morally bankrupt the country, without a chapter 11 protection.

To use the state of Israel as a model for how we should protect ourselves from terrorists, as is currently proposed, does not make good sense. One unbiased look at the Middle East shows that Israeli citizens are less secure after about one and a half years of Likud government with concomitant repression of the people living in the West Bank and Gaza than they were before. No amount of propaganda can hide this fact. For us to go down the same road is a guarantee that we shall also suffer the same fate. What is needed instead is that on the domestic scene we should first of all stop creating more fear. If and when another disaster were to occur we should respond to it with measures which limit the impact on the innocent victims, while we are pursuing at the same time a foreign policy which shows to the entire world that we do not prefer one country over another when we try to resolve a given conflict..

In regard to further legal measures for our problems it should be obvious that whenever more laws are created the lawyers go to work and in no time at all they will have discovered loopholes to subvert the law so that the rich and powerful can get away while the little guy goes to jail. This is not a good way to run a country. Campaign finance reform is also worthless. Loopholes will be found and money will continue to be poured into the coffers of preferred candidates. A genuine reform of the electoral process which drastically reduces the election cycle should be called for. As long as a Congressman or even Senator has to worry immediately upon entering office about creating a "war-chest" for re-election, he/she cannot be expected to take a rational, reasonable, long range stand on controversial topics. Pandering to voters with the deepest financial pockets is bound to take precedent. Regardless of the best intentions this must be recognized by the public at large as a fact of life. As long as we do not insist on electoral reform rather than merely campaign finance reform nothing will be accomplished. When laws are created and subsequently not impartially and promptly enforced they are worse than useless; they make a mockery of the very word "law."

And what is the common denominator of all our problems? Absence of a sense of responsibility! The rich know that they can get away, in some cases even literally, with murder and there is no conscience to restrain them. "Greed is good" we have been told in a movie not too long ago. When CEO's of companies are interested mainly in enriching themselves further without regard to the fate of their employees or stockholders who get ruined in the process, capitalism will lose its luster as a model to be emulated by the rest of the world. So will the secular society which we are pushing so hard for in other countries. No human relationships be they within the family, in business or government can flourish without trust. But trust has to be earned and cannot be legislated. This is the fundamental problem of our country. The last few decades of the past century have eroded trust on all levels and it is high time to rebuild it, by day to day behavior which subordinates personal desires to the needs of others. This effort could be immensely aided if trust in God were to be re-established because it brings with it a sense of responsibility regardless of high one's station in life is. To those who believe, like Nietzsche, that God is dead we can answer that Nietzsche forgot one vital characteristic of God. You can kill Him but He obstinately refuses to stay dead.

Those of us who still have a conscience and believe that we have an immortal soul for which we are responsible to our creator will have to shed our complacency and cowardice so that we can indeed work toward America becoming again "one nation under God," who by the way is non-Sectarian. I said cowardice on purpose because those who engage in this task can expect ridicule by those who "know better," and it is much easier to just keep quiet and "not make waves." This was an option we had also in Nazi Germany. In those days you risked your life if you spoke out; today you only risk derision or being shunned. But this is precisely what builds character, a quality which has been so sadly lacking in high places.

Finally, the perfunctory "God bless America" which is the routine refrain of our President and some other politicians with which they close their speeches is utterly meaningless. Why should He? when those in charge of the country don't pay Him any respect the rest of the time. The phrase is not even a request but when not preceded by a "may," it is an order. Inspire of His infinite patience He may not relish being ordered around. Thus our country needs a change of heart and a return to the values which created it in the first place. The attempt to replace an internal conscience by external laws has failed and will continue to do so. The time has come to change the attitudes which gave rise to the headline of this essay to a sincere: Welcome to America, Lord!





September 1, 2002

OCTOBER SURPRISE?



It is a longstanding political practice that when the outcome of elections is in doubt the ruling party, of whatever designation, tries to change the cards in its favor by creating a foreign policy crisis. The assumption is that the nation will rally around the flag and you just "can't change horses in midstream." The upcoming midterm elections may well provide a great temptation repeat this time-tested paradigm. The more so since the Republicans have only a slim margin in the House and have lost the Senate by one vote. Furthermore it is also a historic fact that the party which controls the White House tends to lose rather than gain seats in midterm elections. Thus the Republicans are potentially in dire straits and their hope of gaining a solid majority in both houses of Congress may require a radical foreign policy coup. The only one that seems readily available and tailor-made is the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

I have been told that, as the saying goes, "It’s a done deal." On October 15 Saddam's government will be taken out by tactical air-borne strikes. U.S. elite forces which are already assembled in Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait plus some other sites, will drop from the sky onto Baghdad and take over. The Iraqi people will cheer like the Afghans did in Kabul and the November elections will be in the bag. When I told my informant, who is influential in Republican circles, that this sounds more like Texas Ranger Walker from the famed TV series rather than a realistic plan for battle because everything hinges on us knowing where Saddam is staying at a given moment, my concerns were dismissed with "oh we know!" Well, I'm not privy to what the President and his advisors really know, but I do remember that our mission in Afghanistan was to "get Osama bin-Laden dead or alive" and that is still in limbo.

I met my informant, whose right to privacy I intend to honor, during the early part of August when I had the opportunity to participate in an experiment of "grass roots" democracy. As a result of articles on this website, as well as others which I had submitted to the Salt Lake Tribune, I became acquainted with, Maha, a young woman who has relatives in Jordan. She and her husband are also deeply disturbed by the conditions the Palestinians have to live under in the West Bank and Gaza. She is, however, not content to merely bemoan their fate and write letters to the Tribune but she is a genuine well meaning activist in the best sense of the word. She has organized and participated in candle light vigils in downtown Salt Lake City and in addition she arranged meetings with our Representatives and Senators.

My physical condition no longer permits me to participate in candlelight vigils and protest marches but when she called me about joining a meeting with one of our senators I was most happy to oblige. I was especially interested because I had been prevented from seeing him last year by his secretaries who vigorously guard him from his constituents, as mentioned in the June 2001 installment. Since I had been unable to visit with the senator I had left a copy of Whither Zionism? with the secretaries, urging them to be sure to hand it in person to their boss. I even went the extra mile and sent an additional copy to the senator's Washington office. I was, therefore, most curious to find out what the fate of that little book had been and came armed with another copy.

As it turned out there were eleven of us who met that afternoon with our "junior" senator and he was gracious enough to listen to everyone. Attempts to meet with the senior senator had been unsuccessful because he talks only through intermediaries. But senator Bennett lent us his ears although when half an hour had passed the expected knock at the door came to let us know that we had overstayed our welcome. Nevertheless we persevered and he had to acquiesce in order not to sound too impolite. We informed him that America's unconditional support of the policies of the Sharon government is not in the best interest of either Israel or our own country, that the plight of the Palestinian people is severe and unless that issue is addressed, security for Israelis and Americans is a forlorn hope. Desperate people resort to desperate measures. We also told him that what is being done in that part of the world in America's name does not conform to the principles we as American citizens stand for and that he should be using his influence in the Senate to become a voice of reason rather than merely obeying the party leadership.

I actually was given the honor by the group to lead off with the discussion and my first question was: "Senator, have you seen this book?" while holding up Whither Zionism? He looked surprised and answered: "No." I then proceeded to tell him of my futile efforts to get this little booklet into his hands. I also told him that he ought to have a word with his staff. He should inform them that when efforts are made by his constituents to personally brief him on issues which are in the vital interest of our country and for which he will cast his vote they should be respected. I subsequently put the booklet in his hand and said: "Senator, please read it on the plane to Washington because that's all the time it takes, and then let me know what you think of it!" He smiled, said that he would but I have no illusions that he really did so. At any rate that was the last I have heard from him but I intend to send him an e-mail. Persistency paid off even for the poor widow and the hard headed judge as we can read in the gospels.

In concert with some of the others I also told the senator point blank that military action on part of America to remove Saddam from power is ill advised. Even if it were to succeed it is likely to turn the Arab masses against us. This is not the way to win the war against terror but is on the contrary an open invitation for more attacks on American lives and property. At that point he became adamant and recited the well known mantra that Saddam is a dangerous madman and criminal who has poisoned his own people, has started two wars against his neighbors, has stockpiles of weapons of mass destructions, is working to get more, will have in short order nuclear capability and this must be prevented at all cost. He is sure to unleash anthrax, smallpox, the plague and other assorted ills against our country which puts us into terrible danger.

It was obvious that the senator's mind was closed and reason could not reach him. But let us look at the facts now and the Encyclopedia Britannica tends to be a reliable resource for history. When one consults it, Saddam looks actually a great deal more rational than he is being portrayed currently. What was, however, the most surprising aspect is that we owe the Middle East mess to none other than our own President Wilson and his famous 14 points. The Ottoman Empire which controlled the area was to be dismembered, Wilson told Congress on January 8, 1918. The non-Turkish nationalities of the empire should be "assured of an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development." Let us remember, however, that America was not even at war with the Ottoman Empire when Wilson already disposed of it.

When it came to divide the spoils after the war, the British and the French had no use for truly independent nations and established a series of client states. Present day Iraq was cobbled together from the former Ottoman provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra but was far from ethnically uniform and served mainly British interests. The borders we now know were finalized in 1922. These were, of course, arbitrarily drawn and the biggest losers for self-determination were the Kurds. Their tribal area was parceled out to Turkey, Iraq and Iran.

The Brits wanted to have a League of Nations mandate over Iraq but the Iraqis insisted on nationhood and gave the British a hard time until independence was achieved in 1932. Initially the country was a constitutional monarchy but it was toppled by a military coup in 1958. A claim by the revolutionary government to Kuwait was abandoned in 1961 when Britain and some Arab governments opposed it. Another rebellion in 1963 brought the Ba'th party ("Revival" or "Renaissance") to power with Saddam Hussein, our "madman," as one of its prominent members. The party advocated Arab nationalism and socialism. Several other coups occurred thereafter until 1968 when the Ba'th party took control again and Saddam Hussein, with a group of armed officers arrested the chief cabinet minister, an-Nayif. Contrary to expectations he was not executed but was sent as ambassador to Morocco. The president of the Republic, Al-Bakr, remained in office until 1979 when his mantle fell on Saddam as his successor who had actually been running most of the government affairs for several years already because Al-Bakr was elderly and in poor health. Industries were nationalized, agrarian reform initiated and irrigation projects were carried out. A small private sector was permitted to exist and there was also a mixture of private and state enterprises.

But there were some domestic and foreign complications. The Kurds tried on several occasions to overthrow the Ba'th regime and in 1974 they initiated a full fledged war. They had help from the Shah of Iran who was interested in the disputed waterway of the Shatt-al-Arab. Saddam met with the Shah in 1975 and a treaty was negotiated which ended the war against the Kurds because they no longer had Iranian support.

Saddam started his presidency in 1979 by discovering a plot to overthrow him whereupon he had 22 conspirators executed while others were sent to prison. This had a salutary effect and Saddam's rule has never been seriously challenged thereafter. The reasons for the Iran-Iraq war were directly related to the overthrow of the Shah in 1979. Although Iraq recognized the Khomeini regime this was not mutual because the Ayatollah regarded the secular Saddam as a bad Muslim and insisted on fomenting an Islamic revolution in Iraq. There were also some minor border disputes, and skirmishes were frequent. On September 17, 1980 Saddam announced that he had abrogated the 1975 agreement with Iran, because the Iranians had already broken it. Iraqi forces invaded Iran on Sept.21-22 and also bombed various targets in that country. The UN stepped in and called for a cease-fire. Saddam agreed under the proviso that the Iranians did likewise which they were in no mood to do. From then on the war dragged on, the Iranians enlisted the help of the Kurds again and that is when Saddam, in order to protect the northern portion of his country, used chemical weapons "on his own people." This solved the problem in the north but Basra was still threatened.

By the mid-1980's Saddam looked mighty good to the Reagan administration, certainly better than the Ayatollah, and American help began to arrive. Another Security Council resolution in 1987 which urged Iraq and Iran to stop hostilities and return to their respective borders was accepted by Iraq but ignored by Iran. Only when Khomeini saw that the war could not be won and was afraid of an internal uprising did he accept Resolution 598 in August of 1988, but it took another ten years before all aspects of the resolution had been implemented.

During these ten years Saddam tried to raise his stature in the Arab world by cooperative agreements with his neighbors and a non-aggression pact with Saudi Arabia as well as Bahrain. It is understandable that he smarted from the Israeli attack on his nuclear reactor in 1981, while he was fighting the Iranians, and told the Israelis that if they were to attack his country again he would retaliate with chemical weapons. This upset the Reagan administration and led to strained relationships. Saddam added fuel to the glowing embers by making, in typical oriental hyperbole, inflammatory remarks about the West's hostile attitude, which paved the way for the Gulf War.

Apart from the problem with the Kurds there had been a long standing dispute about the legitimacy of Kuwait as a separate nation. As mentioned above, Iraq had, even before Saddam's ascension to power, regarded the country as one of its provinces. It was the British who had nixed the idea because they had their own fish to fry in that part of the world. Not only was there the sovereignty aspect, but there was also a dispute about two strategically located islands at the head of the gulf, and negotiations between the two countries about their fate went nowhere. In addition Iraq was in serious financial difficulties as a result of the Iran-Iraq war. It owed $80 billion, half of which was to go to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Saddam, in his naiveté, had assumed that his Arab brothers would not only forgive the debt but, in the spirit of the Marshall plan, help with the reconstruction of his country. He may well have thought that they owed him something for having saved their regimes from succumbing to an Iranian style of Muslim fundamentalism. But Arabs are not Americans and they not only left him high and dry, but also increased oil production which dropped the price and thereby reduced Saddam's revenues. The invasion of Kuwait was intended to solve his financial problems and help the cause of Iraqi nationalism. The decision was made even easier by a misunderstanding of what the American ambassador had said prior to the invasion. She seemed to have implied that America had no vital interest in this dispute.

But Papa Bush and Maggie Thatcher said "this will not stand" and the Gulf war was on. President Bush senior is now being criticized for "not having finished the job" when he had the chance to get rid of Saddam. But these connoisseurs of history fail to remember that Bush led a coalition and was acting under an UN mandate which demanded only the restoration of Kuwait's integrity. Regime change was not in the cards! In the aftermath of the gulf war Iraq was devastated. The Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south tried to get independence from Baghdad but after our initial encouragement of these efforts we withdrew support from the insurrectionists and left them to Saddam's not so tender mercies. Apparently our policy makers thought that a weak, ineffectual, but geographically intact Iraq would serve their purposes better than a dismembered one.

Since I have not examined Saddam in person I am not entitled to make a psychiatric diagnosis but from the history as presented above I find it difficult to believe that the man is irrational. Throughout his career he has acted in self-interest, like any good politician, although he has frequently underestimated his opponents. This is a not uncommon mistake to which even the Johnson administration succumbed. Let us also remember that Saddam is now 65 years old, has not embarked on any military ventures in the past ten years, and there is reason to hope that he might have learned from the mistakes of his youth. It is unlikely that he is either going to "nuke us" now or in the future, nor will he send us chemical weapons either directly or by proxy. With all the war hype which is going on nobody seems to ask the question why he would intend to attack us. He is not stupid and knows that any such act would be the end of him. He is not even likely to attack Israel, which would be the only logical target because we, if not the Israelis, would wipe him out and I do not believe that he is suicidal. If the Israelis feel threatened they have ample military resources to destroy Saddam's regime and I fail to see a reason why we ought to do the job for them.

Regardless whether it's October 15 or some other date, President Bush seems to feel obligated to finish the job his father had supposedly left undone. It looks like that he has already painted himself into a corner by all the bellicose rhetoric and he may now feel that face has to be saved and bombs have to fall. UN approval is neither regarded as necessary nor desirable. All that is needed now is an event which leads to some loss of American equipment or lives, which can be used to infuriate the public. But that should present no problem inasmuch as ample precedents exist how a casus belli can be manufactured at a moment's notice. Incidents at the no-fly zones, for instance, could readily provide the analogue of a Gulf of Tonkin event which served the Johnson administration so well in its quest to justify expansion of the war in Viet Nam.

Let us now assume for the sake of argument that everything goes miraculously well, it's all over within a few days before Saddam can send rockets loaded with biologic weapons to Israel, which he would surely do under other circumstances, and there is only relatively minor "collateral damage" among the civilian population. Saddam is dead and the Ba'th party gone, then what? We will install the analogue of a Karzai regime in Baghdad but it is not likely to have much control over the rest of the country. The government will be regarded as an illegitimate stooge for American interests, and Muslim fanatics, as well as Iraqi nationalists will do their best to destabilize it. The Kurds will in all likelihood want their independence but that will create a problem with our NATO ally Turkey because the Kurds may want to have their Turkish brethren in their own nation. This is what President Wilson had promised them after all. The same secessionist trends apply to the Basra district. The Shiites living in the area may want to join their fellow Shiites in Iran and that is likewise not in our interest. Who wants to make Iran stronger than the country already is? The next "war of liberation" against Iran is then automatically preprogrammed. Is that what the "Bushies" really want?

The British tried to control the Middle-East with governments of their choice. They failed! What is the reason to believe that we will be more successful? The fundamental problem is that we expect that everybody in the rest of the world has to think like us and when they don't they ought to be made to do so. It won't work. Oriental traditions are different from ours and cannot be shed by an executive fiat from Washington. We also ought to realize that Iraq, which basically is the ancient Mesopotamia, has produced the first great civilization this world has known. Americans see only the current situation but people in that part of the world have longer memories. They view themselves as the descendants of the Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians who have ruled their countries long before there was a Western civilization which is actually in part derived from them. Before there was a Moses there was a Hammurabi and it was his laws, including the famous eye for an eye, which became incorporated into the Bible. If we have our pride so do they have theirs.

While I am highly skeptical of a military solution to our fight against the "axis of evil," there is, of course, another point of view as expressed, among others, by Mr. Podhoretz in the current issue of Commentary. He loves the "Bush doctrine" of pre-emptive strikes and firmly believes that the "Afghan model" will work. Once Baghdad is liberated Iran will fall on its own accord, as the next domino, and by implication so will the other Muslim regimes we are not fond of. Apparently the supporters of al Qaeda will then either see the light of democracy or just whither on the vine. Well, anything is possible, what is likely is another matter. It would, therefore, behoove the hawks in our administration, and especially President Bush, to remember that it takes only one party to make war but two to make peace. Once war starts in earnest there is no way of knowing how and when it will end.

Will there be the mentioned October surprise? No one can know for sure but the world may well be confronted sooner or later with a fait accompli. We, the citizens and taxpayers in whose name all of this being done, have just as little influence on the actions of our government as the Germans had under Hitler. But in contrast to those days democracy allows us to raise our voices in warning. If and when the war comes it will hardly be a surprise for anyone any more. The only real surprise would be if reason won out over passion.





October 1, 2002

ONE YEAR LATER



In contrast to politicians and a great many journalists, physicians are trained to perform follow-up studies on their patients in order to learn whether or not a treatment regimen has been effective. Thus it is appropriate not only to remember the dead of September 11, the number of whom has now shrunk from 5000 to about 3000, but also what the American response to this tragedy has accomplished.

The Taliban regime in Afghanistan has collapsed under the weight of bombs as well as the troops of the Northern Alliance and victory is being proclaimed by our politicians, who feel free now to march on to Baghdad. We have been shown pictures of happy people dancing to Western music in Kabul and the faces of women who no longer need to be draped from top to toe. But let us pause for a moment and look closer at what was really accomplished in Afghanistan. We have installed a client regime in Kabul but its authority does not extend much beyond the capital, or Kandahar, and possibly some other cities. The countryside is far from pacified, roving bands impede disaster relief efforts so that people are starving again and another winter is in the offing. President Karzai is seen as a stooge of the West and has to rely on American Special Forces for his personal safety. The locals are still trying to murder him. The King, of whom we have heard nothing lately, was supposed to unify the country but when it came to elections we didn't want him on the ticket. What he is doing now is anybody's guess and he may well look wistfully back to his stay in Italy where he was at least safe.

In the fields the poppies are blooming again, the growth of which had been banned by the Taliban, and a bumper crop of opium and heroin is assured. A British source has stated that Afghanistan produces 75 per cent of the world's heroin and 90 per cent of Britain's supply. That the British authorities are not thrilled over the renewed influx is understandable. The Kabul government as well as ours doesn't want this state of affairs and we are trying to bribe the farmers to destroy the crops, but since selling the stuff brings a great deal more than what we are offering the result is a foregone conclusion. Furthermore, although the Taliban government has disappeared, this does not mean that their fighters have seen the errors of their ways and become good democratic citizens. As expected they have melted into the mountains and villages from which they continue to harass their enemies, be they Afghans or foreigners. Inasmuch as the people are dirt poor there has also developed a brisk trade in Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. We offer the Afghans some money to hand them over to us but there are others who pay even more to get them smuggled out of the country to Pakistan or elsewhere. Thus a primitive capitalism is flourishing and the highest bidder gets the prize. What we do with our captives, apart from interrogating them is also a good question. As far as I know no one has recently wondered about what is happening to the detainees in Guantanamo. Since they are not designated as prisoners of war, although we are fighting a war against terrorism, they seem to have no civil rights whatsoever. There exists another nasty little fact we are not supposed to remember. The most important Al Quaeda leaders which are in our custody were not captured by our special forces in Afghanistan but through the dedicated cooperative efforts of intelligence services around the globe. "Bin Laden dead or alive," which was the President's motto when we started the bombing campaign, has also been quietly forgotten.

Our efforts to root out Al Qaeda and Taliban militia, which our special forces are still intermittently engaged in, are seriously handicapped, because we have to rely on local informers as to where their hiding places might be. It is assumed that these citizens love us more than their own countrymen whom they are supposed to inform on which is, however, not always the case. Sometimes they engage in efforts which are clearly counterproductive from our point of view. For instance by calling in air-strikes on villages which are populated by rival clans but are quite neutral in their opinions about the U.S. In so doing we may bomb wedding parties or a convoy heading for elections. These sorts of "friendly fire" mistakes do not endear us to the populace. Nor can one blame the Canadians for being upset when we bomb them.

On occasion we have also conducted house to house searches. This seems innocuous enough to us but was regarded as deeply offensive by the locals. In the home the women are not veiled and foreigners have no right to gaze on their faces. Now we are supposedly first sending Afghans into the house to be searched, to ensure proper attire by the ladies. In the countryside the Burqa is still the appropriate dress code and men rule the roost regardless what our feminists or their local equivalents desire. The promised aid to Afghanistan which was to feed the people, reestablish the destroyed infrastructure, and promote democratic reforms has been slashed and is slow in coming. We try to pawn the aid efforts off to our allies because the impending second Gulf war obviously requires our money and there is just so much that can be extracted from the ever patient American taxpayer. In addition there is also bound to be a limit somewhere for the steadily increasing billions of deficit spending.

It is, therefore, obvious that democracy is not going to blossom in Afghanistan any time soon. If one looks objectively at that country today one gains the impression that we are apparently in the same situation as the Soviets were in early 1980. They had installed a friendly government, proclaimed freedom from an intrusive religion, replaced it with their own secular values and expected peace and quiet on their border. As we know it didn't work out that way. The locals liked their own religion better than Soviet values and America was most willing to oblige with money and material so that the mujahadeens could give the Russians a hard time. In the process we created Osama but the ingrate turned against us when we established military bases in his home country after the Gulf war instead of just packing up and leaving. For infidels, including women and Jews, to establish a permanent military presence in the land of the Prophet was too much to stomach.

This reminds me of an event in the 1980's when I had been invited to Saudi Arabia for a lecture tour. On the visa application one had to enter one's religion and there was a comment, "Judaism and Atheism not acceptable." So there! On the plane from Jeddah to Riyadh I had my usual window seat and a Burqad lady sat down next to me. The stewardess arrived immediately thereafter and ordered me out of my seat. I am by nature not very obliging to peremptory commands especially when no reason is given, so I pulled out my boarding pass pointed to 14 A looked up at the row number and there was 14 A. In righteous determination I had no intention of vacating that seat. A somewhat animated argument ensued, the stewardess was demanding my leaving and I was equally determined on staying. Then a lady, with only a modest and attractive head scarf covering her hair, seated in the row ahead turned around to me and said quietly: "You are not allowed to sit next to a lady." Well that explained the situation and I happily yielded to local custom because Europeans are taught early on "When in Rome do as the Romans." This piece of wisdom some Americans have yet to learn. But since we are now engaged in world wide "peace keeping," it would seem to be imperative that our military forces are being taught not only how to handle their weapons but also to show proper respect to local customs.

As far as the goal of the Afghan war is concerned we have been told that it was to destroy the infrastructure of terrorism and to liberate the Afghan people from an intolerable religious regime. An ulterior motive as for instance a pipeline construction from Central Asia through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea was, of course, denied publicly but devoutly wished for by certain circles in the oil business. Well, the pipeline has remained a pipe dream for the time being because nobody in his right mind is going to invest money in a country where public safety cannot be guaranteed. This adds considerable allure to Saddam's oil reserves. Once he is gone a friendly regime can be installed in Baghdad and the oil will flow to the Persian Gulf without having to bother with expensive pipeline constructions. That is the assumption, what reality will bring no one knows.

It is likely that I will now be accused of massive cynicism and of disregarding the noble motives for which we ostensibly are going to topple the Saddam regime. President Bush assured us just a few days ago that Saddam is a menace to Western civilization not only for our generation but that of our children and grandchildren. Mr. President please pardon my skepticism about rendering the world safe for our grandchildren. The only universally true law of life is change and unforeseen consequences! There is no way anybody can make our children, let alone grandchildren, safe by engaging in wars and "regime change." It has not worked in the past and will not work in the future.

Let me remind our "hawks" of just one such past effort. "We believe that our own desire for a new international order under which reason and justice and the common interests of mankind shall prevail is the desire of enlightened men everywhere. Without that new order the world will be without peace and human life will lack tolerable conditions of existence and development. Having set our hand to the task of achieving it, we shall not turn back." Thus said President Wilson on February 11, 1918 in his speech to the Congress. The new order brought Versailles; Versailles brought Hitler, who in turn brought the Soviet Union into the heart of Europe. Only by waging a cold rather than hot war against her did that regime collapse under its own weight without a drop of American blood having been shed. Surely this might be a better precedent than continued military campaigns.

The main difference between the Soviet presence in Afghanistan and ours in regard to world politics is that the new mujahadeen, which are in the process of emerging, won't have the resources of the U.S. available to them. But what are Pakistanis, Iranians and even Chinese for? Arms deals make money and I know of no country which has in the past refrained out of lofty motives. Our new found "friend" Musharraf has a similar problem as does Karzai. He can't trust his people and has to rule by decree. While we abhor a dictatorial regime in Iraq and are inundated by the dire threats Saddam might pose if he were to get nuclear weapons our pundits are much more tolerant of Mush raff’s proven nukes and his means to drop them on people whom he doesn't like. Obviously he knows better and won't use them but why should Saddam? Thus it is again not democracy or humanitarian values which count in the circles that really make our political decisions but whether or not a given dictator is willing to do our bidding.

One tends not to read the type of information about our Afghan victory, which was mentioned above, in our major news media. It is available, however, not only on the Internet but also the Christian Science Monitor. Although I have considerable reservations about Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy's medical opinions the worldwide coverage of political events which the Monitor provides is indeed a service to democracy because the information is presented in a fair and balanced manner. This is not necessarily the case with our major news-organizations and the media pundits

What has happened at home since 9-11-2001? The stock market has crashed, the economy is in the dumps and the idea of early retirement by some of our baby boomers had to be shelved. Some of them no longer even worry about retirement but have more immediate problems with either keeping or getting a job. The airline industry especially is in shambles. Not only has flying become a distasteful chore because of the "security” measures but their very survival is at stake. A mid East war with an inevitable spike in oil prices may well be the kiss of death for some of our airlines which can't make ends meet even now. What the laid off employees, from all the companies which are busy with "downsizing," are supposed to do does not seem to concern our happy warriors in their quest for our safety. Those are the realities some Americans have to be concerned about and I am sorry to say that these worry me considerably more than Saddam's WMDs. The question for some of us grandparents is not whether or not our grandchildren will be nuked, anthraxed, or smallpoxed but will we have to bail them out financially and will we be able to do so?

Another ominous event has taken place in "the land of the free and the brave." Our Muslim citizens of Mid Eastern descent live in fear of being regarded as terrorists. Professors in academia may no longer voice their opinions freely because they can be blacklisted and lose their jobs. Our high tech industry has relied heavily on foreign students but now their visas are no longer as readily available as in the past. Some Saudi students who had green cards here and had homes and cars, were not allowed to return after a brief visit to their home country. They have been forced into limbo. Other bright Mid Easterners no longer get student visas in the first place and will have to go for a good education to Europe or states of the former British Empire, which FDR helped to dismantle. For those who doubt America's role in the demise of the British Empire I suggest A Time For War by Robert Smith Thompson and Churchill by Clive Ponting.

The war in Afghanistan is not yet over it has merely shifted to Phase II, as predicted on these pages last year. If Afghanistan is to be the model for a regime change in Iraq our administration would have a lot of explaining to do why the result will be better. But it is not in the nature of politicians to look beyond immediate goals. Instead of explanations and rational debate, fear has to be produced in the populace so that Congress can cave in and ratify whatever the administration demands. This recipe has worked in the past and is expected to do so again. But fear, anger, and hate (which President Bush has admitted to harboring against Saddam Hussein), are not the foundations upon which American policy should be conducted.

There seems hardly any doubt that war with Iraq has already been decided on by the Bush administration. The troops are being moved to their staging areas and the political maneuvers at the UN and in Congress are designed to fix the blame on Saddam. The strategy for achieving this goal has also become clear. We will make demands to the Baghdad government which are incompatible with their national sovereignty and when they are either declined or subverted we start with "regime change." This model dates at least to July 1914 when Austria used it to start a war with Serbia. Most recently it was resurrected by Madeleine Albright with the Rambouillet "agreement" which unleashed our war on Milosevic. The question seems to be no longer whether or not there will be war but when. Last month's installment was called October Surprise? but since even Democrats have caught on now it may not be feasible any more. The November elections may well turn into a referendum on the war and be decided by the susceptibility of the American people to propaganda. "The Great Game" as it used to be called at the end of the 19th century, is still being played. Empires have to be defended and commercial interests expanded which inevitably leads to conflict with those who, to use a well known colloquialism, don't want to play ball with us.





October 17,2002

THE SAGA OF TUTANKHAMEN'S SKULL X-RAYS



Before reading further I suggest that you print this "Epistle to the World" because I shall refrain from highlighting special aspects; the details are important and the eleven pages cannot be properly digested by cursory glances at a screen. Although I had mentally committed myself to monthly installments there are occasions in these fast moving times when one feels forced to deviate from this pattern. Too much is happening which deserves to be commented upon. The evening of Sunday, October 6 was one such event when the Discovery Channel presented "The Assassination of King Tut." In this pseudo-documentary the English-speaking world finally received the answer as to who had murdered Tutankhamen, the last descendant of Egypt's fabled 18th Dynasty. The mystery of the king's sudden death, which has puzzled Egyptologists for decades, was solved by none other than a pair of detectives from my neighboring cities of Provo and Ogden. We were told that a set of skull X-rays had been released to them from England for their investigation. These produced "vital evidence for the detectives" and allowed them to finger the killer. Now at long last "justice has been done" for the unfortunate victim and he "can rest in peace." It had been Ay, the Prime Minister, who in the waning years of his life, killed the frail handicapped Tut in order to usurp the throne. Since I made a more or less "cameo" appearance in this Machwerk (the word has no direct English counterpart but denotes a piece of fake artistry), I owe it to my friends and readers to set the record straight.

I have had a long standing interest in Egyptian history and when I saw on one of my periodic trips to Vienna a book by Vandenberg Nofrete, Echnaton und ihre Zeit, I bought it right away. What I read in this book during the middle 1980's literally set this whole show in motion. It's obvious that God's mills grind slowly. The key sentences when translated from German read:

"Radiologic examinations of the mummy revealed that the young pharaoh did not die of natural causes and, therefore, urgently needed this tomb [which had been hastily prepared and was not originally intended for him]. Tut-ench-Amun has a hole [Loch] in the posterior portion of his skull [Hinterkopf] as it might have resulted from a club or spear tip. Did the little king die from the hand of a murderer? Many regard Eje [Ay] the 'Father of the God' and successor of Tut-ench-Amun, as the murderer; an assumption which has not yet been fully validated."

The words "hole in the skull" clearly raised the interest of the professional neurologist and I immediately decided to follow through on this. Where are these X-rays and what do they really show? was the question. But Vandenberg had written for the general public and had, therefore, not provided references for his statement. There are, however, other sources and the Cambridge Ancient History has a well deserved excellent reputation. It contained a statement by Cyril Aldred, a highly respected Egyptologist:

"He [Tutankhamen] died in his nineteenth year, perhaps as the result of a wound in the region of his left ear which penetrated the skull and resulted in a cerebral haemorrhage. How this lesion was caused must remain a mystery, but the nature and seat of the injury make it more likely to be the result of a battle wound or an accident than the work of an assassin."

Now we no longer have just a skull defect but also a brain hemorrhage. Furthermore it is not in the back of the head but in the region of the left ear, and young Tut wasn't murdered after all. Where did Aldred get his information from? As a scientist he gave the reference which read "The Times, Science Report, 25 October 1969." A trip to the public library followed, the article was located and printed. The headline of this brief note read "Violent death of Tutankhamen." The essential sentences were:

"Examination of the mummy by Professor R.G. Harrison and Dr. R.C. Connolly of the anatomy department at Liverpool University, has revealed wounds that resemble brain damage sustained by a violent blow on the head.

X-rays of the pharaoh's head have shown up a thinning of the bone at the back of the skull, Professor Harrison said yesterday. His diagnosis is that the thinning was caused by a cerebral haemorrhage resulting from a blow to the head."

I found out later that the statement was based on a BBC documentary which had been shown in the UK in 1969 and will be discussed later.

All right; now we no longer have a skull defect but only a thinning of the bone caused by bleeding in the brain. Thus, the question remained what did these X-rays really show? But at least there were now two names and an address. This is how my correspondence with Mr. Connolly, Senior Lecturer at the Anatomy department of Liverpool University, started and which thanks to my compulsive nature survived the trip from Michigan to retirement in Utah. He was one of the key members of Harrison's expedition which actually had as its goal to investigate the kinship of Tutankhamen with a mummy that had previously been thought as belonging to Akhenaten but is now regarded as that of the ephemeral Smenkhare, who was either co-regent or for a short time successor of the heretic pharaoh. Precise data are lacking. As a result of their examinations Harrison suggested on anatomic and Connolly on serologic grounds that Tutankhamen and Smenkhare may have been brothers. This important scientific finding was, however, in the public mind overshadowed by the sensation the skull X-rays had caused. When I wrote to the Chairman of the anatomy department in the summer of 1986 my letter was answered by Mr. Connolly who wrote:

"Before Professor Harrison died, we were working on an extensive analysis of the x-rays of several Dynastic specimens including Tutankhamun but this is still incomplete. I have all the x-rays and am hoping to complete the study in the not too far distant future and I shall give you the information about publication.

We haven't published anything beyond the 1972 Antiquity but I may produce a report before publication of the main comparative study because several workers have been seeking information specifically about Tutankhamun."

I thanked Connolly for his information and asked him to inform me about the final results of his investigations. I also made a trip to the University Library in Detroit and unearthed two relevant articles by Harrison. One, dated 1971, was hidden away in a journal called Buried History under the title "Post Mortem on Two Pharaohs. Was Tutankhamen's Skull Fractured?" The second article was the mentioned 1972 report in Antiquity with the simple title "The Remains of Tutankhamun." This article is a classic because it provides most valuable evidence about how Carter and Derry's "autopsy" of the pharaoh in 1925 was really carried out. The details would take me too far afield now, suffice it to say that due to an excessive use of unguents the king's mummy was found to have been solidly glued to the bottom of the third coffin and even the gold coffin itself was stuck to the bottom of the second coffin. Carter's team had to literally chisel the mummy away from the coffin to get at all the artifacts which now grace museums around the world. They severed the limbs, sawed the trunk away from the pelvis and decapitated the mummy at the seventh cervical vertebra. Mr. Filce Leek, a member of the expedition, produced a book afterwards under the title The Human Remains of Tutankhamen where he details the condition in which Harrison's team found the mummy of the king. Unless one has read the Antiquity paper and Leek's book in detail no worth-while opinion can be formulated about the meaning of the X-rays and a possible cause of death.

While the paper in Antiquity did not enter into speculations how Tutankhamen may have died, Harrison did write in the Buried History article:

"While examining X-ray pictures of Tutankhamen's skull I discovered a small piece of bone in the left side of the skull cavity. This could be part of ethmoid bone which had become dislodged from the top of the nose when an instrument was passed up the nose into the cranial cavity during the embalming process. On the other hand, the X-rays also suggest that the piece of bone is fused with the overlying skull and that this could be consistent with a depressed fracture which had healed. This could mean that Tutankhamen died from a brain hemorrhage caused by a blow to his skull from a blunt instrument.

This evidence taken together with the fact that the pharaoh was only 18 when he died, and considered against the troubled times during which he lived, poses an intriguing question: was Tutankhamen murdered?"

It was this sentence and one other sentence on the mentioned BBC documentary which started all the speculations about murder. Without any new evidence since 1969, Tut's death is now being declared not only a homicide but we even have the murderer according to the Discovery Channel.

Yet when one looks at what has been presented so far in regard to the interpretation of the crucial X-rays we have two different locations for the supposed "fracture" and "hemorrhage." One is in the posterior portion of the head, namely the occipital bone and the other higher up in the parietal bone. A scientifically inclined mind might ask: well which way is it? Let's give these X-rays to a panel of neuroradiologists and let them decide what the proper interpretation of the radiographs should be. Let us remember, also, that Harrison was Head of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Liverpool and although an excellent scientist he was not necessarily a specialist in neuroradiology.

The years went by, Martha and I had retired from our jobs, moved to Utah and I kept checking the literature intermittently whether or not new information had come out from Liverpool about the final interpretation of the X-rays. When this was not the case I asked, in December of 1995, my friend and colleague Dr. Ted Reynolds, Director of "The Institute of Epileptology" at the Maudsley Hospital in London, if he could find out who the current Chairman of the Anatomy Department at Liverpool University is because as time moves on people have a tendency to die. Lo and behold in April of 1996 I received a letter from Connolly. It was dated April 1, 1996 and stated:

"Your letter to Dr. Reynolds has been passed to Professor Chadwick, who passed it to Professor Wood who passed it to me. Reports of my death have (as the man said) been greatly exaggerated!

I enclose a positive and a negative print of the original lateral radiograph of the badly damaged head and neck of Tutankhamen.

I am afraid there is really nothing beyond our original publications on the subject which I can add about these radiographs. They have been examined recently by several eminent radiologists, and apart from the obvious features referred to in previous publications they really do not contribute anything particularly significant either to the procedures for mummification in the 18th Dynasty or, more importantly to the cause of death."

The letter ended with the request that in any publication credit should be given to the Department and that there is a standard University charge for publication in popular magazines or in non-academic books.

I thanked Connolly for his pictures and also mentioned that this view of the head has in the meantime already been published by Nicholas Reeves in The Complete Tutankhamen. In the text Reeves wrote, "Sadly Harrison did not live to publish fully his thoughts on this feature [the obvious bone splinter in the parietal area], and it is not clear whether he believed the damage to have been sustained before or after death, accidentally or intentionally. That the king was murdered, however, seems increasingly likely." How Reeves, who was a Curator in the British Museum's Department of Egyptian Antiquities, arrived at the likelihood of murder was not elaborated on.

Photographs in hand I proceeded to show them to my colleagues Dr. Richard Boyer, Head of the Department of Medical Imaging at Primary Children's Hospital (Salt Lake City's Pediatric Hospital for the University of Utah) where I still worked as a consultant, Dr. Anne Osborn a highly respected specialist in Neuroradiology at the University Hospital, and the Medical Examiner of the State of Utah, Dr. Todd Grey. This was done on separate occasions to obtain unbiased independent opinions. The verdict was unanimous: the splinter is in all probability due to post-mortem artifact, there is no evidence for a skull defect but unless one had the actual radiographs a final opinion could not be rendered merely on photographs. The visit to Dr. Grey was prompted by the desire to discuss my own ideas, on how the king might have died, with a forensic pathologist. In a subsequent letter, dated September 30, 1996, he confirmed that they were reasonable. The X-ray information was promptly relayed to Connolly with the request that he should continue to keep my interest in mind and let me know if and when something new developed.

Something did, but not in Liverpool. I had attended the American Clinical Neurophysiology Meeting in Boston and during a break in the proceedings wandered across the street to the Public Library. Everything was nicely computerized and not quite knowing what I would be most interested in I typed "Tutankhamen." Much to my surprise up came a brief article written by David Stout for the New York Times June 30, 1996. The headline was "The violent Death of King Tut." This was obviously the same as that of the 1969 London Times article except that irreverent American journalists are loath to use the king’s full name. The article stated:

"After studying the X-rays of Tutankhamen's skull, two scientists said last week that he might have been bludgeoned, and that his death at the tender age of 19, might have been slow.

The discovery was made when Bob Brier, an Egyptologist at the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University, asked Dr. Gerald Irwin, a physician and trauma specialist at the university, to examine the X-rays of King Tut that were taken 28 years ago at the boy Pharaoh's tomb.

Dr Irwin said the X-rays showed that King Tut, who ruled Egypt more than 3,000 years ago, could have died of a blow to the head. And a line on the skull could indicate a blood clot, meaning Tut may not have died right away."

Immediately upon returning home a Fax went off to Connolly asking him whether or not Brier and Irwin had been members of the team of "eminent radiologists" whom he had mentioned in his previous letter. The answer was that this had not been the case. Brier and Irwin did not even have the X-rays. What Brier had done was to enlarge the same photograph Connolly had sent me previously, placed it on an X-ray viewing box, "made up to look like an actual radiograph - which it is not." To add emphasis not was underlined three times. Well, so much for the integrity of the New York Times but it was sad that one of our medical colleagues had allowed himself to be used in this spoof. Nevertheless a new wrinkle had appeared in this ongoing saga: What was the reason for assuming that Tut's death had not been sudden but that he had lingered for some time before succumbing to whatever had ailed him?

The answer was provided by a Father's Day present from my good and faithful wife in June 1998 in form of a book The Murder of Tutankhamen. A True Story by Bob Brier, Ph.D. The dust jacket tells us that Bob Brier is one of the country's most respected Egyptologists, whose specialty is paleopathology and that he has conducted autopsies on many ancient mummies. We are informed furthermore that "Now Egyptologist Bob Brier uses modern forensic techniques and ancient documents to reveal the crime, identify the killer of Tutankhamen, and bring the tumultuous world of ancient Egypt and its young pharaoh alive."

The historic information Brier provides can be found in other texts on the 18th Dynasty but what is new is an explanation for David Stout's article. Brier wrote:

"Given the omissions and confusions surrounding Tutankhamen's X rays, it was clear that a careful reexamination of the material relating to Tutankhamen's death was necessary. My first step was to get a copy of Harrison's X ray, but he had died in 1979. His colleague R. C. Connolly was still at the University of Liverpool and he kindly sent me prints of the X ray along with a friendly note that was far from encouraging.

'I am afraid there is really nothing beyond our original publications on the subject which I can add about these radiographs...Apart from the obvious features referred to in previous publications they really do not contribute anything particularly significant either to the procedures for mummification in the Eighteenths Dynasty or more important, to the cause of death.'"

Brier referenced the letter as having been sent on April 1, 1996. An attentive reader of this Hot Issues installment will immediately have experienced a profound déja vu sensation and this is the reason why I have presented Connolly's letter to me in full which had precisely the same date. What has happened here? Connolly is a busy man who has a heavy teaching load, in addition to his research efforts, and has little time to spare for numerous requests from all over the world about Tut's X-rays. So he apparently sent the same letter and photos to insistent petitioners. But Brier did something which is not quite kosher in scientific circles, especially when he subtitled his book "A True Story." He had replaced the statement about the "eminent radiologists" who had examined the pictures recently with ellipsis! The reason is obvious because what doesn't fit a hypothesis is not allowed to exist. If there is one message in all of this it is: Beware of Ellipsis! They can be used to hide the truth and whenever an ellipsis is encountered it behooves a scientist to go to the original text and find out what has been omitted.

But there is more. Figure 25 shows the by now famous photograph which is labeled as "X ray" and an arrow "points to the location of the possible blow to the back of the head." It is nowhere near the left ear as had been suggested by earlier authors and is so close to the neck that it would seem highly unlikely for an assassin to strike this spot which is extremely well protected by the neck musculature. Figure 26 shows the blowup of the photograph on the view-box Connolly had mentioned in his Fax. Brier can be seen pointing to the bone splinter in the parietal area (which is regarded as artifact), while Dr. Irwin watches attentively. The legend to the picture states that "Irwin was the first to suggest Tutankhamen may have lingered before dying from a blow to the back of the head."

Irwin's opinion was based on the BBC documentary of 1969 which I had not seen until after the interview for the recent Assassination video. In this documentary, which by the way is excellent, we are shown under what conditions the X-rays had been obtained by Harrison's team in 1968. On the film Harrison explained in detail the skull X-ray findings in regard to the splinter, which he regarded as artifact. But subsequently he added a fateful sentence when he described an "eggshell thinning" of the occipital bone, "This is within normal limits. But in fact, it could have been caused by a hemorrhage under the membranes overlying the brain in this region, and this could have been caused by a blow to the head, and this in turn could have been responsible for death."

Here is now the proverbial "smoking gun" for the cerebral hemorrhage or more properly called subdural hematoma, in neurologic circles. But Harrison was a scientist, as such cautious and not given to apodictic statements. The sentence is laced with "could." The only time a definitive "is" was used occurs in relation to the finding being "within normal limits." Now let us fast forward to 1998 and Brier's book where he wrote in regard to Dr. Irwin's opinion:

"First, I showed him the BBC video of Harrison's explanation of the X ray. Then he studied the X-ray print of Tutankhamen's skull. He agreed with Harrison. There could indeed have been a blow to the back of the head; the X ray was evidence [sic] for a hematoma; an accumulation of blood beneath the skin. But then Dr. Irwin noticed something else. Inside the skull, near the location of the possible blood clot, an area of increased density showed. This is what would be expected from a calcified membrane formed over a blood clot. Physicians call it a chronic subdural hematoma - a phenomenon that takes considerable time to develop."

Although Brier goes on to state correctly that the X ray "does not prove he was murdered," because X-rays can't reveal intentions, he had to justify the title of his book. He, therefore, continued:

"In Tutankhamen's case, two renowned experts saw evidence [sic] of a hematoma in the skull. Did Tutankhamen trip and hit his head? Given the location of the hematoma, that is unlikely. By itself, evidence of a fatal blow to the back of the skull in a place where an accident is unlikely would never convince a jury to convict. But it would certainly be enough to cause a thorough investigation by the police to see if they could turn up additional evidence. They would label the X ray 'indication of suspicious circumstances.'"

This is where the saga ended for the time being. Although the murder theory was not regarded as proven it was initiated by a set of X-rays which had never left Liverpool and had never been published in the medical literature so that the pros and cons of the various interpretations could have been discussed. Brier devotes the rest of the book to his literary detective work with the final conclusion that the assassin had been Ay. This would not have come as a great surprise to those Egyptologists who subscribed to the murder theory on the flimsy X-ray "evidence." I discussed this new "evidence" again with my radiology colleagues who regarded the idea of a calcified posterior fossa subdural hematoma as highly unlikely because they had never seen one in that location especially in a person of that age. Since my own efforts to get the actual X-rays had not been successful I dropped the matter and devoted myself to more attainable purposes.

But to paraphrase Shakespeare "uneasy rests the head that wore a crown." In August of 2001 a call came out of clear blue sky and a lady, who identified herself in a wonderful British accent as Kate Botting, asked me if she could talk to me in regard to Tutankhamen. She was making a video about Tutankhamen for Atlantic Productions to be shown on the Discovery Channel and would appreciate it if I could give her a few minutes to discuss the project. She was in town and could come to our house if this were agreeable. Obviously it was agreeable and over a couple of glasses of wine Martha and I discussed with Kate, and her camera crew supervisor Lance, all my efforts to find out what the X-rays really showed. I also told them that the evidence for young Tut having been murdered, as presented in Brier's book, is inadequate and pointed to various other more probable scenarios. She was enthused and asked if I would be willing to be interviewed for the film. I agreed but only on the condition that she bring along copies of the X-rays from Liverpool so that our experts could go over them and come to their own conclusions. She agreed and filming was set for September 15. But the whole world knows what happened on September 11. Air travel came to a standstill and the project had to be postponed.

After several delays Kate arrived on September 19 at 12:30 a.m. and by 8:30 a.m. I had finally at long last 3 X-rays in my hand. They consisted of the famed lateral view, a front to back view and one taken from the chin up. I headed immediately for what used to be called X-ray department of Primary Children's and now has the less descriptive but more flowery name of Medical Imaging. As usual Boyer was busy and there was no time for detailed inspection. I left the X-rays with him so that he could at least glance at them prior to the interview which was scheduled for the late afternoon of the same day.

Filming took place, most appropriately, in the morgue of the Medical Examiner's building. I was first in line and explained for about half an hour the reasons why the "evidence" for Tut's murder does not necessarily hold up and that a key element of Carter's findings may not have been properly interpreted in the past. Moisture had damaged not only the second coffin (the third one was pure gold) but even the bandages with which the body had been wrapped. Carter also reported that the closer to the body one came the worse the condition of the bandages and it seemed that the moisture had come from the body itself. Carter blamed this moisture on an excessive use of unguents for religious purposes and they had over the millennia introduced spontaneous combustion which accounted for the massively decayed state the mummy was found in. Inasmuch as the whole purpose of mummification was to preserve the deceased in as intact a state as possible, and the ancient embalmers had been experts in their art, I found it difficult to believe Carter's explanation. It seemed more likely to me that the body may have been already in the process of decay by the time it reached the "House of Vigor" or "Vitality," as the workshop of the embalmers was euphemistically referred to. Under these circumstances even experts may have been confronted with an impossible task. Desiccation with natron, the usual procedure, would have been no longer effective and a hasty disposal of the remains may have been imperative. Anyone who has had the unfortunate experience of viewing a decaying body knows that this process is accompanied by a terrible odor and I reasoned, therefore, that the clearly excessive use of unguents, by the bucketful, may have been to mask this dreadfully foul smell. I also suggested that there may well have been an accident during hunting or fishing in the desert or marshes sufficiently far away from the palace and even a few hours in the Egyptian sun can lead to the decay of a dead body. Another possibility could be related to the unexplained, and now no longer mentioned, nature of "the scab" on the left cheek which Derry had noted at the original autopsy. It might have been due to an insect bite which had become infected leading to sepsis which likewise hastens bodily decomposition and makes proper embalming difficult if not impossible. This is precisely what I had discussed with Todd Grey in 1996 and he had felt that these were reasonable ideas. I did not talk about the skull X-rays during the TV interview but left that to Dr. Boyer.

My comments were, however condensed in the movie to two brief snippets and since they clearly interfered with the murder idea they were treated with a curt statement, "But Cooper and King [the detectives] think it unlikely that Tutankhamen died in an accident, someone was always looking after him." On TV, just like in newspapers, the editor always has the last word and that is all the public ever gets.

The same mangling of the interviews occurred also especially in regard to Rich Boyer's skull X-ray explanations. He spent about twenty minutes explaining the various features which were all due to post-mortem artifact but he then became attracted to the seeming lack of intervertebral disc spaces. He interpreted this finding as suggestive of a congenital condition called Klippel Feil syndrome where the neck is fused and movement of the head thereby limited. This was precisely what the producers had been longing to hear because with a normal skull X-ray the murder theory loses much of its luster. When it was further said by Boyer as well as Grey, whose turn had come next, that even a relatively minor fall or blow to the head might, therefore, be fatal the murder story was again on track and a brand new piece of "evidence" could be added.

The detectives then took over. With the help of a "profiler" and by visiting the wall paintings of various tombs in Egypt the narrator told us that they were able "to right a wrong and nailed a killer." Ay had come upon the sleeping Tut, lifted his head by the stiff neck and then smashed it down. Murder solved!!!

When I saw this fantasy I cringed, but I had been forewarned. Connolly had sent me from England newspaper extracts which detailed the contents of the movie. Even our own Time magazine had a long article on "Who Killed Tut?" While my emotional tone was one of annoyance for having been misled in believing that the movie would be a documentary where the various possibilities of Tutankhamen's death would be discussed in a scientific manner, I can imagine how Egyptologists must have felt when they saw how previously published information was used by the producers to declare an old theory as a brand new fact. Since it was Bob Brier's book that apparently had been the inspiration for this video he may well have been particularly unhappy for not getting his name mentioned in the program. Although the content of the film was misleading my good Martha, who always finds a rose even among weeds, said: But the photography was good! That was correct and Lance deserves congratulations.

A few days after the filming Rich and I went over the X-rays in detail especially in regard to the supposed Klippel Feil syndrome. The impressive fusion of the cervical spine turned out to have likewise been a post-mortem artifact due to the resin. The neck was encased in a consolidated mass of resin which became apparent when we saw Harrison's original video-documentary, given to me by Kate. For this, as well as for bringing the X-rays from Liverpool I am grateful. The bone splinter in the skull which had given rise to the skull fracture theory is in all probability, as Connolly has pointed out to me, a piece of the first cervical vertebra which was dislodged when Derry stuck some instrument through what is called the foramen magnum on the bottom of the skull to explore the skull cavity. The "thinning" of the occipital bone is normal and exaggerated by the tilt of the head when the X-ray was taken, this applies also to the suspected "calcified membrane," which was taken by Brier as evidence that the pharaoh had not died suddenly. Thus the side view of the skull X-ray, which can be found in books around the world, is normal. Detailed explanations of the findings, which have been so puzzling, are now being prepared by us for a presentation to the medical community. So much for the "groundbreaking evidence" and the "motive for murder," the video tells the world about.

What can be learned from this adventure in science fiction? The first lesson is that persistence pays off even if it takes 15 years to see some X-rays. The second is that what you get afterwards may not be what you had expected, and the third that you cannot trust what you are being told on TV even from respected programs which masquerade under the name of History or Discovery. All the producers want is ratings which translate into money and that is what makes the world go round. By the way I was asked by a friend if they had paid me for my performance. Yes they did. I received $300. But Grey and I paid afterwards for dinner at an upscale French Restaurant where the entire party of about eight people was invited. Since Rich Boyer had to leave immediately after his interview he did not receive his $300. I, therefore, gave him half of my "honorarium," which he was loathe to take but I felt guilty and forced it on him anyway. He has a great many more children than I do, gets only a meager salary from the hospital, and he can use every penny he so richly deserves.

It is obvious that this saga is far from over. Tutankhamen's death will continue to give rise to further speculations and a new book which supposedly claims that he had hit his head against the throne during an epileptic seizure is to become available in November. It is, therefore, abundantly clear that the meager medical evidence has been distorted to such a degree that I might even write a book of my own. I would not only critically examine each one of the numerous theories that have been proposed and point out their shortcomings, but also discuss how and why the conclusions, which dot the literature, were arrived at. This aspect would actually be the most important one because the methods by which people are led to believe what they believe have general validity and clearly transcend the fate of Tutankhamen.





November 1, 2002

ISRAEL THE FIFTY-FIRST STATE



This installment may be unsettling for some but please have patience, curb your emotions and read carefully. It is important if one wants to understand America's Foreign Policy and get a glimpse of the possible future. Please note that whenever bold print appears in direct quotations it has been added for emphasis.

In the October 25, 2002 issue of The International Jerusalem Post Shmuley Boteach who is identified as "a rabbi and best selling author, who hosts a daily talk radio show syndicated across the United States" wrote on the Opinion page a lengthy article entitled "Add Israel's star to the Union." The accompanying picture features the U.S. flag with a large six point star in the place of honor leading all the other smaller five point ones. Lest one might get paranoid and presume that the artist meant this to be the final design of our national flag he placed it on a rather barren stretch of beach at the edge of a body of water, which probably symbolizes the Mediterranean, and with a small hill in the distance. One can assume, therefore, that it was meant to represent the 51st state's flag rather than our national one. On the other hand the addition of the Star of David to Old Glory is not new because Goldberg's book Jewish Power carries it on the dust jacket although, as a late arrival, it is placed slightly below the last of the ones we are familiar with.

In case one might think that the author is merely making a Jonathan Swift type "Modest Proposal" it behooves one to read the article carefully because the rabbi details the benefits which would accrue from this idea not only to Israel but to the United States as well. The argument proceeds as follows:

Americans are now, as a result of the September 11 attack, in the same situation that Israel has been all along. The rest of the world no longer has sympathy for America but the country is regarded as arrogant and throwing its weight around, an idea that Jews are thoroughly familiar with. When America is being accused of trying to take over the world, has this not happened to the Jews also? “Jews have been decried as condescending to the rest of the world with their trumped-up claim of being 'the chosen people,' just as America is now condemned for harboring a holier-than-thou attitude to the world's nations, who are not prepared to weed out evil terrorists." The author goes on to say that “Now that the Americans have become the Jews of the world, I propose formalizing the arrangement by making Israel the 51st state in the Union."

This act would immediately solve a number of problems for the Jewish state Rabbi Boteach believes. Although Israel has currently the means “to destroy the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure and exile Überterrorist Yasser Arafat" it is prevented from doing so by international pressure via the U.S.:

”And so Israel straddles the line. It proceeds with limited actions, after which Bush, under intense pressure from American allies, puts in a call to Ariel Sharon and Israeli troops have to pull back - until another group of Israeli civilians are killed.
This problem would obviously be solved, by statehood because once Israelis are American citizens any attack on them anywhere would be an attack against America.
Then it would be absurd for Bush to be pressured by other world leaders to curb the military response. Israeli-turned-American commando units would finally go in and remove Arafat's terror regime once and for all, just as the US changed regimes in Afghanistan.”

What does America get out of this arrangement? The author's answer is equally simple: America needs a permanent base in the troublesome Middle East, which is a spawning ground of terrorists. America would immediately acquire "a crack military that is highly experienced in fighting terror. America would also be able to watch over the Middle Eastern oil fields, on which it is so dependent, from very close range."

For those Jews who feel it would "be crazy" to give up their homeland which they have been struggling to get for 2000 years, the rabbi advises "a reality check." Israel will never be safe because:

"Let's call a spade a spade. The Arabs will only ever be satisfied when Israel is pushed into the sea, and without an American green light to get rid of the Palestinian terrocracy [sic], we cannot be entirely sure that there will even be an Israel, God forbid, in a decade. That is, unless Israel becomes an American state."

So far so good but how about the Jewish character of the 51st state? Won't that be a problem? Not at all the author reassures us and points to my home state of Utah as the splendid example. Three Cheers! Now Utahns can really be happy: we had a banner year! In February we hosted the Olympics, which indeed went superbly well, in October the world was informed that we have brilliant detective profilers who can solve a crime, which may or may not have been committed three and a half thousand years ago (see previous installment), and now we are the model for a prospective 51st state. In Utah, the rabbi writes:

"the Mormons basically have their own state, maintaining cohesiveness and a strong religious identity while being patriotic members of the larger American republic. In fact, they enjoy the best of both worlds.
Their schools are funded by the state, yet attached to every public school is a Mormon religious school, funded by the Church, where pupils go as soon as classes are over."

I am not telepathic but I can hear the Prophet, Seer and Revelator of the Church, President Gordon B. Hinckley, quietly say to this picture of Utah "Lord, wouldn't it be nice if it were so! We'd surely save ourselves a lot of legal fees for suits brought against us!" But let us continue with the rabbi's views a little longer before I shall proceed with my own reality check in regard to the Utah fantasy. The rabbi also sees enormous financial benefits for the U.S. as well as Israel. No longer will the Israeli economy have to struggle because "federal dollars being put to education and defense would come in very handy.":

"The US is already pouring billions of dollars into Israel in foreign aid each year, and millions more private citizens, a large part of them fundamentalist Christians, support Israel. Why not change all this and make it tax dollars instead?
While the idea of turning Israel into the 51st state might strike some as crazy, to me it is self-evident. The US and Israel are both democratic nations. Both are deeply religious, founded on the Judeo-Christian ethic. They are united in their fight against terror, and are increasingly loathed by the world for acting to defend themselves against unrepentant murderers. Both require peace in the Middle East as their foremost foreign policy goals.
Finally, both already have lots and lots of Jews.
For two centuries America has been seen by oppressed immigrants the world over as a 'promised land.' Why not have America acquire the real thing and make it official?"


After having read this article I was still not quite sure: Does the author really mean every word he says or is he talking tongue in cheek? But it doesn't really matter what I think because I am certain that there will be a great number of people who will take him at his word and will either applaud or exude venom. Let us do neither and proceed instead with our God-given intellect rather than reacting emotionally.

This is necessary because it would not be justified to regard the author simply as a crazy dreamer whose views are so outlandish that they need not be listened to. When Herzl proposed his Jewish state in 1896, everybody regarded him as crazy. He knew it, but he wasn't concerned about the "Wadlbeisser" as he called his detractors, of which there were many. The term is a typical Viennese expression for which no English equivalent exists. It refers to those nasty little dogs that pester you and try to bite your calves while you are out for a walk or bike ride. Zionism was regarded as dangerous nonsense by the Viennese Jewish community. Herzl's bosses, Benedickt and Bacher, at the Neue Freie Presse, which might be regarded as the equivalent of the New York Times or Washington Post of that era, forbade him to write articles on Zionism in their paper. His diary entry of September 3, 1897 can serve as an example of how dreams can become reality:

"If I condense the Basel Congress into a single statement - which I shall be very careful not to say openly - it is this: In Basel I have founded the Judenstaat [there is disagreement whether the term should be translated into "Jewish State," or "State for the Jews," both translations are feasible]. If I were to say this out loud today I would be answered by universal laughter."

It took fifty years and two World Wars but persistence paid off. Another dreamer whose time eventually came was Eliezer ben Yehuda, who was born during 1857 in Latvia as Eliezer Perlman, also spelled Perelman at times. While Herzl had insisted that "we can't all be expected to learn Hebrew," that was indeed ben Yehuda's goal. At the end of the nineteenth century Hebrew was the equivalent of Latin, spoken only in religious services or by scholars. Ben Yehuda realized that one can't have a common country without a common language and he started by using only Hebrew in his daily communications with his family. He pushed the idea so vigorously that eventually the language became officially recognized in Palestine, along with Arabic and English, during the British Mandate period.

Let us not laugh at dreamers, therefore, but examine realistically the premises and logic of Rabbi Boteach's suggestion. While some Israeli's may well jump at the idea others are bound to be reluctant because it's nicer to be a big fish in a small pond rather than a little fish in a big pond. Sovereignty suits them just fine. Furthermore, any attempt to buy yourself "security" by amalgamation in a larger entity, which is highly diverse, and at the same time not integrate but insist on your separateness is a highly dubious enterprise.

Apart from these aspects there are three catchphrases in the article which need to be discussed. These are: Israel is a democracy, the Judeo-Christian ethic, and the facts about Utah.

Yes, Israel is a democracy in name, but by Jews and for Jews. The country has no Constitution! A constitution was promised in the Declaration of Independence in 1948 but never enacted. The government runs on a Basic Law which in turn is derived from Emergency Decrees by the British. Over the years some of them have been made progressively more stringent in regard to people who might want to dissent from government policies for whatever reason. Although Palestinian Arabs, who are Israeli citizens within the 1967 borders, have the right to vote, they are discriminated against when it comes to any other legitimate aspiration they might have. Even such simple things as adding a room to your house can get stalled in bureaucratic hassles. To equate Israeli-type democracy with American democracy is a propaganda ploy devoid of reality. Let us not forget the purpose of the state. It was founded as a home for Jews and non-Jews are, therefore, not particularly welcome except as visitors.

If the rabbi's suggestion were to become reality some Israeli Jews might not be very pleased because a Constitution which guarantees equal rights to the Arab Palestinians would have to be enacted. All of the four million or so Muslims (which includes those living in the West Bank and Gaza who can't all be eradicated as part of the "terrorist infrastructure") with their higher birth rates would have at long last their voices heard and Jewish dominance over the Holy Land would come to an end. The rule of law would no longer be promulgated and enforced exclusively from Zion but also from Washington.

The Palestinian people, especially in the occupied territories, on the other hand, might experience it as a God-send. At long last they would have recourse to law courts, there would be a Constitution which grants them equal rights, demolitions of their homes and orchards would cease and so would the "security arrangements" consisting of curfews and massive restriction of movement. Furthermore, the 51st state would obviously be open to indiscriminate immigration. Not only would the expelled Palestinians descend upon this state but so would other diverse non-Jewish groups who might want to build another Mediterranean Monaco. What the rabbi is really suggesting, apparently without realizing it, is a repeat of the Jews inviting Rome to take over their country because they had not been able to govern themselves! I have dealt with this historical fact in Whither Zionism? last year.

The second point is the "Judeo-Christian ethic," "heritage," or "tradition" as it is also commonly referred to. Readers of this website and some of my other publications know that I have strong objections to this term. It is inherently faulty because it amalgamates Christianity with Judaism and obscures the essential differences between the two religions. I have written two books about the problem, The Moses Legacy: Roots of Jewish Suffering and A Jesus for Our Time. Both are still looking for publishers and my hopes are growing dimmer by the day, as rejections keep dribbling in. Serious ideas that deserve to be discussed in an intelligent, rather than facetious, way are not in demand in today's publishing industry which is nearly exclusively devoted to the proverbial bottom line.

If the term Judeo-Christian ethic were used simply to denote that Christianity arose from Judaism, or that we share the Ten Commandments, there would be no problem. But when the two religions are equated for political purposes I have to object. The Old Testament is not the book by which I want to live my life, although this is currently a minority view. Nevertheless, for a Christian the role model is not necessarily Moses but Jesus, and his message gets shortchanged when we talk about the "Judeo-Christian ethic." America used to call itself a Christian country but this is no longer politically correct.

Why do I disagree with the Old Testament or the Written Torah as Jews call it? Because it contains a basic premise which I cannot in good conscience subscribe to. If the original premise is amiss so will be all subsequent actions which flow from it. Let me explain. In Genesis Chapter 1 verse 26 of the Bible we can read:

"And God said: 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.'"

The quote comes from the Socino Chumash translation of the Torah. The key word here is dominion! Man is to be the ruler and exploiter of the earth's natural resources. The word was used again in verse 28 where God is quoted as saying to Adam:

“‘Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth.'"

The medieval commentator Sforno (Obadiah Ben Jacob Sforno c.1475-1550) explained "to have dominion" in a footnote. “Ensnare them by nets and snares and compel them to serve you.” Thus, the model which this view of the world provides is one of dominance by the stronger over the weaker. That this applies also to human beings is made explicit in verse 16 of chapter III where the Lord God said to Eve, "'. . . thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.'" Instead of mutual cooperation there is to be force which soon was extended to political action. Moses ordered conquest and those who were not part of the "chosen people" had to have their altars overthrown and their idols smashed. This ethnocentric position which shows no regard for the traditions and aspirations of others is also the "heritage" left by Moses. It has precious little to do with what Jesus taught and this is why I oppose the term Judeo-Christian ethic, heritage, or tradition, when it is used for political purposes.

Now to the idea that Utah could be the model for a Jewish 51st state. What the rabbi said about Utah is in part true, but what is more important is what has been left out. Utah does have a constitution which guarantees equal rights to all citizens. As a matter of fact the church-state separation criteria are considerably more detailed and stringent than on the federal level. Although about 85 per cent of the legislators are Mormons and it is difficult to get legislation passed which is not approved by the LDS church, there is a recourse. Initiatives can be put on the ballot and the press is free. Salt Lake City's major newspaper The Salt Lake Tribune publishes all opinions. The letters to the editor are an excellent example of the diversity of feelings expressed by this supposedly homogeneous population. The church, when it comes to civil actions, does not nearly have the same power as the religious parties in Israel for instance. Let me give two examples.

A few years ago a "secular" Jewish student objected to the school choir singing at High School graduation the song "Friends." It had been a long standing tradition, but she insisted that the song violates the mandated separation of Church and State because it contained the word "God!" The students were forbidden to sing it and when they did so anyway, they were severely disciplined! As I said in a previous installment God is officially "unerwünscht," even in Mormonland. Events of this type do not foster religious harmony, but more importantly they show that the LDS church caves in when it comes to church-state matters.

The second example is the current legal controversy over an easement on Salt Lake City's Main Street adjacent to the Temple plaza. The property had been bought from the city by the Church to provide a park-like area around the Temple grounds where visitors would be sheltered from the hustle and bustle of traffic. Although the easement, which allows pedestrian traffic to flow along Main Street, is now private property, it has been used by some malcontents to express their opinions against the Church quite vociferously thereby vitiating the intended purpose. When they were politely removed from what the Church regarded as its property the case was placed before the courts under the free speech amendment to the Constitution. It is being litigated right now before the appeals court which is not in Salt Lake but in Denver, Colorado. Ergo, although the LDS church clearly has some power in our state it is limited and in no way parallels that of the religious parties which sit in the Knesset.

There is another important difference between Utah and Israel. When the first group of settlers arrived here during the summer of 1847, Brigham Young wisely decided not to interfere with the tribal customs of the natives. He told his flock that it was much better to trade with the Indians than to kill them. This policy of tolerance, which was in complete contrast with what happened in other parts of the West, where the "Indian Wars" raged, paid off and the state has never experienced racial upheavals. The only mass killing which did occur was in 1857. A group of emigrants from Arkansas on their way to California had behaved obnoxiously during their trek through what is now referred to as the "Crossroads of the West." They were subsequently murdered in southern Utah by a band of Mormon militia and some local Indians. This Mountain Meadows Massacre, as it is called, was a very unfortunate event which still spawns ever so often a spate of books. But it ought to be seen within the context of the then existing tensions due to what is officially called the "Utah expedition" but locally the "Utah Invasion." President Buchanan had dispatched 2500 regular troops, plus auxiliaries, to Utah because the Mormons had a theocracy, did not subscribe to the dictum that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" and they also adhered to the Jewish patriarchal custom of "plural wives." The Union tolerated that men may have several wives in succession via divorce, but not simultaneously. This "peculiar institution," as it was called, had to be stamped out. Nevertheless, one can say in retrospect that if the Jewish settlers in the early decades of the twentieth century had been guided by the Brigham Young principle how to deal with the locals, the entire history of the Jewish state including its current dire straits might have been different. Their Zion might have become as secure as ours is.


But even if we leave all these points aside the proposal, if it were adopted, contains another fatal flaw which would lead within a relatively short time to a disaster for the Jewish people in the U.S. and abroad. Herzl wrote in his Der Judenstaat, "The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in considerable numbers. Where it does not it is brought along [eingeschleppt] by immigrating Jews." This was true in 1896, was proven subsequently true in Palestine, and is likely to remain true in the future. There is already considerable concern in the America's Jewish community about a steady rise in anti-Semitism. This is bound to increase if the country were now to officially adopt Jewish goals as its own. It might not take very long before the cry "America Awaken," in analogy to Deutschland Erwache, will no longer be uttered by fringe groups but enter the mainstream. This is all the more likely because terrorist attacks against us, for which there can never be adequate security unless one creates a police state á la Hitler or Stalin, are going to mushroom. Protest political parties are already on the horizon because neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are seen any longer as the true representatives of the people at large. This is documented by the fact that slightly less than half of the people voted in the last election. Radical populists are bound to arise, and with them civil strife. Is this what the rabbi wants for his people? He probably does not, but this is what he will get. It may not come in my lifetime but come it will because whenever minorities try to force their opinions on the majority a backlash ensues. It's a law of life and anybody who ignores it will suffer the consequences.

But Rabbi Boteach is no mere dreamer. His article needs to be seen in the context of the news reports in the same issue of the Jerusalem Post. On page 2 under Diplomacy with the subheading Entente Cordiale we see a large picture of our smiling President and behind him a smaller one with an equally happy Ariel Sharon. One might be tempted to jump to the conclusion that he represents the power behind the throne, but I shall refrain from yielding to it. What is more important is the text of the article where we are assured that the recent meeting between Bush and Sharon in the White House had gone exceedingly well. “‘It was an excellent visit, perhaps the best so far' a senior official said." In regard to the upcoming Iraq war, "last week's talks consisted of 'deep strategic coordination' that will be necessary in any war, an Israeli official said." So this is what the meeting was really all about and as usual the American people who pay the bills are not allowed to be privy to what's going on in their name. “Both US and Israeli officials are reluctant to detail that coordination, which will include early warning of a US offensive." Obviously!

The term entente cordiale is especially ominous because it recalls the real cause of WWI; secrecy for the sake of "national security!" The details of the alliance between Great Britain and France were hidden not only from the public but even from the British cabinet! This "understanding," between the general staffs of the two countries, obligated the British fleet to guard the North Sea and the Atlantic, while the French deployed their fleet in the Mediterranean. It was this agreement which forced Britain into the war with Germany. Violation of Belgium neutrality was good for public consumption but was not the reason. The Germans never understood that any attack on France, which in turn was allied with Russia, would automatically involve England and thereby ignite a world war. The documentation for these statements can be found in the book How Diplomats Make War. On page 52 Francis Neilson, the author, who was Member of Parliament from 1910-1915 wrote:

"A neutral's hands must be free . . . . There can be no impartiality where the policy of a country is fettered by secret understandings. The phrase 'foreign friendships,' used so often of late, is in itself an indictment; and in connection with France proves how absurd our position as a so-called neutral power was all through the negotiations since the murder of the Austrian archduke."

This was written in 1915 at which time it had become obvious that this fratricidal war was the greatest mistake Europe had made in its long history. Our current so-called friendship with Israel, which I have discussed in Whither Zionism?, and now the Entente Cordiale are a prescription for catastrophe. They tie our hands and give a lie to our professed stance as "honest broker" in the Israeli-Palestinian war. Thus the rabbi is not just dreaming he has solid grounds for his suggestion and the final paragraph of the Entente Cordiale article is the clincher:

"Daschle [our democratic Senate Majority leader] said that when it comes to Israel, there are no Democrats or Republicans, 'only Americans.' Sharon wished both parties good luck in the November 5 elections."

Well here it is. The elections are just about as useful in regard to foreign policy as the one recently held by Saddam. As far as Iraq is concerned, Congress has abdicated, the three important dissenting voices in the UN Security Council: France, Russia and China, will be browbeaten or bribed so as not to cast a veto and at least abstain from any resolution which might limit George W.'s power to go to war. The Ides of October have passed, but aufgeschoben ist nicht aufgehoben (postponed doesn't mean abandoned) as the German proverb says and the war is still on the docket for January. As Gwynne Dyer so accurately remarked in a Tribune article this week "a December attack could undermine the Christmas retail binge." That Christmas was supposed to make us reflect on the birth of the "Prince of Peace" has, of course, become a fantasy a long time ago.

Since I had never heard of Rabbi Boteach before, I looked him up on the Internet and complete information is available via "Google" by simply typing his name. The short biography on Beliefnet.com to which he is a frequent contributor is informative, but even more so is the longer one by the Harry Walker Agency. Both sites are worth visiting if one wants to put his Jerusalem Post article in perspective. In order give the reader a brief overview I am quoting here the introduction from Beliefnet.com:

"Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the director of the L'Chaim society, a Jewish education organization that hosts world figures and statesmen lecturing on values-based leadership. He is also cofounder, with Michael Jackson, of Heal the Kids, an initiative to encourage adults to reprioritize children. He is the author of a number of books, including 'Kosher Sex: A Recipe for Passion and Intimacy,' 'Dating Secrets of the Ten Commandments,' and most recently, 'Why Can't I Fall in Love.' A winner of the annual 'preacher of the year' contest sponsored by the Times of London, he was formerly rabbi of Oxford University."

My non-bilingual German and Austrian friends will be pleased to hear that "Kosher Sex" has been translated into their native language.

Knowing what I now know about the rabbi, who has also been described as "a world-famous thinker," I am still puzzled: did he write in jest or did he mean what he said? You, the reader, will have to decide, but the "Entente Cordiale" article is definitely a deadly serious piece of news. It should not be allowed to go unchallenged if the American people want to retain their freedom of action in foreign affairs and avoid a potential WWIII.

Let me conclude now with a personal note to the rabbi.

Dear Rabbi Boteach:

You have been called "a world-famous thinker." Please think again about your proposal. As mentioned above, I was not sure why you had written it but on further reflection I believe that you might have done so in order to "test the water." If this was indeed the case I would like to assure you that you have stepped into Lake Superior and it is urgent to get out immediately. No one survives in it for any length of time. Your premise that Americans have become "the Jews of the world" is mistaken. Americans are not "loathed" all over the world, only some aspects of our foreign policy are. Please do not equate the people with a handful of politicians, that was a Nazi ploy, and please abstain from remaking us in your image. No good can come from this effort, only bloodshed. Furthermore, please inform those of your co-religionists both here and in Israel that attempts to turn the clock back 3000 years to biblical times cannot produce peace but only perpetual war, to the detriment of all of us.

It is time to abandon the conquest and "dominion" model, technology has become too dangerous. Hate has to be removed step by step rather than fostered. There are no quick fixes and we have to learn to work on the Lord's time table instead of ours. If we want to have peace we will have to make a genuine effort to first open our hearts and minds to those who disagree with us and then jointly work towards mutually satisfactory solutions. It is the only way to save the world from catastrophe. In regard to the Holy Land I can think of no better advice than the one given by the Buddha to his followers twenty five hundred years ago, "Don't repel each other, like oil and water; but mingle like milk and water." Regardless of what happens in the near future, in the long run the two sons of Abraham will have to live together and it should be America's role, and especially that of American Jews, to help them do so. Please feel free to contact me so that we can discuss this - literally - deadly serious problem further.

Sincerely yours,

Ernst Rodin MD





December 1, 2002

WANTED: GOOD JUDGMENT!



The week of November 3-9 was surely a highlight in our President's life. On November 5 the country gave him control of both houses of Congress and on November 8 the UN Security Council passed unanimously a resolution to force UN inspectors on a reluctant Iraq. The carrot and stick approach as outlined in the previous installment worked. Apparently the administration promised Putin free hand in Chechnya, trade concessions to the Chinese, and the Syrians would have received the stick had they not "played ball."

The question now is: what will our President do with all this power which has been bestowed upon him? The measure of his character will become apparent in the next few months. By March we will know whether the mentioned week was one highlight or a watershed, and the zenith of his achievements. Judging by the rumblings emanating from Washington it seems that our President is intent on a war with Iraq, come what may. Plan A the October 15 "surprise" air drop attack was shelved as too risky, and as it turned out it wasn't necessary anyway. Now it's on to Plan B. This seems to combine Plan A with initial bombing, ground invasion and generous bribes of local Iraqi opposition leaders. It had worked after all in Afghanistan, so why wouldn't it work in Iraq? seems to be the logic.

But has it worked in Afghanistan? On September 14, 2001 three days after the tragedy, I sent a brief article to the Salt Lake Tribune entitled "Justice or Revenge?" In it I strongly argued for the former and against the latter. I wrote

"Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that we obliterate the Taliban regime will that be the end of terrorism? Of course not. Fanatics are simply going to move to another 'rogue state' and in addition destabilize those regimes in the Middle East which are currently friendly to the U.S.

Furthermore, bin Laden's demise will not automatically create 'peace on earth, good will to men.' There are enough drug lords with 'deep pockets' who can support any number of groups who carry a grudge against the United States. To start a war is easy to end one is difficult as Lyndon Johnson found out in Vietnam."

I also argued that the causes and not only the symptoms must be treated and one of them surely is the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian disaster. While clearly not the only cause, our unconditional support of the Likud government and its repressive policies in the occupied territories are certainly a contributory factor for the hatred some Arabs feel against our government. I counseled reason which punishes the perpetrators of the 9/11 disaster while we address at the same time legitimate grievances others might have against our policies. Since this type of argument ran against the grain of prevailing passions the article was never published.

Little did I know that this proposed program never had a ghost of a chance as the recent book by Bob Woodward Bush at War clearly demonstrates. Anyone who still harbors any illusions about how our government really functions should read this book. Even on September 11 Bush had already accepted the premise that the al-Qaeda attack was an act of war which can only be responded to by massive military retaliation. Limited strikes against the perpetrators combined with patient police work to uncover terrorist cells around the world were never regarded as an option. Patience is not yet an American virtue. Immediate and spectacular action was demanded by the President. The idea was that we wouldn't do it "like the Soviets," going in with massive ground forces, but we'd use our air power and let the locals do the fighting. To this end "Gary," our highest level CIA clandestine operations chief was dispatched to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan on September 19 with a select group of "special ops" and a suitcase containing $3 Million in $100 denominations. He liberally dispensed the cash among the warlords as a down payment with another $10 Million to follow. They could use the money any way they pleased and he also promised them the blue from the sky how we would subsequently rebuild their country on a lavish scale.

As we all know Phase I worked superbly well but we are now in Phase II which is, somewhat similar to the situation the Soviets found themselves in 1979. The Afghan government, which they supported, had lost control of the countryside to the mujahadeen who thoroughly detested the atheistic practices of the Soviet style regime and wanted to establish an Islamic republic. Once the USSR invaded the country, the CIA sprang into action with money and equipment. The rest, as the say, is history including the creation of our erstwhile friend Osama.

Now fast forward to the end of 2002. We have a friendly government in Kabul but Karzai, the President, requires American bodyguards because he can't trust his own people to protect him. Although the countryside is not yet in open rebellion, the Americans are not seen as liberators but as another materialistic culture which exploits the locals for their own gain. Burqa or veil is still the traditional garb for women; definitely outside Kabul and to some extent even in the capital. As a female Afghan Supreme Court Justice found out: democracy has limits. When she returned to her country after having been photographed at the White House with President Bush, without wearing a veil she was promptly sacked by her government. Afghanistan is after all officially an Islamic State and the Commission which is to write a new constitution is headed by a judge who is in favor of sharia, Islamic law. When a group of about 2000 students recently protested against their miserable living conditions in the dorms (e.g. broken windows, massive overcrowding, no heat, no electricity etc.), they were met with gun fire which killed three and wounded several others. As one student ruefully commented, "We thought this was a real democracy. We didn't know we could be killed for demonstrating. Otherwise we wouldn't have done it."

Thus nation building, an idea our President thoroughly denounced while still a candidate for office, is still not to his liking. Our resources instead of being used to build up what we helped smash are being diverted against Iraq. We are thus paving the way not only for another Afghanistan quagmire, but a similar one in Iraq when Saddam has been successfully deposed. Apparently the idea is that we'll let our allies pick up the pieces afterwards.

The average person keeps asking oneself: why this obsession with Iraq? It not only threatens to ruin any hope we may have for rebuilding Afghanistan in the near future, but is also bound to destabilize the Mid-East. This is where Bob Woodward's book comes in again. Immediately after 9/11 Bush was urged to go not only after the Taliban and Osama who is referred to in Washington circles as UBL (first name Usama) but also Saddam Hussein. Bush correctly resisted because he feared that this loss of focus might not resonate with the American people. He wanted first UBL's head. After that was done and the Taliban were finished it would be Iraq's turn. This decision was already made in the first two weeks after 9/11. The order to go after UBL's head was taken literally, if we can trust Bob Woodward. Cofer Black, the CIA's Director of the Counterterrorism Center ordered advance team chief Gary with his $3 million suitcase to bring him bin Laden's "head in a box." When Gary was surprised because this violated the rules the CIA had been operating under and questioned the order, he was told by Black, "I want to take it down and show the president." Woodward continues that when Gary signaled the team's safe arrival in Afghanistan "mindful of Cofer Black's request about bin Laden's head, he added a line to the cable requesting some heavy-duty cardboard boxes and dry ice, and if possible some pikes."

Is that really how our highest level administrators see their jobs or did Woodward fall for a joke that was played on him? We don't know, of course, but what is not a joke is that our buildup in the Gulf for the upcoming war with Iraq proceeds according to the Afghan model and we are buying ourselves now an Iraqi opposition army of Kurds. But the army we are buying ourselves is not wanted by other Iraqis and our latest opposition leader beneficiary is, according to the Christian Science Monitor, the ex-General Secretary of the Iraqi Communist Party, Ballahadeen Nouri. Never mind, that ordinary Iraqis neither trust him nor any other opposition leader. Marching on we must because our Commander in Chief says so and as Woodward wrote: his decisions are not to be questioned. As he told Woodward personally, “‘I’m not a textbook player. I'm a gut player.' “He also stated, “‘I’m the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation.'"

Well, I guess that attitude seems to take care of the Gettysburg address. "Government of the people, by the people, for the people" may become obsolete as we enter the era of unending war against terrorism and "Homeland Security." The measures designed to "protect us," and which are already on the books, will give the government unfettered access to complete information about our private lives. Lady Liberty may soon wonder about what has happened to the country whose entrance she guards.

It is reasonable to ask now who this President we elected 2 years ago is. Chris Matthew's recent book American presents us with a quote of candidate George W. Bush from December 1999, "Let us reject the blinders of isolationism, just as we have refused the crown of empire. Let us not dominate others with our power or betray them with our indifference. And let us have an American foreign policy that reflects American character. The modesty of true strength. The humility of real greatness." Is that the President we have now? It seems that during the run-up for election Mr. Bush wasn't quite sure what he would do with his presidency if he won, but 9/11 gave him an opportunity which is now being relentlessly exploited. He decided right then and there that he would be "a war time president" and this would be the all consuming direction of his administration. The war is limitless and will stretch even beyond his term. I guess the speech writer who was responsible for the above cited quote is out of a job now.

Since the President seems determined to have his war it'll only need the pretext, as mentioned in previous installments. This can be readily manufactured because on the one hand the conditions imposed on Saddam are sufficiently stringent that any minor breach of compliance can be exploited and on the other hand the "no fly zones" are ready made for excuses not only to bomb but to create incidents when needed. We in the U.S. have accepted the "no fly zones" as our right conferred upon us by the UN Security council. Little do most of us realize that this was supposed to have been a temporary arrangement in 1991 for humanitarian reasons. They were intended to prevent Saddam from punishing the Shiite rebels in the south and the Kurds in the north, when his regime was threatened in the aftermath of the first Gulf war. That has, of course, fallen by the wayside a long time ago and we, jointly with the Brits, are now happily bombing air defense installations in preparation for the upcoming war. This one will, of course, also be fought for humanity's sake because the "monster" and "madman" who has WMDs and has gassed his own people must be eliminated. That our money bought him the gas and that the Reagan administration was not averse to Saddam's use of it against the Iranians and their allies the Kurds in the Iran-Iraq war must not be remembered. Neither should we remember that the icon of the 20th century, Winston Churchill, also had no compunction about advocating the gassing of people, although he was in favor of non-lethal agents. Geoff Simon quotes Churchill in Iraq: >From Sumer to Saddam as having said, "I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes." This was at the time when the Kurds were in open rebellion against the British Empire which had shouldered the "White Man's Burden" and was intent on bringing Western values to the dismembered Ottoman Empire. Wing Commander Gale of RAF Squadron 30 in Iraq is also quoted to have said after the bombing campaign, "If the Kurds hadn't learned by our example to behave themselves in a civilised way then we had to spank their bottoms. This was done by bombs and guns." For the British Empire "to behave in a civilized way" was "do as you are told" and forget about any aspirations of nationhood, which had been implanted into their minds by our very own President Wilson. The British found out the hard way that their type of nation-building didn't work in the long run, either in Afghanistan or in Iraq, but Tony Blair is eager to forget the past and hopes that the U.S. will do better. That this hope is hardly justified by history and the currently existing facts doesn't seem to bother the Bush-Blair "Axis of Good."

In the second paragraph I have mentioned that the next few months will tell what kind of a man George W. Bush really is. The jury is still out and this is why I have composed this little poem in the style of Aeschylus

To Our King George II

A bush thou art, Alas no tree.

Yet Fortune lifted thee

High above all other men.

Power undreamed of eons before

Is yours; but not forever more.

Two years, or maybe six,

And you'll return to Texan sticks.

What deeds you do in this allotted span;

The choices made, for good or ill of man,

Are yours alone, with no one else to blame.

Let, therefore, this your warning be:

Brute force does serve expediency;

Yet in its wake the victimized

Will shout for vengeance; always highly prized.

Unless obstinacy does to wisdom yield,

And friendly counsels rule the field,

The seeds you sow no good will bring.

And of your downfall future bards will sing.







January 1, 2003

DECONSTRUCTING AMERICA



This time of year usually leads one to look back as well as forward. We want to know how we got where we are and what the likely near future will be. But Americans tend to have a short memory. This is why George Bush I, for instance, could confidently talk about creating a "New World Order,” a course which his son is now eagerly pursuing, because Dad had supposedly left the job unfinished. Only those of my generation who have lived in Europe know and remember that Neue Ordnung was the slogan under which Hitler fought his WWII and pursued the extermination of Jews. He was actually more modest than Bush father and son, because he limited his announced efforts to Europe. Europeans who have experienced the disaster which Wilson's evangelism has foisted on the world are also highly dubious of the results the new Wilsonianism, which currently emanates from Washington, will bring.

When I look back at the country I came to in the late summer of 1950 and compare it with the winter of 2002-2003 I hardly recognize it now. Nobody forced me to come; I did so exercising my free will and volunteered to become a U.S. citizen. I saw goodness, a spirit of cooperation, willingness to help and kindness to the stranger. That was the country I wanted to live in. But I also saw New York. Although the skyscrapers were imposing so were the drunks sleeping on the sidewalk right off 34th Street and Fifth Avenue. The jostling and rudeness of the pedestrians and cab drivers, the filth of certain sections of Brooklyn and the Bronx also made me wonder what was going on and Goethe's words, "Wo viel Licht ist, ist viel Schatten" came to mind. Indeed where there is a great deal of light there is also deep darkness. It wasn't that city life itself repelled me, because I had come from a big city, but it was the arrogance of "we are the biggest and the best" by some of its inhabitants who thought that when they went across the Hudson into New Jersey they had gone slumming.

Just as I had to leave Stalin behind in Vienna there was the determination this is not for me, there had to be a better place. I found it first on Staten Island because, although a borough of NYC, it had a semi-rural character in those days. The real America, however, was in Minnesota and the rest of this vast country where people didn't throw insults at each other but lived in peace with their families and neighbors. There was the opportunity to grow and develop. As the Mayo brothers, who had stamped out a world renowned medical center in the cornfields had said, "Here is an opportunity, what you do with it is up to you." That was the spirit and the challenge. You had a chance and no one else to blame for your under achievements. We had different opinions on a variety of subjects but didn't insist that our own was the only correct one. We addressed strangers by Mr., Mrs. and Miss. or whenever appropriate by our academic titles. It wasn't snobbishness but in so doing we showed good manners and respect for each other. "Every Tom, Dick and Harry" was a byword if one wanted to refer to uneducated or nasty people. God was a reality in people's lives and honesty a virtue. People knew what the word "shame" meant. When Senator McCarthy started slandering people his career was finished with one sentence by the defense counsel, "Senator have you no sense of decency left?"

Little did I know in 1950-51 that in New York I had seen the future and that there was no escaping from it. The "elites" of the crooked axis: New York, Washington and California have imposed their stamp on the country and now the rest of the world is supposed to followed suit. But what does this Western civilization, which we are defending really look like? Yes, I can still write and say what I do but one wonders how long? The Homeland Security Act and the Patriot Act may soon regard opinions which dissent from the "party line," and there is no doubt that we have one, treasonous. People are already afraid to openly discuss certain taboo subjects. You can revile God, slander the Catholic Church, teach sex in school rather than religion, question whether or not we ever did go to the moon, but there is one subject which remains holy and that is the Holocaust and the safety of the state of Israel. These have become inextricably linked. It wasn't always so.

I have two editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica. The full 24 volume set of the 1960 edition and a CD ROM of 1999. A comparison is instructive. In the full set neither the word Holocaust nor Auschwitz appears as a subject. The persecution and destruction of European Jewry is covered in one paragraph under Hitler where it says, " in German-occupied Europe between 4,500.000 and 5,500.000 had been killed by the end of the war as the only solution in Hitler's view to the Jewish 'problem.'(This approximate total is a compromise between the 6,000.000 quoted during the Nuremberg trials and the 4,500.000 later admitted by German sources). The sufferings of other races were only less when measured in numbers killed. Such barbarism was indiscriminate, even where, as in the Ukraine, Hitler might have encouraged nationalist feelings to his own advantage." The 1999 CD reports in a long article devoted to the Holocaust that 5,700.000 were killed and there was no longer any reference to the suffering which had been inflicted on "other races." In the Auschwitz article the world is now told that in this particular concentration camp estimates of death "from all causes vary greatly, usually cited as between 1,000.000 and 2,500.000 but sometimes reaching 4,000.000." Yet, the November 25, 1947 edition of The New York Times stated in a report on the Cracow trial of Auschwitz KZ guards and officials that they had been responsible for the deaths of 300,000 prisoners.

Does it matter how many people were "really" killed? No, but what does matter is that the more time elapses the larger the figures grow. What is more important, however, for people who live in a democracy and believe in the freedom to investigate historical events as objectively as possible is that the Holocaust is off-limits. In Europe there are laws against it and one loses not only one's reputation but can be sent to jail even if one simply wants to scientifically examine the methods which were used in the perpetration of this crime. One may now say: Well, that's Europe. But how long will it be before such a law is being passed here? The leaders of the Jewish community seem to believe that by elevating and magnifying the Holocaust, and by stifling all dissent, the people of the world will develop more compassion for Jews. This is unrealistic because the policies of the current government of the state of Israel produce hatred rather than pity. America is seen as aiding and abetting these policies and, therefore, European anti-Jewish sentiments will inevitably arise here also. The current issue of Foreign Affairs shows a picture of an antiwar demonstration in Paris from October 2002 where a somewhat morose looking young lady holds up a placard. It has a picture of Hitler, with his familiar bullet proof uniform cap, in the top center who says "grâce à Sharon & Bush ma reléve est assurée!" This sentiment that "thanks to Sharon and Bush my revival is assured" is unfortunately not a fantasy and appeals to the Holocaust, or law suits will not prevent it.

The extent to which the Bush administration is beholden to the Sharon government is perhaps best exemplified by the fact that Bush's "road map to peace," which he touted during the fall, is being kept secret and was not released to the press when Sharon expressed his displeasure. This does not go unnoticed by the rest of the world and it is only a matter of time till anti-Jewish sentiments will spill over onto our shores. The policies of our administration make it inevitable. This is a tragedy and I am especially disappointed because I had put such high hopes on the Bush administration. I had voted for the man and was delighted when he was finally confirmed by the famous single vote of the Supreme Court. I had been deeply disenchanted with Clinton's performance in office and breathed a sigh of relief that now honesty and sanity seemed to be returning to Washington. I wrote and distributed Whither Zionism? in the assumption that our politicians might benefit from a brief history lesson on the Middle East which was obviously the powder keg about to explode further. It was ignored and events proceeded from bad to worse. Prior to 9/11 our president seemed singularly disinterested in foreign policy, until the wake-up call came. On September 11 he was confronted with a choice between vengeance and justice. He chose vengeance and we have not yet seen the outcome of that decision. Let there be no doubt, Bush's reaction to Osama's challenge was not foreordained. It was a deliberate, conscious, but possibly impulsive choice. He announced that war had been declared on the United States and the rattlesnake motto, "don't tread on me" was invoked. Bush would show the world whom they were dealing with. Are we rattlesnakes, or human beings? When one considers the size of our country and its economy, the 9/11 tragedy can be compared to a mosquito bite. Bush has elevated it into blood poisoning with an ever increasing drain on lives and resources.

In last month's installment I mentioned Bob Woodward's statement that Bush characterized himself as a "gut player." This assessment was repeated in the current issue of Time magazine. In the article "Double-Edged Sword" the relationship between Bush and his Vice President is discussed. "Bush had the zeal to make the war on terrorism his mission; Cheney provided the theology. 'With Bush, it's all gut; its visceral,'a White House official says.'He hates Saddam. He's an evil guy who tried to assassinate his dad, and he's gonna get him... '" Do we have a Captain Ahab at the helm of our ship of state who will go after his white whale, come hell or high water? This surely is a chilling thought. His crew of Cheney, Rumsfeld and their supporters keep cheering him on and there is only the lonesome General Powell who is likely to be swept aside in the events of the next month.

Barring divine intervention the war with Iraq seems all but inevitable. Obviously the Lord has a number of options which range from helping Iraqi colonels assassinate Saddam, a massive devastating earthquake that levels the center of Washington and gets rid of all politicians, an invasion by space aliens and the like. But apart from the first one these seem rather unlikely and fate will take its course. At some point in the next 6 weeks the inspectors are likely to be ordered out of Iraq, regardless of what they do or don't find, just as happened in 1998 when Clinton sent a few rockets. This time it won't be just rockets but boots will follow. This is inevitable because one cannot possibly assemble such a vast invasion force in the Gulf States, as we are doing now, and then tell the troops, "Thanks for coming, but it's time to go home!" This is so preposterous that it need not be discussed further.

The only question is the date when the sky over Baghdad will be raining bombs again. Our president may have to coordinate this with his "good friend" Ariel. Sharon has an election coming up on January 28 and is likely to win. His opponent the well-meaning mayor of Haifa, who runs on the sensible platform of disengagement from the occupied territories, will probably get beaten. Sanity is not in demand; neither here nor in Israel. Once Sharon is firm in the saddle again there is nothing that can stop the war because the map of the Middle East needs to be redrawn in Israel's favor. There are already rumblings from Jerusalem that Sharon is not happy about the Lebanese who had the audacity to drill a well in their own country which diverts water from the Jordan river upon which Israel depends. They also tolerate Hizbollah which intermittently sends some rockets into Galilee, and since they wouldn't do so without Syrian support this state which "harbors terrorists" will also have to be democratized by military means. Furthermore, this could be finally the opportunity to get rid of the Palestinians who can be expelled into Jordan and this country will likewise become a democracy under joint Israeli-U.S. protection. Then the dream of a Greater Israel, some Zionists had longed for since the establishment of the state, will have been realized. This is not total fantasy because we have been told that the U.S. and Israeli Chiefs of Staff are coordinating their plans for the upcoming war.

There is no doubt that all of this is militarily feasible because the mentioned states are simply no match for our "precision weapons" with their "depleted" uranium war heads which smash through whatever is in their way and subsequently leave it as a radioactive health hazard for ever and ever more. That this is a fact of life is testified to by the remainder of Iraqi and Serbian tanks in their respective battlefields. All right, we have achieved our military objective, now what? We are going home and let the rest of the world clean up the mess we have left behind? This seems to be the thinking of our planners. But Mars has a nasty habit that once his door has been opened he enjoys himself to such an extent that he is loath to go back and have the door shut on him again. The above painted scenario assumes that after we've "democratized" the mentioned states we are free to go after the junior partner of the axis of evil, Kim Jong Il, get rid of his bomb and then liberate the Iranians from their ayatollahs. Oil will flow in abundance, the economy will boom and re-election is in the bag. The Wilsonian dream has been achieved, the world is safe for democracy, the messianic kingdom has arrived and will endure as Pax Americana forever. Is this really how the people who are responsible for our future see the world?

The fly in the ointment is those nasty Muslim extremists who are supposed to stay quiet and keep Musharraf, as well as all our other clients in the area, in office. They may not be inclined to do so and are bound to extract their price from us by continued terror attacks. Regardless how many laws and restrictions are being passed there is simply no way to make us "safe." Again, Israel is the model and the warning. They went this route since 1967 and are currently worse off than they were before that war. This is a lesson one doesn't want to hear about and will, therefore, have to be relearned.

But back to the title of this essay and Deconstructionism because this is what our leadership and intellectuals are engaged in. The word did not exist as a concept in the 1960 Encyclopedia Britannica but it does show up on the mentioned CD ROM. When I looked for it, the article on Nietzsche appeared. He was the father with his Umwertung aller Werte, transvaluation of all values, which his as well as Freud's disciples put into practice. The phenomenal irony is that Nietzsche's evil genius was released by microscopic worms, spirochetes, which slowly but surely ate up his brain. We have to thank a prostitute for this gift to the world. Had he not lost, due to syphilis, the function of parts of his frontal lobes, he would not have shown this phenomenal lack of inhibition and he would not have produced the books he became famous for. Die Geburt der Tragoedie, Morgenroete , Froehliche Wissenschaft and whatever else he had published prior to 1883 wouldn't have made a ripple among intellectuals. It was Zarathustra and what followed thereafter, written in a manic state, which cemented his fame.

It surely makes one wonder what runs this world. Maybe Empedocles had the answer twenty four hundred years ago. He posited the cyclical dominance of one of two forces: Love and Strife. While Love is constructive, Strife tears apart. In the nineteen-fifties we still had Love in this country, it degenerated into Lust and now Strife rules. How long will it be before Love has a chance to return?





February 1, 2003

RHETORIC OF WAR



In contrast to magazines which routinely predate their issues by several days, these essays are indeed sent to the web on the mentioned date. This means, however, that in these fast moving times events may occur which were unexpected and have to be commented upon. The Columbia shuttle explosion which happened this morning was one of those. What might have been simply a national tragedy, similar to the Challenger disaster, has potentially the makings of an international catastrophe. One of the crew members was an Israeli Air Force officer and the hopes of his entire country were flying with him. He was the shining star in the midst of gloom which was suddenly extinguished in a mass of disintegrating debris. Since mission command had lost contact with the shuttle crew 15 minutes before impact, while the shuttle was still at an altitude of 200,000 feet, any type of terrorist action initiated from the ground is highly unlikely. Nevertheless, there is hardly any doubt that conspiracy theorists will immediately go to work, especially since the Israeli officer had piloted one of the planes that bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981. It is clearly too early to gauge Israeli and American reactions to this tragedy and I shall abstain from speculating. The following article was written during the past two days and inasmuch as today's tragedy does not invalidate any aspect of it I shall leave it in its original form.



This was the week where the course for the current decade and possibly beyond was set. Sharon was, as expected, re-elected and has already spurned an offer by Arafat to enter into negotiations about the conditions the Palestinians are forced to live under. There will, therefore, be continued stalemate and further bloodshed in that country. As predicted in the April 1, 2002 installment Palestinian State or Israeli Protectorate, Sharon has in the meantime indeed re-occupied the West Bank and major portions of Gaza, although he has so far refrained from martyring Arafat. To foresee events like these does not take special prophetic powers. All one has to know is the character of the leaders of a given nation and their actions become predictable. Any hope for an early peace in Israel has been destroyed by Sharon's re-election and the situation will continue to have to go from bad to worse. Eventually the Israelis may wake up, say enough is enough and follow Mitzna's disengagement plan which actually dates back to 1968 as pointed out in Whither Zionism?. Unfortunately the majority of Israelis are not yet ready to face these harsh facts of life and continue to believe that Might makes Right, that fear will spawn hate, and hate combined with military force will eventually triumph. That was also Hitler's fantasy.

The fate of Israel would not necessarily be of major concern to Americans had our politicians not yoked us, apparently irrevocably, to Jerusalem's policies for reasons which were spelled out in the Unholy Alliance article of May 1, 2002. President Bush seems to have a rather simplistic view of the world. There is only good and evil. He has declared after 9/11: Who is not with us, is against us. The inhabitants of this world are now being divided by Washington into those who are good, i.e. they agree with America's point of view; or evil, namely those who disagree and especially those who oppose us by means of terror. States who pursue an independent nuclear policy are "rogue states" and have to be dealt with by the American military. We are after all "the only superpower" and have the best trained army in the world. As the former Secretary of State, Madelaine Albright, reportedly told the generals who were reluctant to get entangled in Balkan politics: what good is it to have such a wonderful military if you don't want to use it? Now we have a President who does want to use it because it has been reported that he sees himself as an instrument of Providence to rid the world of evil. An inner belief of this type should raise concern because it brings inevitably past history to mind.

In his State of the Union speech our President made it clear that he feels America has been chosen by history to rectify evil throughout the world, but most urgently in Iraq. "America and the world will not be blackmailed . . . . A brutal dictator with a history of reckless aggression, with ties to terrorism, and great potential wealth in a vital region will not be permitted to threaten the United States." He has "shown utter contempt for the United Nations and the opinion of the world . . . . It is up to Iraq "to account for what happened to the "25,000 liters of anthrax, the 38,000 liters of botulism toxin, the 500,000 tons of sarin, mustard and VX agents" as well as the "30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents." The "high strength aluminum tubes" capable for developing nuclear weapons were also referred to although an hour earlier the Chief Nuclear Weapons Inspector, Mohamed El Baradei, had told us in a TV interview that the aluminum tubes had nothing to with atomic weapons, and that his experts have so far been unable to detect anything that would raise concerns. The President then asked the rhetorical question what all of this arsenal is good for. "But why? The only possible explanation, the only possible use he could have for these weapons is to dominate, intimidate or attack." He could "resume his ambition of conquest and create deadly havoc in this region . . . . Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy and it is not an option." Subsequently the President enumerated again the major sins Saddam has already committed. He used poison gas "on whole villages leaving thousands of its civilians dead, blind or disfigured." He, tortured "children while their parents watched." Saddam's CIA personnel poses as scientists and the real scientists are forbidden to talk to UN inspectors on pain of death, which includes their families. In Saddam's prisons tongues have been ripped out, skin burned with acid and there is rape. The President declared that "If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning." He went on to say that "We fight reluctantly, we strive for peace," but "if war is forced upon us we will fight in a just cause with just means, sparing the innocent," but we will "fight with the full force of the American military and we will prevail." Although God has been banished from U.S. schools He seems to be alive when needed and the President concluded with the assurance that He will help us and finished with the familiar refrain of "God bless America."

I have recited the essence of this speech in such detail because Central Europeans of my generation have heard this type of language before when an attempt was made to create enthusiasm for war, which was notably lacking by the populace. The year was 1938 and the evil person, for Germany was in those days Mr. Benes, the President of Czechoslovakia. In the middle of September the Sudeten crisis was in full bloom. Chamberlain had twice, unsuccessfully, met with Hitler who had kept upping the ante and war seemed imminent. Hitler's September, 26 speech in the Sportpalast gave the signal for, and the cause of, the impending war. As everybody knows he was, like Fidel Castro, exceedingly loquacious and his speech - reprinted in Domarus' Hitler Reden 1932-1945 kommentiert von einem Zeitgenossen - takes up 8 pages even in shortened form.

Before going any further let it be understood quite clearly that I am not comparing the person of President Bush with Hitler; or that of Saddam Hussein with Benes. All I intend to do is to show how the rhetoric which is used to whip up enthusiasm for war is timeless, the same the world over, and can be used by anybody. Here are some key morsels from that speech but I am somewhat handicapped by Domarus excerpts' because the main hate tirade against Benes was omitted. Domarus merely mentioned that it had occurred. Nevertheless what is printed is enough to give the flavor. The following are direct quotes when translated from German. "The question which has so deeply concerned us during the past months and weeks is well known: It is not so much: Czecho-slovakia, it is: Mister Benes," whom Hitler called "the father of lies, responsible for the slaughter [niedermetzeln] of thousands of Germans." Hitler then went on to recite, what Domarus appropriately calls, the "Parteierzählung," namely his regularly repeated mantra of how he, the poor orphan and unknown soldier, had been led by Providence to first head the party, then the Reich and now, after the incorporation of Austria, Greater Germany. But eventually he got back to Benes who had created this state (Czechoslovakia) from a lie because he promised a Swiss type model where all the minorities were supposed to have had equal rights. This never came to pass "he started a regime of terror!" When members of the three and a half million German minority protested they were "shot down . . . . Mr Benes had decided to slowly but inexorably exterminate the German population . . . . He has succeeded to a certain extent. He has thrown innumerable human beings into the deepest despair. Through unabashed use of his terror he has succeeded to silence and frighten these millions while at the same time the international obligation of this state became clear. This state [CSR] is now used by Bolshevism as its entry door," and it represents an airbase which threatens all of Germany. Benes' enslavement of the people by the military leads "to gruesome figures: in one day 10,000 refugees, on the next 20,000, one day later now 37,000, again two days later 41,000, then 62,000, then 78,000, now there are 90,000, 137,000, and today 241,000. Entire districts are being depopulated, villages are being burned down; with grenades and gas one attempts to smoke out Germans [ausräuchern] . . . . The time has come for plain talk . . . . If anybody has that amount of patience as we have had in the past one can surely not say that we are eager for war." Hitler ended the speech with the statement that he had given Benes his outline for a peaceful solution, which included incorporation of the German speaking areas of the CSR into Greater Germany. "The decision is now in his [Benes'] own hand! Peace or War! He will either accept this offer and give the Germans at last their freedom or we shall bring about this freedom by ourselves . . . . We are resolute! Mister Benes may choose now!"

Let me re-iterate, there is no doubt that Hitler not only exaggerated but used outright lies, especially when he declared in the same speech, that once the Sudeten question has been settled in his favor he has no further territorial demands in Europe and specifically, "we don't want any Czechs." His motive, however, was not the plight of the Sudeten Germans but Czechoslovakia had to disappear so that he could then proceed with his march to the East. Lest there be a misunderstanding I want to state once more that President Bush and his speech writers acted in good faith but the point is that rhetoric has consequences and in this respect the two speeches are a good example for how to inflame public opinion at home and abroad. Hitler's war against Benes was avoided at the last minute by the Munich conference, which is now universally condemned as appeasement. Nevertheless, it had its value at the time because neither England nor France could have helped the Czechs in 1938, just as they could not help the Poles a year later, when they did declare war on Germany. The year England gained enabled her to build up the RAF and defeat the Luftwaffe in the battle of Britain another year later. Chamberlain deserves better than the "bad rap" he is currently receiving. While Churchill pushed for war in 1938 and is now held up as the paragon of wisdom it must be admitted that although he won the war he lost the empire as a result of it. The outcome of wars tends to be quite unpredictable.

But back to the President's speech and the comparison. In both instances, the adversary is depicted as an individual consumed by utter evil. In both instances figures are trotted out, to demonstrate that an intolerable situation exists. In both instances it is emphasized that if the condition is not immediately rectified the most dire results will occur and in both instances the choice between peace or war is attributed to the adversary. The danger in Hitler's case was the threat of Bolshevism, which had served him exceedingly well throughout his career, and in the current instance it is the specter of atomic or biochemical annihilation of our cities by terrorists. Although Hitler did not use the phrase "this war which has been forced upon us" on this occasion it was regularly employed after the victorious Poland campaign, when he saw no reason to continue the war with the West. He wanted to go East because that was where the empty spaces and material resources lay which he coveted.

Bush's premise is that America is in mortal danger from this "madman," Saddam, and immediate action to disarm him is required. But just as in 1938 there is a hidden agenda. Disarmament is clearly not enough. It needs "regime change" and unless there is a coup inside Iraq, or Saddam were to be willing to go into exile with his family, as well as the top leaders of the Ba'th party, this can only be accomplished by American military ground forces. But we don't want just "any regime," we need a client state in the area because there happens to be the proverbial elephant in the living room in the region of whom nobody talks about here. It is Israel, who as our friend and not just ally, needs friendly regimes as neighbors. Neither the Turks, the Syrians, the Jordanians, the Saudis and maybe even the Kuwaiti seem to be particularly afraid of Saddam's WMDs. So it does boil down to Israeli politics, the regional nuclear superpower. Bush's rhetorical question why Saddam needs his WMDs has another answer. They are Saddam's life insurance and not necessarily intended for the purposes mentioned by the President. His nuclear reactor was bombed once by the Israelis and he may want to make sure that if they attempted to interfere again in what he regards as his own internal affairs they would suffer the consequences.

Now let us take this point a step further. Granted that Saddam has no conscience and will do anything to stay in power. Granted further that he has some WMDs, does it follow that he will use them to antagonize us on purpose? I have dealt with this question in the December, 2001 installment on War on Terrorism and can find no reason from his past behavior that he is suicidal. The total annihilation of his country would be assured if he indeed launched germ or chemical warfare against us without a prior invasion. Let us in addition think unpopular thoughts and place ourselves in his shoes. The President has declared that "trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not an option." What would you do if you were to be devoid of a conscience, your life is on the line, and your country is invaded by a superior force? Would you not want to use whatever WMD is in your arsenal and in addition give some left overs to known terrorists? Thus our policy instead of decreasing the threat of terror might actually increase it geometrically.

This leaves aside the unrest which is likely to be spawned in other Arab and Muslim nations, who have a vast revoir of human suicide bombers. Our announced policy to stomp out evil in the world wherever it exists cannot succeed. It assumes a static world, where we can enforce our will wherever we want. This assumption is fundamentally flawed because the laws of physics assure us that for every action there is a re-action. We also know from history that there are no "final solutions." "A New Order" in the world by rearranging borders has always had a short life span. It was pursued by Hitler in Europe, by Japan in East Asia, and most recently by the President's father, who promised that he would "bomb Bagdhad back into the stone age." The only universal law of life is change and Fukuyama's "End of History," in the sense of absence of wars and revolutions, will never arrive as long as there is a human rather than humane race.

It seems clear, to me at least, that whatever we do in the Middle East cannot lead to permanent peace in the area unless the Palestinian problem is addressed. It is this purulent wound which poisons not only the region but our active support of Israeli policies, threatens our own future and that of our children. Last year the President chided the UN for not enforcing its decisions on Iraq and he did so again this week. But Iraq and North Korea are not the only states which thumb their noses at the UN. So does Israel and the silence from our part in this respect is truly deafening. Nevertheless, the rest of the world sees what is going on and will accuse us, not without good cause, of hypocrisy. Hiding behind noble words and calling opponents to Likud policies anti-Semites is not likely to succeed forever and we are squandering whatever good will America has built up in the world over the past century.

Neither is it correct to assume that all the people in this country, and abroad, who oppose a war against Iraq at this time are professional protesters and "cooks." We have faith-based groups both here in Utah, as well as the country at large who do not believe that the current situation meets the Christian theologic preconditions for a "just war." Abroad, Germans are chided for being opposed to the war, because they should toe the American line. After all, we have liberated these ingrates once, and the French even twice. That Americans have insisted after WWII that Germans change into pacifists is not to be remembered. Furthermore, citizens of the former Greater Germany have their collective noses utterly full from, "Führer befiehl, wir folgen." They did follow their leader, blindly trusting in his good will, and it destroyed their countries. Questions about the wisdom of leaders should not be ridiculed or snuffed out but honestly debated. This debate should take place in broad daylight rather than behind closed doors.

The most important question is: Why Now? This is the first question every physician asks when a patient comes with a chronic illness. Our Secretary of State will give the answer to the world next week. But, General Powell please pardon me for being skeptical. If we had unequivocal proof for Saddam's imminent threat to our shores we would have no hesitation sharing it with the rest of the world. The fact that the President himself did not announce it this week seems to indicate that he wants to gain some additional time. The Turks should cooperate with an invasion from the north and the buildup of military forces in the Gulf. seems to have progressed slower than expected. There may also have been some procurement snags with the protective suits against toxic agents. But as the President said, "We are talking weeks and not months." This is the point where Rhetoric of War comes back to haunt us. The President has painted himself with his own words into a corner from which he will find it very difficult, if not impossible, to extricate himself. Words have consequences and once they have left the mouth of the speaker they assume a life of their own.

In the February 2002 installment The Great Satan I have made the point that when one is faced with a difficult decision whether to act immediately or consider first the potential consequences, one should keep in mind that God has time! The good and the true will still be available to us after deliberation and consultation with others. Only "satan," the adversary, lacks time and urges us into precipitous action. When we are told that "time is running out," we have both the right and the duty to ask "Why?" A reasonable course of action would be to allow the UN inspectors whatever time they require to do their job. Saddam cannot be an immediate threat as long as they are in his country and we can use the time to address other more pressing issues. The economy needs to be rescued here at home, rather than stressed further with a war and a prolonged occupation of Iraq. The war against terrorism needs to be continued with international cooperation of police and intelligence services. The job in Bosnia, Kosovo, rump Yugoslavia and especially Afghanistan has been left unfinished. We promised these people better lives but have failed to come through with the necessary action. To promote HIV-AIDS relief for Africa is laudable but hardly deserves the priority assigned to it by the President when we have so many other pressing problems and a massive, steadily growing, budget deficit. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, we should use the time gained, by allowing the inspections to proceed, to finally use our influence to bring the Palestinian tragedy to a reasonable conclusion. By showing genuine impartiality towards Jews and Arabs alike we may be able to turn world opinion in our favor again. We should not allow the perception to continue that Israel's policies determine those of Washington. The elephant in the living room has to be addressed. If we don't do it ourselves the Arabs will, but in a manner we are not going to like. Concrete actions which promote peace and good will should now be the order of the day rather than Good and Evil rhetoric and "My way or No Way."





March 1, 2003

FROM HOMO SAPIENS
TO THE NAKED APE



In the middle of the 18th century the botanist Carolus Linnaeus bestowed the title Man the Wise on our species and genus. This sense of pride and optimism seemed to be justified because of the phenomenal strides which were being made at that time in the sciences and humanities. It was the era of the Enlightenment which laid the foundations for our modern world. The fundamental laws of physics, discovered in the previous century by Newton and Huygens, were refined. In medicine Boerhaave introduced bedside teaching; Halle wrote the first modern textbook of physiology; Morgagni introduced the anatomic concept into the diagnosis and treatment of illness; Réaumur not only invented the thermometer but also showed that the first stage of digestion results from the action of stomach acid, rather than fermentation or contraction of muscle walls as had been assumed previously; Galvani demonstrated that muscle can contract as a result of electricity, and these are just a few names from a long list.

It was, however, the social philosophers starting with Locke, and subsequently Hume, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire who led the fight for reason over religious dogma. All of the then current knowledge was compiled in a seventeen volume encyclopedia to make it available for the people at large. As Diderot one of the editors remarked, "Our children, better instructed than we, may at the same time become more virtuous and happy." D'Alembert, the other "encyclopedist," remarked: "Our century is the century of philosophy par excellence. If one considers without bias the present state of our knowledge one cannot deny that philosophy among us has shown progress." It was probably no coincidence that at the same time harmony was added in music to the previously prevalent polyphony, and in the decorative arts what was termed rococo, which stood for lightness, grace and elegance, became dominant.

Nevertheless the fact that all was not well with Homo sapiens was hinted at in politics, which went on as usual. Frederick II of Prussia, who became known as Frederick the Great, started his "preventive war" in 1756. He had previously exploited Austria's weakness after the death of Charles VI by taking Silesia away from the young Maria Theresia who had inherited her father's empire. Austria's coalition with France and Russia in 1756 was supposed to have rectified that situation and to put Frederick in his place. But nobody expected that it would last seven years. When der grosze Fritz (Hitler's model) had finally won with the assistance of British money and the fortuitous death of the Czarina, which removed Russia from the alliance, the face of the world had changed. France had lost most of her overseas possessions in America as well as India to the Brits and was financially exhausted. Austria had not only permanently lost Silesia but the House of Habsburg which had supplied the German Emperors for the past several centuries was now challenged by the Hohenzollers of Prussia. The conflict between Berlin and Vienna as to who was to have the dominant voice in German affairs had begun and found its culmination on March 15, 1938 when the German army paraded before Hitler over Vienna's Ringstrasse. The ultimate symbolic irony was that the reviewing stand had been erected in front of the monument to Maria Theresia who had led the fight against the great Fritz. She had to stare at Hitler's rear end who represented everything that was abhorrent to the Austrian spirit.

Apart from Prussia, the other winner was Britain because the foundations for her empire, which lasted somewhat less than two hundred years, were laid with this treaty of Paris in 1773. While they basked in glory for a few years they soon found out that the American colonials were now no longer content to remain colonials but in the spirit of the enlightenment wanted their say-so in the London parliament. British arrogance refused to talk to these uncouth upstarts with the American War of Independence the outcome. It was a given that the colonists could not have won their war against the British had the French not smelled a chance for revanche and supported Washington. All the rest is, of course, known but if one were to ask any American High School graduate today what role Montesquieu had played in this whole drama one would get a "Monte who?" Yet it was he, who in his The Spirit of Laws had laid down the principles how a state should be governed. It was precisely this document that gave rise to the American Constitution, which is so sadly abused today.

To return to the consequences of the 1773 Paris' treaty. While in the short run the British prospered, it laid in the long run the foundation for the demise of their empire. They had nurtured Prussia into a semi-great power but the Hohenzollerns were not satisfied with that and when they demanded full equality with the British. This had to be denied to them because the Kaiser was "evil." The result was WWI, which led in turn directly to the second one. The other phenomenal irony of history is that Hitler actually wanted to help preserve the British Empire because it held the "inferior races" in their place and because he was a man of the infantry rather than a sailor. Overseas possession could be safely left to the Brits as long as they acquiesced to his taking the European East for German colonization. But Churchill, the navy man, was suspicious and wanted to preserve the empire under American protection. That Roosevelt had no use for empires, except his own, dawned on him too late when England was no longer in a position to refuse American demands. Churchill had survived the war, one really shouldn't say won, but he had lost his job and the empire. The real winners were America and the Soviet Union. Our President should ponder this fact of history when he contemplates the picture of his hero which supposedly hangs in his office. He might also keep the fate of both Churchill and that of his own father in mind. After they had been successful in their wars, they were removed from office!

By 1789 and 1793 when kids started playing soccer with decapitated heads in the streets of Paris under the name of liberty, equality and brotherhood some doubts as to the perfectibility of our species were bound to arise. As the sciences progressed Lamarck developed the concept of evolution in form of a ladder. At the bottom resided the ameba and Homo sapiens was still on top. Darwin subsequently substituted the ladder for a tree and established the close kinship between man and apes. Interestingly enough he called his epochal book the "Descent" of Man rather than "Ascent" and as history has proven subsequently this was amply justified. Even more apt was the date when the book was published. The Franco-Prussian war had also started in 1871. The quick victory with the resultant unification of Germany under the Prussian king, who became German emperor, pushed Austria irreversibly into the Balkans and was as such another cause of the Great War slightly over forty years later. The humiliated French wanted revenge, the Brits didn't like the arrogance of Cousin Willie, and the Russians had no use for the Austrians in the Balkans.

Nationalism had become the rallying cry of the age. Nations had to be liberated from their "oppressors," and the way was paved for what Grillparzer (Austria's greatest 19th century dramatist) called, "from humanism, through nationalism to bestialism." Small wonder that Nietzsche appeared on the scene a few years later with the Uebermensch as the solution to the problems of the human race. The will to power where the stronger dominate, and if necessary exterminate, the weaker in perpetual warfare provided the justification for the events of what has been called the "execrable" twentieth century.

Although Darwin had already disabused us of the notion that human beings are something special and had shown that our emotions find their counterpart in other animals it was up to Professor Desmond Morris to finally put us in our place. Homo sapiens was gone and The Naked Ape emerged in 1967. The book with the same title was an instant bestseller and it is still rightly regarded as a classic. In it Dr. Morris detailed with great care how all of our behavioral traits in regard to: child rearing, exploration, fighting, feeding, and comfort seeking are in no way unique but simply the expression of our animal heritage.

As a zoologist Dr. Morris did not address himself to the problem of verbal and written language, our proudest achievement. For a neurologist like me language, and its function in health and disease, is of course of paramount interest and it has become obvious that the abuse of language is nowadays the greatest danger to our civilization. The spoken and written word allows us not only to express our desires, fantasies and opinions but it has also enabled the naked ape to create a truly staggering array of lies, with which he threatens and deludes himself as well as others. This brings us to our current century which has all the hallmarks of becoming even more "execrable" than the one we have left behind.

Why should this be so and why do wars repeat in endless cycles? The simple answer is that human passions have never changed and only the excuses for war have. As is apparent to anyone who has a grasp of history wars never solve a problem they simply pave the way for the next one. In addition the last century has shown that wars have become increasingly vicious and that the lines between combatants and the civilian population have become thoroughly blurred. When cities are bombed and the infrastructure for the population is destroyed in order to eliminate the enemy one should not be surprised that adversaries who lack military power will use guerilla tactics, which have never differentiated between civilians and soldiers. When the "terrorist" leader of the Irgun Zvai Leumi, Menachem Begin, blew up the King David hotel in Jerusalem in 1946, because it was the headquarters of the British mandate forces, and killed 91 people the end, namely the creation of a Jewish state, justified the means. By 1977 he was Prime Minister of Israel and in 1978 he received the Nobel Peace prize, jointly with Anwar Saddat. The fact that he was in violation of numerous UN Security Council resolutions urging Israel to vacate the territories conquered in the 1967 war (which was likewise waged for "preventive" reasons) was obviously of no concern. One need to choose one's "friends" wisely and when one has the backing of the United States one can safely ignore the UN.

Saddam Hussein was not so lucky. He thought that he could get away with an invasion of Kuwait but that was not to be condoned and our erstwhile friend and ally against the Ayatollah of Iran became the "Butcher of Baghdad" who not only had to be give up his ill-gotten gains but has been under quarantine ever since. Currently the Bush administration regards it as imperative that he be removed from power within the next few weeks, come what may. As is obvious from the foregoing power politics are as old as civilization. What is somewhat new is that it is no longer admitted to but couched in moral language. Saddam is not just another despot, with a long history of others of his ilk, but he is profoundly evil and it is this evil that our morality requires us to lead a "just war" directed towards his removal.

At this point Homo sapiens has fully abdicated and the naked ape has come into his own. Some of today's newspaper headlines are telling, "The True Ethical Position Is to Give War a Chance and Vanquish Evil;" or "Time to Go to War and Exterminate the Evil Butcher of Baghdad." Although Saddam has no means to significantly harm the United States while Kim Il Jong of North Korea does, we are told that it is "moral" to remove Saddam but it would be "immoral" to apply the same treatment to little Kim. The latter could retaliate and cause significant casualties while our losses in Iraq, apart from "collateral damage" to Iraqi civilians are likely to be minimal. With other words it is moral to go after a weak bully but you better stay away from one who could significantly hurt you. This is the law of the jungle and has nothing to do with morality.

In order to make an Iraq war palatable the American public is currently being subjected to an incessant barrage of fear and hate. During the "hadj" our government had decreed that we have to live under "code orange" of serious danger and which is only one step removed from code red, where presumably the whole nation comes to a grinding halt. This alert sent people scurrying to stores for duct tape and plastic sheets to make their homes terrorist proof. Two days ago the risk was reduced to yellow which indicates only "significant" threat conditions. Since yellow is a color which is in the popular mind not particularly associated with heroism, Osama can congratulate himself on how our leadership has taken and continues to take his bait.

As far as hate goes the same author, who wants to "exterminate" Saddam also wrote this week that "Bush Must Bring Hammer Down on Militant Muslims in our Midst." In the previous installment "Rhetoric of War" I have mentioned that Hitler and President Bush used the same type of language to influence their respective audiences. Now Cal Thomas, the author of the two mentioned pieces, chimes in with phraseology right out of the Goebbels kitchen. In 1938 we could have read in the Stuermer that "We must smash the Jewish Danger in Our Midst." By the way Mr. Thomas regards himself as a Christian, whose wish for the Israelis to expel all the Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank and Gaza so that the Jews might finally enjoy most - Jordan and Syria would still be missing - of their promised land, was discussed in the July 2001 installment.

There is no doubt that a small number of militant Muslims who plan to wreak havoc exists in our country. But who defines a "militant" Muslim? What must he have done to earn the label of terrorist suspect, let alone terrorist? This is the slippery slope we are on and which allows the government through hasty legislation to undermine the freedom the fathers of this country have fought for and which the majority of the people want to see preserved. But this becomes impossible when a climate prevails where "The Virtue of Hate" is advocated. An article under this title appeared in the February issue of First Things and the author, a rabbi, declared that, according to the Talmud, a Jew is "obligated to hate" a "hopelessly wicked" individual. I happen to know that the Talmud is an encyclopedia where you can find anything whatsoever to prove your point and I know also that Jesus did not die for the Talmud! Furthermore who is going to play God, and certify someone as "hopelessly wicked?"

Our current war against terrorism is as I have mentioned repeatedly a war of religious opinions and we must now be honest and specific. Osama bin Laden as a self appointed representative of Muslim fundamentalism has at his goal to bring his brand of religious fundamentalism to the Muslim world. After the recent tape was made public I received an e-mail which stated that Arabic speaking people got a completely different impression as to what bin Laden had actually said. I followed up, typed "bin Laden tape" into Google and presto there was his speech as reported by the BBC. I have a fondness for this network which dates back to my youth when, as reported in War&Mayhem, I sat glued with one ear to the radio in the afternoons to hear: Hier ist London mit der Sendung fuer die deutsche Wehrmacht. Had I been discovered it would have meant KZ but it was the only way to get correct information as to how the war was going. It is gratifying to know that at least the BBC can still be trusted so many decades later.

At this point I shall let him speak for himself rather than putting words in his mouth. But I will only give brief excerpts because anyone interested can readily find the full text on the net. Bin Laden emphasized that "fighting should be for the sake of the one God," rather than for "championing ethnic groups, or for championing the non-Islamic regimes in all Arab countries, including Iraq." Osama has no use for Saddam and his "socialist" regime but the "mujahadeen brothers in Iraq" should not be afraid of the American weapons because the Americans are fearful of engaging in hand to hand combat and trench warfare. He also exhorted "honest Muslims" to "incite, and mobilize the [Islamic] nation, amid such grave events and hot atmospheres so as to liberate themselves from those unjust and renegade ruling regimes, which are enslaved by the United States . . . to establish the rule of God on earth." The states which fell into this category were listed as "Jordan, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, the land of the two holy mosques [Saudi Arabia], and Yemen." He also urged "patience" during the fight because Americans are known to have little, and "martyrdom" because there is no effective defense against it. Furthermore, "fighting in support of the non-Islamic banners is forbidden" and "Socialists are infidels wherever they are, whether they are in Baghdad or Aden." The support of Saddam is, therefore, simply a marriage of convenience just as the one between Churchill and Stalin was during WWII. The enemy of my enemy is my friend was the slogan and as Churchill put it at the time, "If Hitler invaded hell I would even find kind words to say about the devil."

Apart from infidel Arab regimes the other main enemy of Osama is the state of Israel. Let us remember that the entire raison d'être for the re-establishment of the state after two thousand years in the Middle East, is a supposed promise to the Hebrews by the same one God of Osama. That this promise exists only in a book written by Jews for Jews is of no concern for fanatics who cherish dogma more than reason. The predominantly Christian U.S. is involved because of our unquestioned support of Israeli policies to the detriment of Palestinian Arabs. Instead of Christians acting as peacemakers the evangelical group, to which according to a recent book by his erstwhile speech writer David Frum - author of the infamous "axis of evil" phrase - President Bush belongs, supports the Israeli side as outlined in the May 1, 2002 installment under The Unholy Alliance.

With oil as the final prize for some, and religious fervor by others, war seems all but inevitable in spite of the fact that our administration's rush has in the meantime hit some speed bumps. Dr. Blix, head of the UN Inspections team, has proven less pliable than our hawks had hoped; the French and Germans have voiced serious reservations, and even the Turks were not entirely happy to have their country used as a staging area for invasion. They not only wanted guarantees that the money we bribe them with for their cooperation will really be forthcoming but also that they have a sizable military contingent to take part in the invasion under their own officers. We chided them, of course, because all we really want to do, we say, is to defend them from Saddam, but nearly ninety percent of Turks are more afraid of our intentions than his. There is also the delicate issue of the Kurds who don't want the Turks to come in and they already threaten with war if they Turks do. In addition within the Kurdish political groups we have the Iranian Shiites on the one hand and secular ones on the other who also vie for who gets first to the oilfields near Mosul. But our administration believes that all these are minor details which can be handled with money and threats. The fact that we are confronted with an increasing budget deficit also does not enter into the equation because as soon as the oil starts flowing in abundance our financial worries are supposedly over.

Nevertheless, apart from the street demonstrations at home and abroad there are additional voices of discontent which include among others the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Furthermore, our regular military forces do not have sufficient personnel and the reserves as well as the National Guard are being mobilized to be sent abroad. This has a serious impact on families because these people hold jobs which in the current economic climate, may or may not be available when they come back. In addition many of these reservists are either in law enforcement or firefighters and as such in the first line of defense if a catastrophe were to happen here. This leads to the absurdity that we defend our country by invading Iraq while at the same time reducing the forces we need for "Homeland Security." Women are also going to war overseas now and as one little kid cried: "Why does mommy have to go? Why can't daddy?" Yes indeed! This little one has to thank Ms. Friedan, Steinem and others of their ilk with the idea that a woman's first priority has to be herself rather than her children. But in some instances both mommy and daddy have been called up and left. Who will take care of these little ones who are left behind? The grandparents, if they are so lucky to still have them. Furthermore since the professional military, even with the reservists and National Guard, is seriously understaffed to meet the global excursions we intend to embark upon it becomes likely that the draft will sooner or later have to be re-introduced. At that point peace marches will erupt to an extent that may dwarf the Vietnam era and the entire so called "Foreign Policy" of this administration will collapse. This is the real state of our country and all the war propaganda cannot hide these facts.

The evening of February 25 was also instructive. First we saw a speech by President Bush to a selected audience where he laid out his vision for the future and about an hour later we were show an interview Saddam Hussein had granted an American reporter. As we know our President believes that Saddam presents an acute and growing danger, which must be eliminated before anything else can be done. Once the Iraqi regime has been removed the liberated people will joyfully cooperate with the necessary American occupation and the Iraqi oil revenues will flow into their pockets. Since the Palestinians will no longer enjoy Iraqi financial and emotional support they will give up suicide bombings and the Israelis feeling secure will stop building settlements and agree to the creation of a peaceful Palestinian state. President Bush is an honest man but if he really believes this fantasy he is grievously mistaken. Iraq is currently contained, has no means to successfully attack its neighbors - we are told that the Iraqi army is only a third of what it was before the previous Gulf war - and it is precisely the Palestinian problem which keeps fueling the anger in the region. The president seems to harbor the illusion that there will be dancing in the streets of Baghdad, when the GI's arrive as was shown on our TV sets when the Taliban were routed from Kabul. But the Afghans are no longer dancing, some of them are taking potshots at our peacekeepers and Karzai needs American Special Forces for protection. That is the reality. It is the long range effect which counts not the first few hours or days.

The interview of Saddam Hussein by Dan Rather was also revealing. The Iraqi president handled himself in a calm and deliberate manner and was careful not to give cause for offense. A telling small detail was when one of the Iraqi interpreters translated a sentence about the former President Bush as "Bush," Saddam interrupted and said that he had said Mr. Bush, he didn't say president because he was no longer president, but he was Mister Bush. Saddam knows the media, how they will pounce on a small detail and subsequently distort it. This he wanted to avoid. His claim that his people will follow him to the death because they had given him recently a one hundred per cent vote of confidence was, of course, baseless. On the other hand his suggestion to publicly debate President Bush via satellite hook-up so that the world could judge the actions of these two leaders was a shrewd one.

The debate idea was, of course, immediately nixed by Washington because the non-compliance of Israel with UN resolutions and the obvious double standard which the Bush administration is applying vis á vis Israel and Iraq would have been brought up. Furthermore, Saddam might have gone even a step further and explained that he would gladly disarm and keep the inspectors in his country indefinitely if Israel got rid of its WMD's under UN inspection. Inasmuch as this is, of course, highly unlikely to ever happen continued warfare is assured. This is also obvious because our administration is unwilling to talk directly not only with "The Butcher of Baghdad," but also the "loathsome pygmy" who is in charge of North Korea. Thus the naked ape will persist with what Barbara Tuchman has called the March of Folly. By not talking to adversaries because they are beneath contempt and inherently evil: pride, greed and delusions will be the real reasons why history will have to repeats in endless cycles of ever increasing violence.

This is the point where we need to part with the naked ape and allow Homo sapiens to re-emerge from the shadows. We ought to say to our politicians: stop and listen, there is a better way. Yes, we have all the characteristics of other species' within us but we also have something in addition. This is the tiny spark of reason which can lead us to conduct ourselves not merely as lying, deluded naked apes but in the manner we were intended to act. Our geneticists have now told us that we share more than ninety per cent of genes with mice. Are we, therefore obligated to behave like mice? Even if geneticists were to tell us in the future that one hundred per cent of our genes are identical with those of some anthropoid apes we can still say: So what? A whorehouse, as well as a cathedral are built with stone, wood and glass but they surely have different purposes. We have been given free will and we can choose where we want to spend our mental time: in the gutter or in company of the divine? But the divinity that lives in some of us does not label others as good or evil who need to be rewarded or punished but who sees homo sapiens both as an opportunity and obligation to strive towards a higher goal which unites the inhabitants of this planet rather than sets them against each other.

Once upon a time Homo sapiens lifted his voice in ancient northern India and declared: "think of pleasurable objects, and you will become attached; from attachment will come desire, when desire is thwarted you will become angry, when you are angry your mind becomes confused and you lose sight of life's purpose. This fundamental psychological insight was also formulated as the Buddha's first and second noble truth: Life is full of Suffering, and the Cause of Suffering is Craving. This is as valid today as it when it first uttered twenty five hundred years ago, but it is ignored. Yet ignorance is not bliss and will inevitably lead to further suffering even for those who literally call the shots today on both sides of the fronts.

Our country is in great danger, not from the currently identified enemies, but by being led down a road which threatens to destroy our soul and lead to despotism. The old proverb "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" is again proving true. Those of us who feel that the impending war against Iraq is a serious mistake also know that this is just the warm-up. After Iraq's defeat comes the turn of all the other "rogue-states" and there is no end to the corruption of our souls. But in spite of all the fear and hate-mongering Homo sapiens is not yet extinct in America. As one protester who took to the streets put it recently: "Bush must really be screwing up to bring out the mainstream." We, as individual citizens, are not likely to be able to change the course of history but that does not mean that we have to follow blindly and willingly to wherever a given administration wants to lead us. Homo Sapiens differs from the Naked Ape in this respect and will direct his efforts toward a reduction of suffering rather than inflicting more in the mistaken assumption of doing good.





March 15, 2003

IDES OF MARCH



This article had been submitted to the Salt Lake Tribune but since publication is far from certain it is presented below.

The Ides of March are upon us again and decisions are made which will affect our lives as well as those of our children and grandchildren for decades to come. Let us, therefore, step back for a moment and reflect upon the origin of these words. On March 15, 44 B.C. Brutus, Cassius and other Republicans murdered Caesar in the Capitol because they wanted to rescue Rome's republic from incipient despotism. What did they get? Mark Anthony’s fiery funeral oration precipitated a brutal civil war between the followers of Caesar and those of the Senate. Two years later Brutus and Cassius committed suicide when they were defeated by Octavian and Mark Anthony. A shaky coalition between the victors lasted for a few years but by 30 B.C. it was open warfare again. Mark Anthony lost, committed suicide and Octavian became Caesar Augustus, the undisputed ruler of Rome. What Caesar's murder was supposed to have prevented came to pass anyway. But, as they saying goes nowadays, this is ancient history and our college students tend to be told "it's all about dead white males" anyway, so why bother?

There was, however, another March 15 which changed the world and I witnessed it. This was the day when Hitler proclaimed from the balcony of Vienna's Hofburg the annexation of Austria. The Greater German Reich was formed on that day and with it began the road to WWII. Without Austria, neither Czechoslovakia nor Poland could have been invaded. The Greater German Reich was supposed to have lasted a thousand years but made it only for seven. If a Cassandra or Jeremiah had told the cheering crowds on that day that seven years later American bombs would ruin their city, that the Red Army would occupy it, and Stalin instead of Hitler would be calling the shots they would have declared her/him as insane. But that was precisely what happened. The consequences of violent political acts are always totally unpredictable and unexpected. This brings me to the current situation.

Those of our citizens who believe that a "preventive" war against Iraq is wrong are now labeled as "Ideologues" of "appeasement," as Mr. Lavender recently put it. Bill O'Reilly on his "no spin zone" is even more outspoken. While he reluctantly tolerates dissent from the current party line he has made it clear that if demonstrations against the war persist after the shooting has started the participants are "bad Americans." Let me now go back again to March 11, 1938. On that morning I awoke as a "good Austrian." Although I was only twelve and a half years old my family was conservative and had no use for Nazis. We looked forward to the plebiscite which was supposed to have been held the coming Sunday, March 13, and we were sure that the government would win the declaration that Austrians want to have a free and independent country. Since Hitler knew that this would be the outcome, the plebiscite was not allowed to take place. The Schuschnigg government was forced to abdicate, a Nazi government was installed during the night of Friday 11, and by Saturday morning we awoke to the roar of the Luftwaffe which had come to "liberate" us. This was the phrase which was given as the reason for the invasion. At that moment I had, in official parlance, become a "bad Austrian" because I was not in favor of this liberation. By the following Wednesday morning I had become a "bad German" because Austria no longer existed. I had not changed my views from Friday to Wednesday. They had remained the same but politics, over which the individual citizen has no control, decreed the difference in classification. The details of these events are documented in a book I published a few years ago.

Eventually I came to America because I wanted to breathe the air of freedom. I became a citizen and on the day I received citizenship my wife and I celebrated with champagne. We were and are good Americans. The Clinton scandals deeply disturbed us and we voted for the Governor of Texas in the hope that he would bring honor and sanity to the White House. But since his administration seems to be in the process of dismantling the very foundations which made America great and to which I swore allegiance, out of my own free will, I am now in danger of being labeled a "bad American."

Mister Lavender's article which caused me to write this reply quoted from Thomas Friedman's book that "When it comes to thinking about Middle East politics, the American liberal mind is often chasing rainbows. They are living in a world of delusion." This is correct as far as it goes except that the word liberal needs to be omitted. It is a conservative administration which tells us that when Iraq is defeated, democracies will spring up all over the Middle East, the Palestinians will get their state, Israel will be safe and for all practical purposes the messianic age will have arrived. This is the delusion for which we are now asked to shed innocent blood and deplete our economic resources.

In August of last year about a dozen of us Utahns saw this imminent war coming and were granted an audience with Senator Bennett. We didn't bring placards but reason and laid out why a war with Iraq, before the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy is resolved, cannot bring peace but only greater disasters. We were a cross section of law abiding citizens ranging from descendants of Mormon settlers to immigrants like myself. Unfortunately we were met by a closed mind. The senator listened politely but answered all of our concerns with the administration's stock mantra: Saddam is evil, he has weapons of mass destruction which he may give to terrorists, he has invaded neighboring countries and gassed his own people. I called it a mantra here because it is mindlessly repeated over and over again without ever considering the context in which these actions occurred. I pointed out to the senator that Saddam was 65 years old and this is not an age where one willfully engages in political adventures. It is in their forties and fifties when politicians are most dangerous. By the middle sixties a peaceful life in security and splendor is much more desirable even for dictators. But as mentioned our presentations were of no avail.

We are also frequently told that Saddam is a "madman," and as such his actions are totally unpredictable. After having watched the Dan Rather interview I can confidently say that this is not the case. He is a shrewd, calculating, ruthless dictator who will do whatever is necessary to remain in power. Arming terrorists to hurt America does not fall into that plan, because it would be self-defeating. We are being told, furthermore, that we have to go to war because we have to liberate the Iraqi people from an evil dictatorship. As mentioned I have been "liberated" twice. First by Hitler from Schuschnigg and then by Stalin from Hitler. It took Austria ten years and the death of Stalin before the country was really free again and decades more to repair all the damage those ides of March 1938 had caused. The lost lives can, of course, never be replaced.

When we are told that Iraqis will dance in the streets of Baghdad when GI Joe and Jane come walking in, just as they danced in Kabul, we should remember that they are not dancing in Kabul any more. Potshots are taken on American peacekeepers and President Karzai has to have American Special Forces protecting him because he can't trust his "liberated" people.

So what should our administration have done? We should have agreed to a continued inspection process, if needed indefinitely, because as long as the inspectors are in the country Saddam's ambitions are hamstrung. To leave the inspectors in Iraq would be infinitely cheaper in blood and resources than first destroying the country and then occupying it for years to come. In addition we should have impartially worked for a genuine peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy. This would have required respect for the rightful aspirations of both sides and would be the only way to bring finally a just peace to the Holy Land. This is what should have been done and this is what some of us have been and are working towards. We are not "ideologues" but people who know war and the concomitant tragedies. It is not the goal of removing Saddam Hussein from power we disagree with, just the means to do so. Although it seems that our efforts are not going to bear fruit in the near future we still owe it to our children to have insisted that there is a better way than the brutality of war.



Now some additional thoughts. It is obvious that as far as the real reasons for this war are concerned, and the behind the scenes maneuvers of the administration, we are to be left in ignorance. Where are the Woodward and Bernstein's who would tell us, for instance, what really went on in the meetings on energy policy held by Vice-President Cheney in 2001? Why are taxpayers not allowed to know who the members of this elite group were which met behind closed doors and why the minutes are such highly guarded "national security" secrets, that even members of Congress are not allowed to get a peek at them?

For clear thinking Americans the moral posturing in regard to Iraq and the questioning of the relevance of the Security Council, because Saddam ignores the resolutions, is bound to sound hypocritical. Israel has refused to meet UN demands to withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza since 1967, and America has never hesitated to use its veto in the security council when Israel's interest were at stake. Now France and Russia are not supposed to do so when they follow their financial or strategic advantages. It has also become apparent that our love for democracies around the world is limited and we infinitely prefer pliable dictatorships like those of Musharraf, for instance, over those countries where freely elected parliaments follow the will of their constituents and object to pre-emptive wars.

As of this writing our president has kindly agreed that he will give diplomacy "one last chance" and delay the UN vote and/or war until next week. We are being told that this is done in order to give Prime Minister Blair more time to come up with a resolution the British parliament can accept. The deal is sweetened further by the belated discovery of the Palestinians' plight who are promised a road map to their very own state. That this road map is doomed, because the Sharon government has absolutely no interest in allowing a viable Palestinian state to emerge, neither PM Blair nor President Bush are willing to acknowledge. As usual it will be the fault of the Palestinians, when the talks break down because they will be unable to rein in their extremist elements. By insisting on Israel's security (defined as no suicide attacks) before giving up the settlements and achieving a functioning Palestinian economy is putting the cart before the horse again. Inasmuch as this is, of course, no secret to administration officials the public is to be pacified by these gestures.

While keeping Tony Blair in power is one reason for the postponement of the war there is also the nasty problem with the Turks. Plan A, the kidnapping of Saddam in October of last year by Special Forces, was shelved as too risky. Plan B was a two pronged attack from Turkey as well as Kuwait. The Turks have unfortunately asserted their democratic right to disagree with American war plans and it may turn into Plan C. Our troops are supposed to halt in front of Baghdad and Special Forces will "leapfrog" north to capture the oil fields of Mosul and Kirkuk. Since this is obviously a more chancy adventure, because the Kurds might get there before we do, the carrot and stick approach is still vigorously wielded to bring the Turks on board. In addition the wavering Security Council members are being subjected to intense pressure so that the so-called "coalition of the willing" has now been dubbed the "coalition of the billing!" American taxpayers, including Congress have so far not had the opportunity to find out how much the destruction of Iraq and its subsequent rebuilding is likely to cost us. The question as to who are the companies which stand to gain from this human disaster, must also not be asked because it might involve "national security." The idea that we might be considerably more secure without inciting further terrorist attacks by this war is also frowned upon in public debate. Furthermore, there has been remarkable silence in our news-media about Israel's request for a handout by Congress to the tune of 12 billion dollars this year. This surely suggests that "we the people" are no longer in charge of our country but are instead ruled by a monarch who yields to an unelected oligarchy and where questioning the wisdom of the country's policies by its citizens is not desired.

In the previous installment I mentioned Montesquieu’s Of the Spirit of the Laws, but there are also the Persian letters (published anonymously in 1721) which are highly á propos. By the way it may soon be unpatriotic to use such French expressions since even "French fries" have already been renamed in government cafeterias and a boycott of French products is advocated. In letter 94, dated Paris 1716, Montesquieu wrote:

International law is better known in Europe than in Asia, yet it can be said that royal passions, the submissiveness of their subjects, and sycophantic writers have corrupted all its principles. In its present state, this branch of law is a science which explains to kings how far they can violate justice without damaging their own interests.

Kings are gone, or have their powers severely curtailed, the people supposedly rule but those two sentences are as valid today as when they were first penned.



On a more cheerful note it was gratifying to hear that Salt Lake City made again national and international news this week. The odyssey of the missing girl, Elizabeth Smart, has had a happy ending when she was found wandering the street in company of her "abductors" right here in our very own Sandy City. The case is surely bizarre and has led to numerous speculations. How can an adolescent from a good home and loving family spend nine months with vagrants without making any attempt to escape or contact her family? The first four months were even spent here in Salt Lake where posters of her face could be seen everywhere. Yet the trio "Emmanuel," his wife, and Elizabeth mingled undetected in public places and were even photographed attending a party. All she had to do at that time was to take her veil off and say: "Help me folks, I'm Elizabeth, I want to go home!" There was no possible danger to her and the only conclusion is that she stayed willingly with Mr. Mitchell and his wife. This is also attested to by the fact that at the time of her arrest she lied initially and pretended to be the daughter of the Mitchells. These are the meager facts and we will probably never hear the full truth because the parents have every right to shield the privacy of their daughter and let her recover from this strange episode.

Psychologists are now spending their time on TV explaining that she was probably a victim of the Stockholm syndrome where hostages begin to identify with their captors. But before there was a Stockholm syndrome Laségue and Falret (again those nasty French, why do they have to be so smart?) introduced in 1877 the term folie á deux, which was later enlarged to folie á trois, when three people were involved. This seems to be what has happened here. A dominant male in the grip of a delusional system converts a submissive female who lives with him to share his delusions which are, not uncommonly, religious in nature. Initially it was the wife, Wanda, who succumbed but she in turn then found a substitute for her own daughter, who had run away from home as a teenager, in Elizabeth. As a good Mormon in an impressionable age Elizabeth then began to identify with the religious delusions of the other two and was all set to save the world. If psychologists and psychiatrists can be kept away from her, the prognosis is excellent because once removed from the environment people always come to their senses again in short order. This applies also to wife Wanda. To send her to prison for at least twenty five years, as has been suggested, makes no sense at all and neither does the death penalty (which we still have in Utah) for "Emmanuel." The man is psychotic and as such good and evil, the terms which are so freely bandied about even in this case, simply do not apply.

Let us hope that reason will prevail and Elizabeth will be left in peace again. Unfortunately this flies in the face of our commercial culture and I'm sure there will be books written about her and her likeness will star in a movie.





April 1, 2003

THE NEOCONS' LEVIATHAN



When I told friends and family that "The Neocon's Leviathan" would be the title of the next installment on this site they had no idea what I was talking about. The terms are not yet household words especially in their juxtaposition. This article was prompted by one of the weekly phone conversations with my brother in Vienna, where we not only discuss family affairs but also the reasons why continental Europe has undergone such a seismic change in its opinions about America. On September 11, 2001 all of Europe and indeed the world grieved with us and today our policies are met with universal incomprehension and by some with fear and hatred. How did this come about?

As always there is no single cause for a given occurrence but a confluence of physical events which bring latent ideas to the fore. There can be no doubt that as Dr. Ullman (who has been credited with coining "shock and awe" as the method of choice in future wars) has written that if Saddam had exported bananas instead of oil we would hardly have undertaken the first Gulf War, of which the second is merely the continuation. Oil is, of course, a factor but not necessarily the only one because we could buy it and make sure that the prices stay reasonably low. But something else happened and that is the Euro. Petrodollars have to be converted into a genuine currency and up to recently the U.S. dollar ruled the roost. Lately, however, with the weakening of the American economy, the dollar has lost against the Euro so that prior to the onset of the war one needed $1.10 to buy 1 Euro (it rose temporarily at the beginning but is currently falling again). Thus the dollar seemed no longer entirely secure and people began shifting to the alternative. From an American point of view this is, of course, intolerable and since the only physical commodity which can prop up the economy is oil, its exploitation must be removed from the locals and placed into American hands. That was at least one assumption which led us into this war.

The other one is about the role America is supposed to play in the 21st century and this is where the "neocons" come in. Irving Kristol, father of the better known Bill Kristol, published in 1995 Neoconservatism. The Autobiography of an Idea in which he wrote:

"Is there such a thing as a 'neo gene? I ask the question because, looking back over a lifetime of my opinions, I am struck by the fact that they all qualify as 'neo.' I have been a neo-Marxist, a neo-Trotskyist, a neo-socialist, a neoliberal and finally a neoconservative. It seems that no ideology or philosophy has ever been able to encompass all of reality to my satisfaction . . . . One 'neo,' however, has been permanent throughout my life, and it is probably at the root of all the others. I have been neo-orthodox in my religious views (though not in my religious observance)[bold print was added in this and all subsequent direct quotes]."

These sentences are extremely revealing because they show that the neo-conservatives as opposed to those for whom it has been a life long creed are actually struggling against their religious beliefs which they transport into the social arena. I am saying this because of what Mr. Kristol had been taught in the yeshiva (the Jewish counterpart to the Muslim madrasa). "Discipline was strict - if we misbehaved in any way, the rabbi would order us to stand up and then give us a stinging slap in the face. He also taught us to hate the goyim and to spit whenever we passed a church." It is to Mr. Kristol's credit that he abandoned these practices, but as a Catholic I was never encouraged by our religion teacher to hate Jews or spit when we passed a synagogue.

This brings me to my brother's question "Who is Kagan?" I had never heard of the man but in my quest for the truth I headed for the Internet and found the article which had upset the Europeans. It was published in June 2002 in Policy Review by the respected Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace under the title "Power and Weakness." One needs to know furthermore that Robert Kagan is also the co-founder, with the mentioned Bill Kristol, of the "Project for the New American Century and he contributes not only to the neocon Weekly Standard and the New Republic but also to the more influential Washington Post. Furthermore, Kagan is a Senior Associate for the Carnegie Endowment and the Director of its "U.S. Leadership Project."

In the mentioned article Kagan polarized the world and the first sentences set the tone:

"It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world. On the all-important question of power - the efficacy of power, the morality, the desirability of power - American and European perspectives are diverging. Europe is turning away from power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation. It is entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Kant's 'Perpetual peace.' The United States, meanwhile, remains mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might. That is why on major strategic and international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus. They agree on little and understand one another less and less. And this state of affairs is not transitory - the product of one American election or one catastrophic event. The reasons for the transatlantic divide are deep, long in development, and likely to endure. When it comes to setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defense policies, the United States and Europe have parted ways."

These are indeed remarkable statements, especially when one considers that they were published in June of 2002 a time when our Secretary of State, Colin Powell, tried to elicit European support for disarmament of Saddam Hussein. Thus it is clear now that he was undercut at the same time by the neocons (Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, Norman Podhoretz, to name just a few of the most important ones) who had gotten the ear of Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and President Bush and who demanded regime change. This fundamental difference of opinions manifested itself outwardly in what the world regarded as the incoherence of American foreign policy. At that point the Europeans balked. Although they agreed with disarmament, thereby removing a potential threat, they did not want to enter on the slippery slope of regime change, because who decides what regime needs to be changed when, and how.

But let us return to Mr. Kagan, his polarization of the world and the attribution of his views to all Americans. At this point I have to admit that I had no idea what he meant with "anarchic Hobbesian world" and "Kant's "Perpetual peace." In order to correct this ignorance one has to go back to the 17th and 18th century for what Hobbes and Kant had really said. Since their writings are voluminous and in part difficult to understand I also had to rely on my old stand-by Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. The following was taken for Hobbes from the Encyclopedia Britannica's Great Books of the Western World, while the original German language Kant article resided in the Marriott library of the University of Utah.

Thomas Hobbes, the son of a Protestant Vicar, was born in 1588 and it has been reported that his mother had been so frightened by the impending invasion of the Spanish armada that she gave birth prematurely. This is why Hobbes commented later that he was born "a twin with fear" and why he "abominated his country's enemies and loved peace." This is not irrelevant for current circumstances because a person whose life is dominated by fear is also likely to hate and the political views will be flavored by these emotions. Hobbes was a convinced monarchist but by 1640 it was obvious that the position of Charles I had become untenable and Hobbes fled to France. While there he published his claim to enduring fame, Leviathan, an exposé of how the state resembles an artificial man, and the rules that should govern the commonwealth. Since he vigorously attacked the Catholic Church in the fourth part of his book he was forced to flee from France in 1651, return to England and submit to the hated parliament which ruled the country at that time. This about face found its repercussion in his book. Nevertheless by 1666 he was persona non grata again and parliament threatened action against the Leviathan. Hobbes was no longer allowed to publish on political subjects so he devoted himself for the rest of his life to his other hobbies: the translation of Homer as well as geometry. In the latter field he managed to come up with a theorem which squared the circle. He was serious about having solved the unsolvable which brought him ridicule rather than renown. By the way, squaring the circle is still figuratively attempted by his followers. Hobbes died at the ripe old age of 91 and these aspects of his life must be known to understand Leviathan.

Leviathan is long, the language somewhat archaic but the central tenants are contained in his "Review and Conclusion" as well as in the chapter by Bertrand Russell. They can be summarized as follows: Man is brutish and desires only self-preservation. War is, therefore, decreed by nature and in it force and fraud are the two cardinal virtues. For the sake of protection, people form a commonwealth (or state, as we would say today) and choose their sovereign. Once he is established he is no longer responsible to the citizenry because they are his subjects who have to obey his will for the greater good. Peace results from submission to authority and since the prime reason for a commonwealth is to protect the individual citizen it is indeed in his best interest to submit. Property rights pertain only to the people among themselves but the sovereign is not subject to the civil law. Since anarchy is the only alternative it has to be avoided even by stringent measures and all attempts at revolution must be suppressed. If, however, a sovereign has been deposed he is no longer in a position to protect the individual and obeisance to the new sovereign has to be made, because even civil authority comes from God as the apostle Paul had declared. There is no difference between sovereignty and tyranny. Tyranny is simply another name used by those who hate the sovereign and thereby the commonwealth because he is its soul. As long as a Christian sovereign does not compel his subject to forego his faith in Christ all his actions are lawful and have to be obeyed. If the sovereign were to forbid the faith the subject has two options: one is to dissemble by submitting in public but not in private, and the other to accept martyrdom. Dissembling is lawful because a biblical precedent exists in the Old Testament.

What Hobbes in fact is telling us that, to put it into a modern context, my fellow Viennese citizens behaved correctly on the morning of March 11, 1938 when they supported the Schuschnigg government because it was lawful at the time, but they behaved equally correctly when they welcomed the new rulers on March 12, because the power had shifted. Hitler was also correct in his actions because the sovereign is supreme and has no obligations to his subjects. According to this view George Washington and the other "founding fathers" of our republic should have been hanged, but once they were victorious they were to have obeyed. This Hobbseian concept found its most recent counterpart in President Bush's remark as quoted by Bob Woodward, "I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain. I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." Students of history will, of course, immediately remember Louis XIV and "L'état c'est moi" (I am the state). But if we endorse this point of view why should we condemn "the butcher of Baghdad?" He is the lawful ruler of Iraq and for Hobbes it is irrelevant how the sovereign got to where he is. The ruler has no one to answer to any more except his god who has put him into power. For Hobbes gaining and holding power is all that counts!

Now on to Kagan's counterpart. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was born in Koenigsberg, East Prussia, and was in his thirties during the Seven Years War when the city was occupied for a time by Russia, a fate which has befallen it again since 1945. This event as well as the subsequent European disasters led Kant to believe that there must be a better way than perpetual war. The article, Zum ewigen Frieden, to which Kagan refers was published in 1795 and should be seen in the context of the French revolution. By 1792 Europe was at war again with France on one side and a coalition of Britain, Austria, Spain and Prussia on the other. In France Louis XVI was beheaded on January 21, 1793 as part of what was then called le terreur instigated by the Jacobins, which also consumed to some extent the original leaders of the revolution like Marat and Danton. By 1794 even Robespierre had shared the fate of all the numerous others whom he had sent to the guillotine. In 1795 the "directorate" was appointed in Paris which paved the way for Napoleon who kept Europe in perpetual war until 1815. What should intelligent people, who were either conscripted into these wars or had to stand by helplessly, have done but suggest possible means to end all this useless bloodshed?

This was the political background to Zum ewigen Frieden. It is also obvious that translations cannot do justice to multiple meanings of what Kant called "A philosophical Entwurf." The word defies accurate translation but tends to mean a first draft of a project, or idea, which one wants to put up for debate. The first sentence of the introduction indicates that the inspiration came from a satirical panel over the entrance of a Dutch Inn "Zum Ewigen Frieden" which portrayed a cemetery. The intended pun tends to be lost unless one knows that the German word for cemetery is Friedhof, courtyard of peace. Kant also requested that his little treatise should not be used for bösliche Auslegung, evil misconstruction, a request which Mr. Kagan's article ignores.

Kant is difficult to read and at times impossible to properly translate but the following key elements deserve to be highlighted:

A peace treaty should be designed only as a treaty of peace if it does not contain the idea of revenge. Otherwise it is just an armistice. For wars to be avoided countries should have a republican form of government. Standing armies should be abolished. States should not incur internal debts to settle external strife. No state should forcefully intervene in the constitution and government of any other!!! No state should allow itself during war those means which make subsequent peace impossible (e.g. assassination of leaders, instigation of treason etc.). Kant recognized the Bösartikeit der menschlichen Natur, the evil inherent in human beings, and for this reason universally agreed laws have to be put in action to keep the beast in check. These laws should be subscribed to by a federation of states. "If a powerful and enlightened nation can form itself into a republic (which by nature has to be inclined to constant peace), it can provide the center for a federal type union of other states [Völkerbund], around which they can gather and thereby guarantee the freedom of the states in accord with international law. and expand thereby gradually farther and wider."

Thus Kant was in fact the father of the defunct League of Nations and now its successor the moribund United Nations because Völkerbund was indeed the German name for the League of Nations.

This gets us back to Mr. Kagan's article. Like Hobbes he seems to be "a twin of fear" and sees power as the only solution to the world's ills. This power has to be wielded by the United States who is responsible to no one. America is currently the strongest military power on earth, therefore, every effort has to be made that this remains so. Since multilateral international agreements hinder rather than enhance, the use of power America should not be bound by them. Europe on the other hand is weak and can, therefore, find its security only in a system of laws which protect the weak. Since Kagan's view of power is strictly military Europe should rapidly re-arm. Inasmuch as American military power is used only for the good of the world it would behoove the Europeans to contribute their share. With other words Europeans should see themselves as an additional resource for American might. Kagan ends his article by saying, "their [America's and Europe's] aspirations for humanity are much the same, even if their vast disparity of power has now put them in very different places. Perhaps it is not too naively optimistic to believe that a little common understanding could still go a long way."

The latter statement is laudable but needs to be seen in the context of another article Kagan published jointly with Bill Kristol in the Weekly Standard on September 3, 2001 a scant eight days before the 9/11 catastrophe. The title was, "A Green Light for Israel." In the article the authors argue that the way to end the Israeli-Palestinian war is for America to give up its "evenhandedness." The authors raise the rhetorical question, "What if we made it clear that, far from pressuring Israel, we planned to back its right to defend itself, and trusted our ally to do the right thing in the very difficult situation in which it finds itself?"

Thus the two articles really complement each other and explain Kagan's view of the world. Israel is the country which lives in the "Hobbesian anarchic world" against which it needs to defend itself to the utmost, by massive military power. The tragedy of 9/11 has subsequently been used to convince Americans that Israel's dilemma is now their own and that they should behave like the Likud government. This stance ignores that the Likud policies, which America is supposed to adopt for the world at large, have been a dismal failure. Israelis are less secure now and their economy is in worse shape than in 1996 when some of our neocons under the leadership of Mr. Perle wrote a position paper for incoming Prime Minister Netanyahu. The title was "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." As far as foreign policy is concerned the article advocated regime change in Iraq and Syria as well as Iran because the latter two countries support Hezbollah which fires intermittently rockets upon targets within Israel. This objective was to be achieved with at least tacit approval if not overt help of the United States. A missile defense system has to be pushed because, "Not only would such cooperation on missile defense counter a tangible physical threat to Israel's survival, but it would broaden Israel's base of support among many in the United States Congress [italics in the original but not bold print] who may know little about Israel, but care very much about missile defense. Such broad support could be helpful in the effort to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem." Furthermore, "Prime Minister Netanyahu can formulate the policies and stress themes he favors in language familiar to the Americans by tapping into themes of American administrations during the Cold War which apply well to Israel. If Israel wants to test certain propositions that require a benign American reaction, then the best time to do so is before November, 1996."

Thus there was to be no "peace dividend" but Americans were to become part and parcel of Israel's perpetual war against its neighbors and the Palestinians. One year later some members of the same group founded "The Project for the New American Century" which pursues the policies outlined in "The Clean Break," and the two Kagan articles, right here in our midst, where Perle, Wolfowitz and Feith have risen to leading positions in the Bush administration. Mr. Perle was forced to hand in his resignation to Secretary Rumsfeld this week (conflicts of commercial interests), but the Secretary would also have done well to follow the advice of his friend Jude Wanniski. On October 9, 2001 Wanniski, founder of Polyconomics, wrote a letter to Rumsfeld "re: The Monkeys on your Back" under the headline "Fire Paul Wolfowitz." The letter is available on the Internet and deserves to be read in toto. As we now know from Bob Woodward's book the 9/11 tragedy was literally a gift from heaven for Perle, Wolfowitz and their friends. Wanniski concluded his letter with Wolfowitz "is a menace and one of the most dangerous men in the world as long as you [Rumsfeld] let him play Defense Secretary. HE MUST BE FIRED [bold print and caps in original].

This is how our administration and the American people were literally "conned" into the Iraq war and Mr. Rumsfeld is likely to be the "fall guy" when the war does not go according to plan. One can also feel genuinely sorry for Mr. Carnegie and past-President Hoover that parts of their Foundations have been hijacked from their noble purpose of achieving peace through laws. Americans now have the choice which of these two visions they want to follow: the Kantian system of laws or the Hobbseian autocracy and perpetual war. Maybe the choice will be easier if we return to the origin of Leviathan. I don't know why Hobbes chose that title but it is a reasonable guess that as the son of a Protestant minister he was steeped in the fire and brimstone rhetoric of the Old Testament. In the King James Version the name leviathan shows up four times. Once in Job, twice in Psalms, and once in Isaiah. Leviathan does not make an appearance in the New Testament and that is why Catholics are largely unaware of the properties of this animal apart from the fact that it's supposed to be big and swim in the ocean. I shall leave Job for later because of the extensive description of this mythical beast. In Psalm 74:14 we are told, "Thou breakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gaveth him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness." On the other hand in Psalm 104:26 he tends to be more benign, "There go the ships, there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein." But in Isaiah 27:1 we are confronted with evil again, "In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea." Admirers of the Old Testament like to believe that the Lord who does the slaying is Yahveh but the biblical authors simply cribbed from an older Ugaritic text which says, "If thou smite Lotan, the serpent slant, Destroy the serpent tortuous, Shalyat of the seven heads." In this instance the slayer was Baal and although it may seem a stretch from Lotan to Leviathan the names become easier to reconcile when one recognizes a) that ancient Hebrew has no written vowels and b) that Leviathan is merely the English rendering of livyatan where the lot morphed into liv while the yat remained. But this is a minor point except that it emphasizes again: only the names change while phenomena and myths remain constant.

More important is the description of the animal in Job 41 where the entire 34 verses are devoted to it in order to demonstrate the power of God over such a loathsome and powerful beast. The chapter is too long to be reproduced here but should be read in toto by those who believe in raw power as the solution to the world's ills. Some samples will have to suffice, "his scales are his pride . . . . out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out . . . . out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron . . . . his heart is as firm as stone . . . . when he raiseth himself up the mighty are afraid . . . . he esteemeth iron as straw and brass as rotten wood." Verses 33 and 34 are the punch line, "Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear. He beholdeth all high things; he is a king over all the children of pride."

Yes indeed and one is reminded of the last sentence in Perle's position paper for PM Netanyahu, "Israel - proud, wealthy, solid and strong - would be the basis of a truly new and peaceful Middle East. This was the vision which was sold to the Bush administration and they bought it. Now is the time when the rest of America is supposed to chime in. But this vision is born of fear and its adherents would be well advised to remember another passage from Job 3:25, "For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me." When, and I am not saying if, the neocons' policies begin to unravel scapegoats will be sought and since a great many of them are Jewish, all Jews will be blamed. This is also part of Kant's "evil residing in human nature."

This is your choice America: you can puff yourself up like leviathan, or you can recognize that pride is a sin and that genuine security results from cooperation rather than domination. Nothing is fore-ordained, the future still remains to be written; but those who place their faith in the leviathan's military might would do well to remember that he was always subject to the Lord, whose ways are mysterious and inscrutable. They should also remember that if there is only one God, as we have come to believe, it doesn't matter by what name different people refer to Him: Baal, Yahveh, Zeus, or Allah.

America is, however, not only a place on a map it is her citizens - you and I - and it is up to us to make this choice, each person individually. There is a story that when Thomas Jefferson left the Constitutional Convention a passer-by asked him, "Mr. Jefferson; what kind of government do we have? A Monarchy or a Republic?" Jefferson answered, "A Republic, if you can keep it!"

Personally I feel that this should be our primary duty. We should re-establish the separation of power between the three branches of government and reject an Imperial Presidency or Imperial Supreme Court. We should demand of Congress to be genuinely responsible to "We the People," rather than special interest, and become transparent as well as accountable to the taxpayers. Senators and Congressmen, rather than their secretaries, should meet with their constituents and listen to their suggestions. We should also demand a stop to the secrecy that surrounds government, in the name of national security, which has made us less secure than at any time in our history. Above all we should relinquish the failed Israeli Likud model of Might Makes Right. In this effort to reclaim our republic we also need the help of those of our Jewish citizens who reject the siren songs of their current spokesmen and opt for a saner, more just, world. Examples to follow might be the editor of Tikkun, Rabbi Lerner, whose central creed is "Love thy Neighbor," or those orthodox rabbis who started a protest by burning the Israeli flag which currently represents oppression instead of freedom. Our Jewish citizens, in order to avoid the looming fate outlined above, should publicly dissociate themselves from their pride-, fear- and hate-mongers and thereby destroy the false monolithic image of "the Jews." If this were done we could have a genuine regime change right here at home in November 2004 and the world might become a better place to live in for all of us.





May 1, 2003

POWER POLITICS OR STATESMANSHIP?



While looting was still going on in "liberated" Baghdad, and her citizens lingered without water and electricity, our Pentagon neoconservatives were already busy talking about the next liberation. We were told that Syria is now the repository of a massive arsenal of WMD's which has in addition been bolstered by Saddam's cache. This is why we a) couldn't find them in Iraq and b) why Syria has to be eliminated. Iran, as another source of chronic evil also has to be dealt with immediately before the mullahs get the bomb. Little Kim Jong Il, on the other hand, has to be treated diplomatically, rather than militarily, because we assume he already has the potential to do us significant harm. It thus becomes obvious that we chose our evils wisely. We use our military against those states we can readily defeat but become considerably more cautious in our ambitions when the stakes are raised.

In the previous installment on "The Neocons' Leviathan" I have detailed the reasons why the mentioned people think the way they do and how the fruits of their thoughts are carried out in actual practice. The key word was "Power" and by that these thinkers mean only military power. The power of the human spirit eludes them and one is reminded of Stalin's quip: "How many divisions does the Pope have?" Stalin's successors found out, and the legions of the Prophet our neocons are inadvertently recruiting are likely to be increasingly heard from. It'll just take time but that is precisely what our "policy makers" don't seem to have. This is not altogether unreasonable because in a republic like ours there is always the specter of an election which might send a given group of oligarchs out to pasture in order to be replaced by another one. Nevertheless one idea seems to be common to Republicans and Democrats alike: America is at the zenith of her power and this power must be preserved and secured come what may. A Pax Americana will now be imposed upon the world and whoever doesn't like it will be made to feel the consequences.

Although I had read the literature which gave rise to last month's article I was still somewhat hesitant to believe that the course laid out by the neoconservatives and their friends will indeed be followed. I was, therefore, genuinely puzzled when I read in The Salt Lake Tribune a brief note under the headline: "Poland. $3.5 billion deal for F-16 is biggest defense contract since Cold War." The short blurb stated in part,

"Prime Minister Leszek Miller, who attended the signing ceremony, said the package reflected 'our partnership with the United States in political and military areas, but also in the economy.' With its complexity and scope, the package underscored strong U.S.-Polish strategic ties, reinforced in recent months by Warsaw's help in the war in Iraq."

When I read this note I wondered "what is this all about?" As a reward for sending a couple of hundred hapless young Poles into battle in Iraq the Polish people are now allowed to buy themselves with their tax money F-16 s? To put this bargain in perspective let us remember that already in the year 2000 (the last year for which I have readily available figures) Poland's economy was in shambles with a per capita income of $6,500 and a trade deficit of $14.3 billion. Due to the world-wide recession since then the numbers can only have gotten worse and the current unemployment rate stands at 18 per cent. Under those circumstances one is surely entitled to ask: What do the Poles need fighter jets for? Against whom are they to be used, since their traditional enemies the Russians and the Germans are no longer a threat?

For the answer to that question I am again indebted to my brother who had sent me as an Easter present the German edition of a book by the French author Emmanuel Todd which was published in 2002 and has already been translated into 11 languages. The original title was Après l'empire. Essai sur la décomposition du systéme américaine, which might be literally translated as: "After the empire. An essay upon the disintegration of the American system." The German translation carried the title Weltmacht USA. Ein Nachruf, which could be rendered as "U.S. world power. An obituary." Well, it's obviously too early to write an obituary but that isn't quite what the Frenchman had said anyway. Nevertheless, his thesis is so striking that amazon.com has so far not put an English translation on the market.

Todd says that America is no longer at the zenith of her power but has begun the downhill slide. Although her military might is currently undisputed, her economic strength has been eroded and she hides this weakness by throwing her military weight around in the world. America has become a debtor nation with a massive trade imbalance, and internal deficit, while Europe is recovering from the disasters of her two civil wars, WWI and WWII. Europe including Russia as well as Japan, China and South Korea are net exporters of goods while America has been relegated to the role of consumer. This, in the long run, is incompatible with America's continued role as the world's only remaining superpower. Thus, a balance between the combined strength of Europe and Asia and that of the Americas is likely to evolve in the future.

Now the pieces of the puzzle fall into place and the emphasis on military power by the neoconservatives and their allies all of a sudden makes perfect sense. If one sees America as the empire which is destined to enforce its values around the globe one must do everything in one's power to prevent other countries from gaining the possibility to challenge one's rule. This means that Europe must not be allowed to unite but the "new Europe" has to be set against the "old Europe." The Euro, which has steadily been gaining strength and now trades again, after the dollar's brief rally during the Iraq campaign, about ten percent higher than the dollar, must be weakened. Poland's entry into the Euro zone is undesirable and the country has to be kept tied to the dollar. Petro-dollars will also have to become greenbacks again. Russia, practically a continent with immense potential natural resources, must be left in economic doldrums and chastised as being undemocratic. Every effort will also have to be made to create unrest in China because this colossus of more than a billion and a quarter intelligent people is bound to challenge, in the long run, America's hegemony over East Asia. This can only be avoided when, under the banner of "human rights violations," the Soviet Union's fate is meted out to China and she sinks again into competing fiefdoms of warlords. Divide et impera, divide and conquer, served the Romans well and the idea seems to be that what worked two thousand years ago will work just as well now.

Under these circumstances Poland being forced to buy herself fighter jets makes also perfect sense. The American economy has to be stimulated and there isn't all that much manufactured paraphernalia we have to sell. Computers, cars and other technology one can buy cheaper from Asia but in military hardware we are unsurpassed. That is also the reason why Kagan, in his article which was mentioned last month, insisted that Europe needs to re-arm. Why? I asked myself, when I read it. Whom are the Europeans supposed to shoot, kill, and bomb? Al Quaeda terrorists, the IRA, Basques? The answer is now obvious. It doesn't matter that the Europeans are sick of war, have no external enemies, and don't really need a new arsenal. What does matter is that they buy our lethal equipment and thereby not only stimulate our economy but also create fear, dissension and instability around the world.

There's only one problem where the new Rome and its Pax differ fundamentally from the old one. Neither Hannibal, Mithridates nor any of the other enemies of Rome had the bomb! It can no longer be de-invented and we have to live with it. This ought to be a sobering thought for would-be imperialists. Pakistan has the bomb and its "democracy" is unstable. China has the bomb and Russia's arsenal is also still relatively intact. We have no monopoly on power politics and if we want to "pre-empt," sooner or later others are bound to do so also. We will then indeed have an Armageddon of unheard of proportions. But it is highly doubtful that at the end of it Jesus is going to arrive with his army of Saints and set up an enlightened despotism. Yet this seems to be precisely what some of our fellow citizens seem to have in mind.

If America continues to pursue the political course she has embarked upon and continues to use the September 11 tragedy as a mask to hide imperial ambitions there cannot be even a semblance of peace in this world. The chimera of a messianic kingdom where one power rules eternally is a bedtime fantasy for children. It cannot come to pass on this earth because the laws of physics and motion are against it. Force produces counter-force and the only constant is eternal change. Statism has never existed and can never exist on this planet.

In previous installments on the "Deconstruction of America" and "From Homo Sapiens to the Naked Ape" I have already documented how far America has strayed from the path she had set out upon in 1945 at the height of her glory. It was America who had proposed, although subsequently not endorsed, the Kantian principle of a League of Nations under Wilson, and its successor the United Nations under Roosevelt. Recently I re-read the Preamble of its Charter and there is hardly anything else that needs to be said in order to show how far we have departed. Here are just a few highlights to jog our collective memories,



"We the people of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

To establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and

To promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, and for these ends

To practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, and

To unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and

To insure by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and

To employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples, have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims [bold print added]."



Although the U.S. has not yet repudiated the UN and its principles de jure it has done so de facto. In last year's speech before that body our President made it quite clear that the UN is relevant only as long as the member nations agree with and help carry out, our policies. America's right to act independently of the UN was also enshrined in a document signed by President Bush on September 17, 2002 entitled "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America." While the introductory letter pays lip service to international cooperation the document itself spells out quite clearly that we shall use international cooperation on our terms only and reserve the right to initiate military policies without regard to international agreements when we feel that it is in our interest. The same applies to international treaties which deal with other global matters such as the environment or the International Criminal Court.

It is obvious that the UN has never lived up to its high principles but no human institution has ever been able to live up to lofty ideals. Power politics has prevented it and is likely to continue to do so. Nevertheless, to abandon the road of international law, as we seem to be in the process of doing, can only bode ill for the future. The UN, flaws and all, is still the only representative organization where all countries big or small, democratic or authoritarian have a forum and their concerns can first be listened to and subsequently, hopefully, acted upon with the blessings of the majority of that body. We seem to be tempted to walk out on the UN because our wishes can be vetoed in the Security Council. But if we do so we sign its death warrant and the real WWIII (I don't agree with the Pentagon's assessment that the Cold War represented WWIII) becomes inevitable. This is the reason why European scholars, like Emmanuel Todd, regard America as the most dangerous country in the world today. No longer able to dominate economically she has to do so militarily and thereby violate the established legal international order.

True statesmanship would require the insight that no empire is immortal and that the strength we still possess should be used to create, by peaceful means, conditions around the world which take the wind out of the sails of would-be terrorists or "rogue states." Our political moralizing, which divides the world between the good and the evil is not only hypocritical but harmful because it is bound to backfire. We cannot live up to the image of goodness we are trying to project, for a variety of reasons. But one which is paramount in the eyes of the Arab world is our unwillingness and/or inability to solve the Palestinian question. President Bush has announced that after the Iraq war he will not only unveil, but in concert with the EU, Russia and the UN, enforce his "road map for peace" in that troubled region of the world. He may genuinely believe that he will be able to do this but the experience of his father in this respect should tell us that this outcome is far from assured.

Let us step back to spring and summer 1991. In a spectacular 100 hours campaign the Iraqi army was routed from Kuwait and President Bush I enjoyed an unheard of popularity rating. This was not limited to the American public but represented a widespread feeling around the world. The invasion of another country had been stopped and UN values, which do not allow for annexations through force, had been upheld. President Bush then tried to translate this military success into a political one by bringing an end to the Israeli-Palestinian war. While Secretary of State, James Baker, worked feverishly to bring Arabs and Israelis together for the Madrid conference, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was working just as hard to convince Congress to give Israel a $10 billion loan guarantee to help with the absorption of the new immigrants from the Soviet Union. Inasmuch as this "loan guarantee" - a polite word for donation - would likely have been used for the creation and expansion of settlements in the occupied territories the elder Bush balked. Arabs would obviously have been in no mood to negotiate when we are seen as blatantly favoring Israel at that critical juncture. Bush was not against the loan guarantees per se but he did want a postponement of 120 days. Inasmuch as AIPAC's efforts were, however, all but assured of success President Bush gave on September 12, 1991 a special press conference where he went over the heads of Congress. J.J. Goldberg in his book Jewish Power. Inside the American Jewish Establishment relates what happened. After Bush had made his pitch for Congress to delay action on the bill

"he said, that he was 'up against some powerful political forces' bent on thwarting his will. Congress, in fact, appeared on the verge of approving the loan guarantees without him.

'I heard today there were something like a thousand lobbyists on the Hill working the other side of the question,' the president barked, pounding his fist on the podium with an anger usually reserved for foreign despots and congressional Democrats. 'We've got one lonely little guy down here doing it.'

The 'political forces' confronting the president at that moment were about thirteen hundred leaders of local Jewish organizations from across the country."

Goldberg tells us that this was merely the culmination of AIPAC's four months long campaign and Bush saw himself threatened to have to use "the first veto override of his presidency." Bush won that battle. Support on the Hill dwindled but he was made to pay a bitter price. The White House was deluged with angry letters and phone calls from irate Jewish citizens who felt that their right to petition Congress had been infringed upon and within five days the President had to write an apologetic letter to Ms. Shoshana Cardin of Baltimore who was at the head of "the powerful forces." The apology was grudgingly accepted but the damage was done and efforts began immediately to deny President Bush his re-election, which had seemed all but assured. Goldberg writes,

"On November 5, 1991, seven weeks after Bush's fateful press conference, America went to the polls for an off-year election that should have held few surprises. The one interesting race was a shoo-in contest in Pennsylvania, where a U.S. Senate seat had been opened up the previous spring by the accidental death of John Heinz, an attractive, moderate young Republican. The GOP's candidate was the popular ex-governor, Richard Thornburgh, another moderate and one of President Bush's closest allies. . . . His Democratic opponent was a little-known college professor, Harris Wofford, who had once served in the Kennedy administration. As of September 17, Thornburgh was forty-four points ahead in the polls."

Within one week after President Bush's press conference the flow of money began to reverse course in the Pennsylvania electoral campaign. While on October 16 Thornburgh still had a two to one fund-raising lead the situation reversed itself completely in the final weeks before the election. "Donors with Jewish surnames who had made up nearly 10 per cent of Thornburgh's October 16 filing, were almost totally absent from his final report. . . .  What had happened was that from all across the country, outraged Jews (and some passionately pro-Israel Christians) were focusing their anger at George Bush on his friend Dick Thornburgh. The accidental beneficiary was Professor - soon to be Senator - Harris Wofford."

After his loss at the polls Thornburgh told Bush that he was the sacrificial canary Pennsylvania coal miners use to check the air in the mine shaft. Goldberg relates the conversation, “‘Mr. President, I'm your canary. You've got a leak, and if you don't do something about it, it's going to get you too.’” Well we know what happened thereafter. President Bush dragged Prime Minister Shamir screaming and kicking to Madrid which later on led to the ill-fated "Oslo peace process," and by November 1992 Clinton was voted in as the next President of the U.S. The official story line was that Bush had lied to the American people about not raising taxes, when he found himself pressed to repudiate his promise, and that the economy was in dire straits. While these were some factors they were not necessarily the determining ones. As the currently well known James Carville, who was then Wofford's campaign manager and who went on to be Clinton's thereafter, is quoted as saying "the press conference did indeed 'hurt Thornburgh bad.' . . . It hurt Republicans in Jewish fund- raising. And we started raising a lot more money.' "

When the 1992 votes were tallied Bush had received 12 percent of the Jewish vote, Perot 10 per cent and Clinton 78 per cent. One may argue that Jewish voters favor Democrats anyway but in the 1988 election Bush had received 35 per cent while his opponent governor Dukakis, who even had a Jewish wife, was relegated to 64 per cent. Obviously it is not the individual American Jewish voters who swing an election but the fund-raising efforts and the allegation of anti-Semitism against those who don't toe the line, can surely have an impact.

This little lesson of history may not be lost on George W. The current $9 billion loan guarantee had smooth sailing in Congress but that does not make the "road map to peace" any easier. Jewish voters are still, by and large, adamantly pro-Israel and so is one of the President's core constituencies the evangelical right. If President Bush wants to avoid the fate of his father he cannot afford to alienate either of these two groups and "leaning on Israel" does not seem to be a viable option. This is the political reality in America.

In Israel the situation is hardly different. Although Israelis are sick of war they want peace on their terms rather than a solution which is equitable for both sides. Prime Minister Sharon has recently said that a Palestinian state is inevitable, and that painful concessions will have to be made, but it seems apparent that these words are for public consumption rather than indicating a genuine change of heart within his party. The Likud party program www.jewishsf.com/bk990514/iparties.shtml prior to the 1999 elections which swept Sharon into office stated,

"PEACE PROCESS

Likud rejects the creation of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. The party will honor all international agreements signed by previous governments. The party will work to strengthen settlements and prevent their dismantling. Jerusalem will remain the united capital. There will be no negotiations over the city's future. There will be increased Jewish settlements in all parts of Jerusalem. No diplomatic activities will take place in Orient House [Palestinian Authority headquarters in Jerusalem]. The Israeli police presence in eastern Jerusalem will grow."

This was the platform Sharon campaigned on and which led him to win two elections. In spite of the fact that this party program is in direct violation of the UN charter and International Law it was adhered to. Jewish settlements in the occupied areas, including east Jerusalem, proceeded at a rapid pace so that the Palestinians now have to live in disconnected islands. They cannot readily go from one town or village to another without crossing specified checkpoints and the main highways in the West Bank, the so-called "bypass roads," are for Israelis to travel on but off limits to Palestinians. The difficulties Bush's "road map for peace" is confronted with can be readily appreciated when one looks at a genuine tourist road map as advertised in the Jerusalem Post. Characteristically the map is called "Carta's Map of Judea, Samaria & the Gaza Strip,” because Israel refuses to acknowledge the UN principle that acquisition of territory by military power is illegal. First the term "occupied territories" was abandoned in official Israeli parlance, then the word "territories" also disappeared, and now there is only "Judea, Samaria and Gaza Strip!" It was hoped to create facts on the ground which will make a meaningful contiguous Palestinian state for all practical purposes impossible. The Carta map, which shows on its title fold a nice shiny car traveling along a modern highway between hills dotted with trees and settlements, reveals the success of these policies and the resultant break-up of Palestinian lands. It is highly regrettable that this map is not shown by the American media, including television, because the American public is thereby kept in ignorance of the true facts and can readily be misled by skillful propaganda. Once the "road map to peace" collapses, just like the Oslo peace process did, the blame will, in all likelihood, be placed again at the feet of the Palestinians for their stubborn refusal to appreciate Israeli generosity and for the persistence in their fight for liberation from occupation.

Our current President loves to think in terms of "good and evil" but he might be well advised to remember what happened to Adam and Eve when they gorged themselves with “the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil." They lost their paradise and since our president regards himself as a "born again Christian" it might also be useful for him to recall Satan's temptation of Jesus. In the wilderness Jesus was promised power over all the kingdoms of the world if he were to fall down and worship Satan. Our president now has this power for a fleeting moment of history. Will he give in to the seducers around him who offer even more glory? Or will he say "No, enough bloodshed! Henceforth we go the way of cooperation with others rather than that of domination?" That would be statesmanship!

Although Mr. Bush is not likely to ever read these lines I do have a suggestion for him. On one of his Sunday mornings at Camp David he might want to sit down in the woods with a copy of the New Testament and ponder Luke 11:24-26. We know that he quoted the preceding verse 23, "He that is not with me is against me,” but the subsequent ones are of even greater personal importance for his soul. They contain the story of a man from whom an unclean spirit had gone out. After this particular demon had wandered around restlessly he decided that he might as well visit his former host again and found the house "clean and garnished. The he goes and takes to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. " I am not saying that our president will resort to the solace of alcohol again, from which he regards himself as having been redeemed by Jesus; but I am saying that he finds himself now in dire danger of some so-called friends and advisers who will try to use him for their pet projects. History is not only made by social forces, as Marx claimed, but by people whom fate has thrown up into executive positions with vast powers over the rest of us and that is where Satan and his guile becomes relevant. The frequently cited words of Lord Acton "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely," ought to be the warning to be heeded.





June 1, 2003

CHURCHILL AND HITLER



The topic of this installment was prompted by two events during this lull between military campaigns in our war on terrorism. The first one was that I had come across the recently released new edition of Sir Charles Wilson's war diaries Churchill at War 1940-45. The second was a TV miniseries Hitler The Rise of Evil, which was shown in the middle of last month. These coincidences made me wonder if there will be a future Plutarch who will write an objective assessment of these "Parallel Lives." It is not possible at this time because even if it were written it would not be published, and if it were published, it would not be reviewed and the book relegated to oblivion. The myths which have grown up around these two personalities must be preserved or the entire current political world-view of that era, and its consequences, would collapse. Yet it is a fact that the fate of these two people was so intertwined that neither would have become what he was without the other. In the following pages I shall give a skeleton outline how these parallel lives led the one to greatness and the other to ruin.

Sir Charles who wrote the above cited book was Churchill's physician from June of 1940 until his death in 1965. He accompanied him on most, if not all, conference trips abroad and was elevated in 1943 to "1st Baron Moran of Manton" for his services. As he reports, this puzzled a young Russian interpreter no end on one of his trips to Moscow. "You are Lord Moran, and he is Mister Churchill?" was a discrepancy this poor Soviet citizen could not fathom. The diaries provide us, however, not only with an intimate glimpse of Churchill but also of the other major leaders of the day, although remarkable enough Hitler hardly figures. The book ends with the diary entry of July 27, 1945 the day after Churchill had lost the election by a landslide to the Labor government and Attlee had become Prime Minister. Yet these are only the first 308 pages of an 848 page book Churchill. Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran, published in 1966, which I found at the Marriott Library of the University of Utah.

While Churchill at War reinforces the picture of the solitary war time hero who had stood up to evil against all odds, the complete book gives a considerably more rounded picture, and I shall rely on this publication for the subsequent analysis. It shows that Churchill's life basically fell into three major portions: up to May 1940 when he became Prime Minister at age 65; the war years until he was voted out of power; and the subsequent slow decay, in spite of re-election in 1951, until his death at age 91 in 1965. But even within the war, the height of his glory, there are clearly three phases. The first from May 1940 to December 1941 when America was drawn into the war, the second ended essentially with the Teheran conference, while the third lasted till his landslide defeat by the Labor Party in July 1945.

Immediately prior to WWII Churchill was out of a job and had a very dubious reputation. He had switched parties twice and his political colleagues did not trust his judgment. He was regarded as a flamboyant adventurer and the Gallipoli disaster in 1915 which had cost 20,000 lives was laid at his feet. He was never allowed to live it down before WWII. Although he is regarded as a brilliant orator public speaking was not his natural forte. His speech was halting, he lisped and he dreaded major speeches, even during the war. Some of his most famous ones, which he gave in Parliament, were read on the BBC by an actor. His strength was the written rather than spoken word and he carefully prepared his speeches, filing key phrases and, like Hitler, practiced them before a mirror. But unlike Hitler his speeches never aroused the passions of his colleagues in Parliament and as Moran wrote,

"Winston had no idea what was going on in their minds. He said a piece. It was a kind of one way traffic, he thought more of the sound of his words than their effect on his audience. It was rather a cold-blooded business, I suppose, the words picked so deliberately as in some fine balancing act, the sentences built up with cool deliberation in his own bedroom. The speech from beginning to end had been contrived beforehand, every word typed out, the very pauses marked in the script. Even his expression as he mouthed his carefully polished periods had been observed and studied before the looking glass."

Churchill's warnings about the danger Hitler presented to the established order might have gone over better with responsible circles in government had he not used marked exaggerations, which were patently false, and vindictive language. Some other similarities between Hitler's and Churchill's opinions have already been presented in War & Mayhem. These included: passionate love for war, a disdain for "colored people," the necessity for eugenic efforts, the establishment of "labor colonies" for "tramps and wastrels," so that they be "made to realize their duty to the state." He bullied others and could reduce grown men to submit to his will by shouting matches. Humanitarian concerns about civilian casualties in war did not exist for him. He intended to float down mines in the Rhine river, was in favor of terror bombing of cities to demoralize the civilian population, and in 1944 approved the manufacture of 500,000 bombs capable of delivering poison gas and anthrax to decimate the German population. But these projects were, fortunately, never carried out.

These aspects of his character were known in Britain but are relegated to oblivion now. Had Churchill lost the war he would have been tried and convicted for war crimes. Moran, who obviously liked and admired Churchill, was nevertheless, puzzled by the internal contradictions of what he called on one occasion "this strange creature." He records a characteristic exchange in a diary entry of August 12, 1956 between himself and Sir John Anderson (Viscount Waverley; former Lord President of the Council and in 1943 Chancellor of the Exchequer)

"Moran: "If Winston had died in 1939, before the war what would history have said of him?"

John (becoming very serious): "he had been wrong about so many things: India for example, and he was wrong on finance, and wrong on Gallipoli . . . . And he wasn't a very good Home Secretary. Then when he was in opposition he was isolated and Winston needs advisers, who will say to him; 'Winston you are making a fool out of yourself.' . . . . Left to himself, Winston's judgment was a menace. No, if he had died then he would have gone down as a failure."

Moran: "What about the war?'

John: "Well, he had this wonderful gift for inspiring people. He was, too, astonishingly fertile in ideas; some were hopeless, of course, but something came out of others. And he was, as you know, a wonderful mouthpiece of the nation. No, I agree he couldn't place people, and he was no good in administration unless somebody held his hand. But his imagination was his most valuable gift. And there was something . . . " (John hesitated for the word) ". . . something selfless about Winston; if an idea got hold of him he would follow it up with endless enthusiasm and energy, quite regardless of whether it would help him personally."

These were the characteristics which made the British people accept Churchill as a leader during war but reject him as soon as the war was won. For the British, dictatorship was a necessary evil during war but not to be perpetuated in peace-time when other qualities were called for. Churchill's re-election in 1951, in-spite of failing health, was essentially a reward for his war-time services and to assuage the guilt for having dismissed him at the height of his triumph. This had been a severe blow to him and exacerbated his tendency to intermittent life-long depressions which he called the "black dog business." Although he was mentally no longer up to the job he stood for election because the need for power was in his blood and he just couldn't let go. This posed a dilemma for Moran, the physician. Should he have told him point blank? "Winston [they were good friends and on first name basis], stay in retirement, enjoy the world-wide accolades you are receiving, you are no longer the man you once were and another term as PM is not the best thing for the country." But Moran knew that out of office Churchill's purpose in life would have vanished and the man would have sunk into even greater depressions than he was already experiencing. As a doctor who considered his patient above all else he encouraged him to run for office. A series of minor strokes and a major one disabled Churchill to an extent that four years later he was forced to resign by his party.

In this connection Moran also commented on Roosevelt's appearance at Yalta, "The president looked old and thin and drawn; he had a cape or shawl over his shoulders and appeared shrunken; he sat looking straight ahead with his mouth open, as if he were not taking things in. Everyone was shocked by his appearance and gabbed about it afterwards." On another occasion Moran commented that "Winston became impatient with the President's apathy and indifference [at Yalta]. He did not seem to realize that Roosevelt was a very sick man." When one looks at the famous Yalta photograph of the "Big Three" it is obvious that Roosevelt was dying and I personally have a feeling that he had cancer because cerebro-vascular disease alone would not account for this obvious weight loss. But diagnosis aside, there is a more important problem. Roosevelt should not have been allowed to run for a fourth term in 1944. During a time when momentous decisions had to be made the country required a sound mind at the helm and the only positive aspect that came from that election was the appointment of Truman as Vice President. Truman could not undo all the harm that had been done in Teheran and Yalta but at least he prevented further inroads by Stalin at Potsdam and thereafter. Thus, the question remains for the physician who is in charge of the leader of a country, "where does your duty lie?" Should the will of the patient, and his "court camarilla," override the good of the country? I cannot answer it but in our age where the fate of the world can be decided by the push of a button the question needs to be discussed openly and guidelines issued.

As mentioned, Churchill saw the potential nightmare scenario unfolding after the Teheran conference and became deeply concerned about not only how his war for the honor and glory of England had turned out but also the ultimate fate of the world. He sincerely detested communism and said on one occasion in 1947 in a private conversation,” If ever it comes to the triumph of the Communists, I hope that some people will have the guts to resist. I am prepared to commit a crime" - he spoke more quickly and with emphasis - "to throw a bomb among the most subversive people. I am not afraid of death." Clemmie, the good wife knew how to handle him when he had worked himself up, just said," Have a little more brandy, Winston." In a 1954 speech at Woodford he said, "Even before the war had ended, and while the Germans were surrendering by the thousands . . . I telegraphed to Lord Montgomery directing him to be careful in collecting the German arms, to stack them so that they could easily be issued again to the German soldiers whom we should have to work with if the Soviet advance continued." The comment created a furor in the press; the mentioned telegram has never been found and may never have been sent. But it does represent Churchill's genuine feelings about the state of post-war affairs. As an aside I might mention that, as reported in War&Mayhem, we, the soldiers of the Wehrmacht, would only have been too happy to join the Brits and Americans in order to send the Russians from Central Europe back to their own country.

"Poor England," Churchill kept repeating after the war and especially after the existence of the atomic bomb had become known. In 1946 he felt that a pre-emptive war against the Soviet Union should be launched within the next few months before Stalin got the bomb. It is also remarkable how his attitude to the German people changed after they had been thoroughly defeated and the Soviets were in charge. During the war he had routinely referred to the Germans, even in private conversations, as "The Hun" and had countersigned the Morgenthau plan, which would have reduced Germans to subsistence levels, but in 1954 he was all for rearming Germany. "They are fine fellows. That is the element which has been the strength of England for a thousand years; responsibility, constancy." When Moran asked him in the same year on another occasion, "what would happen to Germany if there was war between Russia and the United States?" "Poor lambs, they would be over-run and our neutrality would not save us. I wanted America to have a show-down with the Soviet Republic before the Russians had the bomb."

On the other hand when Stalin died and Malenkov took over, Churchill was eager to make peace. He repeatedly urged Eisenhower to arrange for a three man summit conference but ran into a brick wall. Neither Ike nor Foster Dulles wanted to even explore the changed realities. Churchill had to resign himself to another failure. Now only the goal to leave the most admirable picture of his life for posterity remained. "History will be kind to me, because I shall write it," he reportedly said. As Moran noted, Churchill became obsessed in the last years of life how the press wrote about him and became very upset over negative comments. Moran closed his diary entries in March 1960 with a cruise they took on Onassis' yacht to the Caribbean. The last five years were simply slow, progressive mental decay which needed not to be chronicled.

But as mentioned earlier Churchill's days of political glory were actually limited to three of his 91 years, between 1940 and 1943. From then on his, and England's, influence was permanently eclipsed by America. "Poor England," he kept muttering but he also said that "I will not be the grave digger of the British Empire." Nevertheless, when one views his decisions objectively, that was indeed his role. He saved England but lost the empire. The fact that he sensed it himself is attested to by a comment to Moran when he mumbled, "I ought not . . . I must not . . . be held to account . . . for all . . . that has gone wrong." The fate of the empire, which had been tottering even prior to the war, was sealed at Teheran. Since this conference was pivotal for the rest of the war and post-war history, although it has been largely ignored by the popular media, I shall now present the essence.

When Churchill made his defiant speeches in June and July of 1940, he knew that eventually America would come to the rescue, just as in WWI, and all he had to do was to hang on long enough for America to be able to do so. While he still had considerable influence on the conduct of the war up to 1943 it had become apparent to him by the time of the Teheran conference that the center of gravity had shifted and decisions were no longer made in London but Washington and Moscow. Churchill's personal influence on Roosevelt had also declined to an extent that the latter didn't even want to talk to him any more because their goals had diverged. Churchill had fought the war for the preservation of the British Empire while Roosevelt's goal was "free trade" throughout the world, and the abolition of all colonies, regardless of whether they were British, French, Dutch or whatever. At Teheran Roosevelt side-lined Churchill and negotiated directly with Stalin. Harry Hopkins (FDR's most intimate advisor) told Moran at that time that in a "heart-to-heart talk" the President,

"made it clear that he was anxious to relieve the pressure on the Russian front by invading France. Stalin expressed his gratification, and when the President went on to say that he hoped Malaya, Burma and other British colonies would soon 'be educated in the arts of self-government' the talk became quite intimate. The President felt encouraged by Stalin's grasp of the democratic issue at stake, but he warned him not to discuss India with the Prime Minister. Stalin's slit eyes do not miss much; he must have taken it all in.

As I listened to Harry, I felt the President's attitude will encourage Stalin to take a stiff line in the conference. But Harry is not worried. Things are going fine he said."

When one looks back nearly sixty years later one is appalled what this unfortunate conference and Roosevelt's plus Hopkins' naiveté have brought us. Europe was cut in half, for nearly fifty years; Africa became one vast disaster zone with tribal wars and accompanying famine; China became communist; Burma is a dictatorship, India and Pakistan are at each others throats over Kashmir; and the other South-east Asia countries Hopkins mentioned are fertile spawning grounds for Muslim extremists. Roosevelt thought that he would bring democracy to the world but in fact he brought us chaos. It is truly terrible to see that our current government seems to be pursuing a similar disastrous course.

But to return to Churchill. As Moran makes clear, up to the summer of 1943 Churchill still had a fair amount of influence on FDR. He persuaded Roosevelt to make the war in Europe the number 1 priority with the Pacific theater the secondary one. He also convinced Roosevelt, over General Marshall's objections, to postpone the invasion of France in 1942, which Stalin urged. Instead the North African and subsequently Italian campaign was pursued which had only half hearted support from Roosevelt and none from Stalin. After 1941 Churchill's conduct of the war was driven by three major considerations. One was to get Rommel out of Africa and secure the Suez Canal; the other to drive through Italy, Trieste and Yugoslavia for Vienna, thereby saving the Balkans for the West; and in addition he was deathly afraid of a repeat of the trench warfare of WWI. The German Wehrmacht had to be bled white first in Russia, and the American infantry had to be steeled in battle against lesser forces before the channel was to be crossed. But Roosevelt's nightmare was that Stalin would come to a separate arrangement with Hitler, if he saw that the West, whom he never trusted, was dragging its feet. If Stalin dropped out and Roosevelt was to be confronted with Japan as well as Germany the military equation would have looked rather differently. Since neither Roosevelt nor Churchill, in contrast to Stalin and Hitler, were dictators for life but had to worry about elections, this concern was very real. It is in this light Roosevelt's demand for unconditional surrender in Casablanca needs to be seen. It was meant to reassure Stalin that the West would not make a separate peace but would stay with him for the duration. All he had to do was to hang on and he would be rewarded thereafter. This is also the reason why FDR acted in 1943 at Teheran the way he did. Stalin had mentioned to Churchill that the Red Army was war-weary and it was, therefore, essential to keep them fighting not only with the firm promise of a second front in France by 1944, but also of post-war rewards.

As far as Stalin was concerned, he admitted to Churchill at Teheran not only the mentioned "war-weariness" of the Red Army but also that “Without America we should already have lost the war." To make sure that Roosevelt would stick to his promises, Stalin also pledged at Teheran that he would enter the war against Japan as soon as Germany was defeated. America was the key and this key Hitler had so badly misjudged.

Although the producers of the Hitler TV miniseries had made a concerted effort to minimize the cartoon picture of Hitler as a boisterous buffoon they could not resist it altogether because the Zeitgeist demands it. Yet if Hitler had indeed behaved mainly in the way as presented by Mr. Carlyle he would hardly have impressed Lloyd George, the Duke of Windsor, Halifax, Mussolini, a variety of European monarchs as well as other statesmen. Even Stalin stood up for him. In the book Summit at Teheran by Keith Eubank one can find that in December 1941 Stalin said to Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary,

"Hitler had proved himself a man of extraordinary genius. He had succeeded in building up a ruined and divided people into a mighty world power, within an incredibly short space of time. He had succeeded in so regimenting the Germans that all elements were completely subservient to his will. 'But,' Stalin added he has one fatal defect. He does not know where to stop.' “When Eden smiled Stalin added that, 'I will always know where to stop.'"

But stopping a war is not as easy as starting one. Whenever Hitler did want to stop the war, prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union, there was Churchill who would not let him. Sumner Welles wrote in Seven Decisions which Shaped the World, "When Roosevelt commented that Hitler was mentally unstable, Stalin dissented - 'Only a very able man could accomplish what Hitler had done in solidifying the German people, whatever we thought of the methods.' “

But the myth makers have succeeded and Hitler will continue to be portrayed as evil incarnate, a madman, who wanted to conquer the world and kill all Jews. This picture must remain paramount and any genuine understanding of who the man was and what he really wanted to accomplish is not allowed to be shown on TV screens. Yet this is the main source the vast majority of the American people rely upon for historical information. Although the mentioned mini-series was certainly politically correct there were two CBS affiliate stations in Texas which refused to show the film. Any potential understanding of the man is to be feared and must not come to pass. Although historical accuracy was for the most part preserved the film failed to show, or at least emphasize, the reasons why Hindenburg had no choice but to appoint Hitler chancellor. Furthermore, while the April 1, 1933 boycott of Jewish stores and professionals was shown, the fact that this was a response to the call for a boycott of all German goods by America as demanded by Jewish organizations in the United States and reported in the New York Times was ignored. Thus the American public is always fed half-truths because what is left out is equally important as what is reported.

I have absolutely no intention to defend Hitler's crimes because they are indefensible, all I intend to do is to correct the most glaring misinterpretations of his intentions. First he never wanted to conquer the world. Had this been his goal he would have insisted on building a navy. But he was a man of the infantry, not a sailor like Churchill or Roosevelt. This is why he was quite willing to sign the Naval agreement with England in 1935 which limited the German fleet to a third of the British. The idea that he wanted to attack America is, of course, ludicrous. He didn't even have the navy to successfully launch a cross-channel invasion of England and that is why he abstained from the effort. Furthermore, if he had any such ambitions he would not have left the French their fleet as part of the 1940 armistice. Churchill on the other hand genuinely misunderstood Hitler and shot some of the French battle ships to pieces at Oran, causing considerable casualties among the French sailors.

Hitler's foreign policy goals were limited to Central and Eastern Europe. He didn't even want the colonies back. These demands were simply a bargaining chip. But the other clauses of the Versailles treaty had to be undone. All the German speaking people had to be united in one Reich which also included not only the 1919 Austria, but that of the 1914 monarchy with Bohemia, Moravia and parts of Poland. Poland would have to cede, in addition, the corridor she acquired in Versailles which separated East Prussia from Germany proper. Furthermore, if feasible, the USSR would be smashed in order to gain its phenomenal natural resources. "Blut und Boden," blood and soil, was the slogan. As Hitler also put it "the German plow will follow where the German sword has conquered." That was the plan from which he never deviated. To put it into operation he had to re-arm but the thrust was to the East rather than the West. Churchill on the other hand insisted, in contrast to Prime Minister Baldwin for instance, that Hitler was a military menace for the West which was simply not true.

For his plans to succeed Hitler also needed allies. France and Russia did not enter into consideration, because of historic enmity against the first and Bolshevism in the second. But Italy and England he thought would qualify, which was the first serious miscalculation. As an Austrian he should have known that Italians, even under Mussolini, are not necessarily natural allies and their talents lie in areas other than military prowess. The idea of England as an ally was dictated by his racial notions and the precariousness of the British Empire. He admired the British for their ability to control nearly a third of the world population and since the empire kept the non-whites in check he was all for it. He did not necessarily want to attack France either because there was nothing to colonize there. But he knew that England and France might not approve of his "New Order" in Europe and that is why he built the West Wall-Siegfried line. Defense in the West, offense in the East was the plan.

But there was Churchill who nixed it. Although in opposition, rather than the government at the outbreak of the war, he had sufficiently agitated against the appeasers that Chamberlain was honor bound to declare war when Hitler invaded Poland. Germany's occupation of Denmark and Norway was due to Churchill's plans to deny Hitler Sweden's iron ore which was shipped through Narvik and was a genuine pre-emptive strike. The invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece was forced upon him also by Churchill and the military inaptitude of the Italians who had gotten bogged down in the north of Greece, while the British landed in the south. An exposed flank immediately before the Russian campaign could not be tolerated. The North African front was also forced upon him by the weakness of the Italian army which had to be bailed out. In spite of the fact, that Mussolini had become a liability instead of an asset Hitler continued to show him loyalty throughout all his subsequent misfortunes.

Why were Churchill and some others in the West so adamantly opposed to come to an understanding with Hitler? The propaganda machine had already painted him as such an ogre that any lasting political, rather than military solution, would have been out of the question, and it was the treatment of the Jews in Germany which provided grist for the mill. Soon after the Anschluss I found in my father's library a book Hitler in der Karrikatur der Welt. It showed how Hitler had been portrayed in the German and foreign press between February 1924 and spring 1933. When I first saw these cartoons I was flabbergasted: How could a book like this which contains genuinely vicious diatribes be published in Germany? I wondered. But as the title page also displayed it was, "vom Fuehrer genehmigt" (approved by the Fuehrer) and the publication date was May 1938. The infamous cartoons in the Stuermer, which were equally vindictive, differed only in the person of the villain; Jews in the one, Hitler and the SA in the other. The caricatures showed Hitler either as an incompetent ninny who wouldn't last; a tool of bankers, the army, or monarchists; a vicious tyrant or bloodthirsty menace who would unleash a disastrous war. In the summer of 1938 we knew that the first aspects were clearly wrong but that a war was only a little over a year away nobody would have believed. After the war I looked for the book but it had been gotten rid of by my parents before the Red Army arrived. I was, therefore, very glad to find another copy in a second-hand bookstore in Vienna later on, because it is an important document which resides now in my library. The point is that we have here a perfect example of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As mentioned, Hitler did indeed want war but a limited one rather than a world-war. Churchill on the other hand could not win a war against Germany after June 1940 and the rest of the world had to be recruited. Germany's mal-treatment of Jews was the ideal pretext. "See what this monstrous tyrant is doing?" was used to mobilize the world against Hitler. Did Hitler intend to kill all the Jews all along, as has been alleged? No, he wanted them to emigrate and didn't care where to. I have already mentioned some of these aspects in War&Mayhem but they are so important that a brief outline is essential here. What needs to be clearly understood, and what is not taken into account now, is that for Hitler Jews were not a religion, but a nation. This nation within the German nation had, in his opinion, usurped rights which it was not entitled to by being successful in all aspects of public life. This success, which denied Germans rightful positions within their own country, had to be curtailed. This was the purpose of the Nuremberg laws and why there were also contacts with Zionist organizations. Initially Hitler had no objections to send large numbers of German Jews to Palestine, but the British were adverse because of Arab hostility. During the war he wanted to cultivate Arab friendship against the British and thought that Madagascar, for instance, might have served as a German "mandate." The European Jews, who were to be shipped there, would have had complete sovereignty in all internal aspects but no standing army or independent foreign policy. This seems to be the model Sharon envisions now for the Palestinian state. The Madagascar plan fell apart because neither the finances nor the transports were available. Furthermore, the British were unwilling to cooperate. This is what led to the Holocaust. With the Polish and subsequently Russian campaign Hitler had acquired a large number of Jews in the East. As a separate nation Jews were even officially "enemy aliens." A few days prior to Hitler's invasion of Poland Chaim Weizman, as spokesman for International Zionism, had pledged full support to the British cause in a letter to Chamberlain. It was published under the headline "Jews to fight for Democracies" in The Times of London on September 6, 1939. As enemy aliens Jews were segregated first in ghettoes then in concentration camps. With America in the war, steadily mounting losses on the Eastern front and increasing civilian casualties due to the relentless bombing campaign, revenge took over in Hitler's mind. When valuable German blood was being spilled, those who were really responsible for the world wide extension of the war, the Jews who had agitated for it, should not escape their just punishment. They needed to bleed also. Since he could not get at the American and British Jews who had agitated against him he would take his ire out on those who were in his power within Europe. In this way the cartoons had become grim reality.



Let me now return to Churchill and how he was really seen by his contemporaries. The following is a series of statements from Moran's book. They are valuable in this context because anybody who has read authentic biographies of Hitler cannot fail to be impressed by similarities between these two politicians. Prior to 1939 Churchill was regarded "a brilliant failure." Then came June 1940 when he demonstrated an "indomitable will to conquer" "Never, Never give in," became the obsession. There was a demonic element in him and an extraordinary concentration on one purpose - victory. He had an extraordinary sense of mission and said, "This cannot be accident, it must be design I was kept for this job." He was pugnacious and seemed to frighten people. But it was also theatrics "I can be very fierce when I like," he said. He governed as a dictator, wanted people to listen to him rather than argue with him. He didn't want criticism, but reassurance. General Marshall said, "some of his projects were positively dangerous had they been carried out." Moran also mentioned that Churchill was "ignorant of human behavior. Where people are concerned he lives in an imaginary world of his own making." He was largely self-educated and virtually stopped reading when he went into politics. He was regarded as a soldier of fortune with the mind of an artist. His planning was all wishing and guessing. War was his hobby. Moran also called him, "that improbable man. A genius trampling down like a bull elephant everything that got in his way." Attlee felt that he was, "Fifty percent genius, fifty percent bloody fool." How did Churchill see himself? As Joan of Arc!

June 1940 was the month when the two parallel lives permanently intersected. With the fall of France Hitler stood at the height of his glory. England might well have made peace with him. As Sir Charles Portal, Chief Air Minister during the war commented later, "They say there was no danger that we should have made peace with Hitler. I am not so sure. Without Winston we might have." After June 1940 Hitler went down to defeat and ignominy, while Churchill's star rose to mythical heights. What was a will for power by each one of the antagonists became an epic struggle of good versus evil by the myth-makers. But morality in politics is an oxymoron. It is a superb propaganda tool yet has never had a place in the real world. What these two lives should really teach us is that when hate is met by hate death, destruction, and chaos are the outcome.

We have been told that Churchill is President Bush's role model and that he ever so often contemplates the bust which sits in his office. What was June 1940 for the one is September 11 for the other. He would, however, be well advised to look at Churchill's entire life and how contemporaries, who knew the man rather than the myth, really saw him. Will Bush also have to mutter some years from now, "I ought not . . . I must not . . . be held to account . . . for all . . . that has gone wrong."?





July 1, 2003

PRESIDENT BUSH'S CHOICE



Our President has told us that the major military operations in Iraq are over. He has not mentioned the long haul, and the inevitable finger pointing especially since Saddam's feared WMD's have so far eluded detection. Some, who don't particularly like George W, even raised the question from the Nixon era, "What did the president know and when did he know it?" It behooves us, therefore, to inquire how America got into this foreign policy conundrum she finds herself in today.

Every physician knows that there is no one single cause for a given disease or symptom only a confluence of adverse circumstances which bring the patient to the doctor. The same applies to politics. It is true that the ultimate order to invade Iraq was given by the President but it is equally true that it was not his will alone that led him into this fateful decision. When one investigates a great variety of available sources it becomes apparent that there were three major factions at work which exploited the 9/11 tragedy for their pet projects. These were the Neocons, the Oil Industry and President Bush himself. As mentioned in "The Neocons' Leviathan" this group of people thought that the difficult situation the state of Israel finds itself in is equally applicable to the United States and Israel's methods to deal with the Palestinians should now be used in an overall war against world-wide terror. This would supposedly lead to the security not only of Israel but the world at large. Needless to say this is a fantasy. Every cough is not tuberculosis or lung cancer and every national liberation movement is not automatically a danger to the rest of the world. This type of thinking mistakes the method for the purpose and can lead to nothing but tragedies. Under those circumstances our war on terror can never end because aggrieved, obsessed individuals, who have no compunction about creating havoc will always exist. This war is just as unwinnable as the war on poverty. "The poor you will always have with you," Jesus said nearly two thousand years ago and he was right; Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" not withstanding. The civilian Pentagon group who ordered the military, and State Department, around has succeeded in alienating us from the rest of the world and although the troops performed brilliantly in Iraq we are now stuck with the not so brilliant aftermath.

It is no secret that if Saddam had merely sat on sand without oil underneath, he could have tortured his people all he wanted, as some dictators do in Africa, and our policy makers would not have gotten particularly excited. But the world, not just America, runs on oil and it is regarded as intolerable that some miscreants can control some of the spigots. Even if America were not dependent on Middle East oil the rest of the world is and if the global economy were to fall into a 1930's type depression America could not escape from it either. So the idea was that since we can't trust this "madman," Saddam has to be gotten rid of and we will take over the flow of oil for the benefit of the rest of the world. That Vice President Cheney's as well as President Bush's friends are standing to make a hefty buck in the process is just icing on the cake.

All that might, however, not have been enough if someone else but Bush had sat in the Oval Office. For him it was personal. Saddam had to go. The son had to finish what the father had supposedly left undone twelve years earlier. In addition Saddam "had tried to kill my daddy." Whether or not that piece of intelligence was true, or belonged into the realm of the babies who were thrown out of their incubators when the Iraqis invaded Kuwait, no one knows. But the truth is irrelevant because people act on their beliefs and the dictum is: don't confuse me with facts! For Bush his mission in life was clear, "crush Saddam." In this obsession, because that is what it was, and that is why the WMDs were merely a convenient pretext, he followed the model of his hero Sir Winston to whom I devoted the June installment. Up to September 1939 Churchill had been floundering but when he became Prime Minister he defined his mission, "I have only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler, and my life is much simplified thereby." Getting rid of Hitler was a worthy enterprise but by what means and at what cost? Churchill's stated method was, "to set Europe ablaze." When Churchill said in November of 1942 "I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire," he had no idea that this would be precisely the outcome of his policies. Hitler knew it, Stalin knew it, Roosevelt knew it but poor Churchill didn't. He was obsessed with Hitler and nothing else mattered until Teheran in 1943 and especially Yalta in 1945 when he got an inkling of what he had wrought.

This brings me to the title of this installment. It was no accident, because in my readings I had also come across a book by Churchill published in 1937 entitled Great Contemporaries. One does not find Stalin there but Adolf earned a short chapter, "Hitler and his Choice." It is worth while reading, as is all the literature written by foreigners and published in non-German countries prior to September 1939. The post-WWII literature tends to be dominated by the Jewish tragedy and, therefore, presents only a partial picture of pre-war Germany. Churchill starts his chapter with

"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched mankind. So may it be with Hitler.

Such a final view is not vouchsafed to us today [an asterisk states "written in 1935"]. We cannot tell whether Hitler will be the man who will once again let loose upon the world another war in which civilization will irretrievably succumb, or whether he will go down in history as the man who restored honour and peace to the great Germanic nation and brought it back serene, helpful and strong, to the forefront of the European family circle. It is on this mystery of the future that history will pronounce. It is enough to say that both possibilities are open at the present moment If, because the story is unfinished, because, indeed, its most fateful chapters have yet to be written, we are forced to dwell upon the darker side of his work and creed, we must never forget nor cease to hope for the bright alternative."

Apart from the flowery rhetoric we must keep in mind that the year was 1935 when he made the following allegations,

"It was not till 1935 that the full terror of this revelation [that Hitler had begun to re-arm Germany] broke upon the careless and imprudent world, and Hitler casting aside concealment, sprang forward armed to the teeth, with his munition factories roaring night and day, his aeroplane squadrons forming in ceaseless succession, his submarine crews exercising in the Baltic, and his armed hosts tramping from one end of the broad Reich to the other. That is where we are today, and the achievement by which the tables have been completely turned upon the complacent, feckless and purblind victors deserves to be reckoned a prodigy in the history of the world, and a prodigy which is inseparable from the personal exertions and life-thrust of a single man."

This review of the past is important, because this is precisely how history is made. We can take the statements printed above as those of a o prophetic visionary or as self-fulfilling prophecies. By this I mean that Churchill would do his level best to prevent "the bright alternative" from coming to pass. For Churchill the problem with Hitler was just as personal as Saddam was for Bush. Let us, therefore look in more detail at the facts as they existed in 1935. If Churchill had read Mein Kampf, which would have been his duty as a statesman who wants to understand the other side, he would have known that the abolition of the Versailles treaty was the number one priority in Hitler's program. Not only did Germany's pre 1914 borders have to be reconstituted but all German speaking people in Central Europe had to be incorporated in the new Reich. Furthermore, Hitler was quite explicit that he did not expect this to result from the good will of other countries. It was bound to involve armed struggle for which the nation had to be fully prepared. But the thrust, as he repeatedly emphasized, was to the East where Lebensraum was to be found. All he wanted from the West was to be left alone in the pursuit of this goal. These plans were no secrets, they were known to anybody who wanted to know since 1925.

The statement that by 1935, or even 1937, the tables had been turned on the victors by the military might of Germany was false. The Franco-British-Czech- Polish alliance, even leaving aside the Soviet Union, was far superior to anything Hitler could put into the field as late as 1939. As far as the roaring munitions factories are concerned Hitler had at the beginning of the Poland campaign munitions for no more than about a month. Even in May of 1940 only about 15 per cent of German industry was specifically devoted for arms procurement. Hitler did not plan for a long war! The "exercising submarines" consisted of a total of 57 in September 1939 and in 1940 only 22 were operational in the North Atlantic. While propagandists and politicians keep, on the one hand, exaggerating Hitler's early military might they keep repeating on the other hand the idea fostered by Churchill that he was the lone voice in the wilderness whose pleas were ignored while "England slept." When one reads Clive Ponting, for instance, it becomes obvious that England did not sleep during Hitler's arms build-up. The British government had made a decision to gear its level of armaments to the likelihood of a major war within the next ten years. This policy was adopted in 1919 and extended to another ten years in 1929. But in 1933 when Hitler took power in Germany the pace was increased and Britain was made ready for war within six years i.e. April 1939. There was good reason for this type of thinking. Timing was essential. If the country was fully mobilized too early the equipment would become obsolete and in the other case one would be unprepared. As it turned out the Brits guessed right.

But this was, of course, not just a lucky guess it was based on solid knowledge. The basic fact was that Hitler had to start from scratch in 1933 because Germany had been forcibly and completely disarmed as a result of Versailles. The French, the Italians, the Czech, and others not only refused to cut their post 1919 forces but kept building more and more modern arms. This was the imbalance Hitler was confronted with. In 1933 he had an army of 100,000 men. There was no heavy artillery, not a single tank and no plane. It was clearly impossible to defend the country, or to gain the respect of the world, and enforce legitimate demands with this type of an army. In addition, the heavy industry to build new arms was not yet available either. Although the Reichswehr had bypassed some of the Versailles restrictions by training pilots and tank crews in the Soviet Union even prior to 1933 nobody, not even Hitler, could create a modern army, within two years, of the proportions Churchill talked about. It was pure propaganda to scare the British public.

What the fear of weapons of mass destructions is today was long range bombers in the nineteen thirties. It was actually Hermann Göring who had proposed the idea of "Shock and Awe," because he believed that the war of the future would be won within hours or days by overwhelming air power. This was one of his typical bragging, blustering statements which was proven wrong. So was the one that he would build such air defenses that no enemy bomber could ever penetrate German skies, and in 1942 that he could supply the encircled troops in Stalingrad by air. To Westerners he kept bragging in the thirties about the strength of his Luftwaffe, which did not correspond to the facts but was, of course, grist for the propaganda mills on both sides of the channel.

Churchill began to spread the fear in the House of Commons as early as 1934 when he announced that the Luftwaffe would be able to threaten London with massive bombing within 18 months. This would have put it into the fall of 1935! The serious buildup of the Luftwaffe did not start until spring 1935 and there was a shortage of everything, planes, equipment to make them, and most of all trained pilots which led to marked accident rates early on. In July of 1934 Churchill declared that by 1936 the superiority of the Luftwaffe planes would be such that Britain would never be able to make up this lead. On November 28 of that year he stated that by 1937 the Luftwaffe size would be double that of the RAF. This was nonsense. Although the RAF was numerically somewhat inferior in planes to the Luftwaffe in August of 1940, it had more and better trained pilots. In addition German fighters could stay over southeastern England for only about twenty five minutes. The RAF on the other hand was fighting over home territory and could, therefore, recover the pilots who had to bail out as well as repair damaged aircraft, an option which was not available to the Germans. Furthermore, the Luftwaffe, in contrast to the RAF, was designed primarily to support the troops on the ground rather than for long-range bombing of cities. As such it was inadequate for the task when the decision was made to bomb London, rather than continue with the destruction of airfields, during the Blitz. Hitler was goaded into this mistake by Churchill who had started bombing Berlin.

I am mentioning all of this because the real history of WWII and its antecedents are being supplanted by myths, and myths rather than facts are the staple of politicians and media hacks who control our fate. How many of us still remember the "missile gap" between the Soviet Union and the U.S. with which Kennedy squeezed out a narrow victory over Nixon in 1968? It was non-existent; but who wants to be reminded? This brings us right back to Saddam and his WMDs which in all probability fall into the same genre of misinformation for ulterior motives.

So where do we stand today and what is Bush's choice?

Although Churchill stated that Hitler had a choice in 1935 this was only partially true. Hitler had made too many powerful enemies abroad which would not let him execute his program, even at the cost of a world war. In addition his vindictive and ultimately self-destructive character stood in the way. These aspects do not apply to President Bush. Nevertheless, after the Iraq invasion he has to make a choice in regard to his future foreign policy. He can take the easy way out let things slide and basically run for re-election on his successes. When the road map collapses, as it inevitably will, the Palestinians can be blamed because I sincerely doubt that no further attacks on Israelis are going to take place even within the proposed three months truce. This will let Bush off the hook and he can wash his hands of the affair to the applause of his main, but narrow, constituency. If by September 2004 either the economy is still in trouble, or some other unforeseen disaster occurs he can, egged on by Karl Rove and the neocons, initiate another "pre-emptive war" to assure electoral victory. I do not believe that the President lied to us about Saddam's WMDs. He was honestly misled by people whom he should not have trusted. It was a mistake and a mistake can be forgiven but persisting in mistakes can not.

The other choice is considerably more difficult and would require strength of character Bush may or may not have. He would have to put thoughts of re-election totally out of his mind and look objectively at the situation the U.S. finds itself in vis á vis the world as a result of his two and a half years in office. The required course of action would then become apparent. He would come to realize that a small high tech army can win against a third world type military force but is insufficient to secure the peace. This is why the Chief of the German General Staff, von Seeckt, had argued in 1933 not only for a small professional army which could quickly conquer enemy territory, but an additional militia which subsequently performs the occupation duties. He was overruled by Hitler who was enamored with vast numbers. Nevertheless, the concept was correct and this is now Bush's and the Pentagon's dilemma in Iraq. The neocons insisted that America can go it alone when it comes to winning wars. But now when our troops are facing a guerilla type war they want others to help out. All of our high tech weaponry is useless for an occupation which the locals want to get rid of. This should have been the lesson of Israel's experience on the West Bank and Gaza but nobody, including our president, wants to admit to this. If Max Boot's article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs is correct that we have only 10 full time active duty divisions in the army and the rest of manpower, apart from the Marines and the other services, has to be made up by the National Guard and reservists, our "pre-emptive" wars can never be successful in the true sense of the word. We can devastate countries but we can not occupy them and turn them into democracies. The required manpower is not available. Reservists and National Guard unit members have civilian jobs and will not be enamored to act as "peace keepers" for extended tours of duty. Army enlistments are also likely to fall off when the goal of the soldier is clearly defined as: to wage war! This means "to smash things and kill people," rather than a cheap way to get a college education and "be all that you can." Under these circumstances the draft may look mighty appealing to policy makers although the Vietnam experience would strongly argue against it. Americans are not militaristic by nature and to turn out the necessary legions in order to change regimes on a world wide basis will not be to their liking. This is where the analogy to Rome breaks down and the inherent weakness of our superpower status is exposed.

Keeping the foregoing in mind Bush would have to repudiate the neocons' idea of the "Hobbesian anarchic world" which requires perpetual wholesale regime changes. He would have to pledge to work within the framework of the UN to defuse, by diplomatic means, the looming genuine threats to international security. He would have to separate the war against terror from local wars of liberation and, most importantly, tone down this constant belligerent rhetoric which threatens everybody who does not share our views. The war against international terrorist networks is, as has always been maintained in these pages, a job for international police and intelligence work, and our military cannot be expected to win this type of war. It's not the job they are trained for. This international police effort requires, however, good will from the rest of the world and if we keep treating other countries in the way we have during this past year, they may simply say: If you want to do things your way go ahead, we can't stop you, but don't expect us to bail you out when you're in trouble. President Bush would also have to come to realize that International Law exists and just as no person can be above the law, no country should be either. A Nuremberg type court which hangs the defeated but ignores the crimes of the victors will not do in the long run. Instead of harping on our standing as the only superpower, which enforces its will upon the rest of the world, we should be satisfied with the status of primus inter pares.

Finally there is the "road map" to which the president supposedly has committed himself but his heart isn't in it. He was dragged into it by Tony Blair to get the Iraq "coalition" going. There is no evidence that Bush truly understands the plight of the Palestinians and unless he begins to do so no peace is achievable in the Holy Land. A disjointed Palestinian state which retains major Israeli settlements and cedes large portions of the Jordan valley to Israel will never be acceptable to the locals. At best such a Versailles type "peace treaty" will be an armistice. The only genuine peace would require steps which have repeatedly been mentioned in previous installments on this site. They include the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state with full sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza, direct access through Palestinian rather than Israeli territory, and complete evacuation of all Israeli settlements which have been built on Palestinian land since 1967. Nothing else has a genuine chance for peace. Last year Bush chided the UN for not enforcing its resolutions against Iraq. Now he would have to take Sharon to task for ignoring the numerous UN resolutions against Israel. Neither Sharon nor any other Israeli government will ever voluntarily agree to the steps outlined above in order to secure genuine peace for Israel. Bush would have to go before the nation, tell the American people the unvarnished truth about what really goes on every day in the occupied territories of Palestine and then announce that unless and until Israel fully conforms to the existing UN resolutions no further American tax money will be forthcoming. Americans are a fair minded people and when the facts are presented to them truthfully they will respond and support him in this effort, certain special interest groups notwithstanding. This would show the world that the president is a man of his word. American prestige would be restored and international cooperation would blossom again.

Time is running out, another election is around the corner and the president must make a decision, which is actually quite straightforward: continue on the present course for the sake of not alienating his main constituency or put principle above electioneering. We are told that he already has more money for the election than all the other Democratic candidates combined and if he were to show himself a statesman by taking at least some of the steps outlined above his personal popularity, which has remained high, may well let him overcome the hostile criticism which is bound to arise.

Mister President: Although I am going to fax this article to the White House I have no illusions that your staff will allow you to read it. Nevertheless, I must remind you that you have been told "The truth will make you free!" Try it, it'll work for you personally and the good of the world. On the other hand you can follow the dictum of Winston Churchill who said that, "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies." Under those circumstances you will allow the country to be inundated in the next year and a half with a continued flood of exaggerations, if not outright lies, geared to create fear in the hearts of Americans and the world. This in turn will in the long run pave the way to a general and much more devastating war. Das habe ich nicht gewollt, I did not want that; the Kaiser said when he saw what his 1914 policies had contributed to. Neither had Hitler wanted a world war in 1939 but that is what he got. One does not unleash the dogs of war without running the risk of getting severely bitten oneself, is the main lesson history provides. Therefore, the overriding question of our time is: Are you and your advisors willing to learn this simple truth?





August 1, 2003

THE NIGER FORGERY



In all civilized societies forgery is a crime, and when committed by a private person leads to jail sentences of varying durations. Afficionados of mystery stories also know that crimes are solved by considering three factors: Motive, Means, and Opportunity. When it was reported that the attempted sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq, which found its way in a shortened version into the President's State of the Union speech, was a forgery, the question immediately arose in my mind: who had done the forging? Remarkably enough the question has, to the best of my knowledge, never been raised in our country by the media.

The motive for the forgery is obvious. Iraq had to be presented as an imminent threat to the world. A nuclear armed Saddam Hussein was regarded as intolerable and it would have been the obligation of the "only remaining superpower" to remove his regime. The U.S. had, therefore, to be sent to war against Iraq. Now comes the next question who had an overriding interest in the fall of Baghdad?

There were three potential candidates. One was the Iraqi exile group under Ahmed Chalabi, the other the neoconservative civilian group in the Pentagon, who believed that American security was so intimately tied to Israel that the latter country had to be protected by any and all means, and the third was the state of Israel itself. Israel is, since 1948, still officially at war with Iraq. Peace treaties have been signed with Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon but not with Syria and Iraq. Although Israel and Iraq do not share a common border there was fear that Saddam might put his enmity against Assad of Syria aside and their combined armies would indeed represent a considerable threat to Israel. Iraq's military power had to be eliminated and what better way than letting others, and especially the US, do it? So much for motive.

Means required a facility which is used to turning out fake documents and that leaves mainly the various secret service agencies of the world. When one considers motive it is unlikely that the French, the British, Germans, Russians etc. would have forged those documents. It is also unlikely that the CIA would have done so, unless it was a rogue operation. The most likely candidate seemed to be the Mossad, Israel's counterpart to the CIA. Having reached that conclusion, which so far has not yet even been hinted at by the media and since my information about the Mossad did not exceed that of the average educated citizen my interest was piqued to learn more about that organization.

The first stop is, of course, always on the Internet and when typing Mossad into Google up came prominently, "FAS Intelligence Resource Program." It was graced by the picture of a spy, the Israeli flag, and a menorah surrounded by Hebrew characters. The headline was, "Mossad. The Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks [ha-Mossad le-Modiin ule-Tafkidim Meyuhadim]." Since the second page of this short document lists only Israeli sources I regarded it as authoritative. It states that the agency was established by Prime Minister Ben-Gurion in 1951 who gave its primary directive as, "For our state which since its creation has been under siege by its enemies. Intelligence constitutes the first line of defence... we must learn well how to recognize what is going on around us." We are told furthermore that Mossad has eight departments. These are: Collections Department responsible for "espionage under diplomatic as well as unofficial cover;" Political Action and Liaison Department which conducts "political activities and liaison with friendly foreign intelligence services and with nations with which Israel does not have normal diplomatic relations; Special Operations Division - Metsada - "conducts highly sensitive assassination, sabotage, paramilitary, and psychological warfare projects;" LAP (Lohama Psichologit) Department "is responsible for psychological warfare, propaganda and deception operations." In addition there are the Research Department responsible for intelligence production and the Technology Department. The latter is "responsible for development of advanced technologies for support of Mossad operations."

Of greatest interest in the current context was LAP with its psychological warfare, propaganda and deception operations. The vigorous propaganda campaign against Iraq, before and especially after September 11, fits perfectly with LAP's duties. Some of us may remember that our Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, intended to have a similar unit at his disposal in the Pentagon but it was shot down by Congress. On the other hand that does not necessarily mean that the project was totally abandoned since the American people, supposedly for their security, must not know what is being done in their name.

Armed with this information I then went to amazon.com and two books came up prominently. One was Israel's Secret Wars by Ian Black and Benny Morris, the other Gideon's Spies by Gordon Thomas. Since it is bad scientific practice to rely on only one source I ordered both books. These led me to the book by Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad case officer and whistle blower, By Way of Deception. The subsequent information is culled from these three sources and for anyone interested I can cite page numbers.

The Black and Morris book is an extensive treatise of 528 pages and an abundance of notes as well as source references which will be read mainly by seriously minded scholars. The one by Thomas will appeal to the general public. It is shorter and based on firsthand interviews with the movers and shakers in Israel and to some extent the US. Ostrovsky gave his personal story why a convinced Zionist who had joined the Mossad in good faith was turned off by its practices and left the organization. Although all three books cover much of the same material they are definitely worth reading if one really wants to get an appreciation of what is going on inside the Mossad and how its operations have impacted on the United States.

The Motto of the Mossad is, "By way of deception thou shalt do war." As mentioned, Israel is indeed still at war at least with Syria, and with the other neighbors there exists only, what might be called, a "cold peace." Internally there is in addition the war against the Palestinians in the occupied territories which is officially labeled as a war against terrorism. As mentioned previously in these pages for Israel there are no occupied territories only Judea, Samaria and Gaza which constitute part of Eretz Israel promised by God to Jews. It has been said that "all is fair in love and war," or as Black and Morris put it, "A la guerre, comme á la guerre." Thus lies, murders, "false flag" operations, are the stock in trade and the only crime is being caught. The essence is: what is good for Israel is good for the Mossad. As Ostrovsky wrote whenever something happened anywhere the only question was, "'Is it good for Jews, or not?' Forget about policies or anything else. That was the only thing that counted. And depending on the answer, people were called anti-Semites, whether deservedly or not." Since what is good for Jews, or more specifically the policies of the state of Israel, is not necessarily good for America, conflicts have arisen and will continue arise.

The Pollard spy operation, which was called by Black and Morris, "a gold mine," is just one example. It was good for Israel to get secret American documents but, according to Thomas, it was bad for the CIA which found its operations destroyed in South Africa and the Soviet Union when Israel turned some of the material over to these countries. Thomas also wrote, "One note taker at the Sunday cabinet meeting in Jerusalem claimed that 'listening to Admony [Mossad director 1982-1990] was the next best thing to sitting in the Oval Office. We not only knew what was the very latest thinking in Washington on all matters of concern to us, but we had sufficient time to respond before making a decision." Even if this "note taker" had exaggerated the fact remains that a serious breach of security had occurred. There was also wide-spread concern that Pollard had received some of his orders, which demanded specific documents that were not in his ordinary purview, through some other highly placed source in the White House.

This brings up another unique feature, which is specific for the Mossad. The paid staff of case officers, field agents, and informers is rather small because it can rely on a large number of sayanim - helpers. These are Jews who come from all walks of life and for whom the survival of Israel is of prime concern. When they are approached by an agent who paints an imminent threat to their spiritual home in the darkest colors they are only too willing to lend their hand in providing information as well as, on occasion, tangible material. For instance the theft of about one hundred pounds of uranium from the nuclear facility Numec in Apollo, Pennsylvania, to get the Israeli nuclear program started. The motives of the sayanim are beyond reproach. They believe that by helping Israel they help making the world a better place. Unfortunately that is a delusion. But this is the reason why the American Jewish community was so upset when the Pollard case broke because it brought inevitably the question of dual loyalty to the fore. Wolf Blitzer, the respected journalist and TV commentator, discusses this aspect to some extent in Territory of Lies.

While the Pollard affair is widely known in this country, events during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the background of the Iran-Contra scandal have not received much media coverage. Lebanon is important in the present context because our current Iraq dilemma was precipitated by the same misuse of intelligence and wishful thinking as Israel's disaster in Lebanon.

Here is a brief summary of the underlying rationale for the invasion. Palestinian guerillas regularly shot rockets into Galilee from the south of Lebanon and also made hit and run attacks on Israeli citizens. Since there was a civil war in Lebanon at the time, Prime Minister Begin and Defense Minister Sharon decided on an invasion of Lebanon. The ultimate goal was to destroy Muslim power as well as the PLO in that country and establish a friendly Christian Maronite government in Beirut which was expected to make peace with Israel.

There were two invasion plans, "Little Pines," a forty kilometer incursion of the Israeli army to eliminate Palestinian strongholds on the border. This was for public consumption and favored by segments of the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces). "Big Pines," an advance to the north of Beirut and cutting the Beirut-Damascus highway was Sharon's and Begin's plan. When Sharon was asked how long the army would have to stay in Lebanon "to assure the emergence of a new Phalange dominated regime? Sharon thought six weeks. Saguy [IDF intelligence chief] was less optimistic and believed it would take no less than three months." As it turned out eighteen years had to pass before the last Israeli soldier came home from Lebanon. The withdrawal was ordered by then Prime Minister Ehud Barak to end the guerilla war against his troops and Hizballah has now taken over the PLO's job to harass the Israelis.

The Lebanon invasion was Israel's Vietnam and it was not based merely on faulty information provided by the Intelligence community but on wishful thinking of the politicians. Although the Christians were initially glad to be rid of the PLO, they soon became disenchanted. They were after all Lebanese and their desires did not necessarily coincide with those of Israel. In addition the Israelis soon found themselves involved with very unhappy Shiites who still provide cover for Hizballah. This seems to be exactly the scenario which played itself out prior to our invasion of Iraq and how long we will have to stay there fighting a smoldering insurrection only the future can tell.

But the Lebanon invasion also showed the split between Israeli and American interests. Israel wanted peace with Lebanon so that it could concentrate on eliminating the threat to the settlers in the occupied territories, which it intended to retain. President Reagan, on the other hand, wanted a global peace arrangement which included an Israeli withdrawal from them Although this would have been in the long term interest of Israel as well as America it was anathema to Begin and led to the disastrous truck bombing of the Beirut Headquarter of the Marines' Expeditionary Force in 1983, causing the loss of 241 American lives. Mossad has excellent spy services and can infiltrate any organization it wants. Israelis are multiethnic, speak several languages and can blend with the population of any country without undue fear of sticking out. It was known to the Mossad that a Syrian sponsored group had planned a major suicide attack with a blue Mercedes truck. Since they did not know its final destination they were shadowing it. The question was how much to tell the Americans about it. A decision was made at the highest level that the Americans should be given only, as Ostrovsky wrote, "the general warning, a vague notice that someone may be planning an operation against them. But this was so general and commonplace, it was like sending a weather report; unlikely to raise any particular alarm or prompt increased security precautions. Admony, in refusing to give the Americans specific information on the truck, said 'No we're not here to protect the Americans, They are a big country. Send only the regular information.' At the same time, however, all Israeli installations were given the specific details and warned to watch out for a truck matching the description of the Mercedes." The purpose was obvious: American public opinion had to be inflamed against Arabs.

This failure to share vital information with one's benefactor and most important ally played itself out also in the Beirut hostage crisis. Among the group of Western hostages was the CIA Station Chief, William Buckley, and the US was desperately trying to get him back. Although Prime Minister Peres assured President Reagan of his full cooperation the Mossad played by its own rules. No specifics were provided and the Americans were led down the garden path. As Ostrovsky wrote, "Many people in the office said the Mossad were going to regret it someday. But the majority were happy. The attitude was, 'Hey, we showed them. We're not going to be kicked around by the Americans. We are the Mossad. We are the best.'"

Had the Mossad indeed cooperated fully the Iran-Contra affair might have been avoided. While the US was supplying weapons to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war the Israelis were busy shipping some of our weapons to Iran. The logic was impeccable. The longer the war lasted the more exhausted the combatants became and the better it was for Israel. On July 29, 1986, with the hostage crisis still unresolved, then Vice-President Bush met secretly with Prime Minister Peres' Chief Security advisor, Amiram Nir, at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Ostrovsky wrote, "Nir told Bush the Israelis 'activated the channel. We gave a front to the operation, provided a physical base, provided aircraft.'" Bush was also told, in contrast to President Reagan's later assertions, that the Israelis were dealing "'with the most radical elements [in Iran because] we have learned they can deliver and the moderates can't.'" When the Iran-Contra affair became known Congress started hearings. Nir, who was the most important witness, had promised to give full testimony which would have severely hurt the American as well as Israeli government. This was not allowed to come to pass and he supposedly died in an unexplained Cessna crash in the wilderness of Mexico. Ostrovsky speculated that he may have been bought off, had plastic surgery to alter his facial features, and lived happily for ever after.

This brings us to the present and the Niger forgery. Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas reported in the July 28, 2003 edition of Newsweek that it may have started with a break-in at the Niger embassy in Rome on January 2, 2001. There was nothing significant stolen, "but someone had apparently rifled through embassy papers, leaving them strewn about the floor." Some months later the Italian intelligence service received a stack of official looking documents from an African diplomat. They were signed by officials of the Niger government and purported to show that Saddam Hussein wanted to buy some 500 tons of pure uranium which can be used for making atomic weapons. The Italians notified the British and the CIA. As it turned out the documents, which consisted of letters dated from July to October 2000, were crude forgeries. They were known as such at least a year and a half before the famous 16 word sentence was uttered by the President. Now the blame is being shifted to the British and most recently the French but who fed it to them in the first place? It was probably the Mossad, which is known for its "False Flag" operations and had the most to gain. For Bush the information, regardless of its provenance and veracity, was icing on the cake in his determination to go to war. But why would the Mossad engage in such a clumsy fabrication when it surely has the means to do a better job?

For the answer to that question we have to turn to the previously mentioned highly traveled and respected reporter Gordon Thomas of Gideon's Spies. In my search for the truth I had found some minor discrepancies between his book and that of Black and Morris. Since he does have a website, Globe-Intel, I contacted him and found him most forthcoming. My first letter was immediately answered and so were the subsequent ones. I am, therefore, happy to publicly express my thanks because such cooperation is far from commonplace. He told me that the Niger documents came from the Mossad and were fed to MI6 (British intelligence) via Rome and when they received them "The documents were originally taken as 'the kind of stuff you would expect with sloppy Third World people.'" In this way the Mossad could cover its tracks and as we know the operation achieved its purpose.

Unfortunately there is more and we are not likely to hear the truth from official channels. There is good reason to believe that the Mossad had some fore-knowledge about the impending 9/11 attack, but failed to share all its information with the CIA and FBI analogous to the Beirut truck bombing and the Buckley capture. A radicalization of the American public against Arabs and the Muslim world in general is obviously good for Israel but is it good for America? Congress is not likely to get the full truth because the White House stonewalls and the documents which are handed over are in part censored.

There is, however, another reason, apart from elections where the Jewish vote is regarded as vital, why the role of the Mossad must remain unmentioned. I believe that we are heavily dependent on "The Institute," as it is also referred to, in the current Iraq war, which is far from over. Only Israelis can readily mingle with Arabs, pose as Iraqis and get information which is not necessarily available to the CIA, or military intelligence in the field, because our guys simply lack the necessary language skills. Even if they were to know Arabic they would not be able to communicate in the local patois and would become sitting ducks. This does not apply to Israelis but since they are interested first and last in Israel, as they should be, we may not necessarily be able to trust the information we receive. This is the bind into which our troops have been placed but it is not likely to be debated publicly.



When one reads the mentioned books one feels that one is staring into an abyss. Regardless of motives, the means are reprehensible and violate all strictures of human decency. In essence we are paying for government supported Mafia operations. The fact that it is not only the Mossad which behaves in this manner but to some extent all the so called "Intelligence" services of the world makes the situation even more grim. This is also another example of the misuse of language. What the spies provide is not intelligence but information. The difference is vital because it would require intelligent people to evaluate this mass of data. But intelligence which is not biased by wishful thinking is a difficult commodity for anyone, let alone politicians and their supporters in the media.

As mentioned the full truth of the antecedents to 9/11, from which all else flowed, is currently being hidden. But "We the People" and especially the families of the victims have a right to know what really happened. Congress should not tolerate stonewalling by the administration and if key documents are not forthcoming they should hold the responsible people, even if it were the President, in contempt. Continued secrecy and cover-ups do not serve the American people. Deception, whether willful or inadvertent, needs to be shunned. When mistakes are made they have to be publicly admitted to, common decency demands it. But regardless of who was behind 9/11, the Niger forgery, and the Iraq invasion the major fact that has emerged is that trust in our government and the media has been eroded. We no longer know whom we can trust and that is the death knell for a free society. Without trust we will create a police state and we will end up not much different from the regimes we are so eager to topple. That is the tragedy of today's events and this is why people of good will need to speak out.

The true revelations will have to come from the inside of the "secret services," including our own. This why I shall give Victor Ostrovsky the penultimate word. He was there, got disgusted and tells us why. In the Foreword he wrote, "It is out of love for Israel as a free and just country that I am laying my life on the line by so doing, facing up to those who took it upon themselves to turn the Zionist dream into the present-day nightmare." In the Epilogue one finds,

"The Intifada and resultant breakdown of moral order and humanity are a direct result of the kind of megalomania that characterizes the operation of the Mossad. That's where it all begins. This feeling that you can do anything you want to whomever you want for as long as you want because you have the power. . . . It's a disease that began with the Mossad and has spread through government and down through much of Israeli society. There are large elements inside Israeli society who are protesting this slide, but their voices are not being heard. And with each step down, it gets easier to repeat and more difficult to stop.

The strongest curse inside the Mossad that one katsa [case officer] can throw at another is the simple wish: 'May I read about you in the paper.'

It might be the only way to turn things around."

Although these words were published in 1990 the passage of time has made them only truer. Now the disease has spread to our government. Unless we face up to it we will go the way of the Israeli state: disliked around the world and embroiled in perpetual warfare with concomitant deceptions. This is not what the founders of our republic had in mind.





September 1, 2003

FOR THE GOYIM THEY SING



The topic to be discussed here is so emotionally charged that it needs to be read in sequence lest wrong opinions are formed. I shall, therefore, refrain from using bold print, which would lend itself to quotes taken out of context. About two months ago I came across a book by Haddon Klingberg Jr., Professor of Psychology at North Park University, entitled When Life Calls Out To Us. The Love and Lifework of Viktor and Elly Frankl. The Story behind Man's Search for Meaning. As discussed in War&Mayhem Dr. Frankl, whose lectures on neurology at the Poliklinik I attended in 1948, became a role model not only for my professional life but also in the personal sphere. What impressed me most at the time was not only his exemplary teaching style but that as a Jewish survivor of concentration camps the man exuded only profound humanism without any trace of hate or resentment. Klingberg's book was, therefore, of great interest and I can strongly recommend it to anyone interested in Frankl's lifework.

I had always been puzzled why Frankl had not achieved greater recognition by leading Jewish authorities. Wiesenthal is known by everybody but Frankl's name does not have the same resonance among average persons. As an example of discrimination against Frankl I might mention that he was clearly entitled to the Chairmanship of Vienna's renowned Neuro-Psychiatric University Hospital when the position became vacant in 1949. It went instead to another Jewish neurologist, Hans Hoff, who had spent the war years first in Palestine and then New York. More about Hoff can be found in War&Mayhem. After reading Klingberg's book the reasons for the difference in the treatment meted out to Wiesenthal or Hoff versus Frankl became apparent.

Although not stated in these words, Frankl had committed four cardinal sins in the eyes of the Jewish establishment. One was that he refused to hate the Nazis for what they had personally done to him and his family. Rather than looking backward at past suffering he looked instead forward to the new challenges life had in store. The second sin was that he spoke out against collective guilt, even in 1945, and advocated reconciliation rather than en bloc condemnation of entire groups of people, which he regarded as Nazism in reverse. Individuals who had committed crimes should be punished but the global condemnation of "the Germans" or even "the Nazis," was not appropriate. His was the voice of the physician who examines individual people and tries to find their positive characteristics which can help them to overcome their negative ones and thus lead to more appropriate behavior patterns. This stance is, of course, anathema to politicians and media people who want to first create and then sway "public opinion." The third sin was that his psychotherapeutic treatment method of "Existential Analysis," also referred to as "Logotherapy," (website: http://logotherapy.univie.ac.at) was seen as serious competition for Freudian psychoanalysis, which essentially reduced the human being to a sex driven organism. Frankl saw the soul and its yearning for meaning in life. This is why he called his first book, the manuscript of which was destroyed in Auschwitz, Aerztliche Seelsorge. The title, which is most appropriate in German, defies a succinct translation and the English title The Doctor and the Soul does not capture its essence. It could be rendered as: how the physician can provide care for a patient's soul. In German the word Seelsorge is regarded as the domain of priests and ministers but Frankl broke through this barrier. He said essentially: Yes, priests should do their job, but physicians also have a role to play when they are confronted with patients whose problem is basically a spiritual one. While Freud, the materialist, had derided religion as an illusion, Frankl saw, felt, and acted on the human being's spiritual essence. This simply did not sit well in our "secular society." The fourth sin was that, although Frankl had never renounced his Jewish faith, he had married, in a civil ceremony, a Catholic woman.

For Gentile readers these aspects may all be "so what," but for some influential segments in the Jewish community they are indeed pretty near traitorous. For these sons of Jacob (I deliberately do not call them sons of Isaac because Esau, Isaac's first born, has a decidedly bad name in Jewish religious circles) there still exists a tribal mentality of a beleaguered "us versus them." This brings me to the title of this essay. Frankl was fond of jokes and one of his favorite ones, as quoted from Klingberg's book was, "An old Jewish man who had emigrated to Berlin is walking in the famous park there. Then a bird appeared overhead lets its droppings go and they land right on the old man's hat. He takes off his hat, looks at it, and says, 'For the goyim they are singing.' "

Obviously one laughs at the joke but as Freud told us jokes can have deeper meaning and in this instance it reveals a basically paranoid attitude bred by a history which emphasizes intermittent persecutions in some parts of the world rather than periods of relative well-being. Gentiles, or goyim, as non-Jews are referred to in private Jewish conversation with a connotation that is somewhat akin to the "n word," will never understand the deep trauma some Jews labor under. When Gentiles either ignore it, or are trying to make up for past sins, they tend to merely perpetuate a mind-set which is inherently unhealthy. This is one facet of Jewish life which deserves be recognized and openly discussed.

Paranoid type of thinking exemplified by - because we have been persecuted in the past we are ordained to be persecuted in the future until the Messiah arrives - can be compensated for by a feeling of superiority over others. This combination of mental attitudes is a major contributing factor to the hostility Jews have encountered intermittently throughout history. To understand this very delicate, difficult, but terribly important subject I'd like to discuss first my professional experience with paranoid patients. Paranoia does, in general, not start out with ideas of persecution but with an experience which the individual regards as extremely important and which the rest of the world should share. When others who fail to appreciate that need, either ignore or ridicule the person, the sense of "I am right and the rest of the world is wrong" is born. When the person then not simply retires into his own fantasy land but actively endeavors to recruit others into his belief system he will encounter resistance and at that point active retaliation by society, which does not want to conform to the wishes of the individual, will occur. This is the typical sequence when paranoia is limited to one person. The family steps in, the patient will be taken to a psychiatrist and a treatment course will be instituted. A problem for society at large arises if this particular person is "charismatic," intelligent, intact in all other mental functions and can rally others into his personal belief system. Under those circumstances events are set in motion which have incalculable consequences. The group then feeds on myths of superiority, which are denied by the rest of society. The resultant ill will by society has two consequences. One is the increased cohesion of the in-group in face of actual or perceived danger and the other active and at times violent hostility by the larger overall society. In this way antisemitism was born and this is why it is so difficult, if not impossible, to eradicate.

These thoughts are not purely academic at present, but have very practical consequences which affect the lives of all of us. The state of Israel was created as a reaction to European antisemitism. It was Herzl's, and like-minded others', belief that when the Jews leave Europe and build a prosperous state in Palestine, antisemitism would lose its raison d'être and all the world would then be happy and grateful for the benefits Jews are providing to the world. The fatal flaw (both literally as well as figuratively) in this assumption was the non-recognition of the existence of an indigenous population in Palestine. The slogan under which Zionist colonizers flocked to Palestine in the late 19th and especially early 20th century was "A land without people for people without a land." This is a classic example of how a wrong assumption has to lead to wrong results. People did live there. They were in the vast majority Arabs and they acted exactly in the manner Sultan Abd ul-Hamid II predicted. When Herzl wanted to acquire Palestine for the Jews with the promise of providing financial help to the ailing Ottoman empire the Sultan replied, through a mutual friend, "If Mister Herzl is indeed such a good friend of yours, as you are mine, then advise him not to take even one more step in this matter. I cannot sell a single foot of my land, because it doesn't belong to me, but to my people. My people have fought for this empire with their blood and have fertilized it with their blood. We shall have to cover it again with our blood before one tears it away from us . . . The Jews should save themselves their billions [Milliarden]. If my empire is parceled out, they might get Palestine for free. Only our cadaver can be partitioned. I do not agree to vivisection [Herzl Tagebuch entry of June 19, 1896. Translation is mine]." One can only wonder about how much past as well as future misery might have been avoided had Herzl been able to take this advice to heart and had indeed abandoned his project. History's wars are not foreordained but result from wrong assumptions and the Zionist dream, which is turning into a nightmare for all of us, is just one of them.

But Herzl was obsessed, and he as well as his followers, could not and still cannot, abandon the quest for Eretz Yisrael, which encompasses for some at minimum the current state plus the occupied West Bank and Gaza. The maximalists dream of the restoration of King David's borders, which are actually quite nebulous if one asks historians. The failure of American administrations to recognize this quest, which can bring only further bloodshed, has led us into the current impasse in the Middle East. Under the slogan that we have to fight terrorism and secure the survival of "the only democracy in the Middle East," America has been led into the war with Iraq and if Likud supporters, both here and in Israel, had their way we would also eliminate Syria and Iran as potential threats to Israel. Let me emphasize that the threat to Israel was not the only reason for our invasion of Iraq but, to deny that it was a contributing factor would also be inaccurate.

Now we come to the problem: How can a small nation of six million people, of whom about one million Arabs are partially disenfranchised even within the pre 1967 borders, prosper in the face of ever growing hostility? To answer this question we have to look at how Jewish intellectuals think about themselves and what methods are employed to gain support from inside and outside their own community. As far as self appreciation is concerned I would now like to quote from a few Jewish sources. One is a recent letter I received from the Simon Wiesenthal Center which starts out,

"Dear Friend,

I'm writing you today with news about a frightening trend that is sweeping across the European continent.

Since October of 2000, the beginning of the Palestinian Intifada II, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has been tracking with growing alarm, a dramatic rise in hate rhetoric and hate crimes targeted toward Europe's Jewish population . . . . The situation has grown so serious that Simon Wiesenthal, now 95, told me that 'there is more antisemitism today than we experienced in the 1930's.'" The message is that Jews not only in Israel but also in Europe are in serious and growing danger and must rally to the meet the threat. Financial support for the Wiesenthal Center was requested; as if the problem could be solved with money.

To highlight the threat to Israeli Jews the tax-exempt organization FLAME (Facts and Logic About the Middle East), which advertises in a number of newspapers and magazines, argues vigorously against the creation of a Palestinian state. It is claimed that the state would never remain demilitarized, continue to threaten Israel's very existence, and eventually lead to a nuclear holocaust. One of the "facts" cited in support of this thesis is that a Palestinian state is unjustified "because there are no distinct 'Palestinian' people. The concept of a Palestinian state came about after the Six-Day War in 1967." Well, this is simply untrue, and the writers of FLAME must know it. Palestine was the official name for the country under the British Mandate; ergo the people living there were Palestinians regardless of what religion they professed. The division of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state was first suggested by the Peel Commission in 1937 and officially adopted by the UN in 1947. The argument whether the Arabs living in Palestine were really "Palestinians" reminded me of the story of a an old man in the Sudetenland, "When I was born I lived in Austria, then I lived in Czechoslovakia, then I lived in Germany, now I live in Czechoslovakia again and I have never even set foot outside of my village." Since the FLAME article reflects the current Israeli government's position it is obvious that the "road map" never had a ghost of a chance to succeed. Regardless of what the Palestinians did or did not do the will from the Israeli side simply wasn't there. In spite of the so called truce Israeli settlements continued to be expanded and the construction of the "fence" which in part separates Palestinian farmers' villages from their fields was started. All of this is done in the name of security for Israel, which reinforces the basically paranoid mind-set into which Americans are now being recruited.

But as mentioned earlier for paranoia to flourish it needs not only the threat of persecution but also a sense of entitlement. In order to understand this aspect one has to read Jewish literature and the book by Max I. Dimont The Indestructible Jews. An action-packed journey through 4,000 years of history, is a good example. He divides Jewish history into three acts. The first one, "The Manifest Destiny", covers the era from the patriarchs to Jesus; the second, "The Existential Dilemma" deals with the period from Jesus to Ben-Gurion, and the third act, "The Paradox of the Diaspora" is being played out now. Dimont believes, and he may well be right, that the Jews are what he called "the surfboard riders of history." They attach themselves to one rising civilization infuse it with their belief system and when that civilization is in decay, they catch the next wave. For this reason they need both the Diaspora as well as the state of Israel as its spiritual center. Let me now quote some key passages to get a flavor of Dimont's thinking.

"The Jews will not worship idols, be they religious, secular or scientific. A consequence . . . is that of the Jews as skeptics, who never accept the say-so of anyone not even God . . . They are a people of law. They are a people born with a pontificating finger, moral busybodies, who are forever telling the world what is right and what is wrong . . . Finally, Jews have always supported education and general welfare. . . the Jewish ethic rallies round the flag that symbolizes what is noblest in man."

In regard to Jewish Diaspora Dimont wrote,

"Each Diaspora interaction enriched Judaism, giving it a new virility, verisimilitude, and a broader spectrum of intellectual activity. But its inner core always remained distinctly Jewish. No matter how much the Jews borrowed, they did not doubt the superiority of Judaism itself. . . . With each new challenge, with each successive enlargement of the Diaspora Judaic ideas were indelibly imprinted on each host civilization. This 'Judaization' of the world that has imperceptibly coursed below the surface of history in our second act is destined to surface in the third."

Dimont then asks, "Will it be the destiny of the Jews in the third act to proselytize the universalistic aspect of their faith to a diasporized world sick unto its scientific soul, ready, perhaps, at last, to accept their prophetic message? Is it possible that Christianity, Mohammedanism, communism have been but stepping stones to make it easier for diasporized man to cross over into a universal Judaism? . . . . At the end of the first act, Jesus proclaimed a religious brotherhood of man in heaven. At the end of the second act Marx proclaimed an economic brotherhood for man on earth. What will be proclaimed at the end of the third act? Will the Christian Jesus reappear as promised by the Gospels, or will a Jewish Messiah appear as promised by the prophets? Thus in the third act, man himself will be faced with an existential choice. Should he choose the Christian paradise in heaven, with an avenging Jesus returning to end mankind with a Judgment day, or should he choose the Jewish paradise on earth brought about by a messianic concept of brotherhood?"

Dimont then addresses the question,

"How could these forthright Zionist agnostics [who had settled in Palestine prior to nationhood] claim to be heirs to the messianic ideal? How could they deny God and yet proclaim the chosenness of the Jewish people? Perhaps Ben-Gurion best resolved this dilemma when he said

'My concept of the messianic idea is not a metaphysical but a social-cultural one . . . I believe in our moral and intellectual superiority, in our capacity to serve to serve as a model for the redemption of the human race . . . "

Dimont concluded,

"Perhaps this is why God chose the Jews, if there was indeed divine choice. He could count on them. As one scholar so perceptively summed it up - 'In Judaism, God turned to man and said, 'Finish the job for me,' and man said 'I will.' In Christianity, man returns to God and says 'I cannot do it, finish the work for me,' and God says 'I will'. In essence the Christians are unable to fulfill the task assigned to man by God, and slough the job back to God via Jesus. . . . As long as the Jews stick to the ethics of the Torah and the ideology of the Prophets they will remain indestructible. When all men embrace this ethic and ideology, they, too, will symbolically become 'Jewish.' There will then be only man."


I have quoted so extensively from my 1973 edition because these are the ideas over which the current war in Israel as well as the more general war with Islamic fundamentalists are fought over. Let me highlight just a few points. Dimont tells us that the Jewish vision of morality is the only correct one. It has to be pushed onto the rest of the world, which has to be "Judaized." "Diasporized man" is a neologism and I doubt that people of other nations or religions feel that they live in a "Diaspora." A "universal Judaism" is an oxymoron. Judaism, strictly speaking, is a set of laws given by Moses to the Israelites to form a nation which sets them apart from the goyim! The messianic concept of brotherhood was always limited to members of the twelve tribes. When one reads the Old Testament carefully, Gentiles could join but would have to undergo conversion to Jewish law, which for males includes circumcision. The expansion of some aspects of Judaism into a universal religion was due to Jesus martyrdom and mainly St. Paul's missionary trips to the Gentiles. It is they who should get the credit. I have discussed these aspects in my next book Understanding Jesus. A Medical Perspective which, as of today, is still looking for a publisher. When it comes to "moral and intellectual superiority," I thought that this concept of the inherent superiority of one racial or ethnic group over another was buried with Hitler in the bunker, but apparently not. The ethics of the Torah and the prophets, which should be accepted by the rest of the world is also a catch phrase without meaning but mindlessly repeated by numerous Jewish authors. The Torah is not only the first five books attributed to Moses in the Old Testament but the entire body of Jewish written and oral law, which most Jews do not adhere to anyway. The prophets were nationalists who showered doom and gloom upon all their neighbors as well as the wayward Jews. This vision hardly lends itself to a peaceful future. Thus to call upon the world to adopt the "universal aspects of the Torah and the prophets," but in the same breath deny the existence of God strikes me as less than honest. Furthermore the truly universal aspects of the moral law antedated Moses. It would be most wholesome for writers like Dimont to read Pritchard’s The Ancient Near East. This collection of documents from the beginnings of our civilization ought to remove chauvinistic preconceptions and provide respect for those ancients upon whose words the laws and wisdom literature of the Bible was based. A great many of the commandments the Israelites were ordered to adhere to in the Torah were actually literally copied from Hammurabi's [ca. 1728-1686] laws. He received them likewise from his god whose name was, however, Shamash not Yahweh.

The statement that "there will then be only man," is a concept not even religious Jews subscribe to and an effort to turn the entire world into atheists must create resistance. Yet it is precisely these ideas which are being pushed in America and which the world receives through television. These fuel the hatred not only against Jews but Americans as their protector. Small wonder that some Muslims will say in so many words: not over my dead body.

Lest one assumes that it is merely one author who harbors and promotes these thoughts one needs only to read Jewish newspapers, magazines, as well as a variety of books by Jewish authors. Dimont, and those who think like him, also have a profoundly distorted view of what Christianity is, or should be, all about. Just as many Christians, especially Evangelicals, harbor an idealized view of Judaism and the state of Israel which has no counterpart in the real world. Thus Dimont's writings are typical for a paranoid mind-set which consists of an exaggerated sense of self importance masking the unspoken fear of the "avenging Jesus." The dead Jesus and the possibility that God might exist haunt some Jewish intellectuals and this is the reason why not only Christianity but all religions have to disappear. The claim that Jews as a whole rally to the flag which stands for "what is noblest in man" also sounds quite hollow when one considers Jewish behavior vis a vis their Arab citizens and to the Palestinians in the occupied territories. Security will never be achieved by brutality and each escalating reprisal will merely lead to more bloodshed. There are indeed some responsible Jews in Israel as well as here who argue against these policies but they are the proverbial voice in the wilderness which gets drowned out by the clamor for revenge and "security."

On the other hand there is one point where I have to agree with Dimont. The "Judaization" of America has succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of Jewish immigrants after WWII. Even our foreign policy is currently no longer in the hands of the professionals in the State Department but is run by a small civilian neoconservative group in the Pentagon who turn Israel's goals into those of America. This is the tragedy of the beginning century because the American people, by and large, do not realize that they are being used for ulterior motives.

We now have to address the question how is Dimont's vision to be accomplished. The answer is already partly in his book and in last month's essay on "The Niger Forgery". "Thou shalt wage war by deception" is not limited to the Mossad; it now permeates all aspects of our society. To get by with deceptions the responsible officials can either lie or stonewall, by not releasing pertinent documents and Congress' as well as the media's acquiescence. Even the minutes of Vice President Cheney's meeting on energy policy in early 2001 are not allowed to be released because they would, in all probability, throw a rather different light on the administration's response to the 9/11 disaster. While secrecy and outright lies are one mechanism, the spread of fear by exaggerating possible dangers is the other, as exemplified by the rhetoric which led up to the Iraq invasion, and expressed also in the letter from the Wiesenthal Center as well as in FLAME.

One year ago I wrote in the essay "October Surprise?" that I had been told in August by a person who was privy to administration information that the decision for war had already been made and that our efforts to convince Senator Bennett to act as a voice of reason in Washington were fruitless. I had no possibility at that time to verify the information but corroboration came in an article from The Guardian. The British have appointed an independent commission under Lord Hutton to examine the recent suspicious death of Dr. Kelly who was the country's foremost expert on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The Guardian wrote in its August 23, 2003 edition under the headline, "Emails show how No 10 constructed case for war," that Tony Blair was told on September 8, 2002 by President Bush at Camp David that the invasion of Iraq had been decided on. It was Blair's job to make the British people come on board and the flurry of e-mails under discussion was to provide the justification for the war rather than an attempt to avoid it. "The sense that the decision had been made is also echoed by the former cabinet minister, Clare Short, who opposed the war and who told the Commons foreign affairs committee that she had been informed by three senior people - believed to be another cabinet minister, an MI6 chief and a top civil servant - that war was inevitable. One of them told her to stop fretting because it could not be stopped."

Evidence how the American people were hoodwinked into the war can also be found on the Internet in an interview with Ray Mc Govern by Will Pitt on June 26,2003 (www.truthout.org). McGovern, a CIA analyst for 27 years, had served under seven Presidents beginning with Kennedy and ending with Bush I. His job was to brief the highest administration officials, and as he relates the motto of the CIA, chiseled in marble at the entrance, is "You Shall Know The Truth, And the Truth Shall Set You Free." In those days CIA officers did indeed present truthful analysis results to the policy makers and were not interfered with, regardless whether a given administration liked or did not like the data. The CIA was an independent agency which could go after facts. This changed profoundly in the run-up towards the Iraq war. President Bush II had ignored the briefing on August 6, 2001 which had its title "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US." Condoleeza Rice, our National Security Advisor, admitted after September 11 that she had not looked at her predecessor's, Sandy Berger, file on terrorism. As she said, "It was still on my desk when September 11 happened." According to McGovern the driving force in the exaggeration of the potential Iraqi threat, which justified the invasion of the country, was the Vice President as well as the civilians in the Pentagon especially Wolfowitz. Mc Govern, also told his interviewer, "When the decision was made last summer that we will have a war against Iraq, they were casting about. You'll recall White House Chief of Staff Andy Carr saying you don't market a new product in August. The big blast off was Cheney's speech in Nashville, I think it was Nashville anyway, on August 26. He said Iraq was seeking materials for its nuclear program. That set the tone right there."

This is what seems to really have happened, the tragedy of 9/11 was used as the excuse to pursue other goals by manufacturing non-existent threats against the U.S., supposedly emanating from Saddam Hussein. Fear had to spread and our moral superiority over the rest of the world had to be proclaimed. This policy has now committed us to an indefinite guerilla war in Afghanistan as well as Iraq and possibly other places around the world. Although the CIA as well as the FBI analysts in the field had done their level best to detect and warn of imminent dangers they were ignored by their higher-ups. Problems of this type will neither be solved by an additional layer of bureaucracy called Homeland Security Office nor by a Patriot Act which allows the government to snoop on its citizens at will.

What can be done now? First of all the press and television have to demand a truly independent investigation of the events leading up to 9-11-2001 and the administration's response to it. Public pressure for an accounting is needed before Congress will react and take the appropriate steps. Senators and Representatives have re-election on their minds and will not act unless the public is truly aroused and it is the media's job to keep government as honest as possible. Stonewalling by the President as well as the Vice President in regard to crucial documents should be condemned and brought before the judiciary. If judicial orders are then denied on grounds of "national security" the responsible people should be held in contempt. Nothing but the disclosure of the full truth will ever get us out of this quandary we have gotten into during the past two years. Our national security is not served by secrecy but only by a fully informed citizenry.

As far as Iraq is concerned the predictions about the consequences of this invasion, which have been made during the past year in these pages, have sadly come true. The guerilla war in Iraq against everyone who cooperates with Americans, as urged by bin-Laden in his tape recorded message prior to our invasion, is now also a reality. I presented excerpts in the March, 2003 essay "From Homo Sapiens to the Naked Ape." The most recent highlights are the tragic attacks on the UN headquarters and even the most revered Shiite mosque in Najaf. Ayatollah Mohammed Baquir al-Hakim had advocated accommodation with the infidels and this was not to be condoned. Attacks upon the Kurds are likely to be in the offing next. At this late stage everybody in the US now wants the UN to assume a greater role. But this cannot be achieved in the way Charles Krauthammer wants it. The headline of his essay on the last page of Time September 1, 2003 was, "Help Wanted. Why America needs to lean hard on its allies to lend a hand in Iraq." This reflects precisely the sense of arrogance which is discussed above. First we tell the world that regardless of what they want we will go it alone, and when that didn't quite work out as envisioned they should come and bail us out. But we intend to keep the major contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq and the anticipated future profits. People who think this way forget that our allies are not our servants, they are free people and the scenario as outlined above is not likely to find their approval. Only when we demonstrate that we are willing for them to share not only burdens but also rewards is help likely to be forthcoming.

To the Jewish people and their sympathizers I suggest that they take the contents of Whither Zionism? and of "The Neocons' Leviathan," which was published here in April of this year, to heart. Please recognize the failure of the neoncons, as well as Likud's, policies and conduct yourselves according to the high ethical principles your writers proclaim. Place yourself into the shoes of the Palestinians in the occupied territories and consider what the world-wide Jewish reaction would be if the roles were reversed and Palestinians treated Jews the way Palestinians are being treated now. Remember that the Golden Rule works both ways, "You will be treated the way you treat others." Realize, furthermore, that when a total of about 14 million people want to convert a world of more than 6 billion to their belief system - be it religious or secular - it cannot work; it must backfire. Complaining about antisemitism, spreading further fear and drumming up money will not help.

The answer to the challenges ahead is honesty and conduct commensurate with universal, rather than parochial, human values. Goethe has summed them up in, "Edel sei der Mensch, hilfreich und gut." The human being's task is to be noble, helpful and good! This is everyone's duty and not limited to a given religious, national or ethnic group. Frankl, a Jew, has shown that it can be done even when a tremendous personal loss has taken place. So have other Jews both here and in Israel. But misguided Jewish zealots, who have converted some Gentiles to their cause, are dragging us down the wrong road. It will be up to individual responsible Jews to publicly and vociferously speak out against this type of "leadership" because goyim cannot do this job for them.





October 1, 2003

IGNORANT ARROGANCE




September was the month when the races for political power started to gather steam. In California we saw a popular attempt to recall the sitting governor blocked by a three panel judge’s vote. But that vote was overturned a few days later by 11 judges and the recall election is on again for October 7. The mere fact that a few appointed judges have the potential power to nullify the constitutionally guaranteed expression of the wishes of 1.6 million Californians should give us pause to reconsider what kind of a republic we have become. Needless to say our current President was actually also anointed by one vote of a Supreme Court Justice, and that it is the Supreme Court, made up of political appointees, who decides what the "law of the land" is at a given moment.

Nevertheless some of us, including myself and most members of my family who had actually voted for Mr. Bush, welcomed this particular Supreme Court decision because we thought he would bring to the White House: honesty, common sense and a foreign policy which works in concert with the UN on the problems of this world. This illusion was fostered further by the people governor Bush surrounded himself with. The designated Vice-President, Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State seemed to be men of experience and substance who had served honorably in his father's presidency.

But appearances were deceiving. We did not know at that time that Mr. Cheney's interests seem to have remained wedded to the oil industry, and it became apparent that Mr. Rumsfeld's defense policies did not originate within himself but reflected the views of a small group of neocons whose political outlook equates the policies to be adopted by the United States with those of Israel, as has been pointed out here in "The Neocons' Leviathan." This group disdained the professionals at the State Department and General Powell, as a good soldier, took his orders from his Commander in Chief, who had also fallen under their spell. This led to the sad spectacle earlier in the year where Powell presented evidence to the UN about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction which neither he nor CIA director Tenet, who was there for moral support, probably fully believed in. What we saw on that day was what might have been regarded as a lack of Zivilcourage, namely standing up for one's principles of truth and integrity and refraining from making allegations based on dubious evidence. Although General Powell had resigned from the army and the president could no longer order him around he failed to draw the consequences from the fact that his position had become untenable because foreign policy was made in the Defense rather than the State Department. Had he quit his job he might well have put the rush to war on hold, especially if the General had given open and full testimony before Congress how his position had been undermined by the civilians in the Pentagon. The fact that he chose instead to support the administration, possibly against his better judgment, makes him, unfortunately, co-responsible for the current tribulations of the "liberated" Iraqi people, the deaths and injuries of our soldiers, as well as of thousands of innocent Iraqis, loss of America's prestige throughout major portions of the world and the staggering financial burdens Americans are now saddled with.

The ultimate responsibility for the conduct of America's foreign policy lies, of course, with the president, and it is no secret that he has little use for diplomacy but favors the approach advocated by the group of Cheney-Rice-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz etc. Had the 9/11 terrorist attack not occurred he might have served out his presidency with little fanfare, because Americans are not a belligerent people. Live and let live tends to be their maxim, in addition to being generous to those who are less fortunate than us. A foreign policy which defies international law and invades other countries in a "pre-emptive" manner tends to be against the image they have of themselves. There is a caveat, however, because our politicians have always played by the rules of power while cloaking them in moral phraseology. The Spanish-American war which set America on the road to empire was ostensibly over the Spaniards sinking our battleship Maine in Havana harbor, although the inquest failed to establish Spanish guilt in this naval tragedy. The reason for invading Cuba was not merely the "liberation of the Cuban people from a ruthless dictatorship," as advocated by what was then called the yellow press. It is also worth while remembering that before there ever was a "Butcher of Baghdad," the American public was introduced to "Butcher Weyler," who was the Spanish general in charge of rooting out the insurgency. In 1896 the Hearst press showered him also with epithets such as, "a fiendish despot, a brute, the devastator, pitiless cold, an exterminator of men."

The rebellion of nationalist Cubans, who used what is now called terror tactics, severely interfered with the profits of the sugar cane industry and that could not be tolerated. In addition some political circles had for a long time cast a desirous eye on the island and even Thomas Jefferson had written, "I have ever looked at Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States." Since American public opinion always rooted for the underdog the invasion of Cuba was preordained regardless of the steps Spain took subsequently to ameliorate the situation. But Spain also had other overseas colonies especially the Philippines and those folks had to be liberated too in order to receive the blessings of Christianity. The fact that the vast majority were already Catholics was apparently unknown. But who can blame President McKinley who, although a very well meaning person, couldn't even find the Philippines on a map. Just as Cuban exile groups in New York had urged America's entry into their war, Philippine exile groups entreated Admiral Dewey, who happened to be in Hong Kong with his fleet, to sail into Manila Bay destroy the Spanish fleet and then hand a freed country over to them. Dewey did the first part but could not follow through with the second. The "splendid little war," as John Hay, U.S. ambassador to London, had put it in a letter to Teddy Roosevelt in the summer of 1898, was soon over in the Caribbean with little loss of American lives. But it turned subsequently into a prolonged bloody battle in the Philippine archipelago which lasted for six years until peace was established. America's goal in the Philippines as outlined by President McKinley was to create a government "designed not for our satisfaction nor for our theoretical views, but for the happiness, peace and prosperity of the people of the Philippine islands." This language strikes one also as eerily familiar. But the Muslim Moros in the island of Mindanao wanted no part of infidel rule in 1904 and kept on fighting intermittently. It took about fifty years before the liberated Filipinos were deemed worthy to run their own country and lo and behold a hundred years later we are still, or again, fighting Muslim terrorists in those islands.

The information and quotes mentioned above can be found in Ivan Musicant's Empire By Default. The Spanish-American War and the Dawn of the American Century.The American people were goaded into empire building by claims of Spanish villainy and a threat to our shores, just as the so-called attack on our ships in the gulf of Tonkin led us into an expanded Vietnam war. Now the charge that Saddam was in cahoots with terrorists, who would unleash weapons of mass destruction on us at any moment, brought us into Iraq for an unforeseeable period of time.

The rhetoric of creating fear, which has to be overcome by a determined course of forceful righteousness, has remained the same and so has the ignorance of how other people live and what their real aspirations are. Uncle Sam knows best and his views have to be enforced. When others, as for instance some ingrate Europeans, like France and Germany, demur they are being given the stark alternative of "if you are not with us, you are against us." In the self-proclaimed war on terror there is no middle ground and people who do not see "the moral clarity" of our cause are not only potential enemies but also evil. Thus one should hardly be surprised over headlines "France: Friend or Foe?" and "Saudi Arabia: Friend or Enemy?" Simplifications like these are to be expected when one considers the background of the people who write these articles, or as in the case of our president write his speeches. Now we come to a remarkable observation. President Bush is apparently disinclined to read even newspapers or magazines in order to form his own opinions. As he said in a recent interview with Brit Hume of Fox News, "I glance at the headlines just to kind of a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves. But like Condoleeza, in her case, the national security adviser is getting her news directly from the participants on the world stage [www.foxnews.com]." Leaving the mangled syntax aside this is surely a remarkable statement by the "leader of the free world." He tells us in essence that he relies entirely on precooked and pre-digested ideas of others who feed him what they think he should know and, what is worse; he seems to have no inclination to get independent verification. I believe that this explains his foreign policy conduct and how he came up, for instance, with the idea that "Sharon is a man of peace." Yes, but on whose terms?

Since Bush's staff shields him from people with divergent views and the president himself has apparently never been out of the country as a simple tourist his views of the world are severely restricted. When one adds to this the fact that he regards himself as a "born again Christian," we can understand why he could so easily fall prey to those elements in the government who seized on the 9/11 tragedy to enact their foreign policy ideas which are in essence those of the Likud party in Israel. When this is coupled with a Bush-Cheney background in the oil industry it is hardly surprising that Iraq had to be invaded regardless of whatever cooperation Saddam may or may not have extended to UN inspectors. It was literally a "done deal" by last September and it has been reported that Halliburton (whose CEO Mr. Cheney was before he assumed his present job) had already received in November 2002 a "no bid contract" to rebuild Iraq's oil industry after the war. The entire UN performance in the fall and winter of last year was not designed to prevent the war but merely to get UN approval for something that had already been unilaterally decided on.

The president prides himself on being a strong leader and he certainly reads the speeches, prepared by unknown writers, quite well. It is, however, highly instructive for a neurologist to watch his body language and syntax when he is speaking spontaneously during rare press conferences or interviews with members of the media. While trying to a give a strong impression and making positive statements his head turns at the same time not up and down in the manner of saying yes, but from side to side which seems to negate what he is saying. This body language is, of course, totally unconscious and raises a question of inner insecurity hidden behind a facade of official bravado. When his detractors pointed out, prior to the November 2000 election, that he may not possess the stuff that is required for a president of the country, we dismissed the idea as malevolent gossip but in retrospect it may well have been correct.

The president seems to be a simple person with oversimplified ideas and thereby became the ideal tool for others who have more complex and occasionally devious minds. This is where his main constituency the "Christian Right" comes in. I suggested earlier this year in "President Bush's Choice" that he had to choose between statesmanship and running for re-election. These are mutually incompatible goals. When I wrote the installment I sensed, of course, what his choice was likely to be and now there is no longer any doubt. Re-election demands that Evangelical Christians must not be alienated. This means in turn that any "leaning on Israel" to grant the Palestinians their rights is out of the question. One of the leaders of the Christian Right, Pat Robertson, recently gave an interview which was published in part in the September 19, 2003 edition of The Jerusalem Post. The headline was "Cross his heart. When US televangelist Pat Robertson talks, millions of Americans listen. And what he's telling George W. Bush is to beware of dividing the land of Israel and creating a Palestinian state." In the introduction to the interview we find, "As far as Robertson is concerned Bush is playing with fire, and making what he considers to be a 'terrible mistake.' To the interviewer's question "do you think that American Christians in 2004 should take that [the division of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state] when deciding whom to vote for into consideration?" Robertson replied diplomatically, "I think they will, but the problem is between two people." Robertson explained that if Bush's opponent is going to be a liberal Democrat who "is as bad or worse on Israel than he [Bush] is," the evangelicals will have no choice but to stick with Bush regardless of the road map. The unspoken conviction is that they will make sure it won't go anywhere any time soon.

In regard to Saudi Arabia, Robertson regarded the Wahabi as "vicious" who have to be dealt with "forcefully." One may wonder what that means, bomb Saudi-Arabia? To the question "How can American citizens, particularly American Christians, support Israel in this difficult time?" Robertson answered, "The best thing is to discuss the legitimacy of Israel, the legitimacy of Israel's claims to the land on a biblical basis. I think that for the American Christians and for Israel itself, the strongest claim to integrity rests strongly in the Bible. The Land was given by God." Well, it really is as simple as that: the Bible is God's inerrant word and ought to be the basis of America's foreign policy in the Middle East. The fact that Muslims will never agree to this interpretation is irrelevant as far as the good reverend is concerned. But since the land was, according to the Bible, deeded by the Lord to all of Abraham's offspring and Ishmael (purported ancestor of the Arabs) had arrived on the scene before Isaac "moral clarity" would seem to require that they have an equally good claim to at least parts of the land. Furthermore, one truly wonders about what kind of Christianity this is when one turns a blind eye to the oppression of Palestinians and concentrates exclusively on the suffering of Jews and their God given rights. For Christians, Jesus is supposed to be the final arbiter and his message does not include land grabs and expropriation of other peoples' property. The effort to remake American Christians in Pat Robertson's image can only result in further disasters. The Good Samaritan parable seems to have been bypassed by these "born again" Christians who prefer the fire and brimstone of the Old Testament.

This would not matter much if the fate of the world did not hang on these arrogant notions, proclaimed by people who are ignorant of other civilizations and their rightful aspirations to live in peace within their own culture. There is no universally agreed way on dress codes, sexual mores, what the rights and duties of males versus females are, and in certain societies even capitalism is not regarded as the highest good. When we try to impose our values on other cultures we can expect serious troubles. When our soldiers come crashing into homes in rural Afghanistan or Iraq in search of terrorists and frighten the women who don't want to be seen unveiled by strangers, humiliate the fathers by having them kneel blindfolded in front of their children, we should not be surprised when new "terrorists" spring up.

While President Reagan has been called "The Great Communicator," president Bush would surely qualify as "The Great Simplifier." By misinterpreting method for goal and labeling all insurrections against existing power structures as terrorism, he is lumping national struggles for independence with religious Mafia type criminals. This is a serious mistake for which the American people are already paying a bitter price and it is likely only to get steeper in blood and resources. It is also hardly surprising that a speech, like the one the president delivered before the UN last week did not evoke resonance from the rest of the world community. He asked for help from the UN, but on his terms. The speech was also laced with what other countries "must" do but there was no hint to what extent he is willing to share revenues if and when they were to become available from the sale of Iraq's oil and gas wealth. This approach is not likely to work and to label those who won't buy into these grandiose plans as either "evil" or enemies, will also not be helpful.

There was another interview on the Fox News channel last week which also fully fits the title of this essay. Bill O'Reilly, whose "no spin zone" has currently the biggest ratings among cable news programs, interviewed Dick Morris who was President Clinton's intimate political advisor several years ago. While Clinton could survive sexual indiscretions, Morris did not and now freelances his services, probably to the highest bidder. The remarkable aspect was that he suggested in all seriousness that if Bush wants to get re-elected next year he has to launch a war against Iran. The issue of potential nuclear proliferation will be the pretext to remove this "rogue regime" which breeds terrorists. If Bush simply sits on his haunches during the next year without any dramatic new foreign wars the unfinished business in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the potentially still sagging economy will come to haunt him and he can shelve the re-election dream. O'Reilly, who is not given to bashfulness and is a strong Bush supporter, did not want to believe this scenario but failed to contradict Morris with a more reasonable approach. Should one be surprised, therefore, that when non-Americans read or see this they come to believe that America is indeed currently the most dangerous country in the world? This perception needs to be changed but platitudes by the president about bringing freedom, democracy and peace to the rest of the world will not do. Actions speak louder than words.

Two years ago I published in these pages under the title "September 11th" an opinion as to what the various key players in the post 9/11 world really want. As far as bin-Laden is concerned he wanted to engage America into a prolonged war with Muslim countries. This would weaken America's stature in the Middle East and rally the masses to the flag of radical Islam. Bush obliged and so far Osama has gotten his wish. We are bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq, we may or may not bomb Iran and each passing day further antagonizes Arabs and Muslims. The fact that we seem to have again adopted a hands off policy towards Israel and vetoed a UN Security Council resolution which condemned Israel's decision to either kill or exile Arafat does not get us bonus points in Arab eyes. In addition Bush's crusade puts a terrible strain on an already weakened economy and it is doubtful that even Congress has a stomach for further military adventures unless another catastrophe occurs which can be laid at the feet of Syria or Iran. That neither of these countries has a wish to tangle with the U.S. does not matter because the mere charge of "harboring terrorists" is nowadays sufficient for a "pre-emptive strike" to bring about a regime change.

Sharon also got his wish. The West Bank is re-occupied; there are running battles in the Gaza strip, and by identifying the Palestinian struggle for statehood with America's war on terrorism he has succeeded in getting America's unqualified support. He has eliminated Iraq as a potential threat, without firing a shot, but Syria and Iran still need a little more work, and so does breaking the will of the Palestinians to resist Israeli occupation.

As far as America is concerned I was mistaken in one assumption only. I wrote that "even our leadership does not want war, but to get the economy moving and to work for global prosperity." This supposition was grounded in the basic goodness of the American people and I was not aware that war had already been decided on by September 12, 2001 as documented in Bob Woodward's book. On the other hand I was not blind to realities as the very next sentences prove,

"Nevertheless in spite of the current unity the country's opinion makers are split over how to set things right in the world. On account of the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition (a term which, by the way, is rejected by observant Jews) there are strong emotional ties to Judaism and the state of Israel. Powerful military action is urged by the majority of journalists. Currently in the minority is another group which regards war as folly but has as yet no strong support from the media. This is bound to change if and when body bags were to arrive in larger numbers.

For these reasons a major war against Islamic states is not in the best interest of the United States but serves only the purposes of Radical Muslims and proponents of a Greater Israel."

The neocons got their war and there is no end in sight. Even if Bush is voted out of office next year the legacy he leaves this country will be difficult to overcome. Democratic contenders for the presidency, who belatedly see the failures of the Bush foreign policy, are trying to define themselves. But so far none of the nine have been able to inspire a great deal of confidence in their ability to steer the country into calmer waters. We know, as yet, too little about the latest and tenth arrival on the scene, General Wesley Clark, to allow for an educated guess as to what he might really stand for and be able to do. As argued previously in these pages what is needed is a paradigm shift; away from ignorant arrogance and towards a policy which is grounded in a thorough understanding of history, which in turn leads to a genuine respect for other people's rightful aspirations and traditions. General Clark may possess these qualities but whether or not he can clearly formulate not only his aspirations, but also the ways to achieve them remains to be seen in the coming months. Right now it is too early to tell because all we have so far is rhetoric.

Finally we must face the real problem of our society. Ignorant arrogance is not limited in our country to politicians; it is wide-spread among the people. Most, if not all of us, fall prey to it intermittently. It is a cardinal sin which needs to be guarded against. "We are the biggest and the best," is a pervasive attitude. Yes, we have the biggest economy and great technology which allows us to reduce any country to rubble. But as the past two years have proven although we can destroy in a flash, winning hearts and minds cannot be done by bombs. This simple truth must first sink into the minds of the people in our media and then the general public. Only a truly educated public can generate an educated leadership which it can follow in good conscience. All politicians on the local, state, and national level, as well as all candidates for public office stress their devotion to education but hardly any one asks them what they mean by that word. When asked the answer is, as for everything else, we need more money for a variety of worthwhile projects. But the problem of ignorance cannot be solved by money. Educational reform, to be meaningful, would have to realize that what is being taught in our schools, from elementary through college, is more important than how it is taught. This is the real problem which ought to be faced and publicly acknowledged.





November 1, 2003

WOLFOWITZ - MAN OF THE YEAR

It is not often that one finds one's views confirmed by independent knowledgeable sources but this was the case this past month. I have always maintained that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was not a direct threat for the United States. Israel was in the potential line of fire and it was, therefore, in Israel's interest to eliminate Saddam. This had been a priority for the supporters of that country ever since the inconclusive Iran-Iraq war, which had left Saddam with a modern army and chemical as well as biological weapons. Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was designed to get rid of the vast debts he had accumulated during the war with Iran. But he had no designs on Saudi Arabia as had been claimed by our media in order to justify not only sending but keeping our troops there. This was known to the Israeli government (Israel's Secret Wars; Black and Morris), but whether or not this information was passed on to the CIA and the first Bush administration has never been revealed. Saddam's military might was severely decimated in the first Gulf war, and the international sanctions thereafter led to the decay of the infrastructure of the country we are now faced with. But although he was not regarded as a threat by his direct neighbors (none of whom, apart from Kuwait, condoned our March invasion) his continued existence in power could not be tolerated by the Likud government and some members of the Bush administration.

Saddam stood in the way of Greater Israel by encouraging the Palestinians' use of force, including rewarding suicide bombers' families, thereby thwarting Likud's plans to quietly annex as much of the West Bank and Gaza as possible. For the Bush administration oil was a major factor but in addition there was the personal issue of Bush II who had to prove that he knew better how to deal with tyrants than his dad. Thus, the neocons (see April 1, 2003 The Neocons' Leviathan) were chafing at the bit and saw immediately in the 9/11 tragedy an opportunity to make tabula rasa in the Middle East. Afghanistan was a side show for the neocons who from day one had argued that Iraq, Iran and Syria have to be dealt with in line with the document prepared in 1996 for the incoming Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, "A Clean Break. A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" (also April 1, 2003). The connection between this document and our present situation is that it was written by the same people who rose to power in the U.S. after the November 2000 elections. They are now the chief architects of our foreign policy which is, at least as far as the Middle East is concerned, no longer in the hands of the State Department but in that of the civilians in the Department of Defense and the Defense Advisory Board. Within these groups Richard Perle and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz are the most important people. They managed to recruit the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice-president Cheney and in due course our President to their cause. It is, therefore highly appropriate that The Jerusalem Post of October 3, 2003 should have on its title page the face of a joyful Wolfowitz and the caption, "Rosh Hashana 5764 Paul Wolfowitz. Man of the year."

One article which details why he deserves this honor is prefaced by, " No question: this was Paul Wolfowitz's year. On September 15, 2001 at Camp David, he advised President George W. Bush to skip Kabul and train American guns on Baghdad. In March 2003, he got his wish. In the process, Wolfowitz became the most influential US deputy defense secretary ever - can you so much as name anyone else who held the post? And he's on the shortlist to succeed Colin Powell as secretary of state." A second article entitled "Invasive treatment" is prefaced, "In 1979 [sic] he warned that Iraq would invade Kuwait. In 2001, he told the president to train his sights on Baghdad, not Kabul. Now Paul Wolfowitz is getting his way. Will he be proven right?" That indeed is the question and the newspapers as well as the Internet are currently full of pictures of a rather shaken Wolfowitz after the rocket attack on the Al Rasheed hotel earlier in the week where he narrowly escaped from being hit.

But Wolfowitz should really have shared the honor with Mr. Perle as became apparent in a "Frontline" documentary, "truth, war and consequences," aired by PBS. The transcript is available on the Internet (www.pbs.org/wghb/pages/frontline/shows/truth/etc/script.html). Several highly revealing statements how American foreign policy was made since September 11 can be found there. Perhaps the most dramatic one was the casual way in which some people with influence can put words into our president's mouth and thereby make national policy. Here is an excerpt of the broadcast,

"NARRATOR: Ever since the end of the Gulf war a small group of influential policy makers has wanted to rid the Middle East of Saddam Hussein. But going to war to achieve it was not politically feasible until after September 11th, 2001.

RICHARD PERLE: Well I believe there was a strong argument for looking at Iraq before September 11th. What September 11th taught us is that we can wait too long in the presence of a known and visible threat.

NARRATOR: On the afternoon of September 11th, Richard Perle, phoned one of President Bush's speechwriters, David Frum.

RICHARD PERLE: I had a conversation with David.

NARRATOR: And what was the content of that?

RICHARD PERLE: That we are not going to deal effectively with global terrorism if states can support and sponsor and harbor terrorists without penalty.

PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH: The search is under way for those who are behind these evil acts.

NARRATOR: At 8:30 that evening, President Bush spoke to the nation. He laid out his policy, echoing the words that Perle had suggested to his speechwriter earlier in the day.

PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH: We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them."

The full interview with Mr. Perle (July 10, 2003) from which these excerpts were used for the Frontline program is available at www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/truth/interviews/perle.html. During that interview Perle repeatedly made the case that if the Iraqi National Congress (INC) under the leadership of Ahmad Chalabi had been given a free hand by the State Department most, if not all, of the present problems in Iraq would have been avoided. Mr. Perle kept insisting that Chalabi is "quite brilliant. He is a Ph.D. in mathematics, with a background at the University of Chicago and MIT. He's a Shi'a, committed to secular democracy." According to Mr. Perle the State Department refused to accept Mr. Chalabi's qualifications as future leader of Iraq and actively sabotaged the Defense Department's efforts to create a stable Iraq under Chalabi as soon as the Saddam regime had been deposed. In the interview Mr. Perle also asserted that what is being called a separate intelligence operation within the Defense department under Wolfowitz and his deputy, Douglas Feith, had become necessary because the CIA simply did not want to see all the damning evidence against Saddam which they had no problem finding. But more about this later when we return to the October PBS broadcast.

There is one additional statement from the Perle interview which I found revealing. After the interviewer had asked Perle point blank: "If you had your choice, he [Chalabi] would still be the person we should be backing," Perle gave him an unequivocal yes. When the interviewer followed up with, "People say that we should listen to people who actually lived in Iraq during the regime," he got this irate reply, "Oh, this is complete rubbish. It would be hard to imagine a sillier argument. Iraq was a place where, if you were an opponent, you were dead. Now how are we supposed to find people in Iraq that we can talk to, and whose judgment we can repose any confidence in? People who kept secret and managed to survive their opposition to Saddam all theses years? What are we talking about?"

This answer shows that either Mr. Perle is "spinning," to make a case for his protegé, or that he has no idea how people, who do not agree with government policies, survive in dictatorships. I happen to know something about this because Hitler was no joy to live under either when you were one of the many who loathed his government. We were not all killed provided we kept our mouths shut and our noses to the grindstone. People put on blinders, concentrate on the tasks daily living requires and stay clear from any political statements. This is the uniform response regardless what the name of the country or the dictatorship is. Survival comes first and to state that anybody who managed to survive inside the country is automatically disqualified from leading a post-Saddam government is either blinded by dogma, or has some other ulterior motive.

Now that we know how Mr. Perle feels about Dr (?) Chalabi let us look at the man through the eyes of BBC which aired a program on October 3, 2002 "Profile: Ahmed Chalabi," also available on the Internet. An excerpt reads as follows,

"Ahmed Chalabi is one of the best known Iraqi opposition figures in the West.

As leader of one of the foremost opposition movements, the Iraqi National congress [INC], the 57-year-old former businessman has even been tipped by some analysts as a possible successor to Saddam Hussein.

A Shia Muslim born in 1945 to a wealthy banking family, Mr. Chalabi left Iraq in 1956 and has lived mainly in the USA and London ever since, except for a period in the mid-1990's when he tried to organise an uprising in the Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.

The venture ended in failure with hundreds of deaths. Soon after, the INC was routed from northern Iraq after Saddam's troops overran its base in Irbil. A number of party officials were executed and others - including Mr Chalabi - fled the country.

Chequered career

A seasoned lobbyist in London and Washington, who studied mathematics at Chicago University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr Chalabi is often described as a controversial figure, charismatic and determined but crafty and cunning at the same time.

Mr Chalabi has been accused by some opposition figures of using the INC to further his own ambitions.

There are also allegations of financial misdemeanours. In 1992, he was sentenced in absentia by a Jordanian court to 22 years in prison with hard labor for bank fraud after the 1990 collapse of the Petra bank, which he had founded in 1977.

Although he has always maintained the case was a plot to frame him by Baghdad, the issue was revisited later when the State Department raised questions about the INC's accounting practices.

Cometh the man?

In recent interviews Mr Chalabi has discounted the possibility he will take a role in any future government.

'Personally, I will not run for any office, and I am not seeking any positions. My job will end with the liberation of Iraq from Saddam's rule,' he is quoted as telling the German weekly Die Zeit. . . He has strong backing among some sectors of Congress and the Pentagon, but is thought to have little grassroots support in Iraq and a number of opposition groups have sought to distance themselves from the INC.

Mr Chalabi subscribed to the 'three-city plan', which called for defectors to capture a number of key areas, isolating and surrounding Saddam.

But the plan had little support from Arab governments, which said they would not allow Mr Chalabi to run a liberation army from their soil.

In 1998, the then US president, Bill Clinton, approved a plan to spend almost $100m to help the Iraqi opposition - principally the INC - to topple Saddam.

But only a fraction of the money was ever spent, and the INC subsequently suffered leadership infighting. Mr Chalabi now says the movement is united. But many people are sceptical.

According to the Qatari newspaper Al-Watan, Mr Chalabi and his movement 'are failures and are not even qualified to run a grocery shop [bold print added].' "

This report leaves us with a choice. Do we believe Mr. Perle, who has an obvious agenda, or the BBC, which has a well deserved reputation for excellence in reporting? There are several interesting aspects in this article. Although Mr Chalabi did study at Chicago and MIT he apparently does not hold a doctorate as intimated by Mr. Perle. Furthermore, it is now apparent why the State Department and the CIA washed their hands of Mr. Chalabi after the failed Kurdish uprising and his questionable accounting practices. In addition it may have been this "three-city plan" which my informant in August of 2002 had in mind when he told me about the removal of Saddam which was to take place as the political coup of the year just prior to the November 2002 mid-term elections (see October Surprise?, September 2002). As far as Mr. Chalabi's promise is concerned that he would not seek political office after Saddam had been removed it was technically correct. He did not have to "seek" it or "run for office" because Mr. Perle's friends in the Pentagon appointed him and he is currently in charge of Iraq's Governing Council.

Now back to "truth, war and consequences" in order to learn how the information was obtained upon which the president led the country to war.

"NARRATOR: When it came to Iraq, the special intelligence office [the group who worked for Perle, Wolfowitz and Feith] didn't trust what the CIA or even their own Defense Intelligence Agency had to say. They did apparently listen to Ahmad Chalabi. According to one Pentagon source, he visited once every other month. Across the Potomac, Greg Thielmann had analyzed intelligence for the State Department for seven years.

GREG THIELMANN, U.S. Dept of State (1977-02): That office was largely invisible to us in the intelligence community because they didn't-- they didn't play in the - - in the normal bureaucratic process of making intelligence assessments and reporting on those assessments.

MARTIN SMITH [interviewer of Richard Perle in July 2003]: What did you understand that office to be about?

GREG THIELMANN: I am still trying to figure out what that office was about. The office wasn't big enough for them to really have the expertise in-house and the mere creation of the office was odd, since the secretary of defense had the entire Defense Intelligence Agency at his disposal. So it's a little mysterious what exactly they were doing.

RICHARD PERLE: Let me blunt about this. The level of competence of the Central Intelligence Agency in this area is appalling. They had filtered out the whole set of possibilities because it was inconsistent with their model. So if you're walking down the street and you're not looking for hidden treasure, you won't find it.

MARTIN SMITH: Conversely, if you look for something, you will find it simply because you are looking. And the nature of intelligence is -- is very often vague, and things can be interpreted one way or another.

RICHARD PERLE: Of course. There's no absolute truth in this."

This was the way how we got into Iraq. In the neocons' view all the professionals in the State Department, the CIA, the FBI and the Defense Department were incompetent because they could not come up with evidence that Saddam was linked to Al-Quaeda and thereby 9/11, had WMD's, and was an imminent threat to the United States. A handful of specially selected people had to go over old data from the mentioned agencies as well as unverified information supplied by Chalabi to provide a "true picture" of the danger we were in. This was the version which was fed to the Vice-President as well as the President who used it to convince the country of the necessity to invade Iraq.

But there is more to this tug of war between the State Department and the defense neocons as the PBS program revealed. While the Pentagon group was busy trying to find justification to bring the country to war the State Department was planning for the aftermath. It established in the spring of 2002 the "Future of Iraq" project because the decision to go to war had already been made by president Bush in March. Since Saddam's army was no match, the outcome was never in doubt, only the pretext had to be found and allies recruited.

The State Department gathered 200 Iraqis to form 15 working groups. These were concerned with how to get everyday functions up and running once Saddam had been deposed. As Edward Walker from the State Department said "There are committees set up to consider each aspect of the future life of Iraq and how you could deal with it in the immediate days thereafter. It involved an awful lot of very bright people, many of whom have the credentials in economics and banking and agriculture and so on . . . ." But Chalabi and the INC were not interested and felt that a committee structure would turn into a debating society which was not the way to solve the problems. They wanted to be recognized as a government in exile. This notion went against the grain of other opposition groups, as well as the State Department, because it was felt that a government should consist mainly of local Iraqis rather than a group coming in from the outside. In this tug of war between Chalabi and the Pentagon on one side, and the State Department on the other, the president came down firmly on the Pentagon's side in January 2003, when he gave it the authority for post-war reconstruction All the work the "Future of Iraq" team had done was disregarded and Lt. General Jay Garner who was put in charge had to start from scratch. During the invasion in March 2003 Chalabi was flown with an "army" of 700 supporters to Iraq where they intended to participate in the march on Baghdad. Since his reception by the locals was far from gratifying, and there was opposition to starting a democracy with an image of a warlord arriving, the U.S. army sidelined him. He didn't get to Baghdad until five days after the city had fallen. General Garner and his crew also had to twiddle their thumbs in Kuwait because the situation on the ground was regarded as too unstable to have the reconstruction team come in. Thus, there was no authority whatsoever, because the American troops were stretched too thin and in addition had no orders to intervene with the looting.

We cannot blame the troops on the ground. The fault lies with the arrogance of the civilians in the Defense Department who ignored all the warnings from the professionals. They first relied on Chalabi who fed them rumors, obtained from paid defectors, which they promptly sent on to Cheney and Bush bypassing the traditional channels. Since the war needed to be justified to the country and the world at large anything that made Saddam a supposed threat to the United States was touted far and wide while the usual qualifiers of genuine intelligence were omitted. Thus, the war was based entirely on wishful thinking while disregarding professional advice.

The immediate post-war chaos including massive looting was predicted on basis of actual experience. Robert Perito who had served on the National Security Council Staff, during 1988 - 1989 gave a presentation to Pentagon officials, upon invitation of Mr. Perle, where he warned about the potential post-war violence. Talking about the experience in Panama he said in the mentioned PBS program, "As soon as the fighting ended, mobs went into the streets of Panama City and destroyed Panama City, looted the city, did more damage to the Panamanian economy than the conflict did. And so my presentation was largely about the kinds of forces that we would need in order to deal with that kind of violence. And those lessons were ignored." But the post-war looting was of no concern to Rumsfeld because as he told us, "Stuff happens!"

There was an additional report about the pre-war search for justification. In the October 27, 2003 issue of The New Yorker Seymour Hersh wrote an article, " THE STOVEPIPE. How conflicts between the Bush Administration and the intelligence community marred the reporting on Iraq's weapons." It confirms what has been reported above but there was also an item which was of special interest to me in regard to the forged documents purporting the sale of enriched uranium to Iraq. In The Niger Forgery (August 1, 2003) I discussed the question who might have had the means, motive and opportunity to commit this crime. It seemed reasonable that the Mossad's LAP department whose task is "psychological warfare, propaganda and deception" might have had a hand in it. Since I do not have access to classified information I merely put forth the suggestion for someone who is "in the loop," or an investigative reporter, to follow through with getting at the truth of that forgery. It had, after all, found its way into the president's State of the Union Address in January of this year. Here is Seymour Hersh's assessment,

"The F.B.I. had been investigating the forgery at the request of the Senate Intelligence Committee. A senior F.B.I. official told me that the possibility that the documents were falsified by someone inside the American intelligence community had not been ruled out. 'This story could go several directions,' he said. 'We haven't got anything solid and we've looked.' He said that the F.B.I. agents assigned to the case are putting a great deal of effort into the investigation. But 'somebody's hiding something, and they're hiding it pretty well.' "

President Bush was elected on the promise to bring common decency back to the White House, which had been sullied by the private conduct of its former occupant. But decency requires first of all honesty. Yet, this administration has been highly secretive. The Cheney deliberations on the country's energy problem have not been allowed to become public. Documents pertaining to the run-up of 9/11 are not being released to Congress, and the FBI is stymied in its pursuit of the truth in regard to a forged document which was used to paint the picture of an impending mushroom cloud over our country. Since this conduct is even worse than that of Mr. Clinton because it involves all of our lives, and not just private sexual gratification, the American people and Congress should take note and demand an accounting. Eventually the truth will come out and the president is doing neither himself nor us any good by hiding behind "national security" or "executive privilege." We are all grown-ups, we can handle the truth whatever it is, and we should not be treated like children who can't be trusted.

The last word should go to Mr. Thielmann. When asked in the mentioned PBS program "Were we told the truth?" he answered, "The administration made statements which I can only describe as dishonest." Since the Iraq situation is in the near future only going to go from bad to worse scapegoating will soon start. Mr Rumsfeld may come in for hard times first. But the problem did not start with Rumsfeld. He succumbed to a siren song by Perle, Wolfowitz and others of their belief system. It is indeed tragic that hardly any one in a position of responsibility is as yet publicly facing up to, "you cannot serve two masters." When the interests of the ruling party of the state of Israel are identified with those of the United States no good can come of it. President Eisenhower's defense secretary, who had been CEO of General Motors and was nicknamed Engine Charley Wilson, said "what's good for GM is good for the country," and he genuinely believed it. Now we have people in charge of decisions which not only affect our country but the entire world, who genuinely believe that what's good for the policies of Likud is good for America. It is this delusion which has to be exposed so that we can get an administration which works for the good of all and not mainly special interests, especially those which benefit a foreign country to the detriment of ours.





December 1, 2003

PROMISE AND REALITY


Last year's December 1 headline was "Wanted: Good Judgment." During the week of November 3 - 9, 2002 our President had been given by Congress the power to invade Iraq, if he so desired; his party had won the midterm elections; and the UN Security Council had passed a resolution to force weapons inspectors on a reluctant Saddam Hussein. I therefore wrote, "The question now is: what will our President do with all the power which has been bestowed upon him? The measure of his character will become apparent in the next few months. By March we will know whether the mentioned week was one highlight or a watershed, and the zenith of his achievements.  Judging by the rumblings emanating from Washington it seems that our President is intent on a war with Iraq, come what may." I also wrote a little poem for him and the last verse was

Unless obstinacy does to wisdom yield,

And friendly counsels rule the field,

The seeds you sow no good will bring.

                                     And of your downfall future bards will sing.


All of us know what happened. The warnings from the State Department were ignored; Rumsfeld acceded to the neoconservatives in the Pentagon; Iraq was "liberated;" our troops are now caught in a hostile environment; some - as well as the liberated Iraqis - get killed on a daily basis; there are more world-wide terrorists attacks which kill the innocent; and the U.S. is saddled with a massive financial debt, which the taxpayers of this country will have to shoulder. I do not have the gift of prophecy but all of these events were foreseeable as has been documented prior to the Iraq invasion in these pages. All that is required is to know history as it really evolved, rather than the myths which have been spun around it, and the fundamentals of human behavior which have remained constant throughout the ages.  

Unfortunately these simple truths have not yet found their place in the minds of the decision makers in Washington which include the speech writers of President Bush. The president gave two major speeches during the past month. One before the United States Chamber of Commerce - Endowment for Democracy, and the other at Westminster Palace. The speeches were not excerpted or commented upon to a great extent in the press but Fareed Zakaria (Newsweek November 17, 2003) wondered how to explain

"the churlish reaction among so many Democrats, Europeans and intellectuals to the president's speech on democracy in the Middle East last week? Whatever the problems - and I'll get to them - as a speech it stands as one of the most intelligent and eloquent statements by a president in recent memory. (Don't take my word for it: read it at whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/11/20031106-2.html.) If it marks a real shift in strategy, it will go down in history as Bush's most important speech."

Mr. Fareed ascribed the negative reaction to the Chamber of Commerce speech as, "A visceral dislike for the president is boxing many otherwise sensible people into a corner because they cannot bring themselves to agree with anything he says." Since I never "viscerally disliked" the president, voted for him, but thoroughly disagreed with his post 9/11 foreign policy here was a challenge. I took Mr. Fareed at his word and read the speech carefully. In the first part the president recalled that president Reagan had also been vigorously denounced in Europe for his vision to bring freedom to the captive people in the Soviet sphere of influence; but he succeeded nevertheless. Subsequently he mentioned "the progress of liberty is a powerful trend. Yet we also know that liberty, if not defended, can be lost." There is no doubt about that and no one will quarrel with it. Neither is "freedom is worth fighting for, dying for and standing for," controversial. But when it comes to "Our commitment to democracy is tested in countries like Cuba and Burma and North Korea and Zimbabwe,” one is beginning to wonder. Are we supposed to invade and liberate them also?

The president then turned to the Middle East and assured his listeners that Muslims can indeed appreciate democracy and that those who do not feel so as yet will soon see the error of their ways. But he also rang a note which sounded disturbing. "Dictators in Iraq and Syria [emphasis added] promised the restoration of national honor, a return to ancient glories. They've left instead a legacy of torture, oppression, misery and ruin." People who are used to reading between the lines will immediately note that here is a potential opening shot of the next war against Syrians, who are known to "harbor terrorists" and who have already been subjected to economic sanctions by the US.  "The good and capable people of the Middle East all deserve responsible leadership." Yes indeed but that cannot be imposed from Washington!

The President subsequently lectured the Palestinians that their "only path to independence and dignity and progress is the path of democracy. . . . The Palestinian leaders are not leaders at all . . . . They are the main obstacles to peace, and to the success of the Palestinian people." One might now have expected some advice for his "friend" Ariel Sharon, but neither that name nor the state of Israel was mentioned at all. It is agreed that Arafat has his faults, but to omit the role the Likud government is playing in fueling the flames of Palestinian hatred, is a violation of good sense and turns this "most intelligent" speech into a travesty. The additional fact that there was not a single sentence about how he intends to solve the Middle East problem - including the self-inflicted Iraq wound - is ample reason to label the speech as full of good intentions but without definitive substance. As we all know "the way to hell is paved with good intentions" and that it is the means to the goal which count.

The president then told us, and if he means it this is important, ". . . we are mindful that modernization is not the same as Westernization. Representative governments in the Middle East will reflect their own cultures. They will not and should not look like us. . . . We've taken a 200-year journey toward inclusion and justice - and this makes us patient and understanding as other nations are at different stages of this journey." Patience and understanding are indeed called for but it is difficult to forget that the president had called himself a "patient man" around this time last year and a few months later the tanks rolled. But since of all us are capable of learning, we can hope that there may more patience next time.   

The second speech at Westminster Palace was in the same vein. He tried to flatter the British with our common heritage and values, but couldn't help inserting a dig at the French. "President Wilson had come to Europe with 14 Points for Peace. Many congratulated him on his vision; yet some were dubious. Take for example, the Prime Minister of France. He complained that God, himself, had only Ten Commandments. Sounds familiar." The president did not mention that it was not only Clemenceau who made a shamble out of the 14 points but was ably assisted by Lloyd George of Great Britain and Orlando of Italy. It was this threesome who created a "peace to end all peace," in the words of Field Marshall Wavell.  

The president continued, and stated that it was the failure of the League of Nations to reign in dictators which led to WWII. This statement is interesting for several reasons. 1) The Carthaginian dictates of Versailles (Germany), Trianon (Austria-Hungary), and Sèvres (Ottoman Empire), which humiliated the vanquished and produced profound resentment, were not mentioned as contributory elements. 2) The fact that Congress never ratified the Versailles dictate, and that the US never did join the League, it's very own brainchild, was also omitted. 3) And this is the most telling for the disconnect we are exposed to; the successor of the League, the United Nations, has been totally ignored in the decision making before the Iraq invasion.

The lesson that Wilson's idealistic stand at Paris foundered on the granite rocks of old fashioned imperialism was thoroughly disregarded. That he came home a broken man should be forgotten because we must charge ahead bringing the gospel of democracy to all the rest of the world.

The president also told the Brits that we are pursuing "a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East," but left undefined what that consists of. Except that "our will is firm, our word is good and the Iraqi people will not surrender their freedom." The last part of the sentence surely rings true. The majority want us out of their country in short order, not just the military but also Halliburton and associates. Mr. Bush then repeated in several paragraphs his admonitions to the Palestinians. But since he was out of the country and not on the campaign trail, he allowed himself to add a sentence, "Israel should freeze settlement constructions, dismantle unauthorized outposts, and the daily humiliations of the Palestinian people, and not prejudice final negotiations with the placement of walls and fences." That would have been nice had he said it in the Chamber of Commerce, and even more importantly if he had informed Sharon in no uncertain terms that this must be done as a first step, or else no more money! That means none of the 9 billion dollars in loan guarantees, and no further funding of Israeli defense policies. Withholding $389.4 million is not a serious policy. The president concluded the Westminster speech by congratulating his hosts with, "The British people are the sort of partners you want when serious work needs to be doing. The men and women of this Kingdom are kind and steadfast and generous and brave."

Yes indeed they are brave; a crowd, estimated by the police between 100,000 and 110,000 had turned out not to hail the Great Liberator but to demonstrate against his policies. He was not allowed by his "handlers" to address Parliament, because he would have been heckled and had to be transported by helicopter to and from Buckingham Palace so that he would not see the unpleasant reception. We need to remember that these are the precautions the "Leader of the Free World" had to be subjected to.

On November 22 The Salt Lake Tribune published an article headlined, "Even in wee town, Bush can't escape protests." It printed the above quoted number of the protesters in London, whom Bush never saw, and the "wee town" was Blair's country residence. While Mr. Bush obviously lives in a bubble, shielded from the real world, this extends unfortunately also to his wife Laura who is likewise shielded from the truth. She is quoted as saying, “I don't think the protests are near as large as everyone was predicting before we got here. We've seen plenty of American flags, we've seen plenty of people who were waving at us - many, many, more people in fact, than we've seen protesters." That's true, but the reason is simple; she wasn't allowed to see the protesting crowds.  The article was also accompanied by a picture which shows a confident Bush striding to his helicopter on the lawn of the Palace. He is accompanied by a rather glum looking queen and when I first saw the picture I wasn't sure of the reason for her unhappiness. It became apparent later. Not only had three helicopter pads savaged her beautiful lawn, her roses some of them dating back to Queen Victoria did not survive the prop whirl, and even her flamingoes which had been evacuated, because of the expected noise apparently refused to come back. Well, "sacrifices have to be made" as the president assured us.

But let us return to the end of the Chamber of Commerce speech where the president assured his audience that the "freedom we prize is not for us alone, it is the right and the capacity of all mankind." Yes that is correct, but how do we achieve it, by patient diplomacy and balancing the needs of all parties, or invasion of the lands of those who do not see the wisdom of our ways? Freedom is the great slogan today but our politicians and media pundits don't seem to understand that it cannot be imposed from above. When one does so one tends to get anarchy which is likely to prevail in Iraq for the foreseeable future. If and when we leave there may well be civil war from which another dictator is likely to emerge. That is also the lesson of history. The problem is not that the people of Iraq are not ready for democracy but a tribal society with religious animosities cannot be expected to rally around a government which lacks legitimacy in their eyes as the current Governing Council demonstrates. Neither they, nor our other prime example of liberation, Karzai in Afghanistan, can show themselves outside government compounds unless guarded by Americans. This shows, more clearly than anything else, the bankruptcy of our post 9/11 foreign policy.

Unless this is openly admitted to and constructive steps are taken, which may, unfortunately, already be too late, the brave rhetoric by our administration will remain just that. Even Goethe wrote at the end of Faust II "das ist der Weisheit letzter Schlusz: Nur der verdient sich Freiheit wie das Leben, der taeglich sie erorbern muss." This is wisdom's final conclusion: only he deserves freedom as well as life itself who has to reconquer it on a daily basis. Freedom cannot be brought on a platter it must be worked for by the people who want to be free.

The 22nd of November was also the 40th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination and the History Channel devoted an entire week to that event. Numerous conspiracy theories and witnesses supporting each one of them were procured and in the end one remained just as confused as before. Although the official government pronouncement is still that the lone deranged Oswald killed the president with rapid fire of 3 bullets from his Mannlicher, the idea is highly doubtful. The Zapruder film clearly shows that the president was hit twice. With the first shot he stiffened and raised his arms to his throat while the second and fatal one exploded the right posterior portion of the skull. For a physician this is troublesome. If the fatal bullet was fired from the 5th floor of the Book Depository building, as the government steadfastly asserts, the entry in the back of the head should have been small, and the exit would large. This is axiomatic in forensic medicine. The only reasonable explanation seems to be that the bullet came from the front and exited in the rear. This is why there was such massive damage to the back of the head. Since this would invalidate the lone assassin theory and indicate a conspiracy of what ever size and by whomever, the government is loath to admit it. Everybody can readily understand that in the panic and danger of the moment in November 1963, at the height of the Cold War,  any idea of a conspiracy might have had a profoundly negative effect and this is why the "patsy," as Oswald called himself to reporters at the Dallas police station, had to be pronounced guilty.

But forty years have elapsed, the Cold War is over, and the government still refuses to open the files to independent investigations.  This is the additional tragedy and points out how unreliable official history really is. If we are not allowed to learn the truth about such an important event, as President Kennedy's murder, which had profound consequences including the Vietnam War, there is something deeply wrong with our government. As mentioned repeatedly we are also denied the truth about the events leading up to the 9/11 catastrophe, about who forged the Niger documents, and numerous other aspects leading to the Iraq invasion.

November 19 was the 140th anniversary of the Gettysburg address where President Lincoln said that "these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth." One hundred and forty years later "this nation under God" is not allowed to mention the word God in public schools and we have a country that is governed by a handful of people who are not necessarily elected and beholden not to the citizens at large but a to variety of special interests which dish out enormous sums of money for their pet causes.

But there is a ray of hope and it comes, of all places, from California. Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn in as governor and runs now the most populous state in the Union. This is a truly remarkable phenomenon. A boy from a small place in Austria decided to make something out of him and started with body-building. He succeeded, got to America, found his way into the movies as Conan the Barbarian (which always irritated me, because I thought that Austria deserved better representation), and then realized the ancient Austrian dream. There is a Latin sentence all of us learned in history about how the Austrian empire came into being, "bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube." Others wage war, you happy Austria marry! The empire was not built by war; as a matter of fact the Austrians lost most of them, but by strategic marriages. To a boy from Thal in Styria to marry into the Kennedy clan surely must have seemed the "impossible dream." But he succeeded. The recall election, which was bitterly denounced by the incumbents, was indeed by the people for the people and an expression of grassroots democracy. Will the entrenched powers allow him to achieve his current goals as governor? We don't know yet, but he has made an excellent start. With Maria Shriver, JFK's eloquent and attractive niece at his side he can woo the Democrats, and his moderate Republican stance, which actually shades over to the liberal side anyway, allows him to govern from the center. When one adds to this a style which tends to make friends rather than enemies he should have a good chance, although Gary Trudeau author of the Doonesbury cartoon can't let go of Arnold's past history of petting desirable young women and demands an accounting. Trudeau was considerably less perturbed about President Clinton's escapades, but that's politics. The problems of California including its massive budget deficit are truly daunting but when one considers what Schwarzenegger had to overcome to get to where he is, he might be able to meet even this challenge and he deserves our best wishes.

Finally November is also the month of Thanksgiving and it might be appropriate, especially for our so called "secular citizens" to remember what this last Thursday of the month is supposed to be really all about. The last paragraph of the Proclamation as signed by George Washington on October 3, 1789 states,

"And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just and constitutional laws, discretely and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows best."    

That was the prayer of the first president of our republic, and in the current climate of intense strife nothing seems more important than to devote ourselves to the realization of that goal. We cannot leave it up only to God; the work must be done by ourselves.





January 1, 2004

TODAY’S DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA



On Wednesday afternoon December 17, 2003 I received an e-mail message from David Irving inviting me to a next evening’s dinner meeting at a nearby local restaurant where he would be talking about comparisons between World War II events and the current situation in Iraq. I had met Mr. Irving several years ago when I had attended one of his annual conferences on “Real History” in Cincinnati and since I was not particularly impressed with the qualifications of the speakers I had not returned. But this is how I got on his e-mail list and since the meeting was only 15 minutes from our home I decided to go and hear what he had to say.
I knew, of course, that David Irving has aroused the ire of Jewish officials because he has publicly questioned not only the number but also the manner in which Jews were killed at the infamous Auschwitz death camp. For this he has been labeled a “Holocaust denier,” which is currently the most powerful epithet to use if one wants to destroy someone’s reputation. The label “anti-Semite” no longer seems to be strong enough, especially since some Jewish authorities insist that any critique of the policies of the state of Israel amounts to anti-Semitism. Inasmuch as this now involves the entire Muslim world as well as numerous European countries, “anti-Semites” seem to have multiplied to an extent to make the term meaningless. Therefore, “Holocaust denier” had to take its place.
David Irving acquired this title in a book by Deborah Lipstadt Denying the Holocaust. The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, published by the Penguin group in 1994. The book received high praise from The New York Times Book Review, New York Newsday and major newspapers from around the country. It is an impassioned plea to fully accept the current version of holocaust history and to abstain from further questions about details. I shall not go into a discussion of Professor Lipstadt’s book because she is a professional student of this tragedy occupying the “Dorot Chair in Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta,” although I have reservations about how she presents some of the data.
Since Mr. Irving felt that Ms. Lipstadt had unfairly slandered him he initiated a libel suit in Great Britain against her as well as Penguin books, the publishers. For reasons known only to him, Irving chose to act as his own attorney, while several high priced lawyers represented Lipstadt and Penguin books. The outcome was a foregone conclusion.
The dinner meeting was supposed to start at 6 pm with coffee in a room separate from but adjacent to the main dining area on the main floor of the restaurant When I arrived promptly at the stated hour there was only one other person present apart from Mr. Irving and members of his family. Therefore, I had a chance to talk to him in an informal manner and get a feeling of the kind of man he really is. He talked in a very rapid manner, with a somewhat clipped British accent and seemed to be preoccupied, looking nervously at the outside. Since my hearing is no longer quite what it was five years ago I had at times some difficulty understanding everything he said. This was compounded by music from the main dining area because the glass doors, which separated our room from the other guests, were open.
At the time of the mentioned Cincinnati meeting Irving stated that he would appeal the negative court decision and I was, therefore, curious about what had happened in the meantime. He told me that several appeals had been turned down, and that British authorities had also raided his home and confiscated all his archival material. His books, which had been his major source of income, have not only been removed from all major bookstores but even libraries, so that he is in serious financial difficulties. His appearances before groups, like the one I was presently attending, have been disrupted by protesters and he has been deported from Canada as well as Austria and been denied entry, among other countries, to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Italy. In England his printer’s office was firebombed. I was rather surprised and did not want to believe this because the man is not a wild eyed radical. He simply espouses and presents unconventional views, which should be tolerated in democratic countries where free speech is valued. There is no evidence that he ever advocated violence. Since I am by nature and profession a skeptic I thought that he was either exaggerating or paranoid. This feeling was reinforced by his furtive glances to the outside, which seemed to continuously distract his attention, and where I could not detect any problems. By 7 pm some individuals as well as a group of people flocked in and we had dinner. There were hardly more than a dozen people present and with one exception, a Vietnam veteran, they were all in their twenties or early thirties.
After dinner, the glass doors to the main dining area were closed and Irving started his talk. He drew a comparison about President Bush’s shifting reasons for the invasion of Iraq and those of Chamberlain and subsequently Churchill at the onset of WWII. America’s reasons from imminent threat by WMDs, through: connections to Al Qaeda, regime change, deposing a vicious dictator and establishing democracy in Iraq are, of course, known to everyone who reads the papers or pays attention to the news. The WWII events as seen from the British side are less well known. Irving explained that Chamberlain declared war on Germany because he had given a guarantee to the Polish government that if Germany attacked the country, England would come to its assistance. By the beginning of October of 1939 that question was moot because Poland no longer existed. It had been partitioned between Hitler and Stalin. Although Stalin was clearly a partner in the destruction of Poland, Chamberlain did not declare war on him because that was not feasible militarily. For England to reject Hitler’s peace offer of October 6 and continue with the war there had to be a new reason, and that was “the defense of the British Empire.” But this was an excuse because Hitler had no intention to rob the British of their Empire; on the contrary he wanted them to keep it so that the Nordic Brits would hold the “inferior races” around the world in check. When Churchill took over the government in May of 1940 he knew that England could not possibly win the war by itself and that he needed the Americans for that purpose. WWI had to be replayed. But since Roosevelt had absolutely no interest in defending the British Empire, and on the contrary would do everything in his power to abolish it, another reason for the war had to be advanced. This was the final one, “to rid the world of a megalomaniac dictator who would destroy Western civilization.”
All of this was no news to me or anyone else who has lived through WWII, although it does conflict with what people are being taught today as the history and origin of that war. Actually it occurred to me at the time of this writing that it wasn’t Hitler who had initiated the war on September 1, 1939. It was his partner, Stalin, when he had agreed to the partition of Poland on August 23. Had Stalin not entered into the non-aggression pact with Hitler and told him instead that he would oppose any change in Poland’s territorial integrity, Hitler would have abstained from his September invasion. A war against Russia, England and France was clearly beyond his military capabilities in 1939. But this is an aside, which belongs to subsequent thoughts rather than the events of December 18, 2003.
Irving’s talk was then interrupted with a message that the manager of the restaurant wanted to see him. When he returned a couple of minutes later he apologized that he has to cancel the meeting because the manager had ordered him to do so. I couldn’t believe that this could happen in our very own Sandy. That somebody was not allowed to give a quiet presentation to a dozen people was unimaginable. I, therefore, told him and the group to just sit tight while I talked to the manager in order to find out what was going on. I could only get the assistant manager who told me that there had been complaints about Mr. Irving’s presence and a group outside the restaurant was distributing leaflets to warn potential guests to stay away. When I looked outside I did not see a group and none of the diners in the main area seemed to be upset in any way. Nevertheless she was flanked by a deputy who I thought might be one of “Sandy’s finest,” but it turned out that he was in charge only of the complex where the restaurant was located. I told the deputy that Irving was giving no offense, any group which might have been there earlier must have left, the man wasn’t going to start a riot, so what was the harm to let him talk for another three quarters of an hour. Restaurant assistant manager and deputy seemed to agree, that as long as no employees entered the room it would be ok to continue for the stated period of time. I went back with “mission accomplished” and told Irving he could carry on with his presentation. He did, but not for long. He was called out again and came back with the message that it was indeed curtains. This attitude clearly aroused my feelings again because I am, after all, a resident of Sandy, a citizen of the United States, had patronized that restaurant before, and free speech was surely one of the reasons why I had come to the U.S. in the first place. Again I went out and demanded to speak with the general manager of the establishment. We talked on the phone; I explained my views and so did he. The problem was that the leaflet group had threatened to tell The Salt Lake Tribune that he was allowing a Holocaust denier to use his restaurant and this would surely drive potential future customers away. I pleaded again for another half hour reprieve and he said that if Irving does not call him personally within the next thirty minutes the deputies in charge of the complex were empowered to evict us.
I returned to the group explained what had happened and Irving continued in an obviously distracted fashion for another ten minutes or so when all of us thought it might be better to quit before the place was raided and his books, which he was trying to sell, were confiscated.
 
The January 1, 2003 installment of the Hot Issues was entitled “Deconstructing America” and I discussed in it the changes that have taken place in our country since I arrived here in 1950. I was, therefore, no longer quite naïve but the event described above was surely unexpected and had I not personally experienced it I would not have believed it. Are these the values our troops in Iraq are fighting and dying for? We must remember that this event took place not even in Salt Lake City with a more diverse population mix but in quiet, mostly Mormon, Sandy!
Irving was not paranoid, he had reason to fear, and leaflets had indeed been passed out by a group, which listed itself only as “The Holocaust History Project” with an Internet address www.holocaust-history.org. The group had apparently come after my arrival but the mentioned Vietnam vet with whom I had exchanged war stories gave me his. Under the title “Who is David Irving?” we find statements attributed to the London Times, “Britain’s leading anti-Semitic lunatic;” to Vice President Al Gore, “ That awful falsifier;” and to Judge Gray, “… he is an active Holocaust denier; … he is anti-Semitic and racist and he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo–Nazism.” These are just some samples, giving the reasons why Irving should be regarded as an “Unwelcome Guest.” 
Since Irving had told me earlier in private that a letter had been sent out by special interest groups to libraries requesting that his books be removed from their shelves I checked the website of the University of Utah library and indeed none of his books which were published after 1989 are available. When I looked at amazon.com only the 2002 hardcover update of Hitler’s War was available to be shipped within several weeks, others were listed as either out of stock or out of print. The Salt Lake County library system likewise has none of Irving’s books that were published after 1990. The greatest surprise came when I looked at the Library of Congress’ catalog. Hitler’s War is available in 1977 and 1990 editions but not in that of 2002. Rommel. The Desert Fox exists but the books about Goebbels and Hess do not. Furthermore, and most astounding, was that his book Nuremberg. The Last Battle is on the shelves but only in its German translation! Irving is now forced to self-promote through the website www.fpp.co.uk/books, and personal appearances which lead to the result described above.
I regard this entire situation as a terribly sad commentary on the current state of America’s democracy. Regardless of what one may think about Mr. Irving personally, or his views, there is a principle at stake. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are the most fundamental hallmarks of our constitution. It is true that groups have the right to pass out leaflets protesting a given person’s presence. It is also true that the manager of an establishment has the right to ask guests to leave when he is afraid that they might interfere with future earnings. But it is, furthermore, true that a climate of fear has been created in this country that effectively silences voices that challenge the currently accepted versions of history. This is a throwback to the Catholic church of the early renaissance when the dogma of the sun rotating around the earth was not to be doubted because the Bible said so. Scientific evidence was irrelevant. Nearly 500 years later we have advanced to the point where we no longer burn dissenters at the stake we just deprive them of their livelihood and ostracize them.
The ancient Jewish cherem, which was pronounced against Spinoza, has now taken the place of papal Bulls. The “Index of Forbidden Books” also seems to have been resurrected and is enforced by Jewish pressure groups rather than the Catholic Church. Let me make it clear that Jewish groups have a right to protest, like everybody else, but the fearful submission of the vast non-Jewish population to the demands of small pressure groups is truly appalling. It is also most remarkable that anyone is free to deny the virgin birth of Jesus, his stature as Son of God, or any other religious dogma but the Nazi holocaust has to be written nowadays with a capital H and is absolutely taboo. Scientific investigations are not allowed. The book has been closed, the canon set in cement!
I have used the word cherem, which stands for excommunication of members from the Jewish community, and it may be of interest to read an excerpt of the formula, which was pronounced over Spinoza in Amsterdam on July 27, 1656. It starts with:

“Having long known of the evil opinions and acts of Baruch de Spinoza they [the governing body] have endeavored by various means and promises, to turn him from his evil ways. But having failed to make him mend his wicked ways, and, on the contrary, daily receiving more and more serious information about the abominable heresies which he practiced and taught and about his monstrous deeds . . . the said Espinoza should be excommunicated and expelled from the people of Israel . . .”
“By decree of the angels and by the command of the holy men, we excommunicate, expel, curse and damn Baruch de Espinoza, with the consent of God, Blessed be He, and with consent of the entire congregation . . . Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lies down and cursed be he when he rises up. Cursed be he when he goes out and cursed be he when he comes in. The Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book [Torah] shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name under heaven. And the Lord shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law. But you that cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day.”


I am indebted to Professor Lindemann of the University of California Santa Barbara campus for having provided me with the article by Asa Kasher and Shlomo Biderman: Why was Baruch de Spinoza Excommunicated? which served as the basis for the quotes. As one says in the German language: Kommentar ueberfluessig; the text speaks for itself.
Let me reemphasize that I am not talking primarily about Mr. Irving’s fate, regrettable as it is, but about the nature of our democracy and what we are allowing it to become. Discerning readers may already have noted that I borrowed the title of this essay from de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America first published in 1835. It is therefore of interest to read what this French world-traveling aristocrat told his contemporaries. He was a cautious optimist who predicted the spread of democracy throughout the world :

“The good things and the evils of life are more equally distributed in the world: great wealth tends to disappear, the number of small fortunes to increase; desires and gratifications are multiplied, but extraordinary prosperity and irremediable penury are alike unknown . . . Each individual stands apart in solitary weakness; but society at large is active, provident, and powerful: the performances of private persons are insignificant those of the state immense. . . . There is less perfection, but more abundance, in all the productions of the arts. The ties of race, of rank, and the country are relaxed; the great bond of humanity is strengthened . . . A state of equality is perhaps less elevated, but it is more just; and its justice constitutes its greatness and its beauty.”

De Tocqueville also warned:

“That men living in aristocratic countries may, strictly speaking, do without the liberty of the press: but such is not the case with those live in democratic countries. To protect their personal independence I trust not to great political assemblies, to parliamentary privilege, or the assertion of popular sovereignty. All these things may, to a certain extent, be reconciled with personal servitude. But that servitude cannot be complete if the press is free: the press is the chief democratic instrument of freedom. . . . I perceive mighty dangers which it is possible to ward off, - mighty evils which may be avoided or alleviated; and I cling with a firmer hold to the belief, that, for democratic nations to be virtuous and prosperous, they require but to will it.”

More than a century and a half later democracy is indeed spreading throughout the world and its strengths and weaknesses are becoming more apparent on a daily basis. We are currently losing our freedom of the press, the only guarantor of personal freedom, and fear instead of confidence rules. Fear of losing income, prestige, or job, allows small groups with access to the press to muzzle those who do not toe the prescribed line. Those of us who do not agree with this increasing trend need to speak out. David Irving is not alone in his plight to get his books circulated. Gordon Thomas, the author of Gideon’s Spies, has also run afoul of the Anti- Defamation League. Barnes&Noble withdrew its support for his latest book Seeds of Fire and his book promotion interviews on national radio and TV were cancelled. The facts which led up to this event can be found on his website www.gordonthomas.ie under “The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith.”
One truly wonders what has happened to the citizens of this country who were told in the past, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Our media are full of praise for having rescued the Iraqis from the fear of Saddam, yet hardly any attention is being paid to the fear that is generated at home. The word fear is, of course, shunned. It has been replaced by the German angst, spelled with a lower case A, apparently in an attempt to hide the real situation. Benjamin Barber has recently published a book, which I became acquainted with in its German translation. Imperium der Angst. Die USA und die Neuordnung der Welt is its title in German. The original English language title was Fear’s Empire. Terrorism, War and Democracy. Our neoconservatives believe that they can rule the world through military power. First come intimidation and subsequently, when the opposing country is weak, occupation. This seems to be the new morality and those who are in charge of our policies act surprised when they find that the rest of the world is no longer enamored with America. Jewish authorities complain about rising anti-Semitism but fail to understand that actions like the ones described above will not make people any fonder of Jews. The dozen or so people who were at David Irving’s meeting were not neo-Nazis or rabid fanatics, they were simply curious to hear another version of history and subsequently debate its merits or flaws in a civilized manner. Should it be surprising when some of these people may subsequently feel animosity against “the Jews,” and not distinguish between militant zealots and the common Jewish people who likewise feel concern about these tactics of intimidation? The end should not justify the means.

There is perhaps no better final comment on today’s situation in America than the cartoon from Singapore that appeared in The Salt Lake Tribune a few days ago.







February 1, 2004

RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION



This is an anniversary of sorts because it has been three years since the Hot Issues were first started. As such it is an appropriate time to look back not only in terms of what has transpired but also to find out where my opinions have been proven wrong.

The most glaring error was, of course, my faith in the incoming Bush administration but it would have required a personal acquaintance with the president to foresee how he would really conduct himself in office. Furthermore, ordinary citizens who are far distant from the levers of power, could not have predicted the 9/11 catastrophe. On the other hand the probable results of the policy decisions after this tragedy could be inferred by reasonable people. Thus, the Hot Issues clearly fall into two sections. The first one deals with events from February - October 2001 and the second part with those that occurred thereafter. They demonstrate clearly how one Bush voter was first full of hope and then became progressively more and more disenchanted with the conduct of our current administration. This is important not because of my vote, which does not matter in the large scheme of things, but the reasons for my disenchantment have wider implications as will become apparent later on.

For now let us start, however with the first essay entitled "The Ashcroft Nomination." In it I defended the appointment of Senator Ashcroft to Attorney General of the United States against attacks by Democrats. They had complained about Ashcroft's statement that "Jesus is our King," because he thereby violated the separation of the Church and State amendment of the Constitution. Ashcroft had done so in a setting of a speech before students at a religious university with an unusually strict moral code and I did not regard it as objectionable in that setting. As matter of fact it brought to mind the same phrase uttered by Cardinal Innitzer from the pulpit of St. Stephens Cathedral in Vienna in October 1938, after he had seen what Hitler and the Nazis really stood for. But this is also the point where the comparison ends. Innitzer had held worldly power prior to March 13, 1938 and lost it thereafter while Ashcroft ascended to it in 2001. Innitzer became a genuine Christian by helping victims of Nazi persecutions, while Ashcroft became a persecutor especially after 9/11. I don't doubt his personal devotion to his faith but his life merely shows that it is difficult, if not impossible, to follow Jesus' teachings while holding political office.

Let us stay with John Ashcroft for a moment. Even if he had not personally crafted the so called "Patriot Act," he condoned it and now continues to defend its practices. The very name of this piece of legislation is inaccurate and simply a propaganda tool because true patriots guard our liberties rather than destroy them in the name of national security. We do not need laws which allow the government to enter our homes without a search warrant, to find out which books or videos we check out from libraries, to arrest and hold us incommunicado without charge for an unspecified time and similar insults simply because somebody thought that we might be "terrorists." Mr. Ashcroft has even seen fit to allow the establishment of a concentration camp, which is obviously not called by that name. Everybody knows that "Camp Delta" exists in Guantanamo, just as we knew in Nazi Germany that Dachau existed. But neither did we know then what really went on in Dachau nor do we know now the conditions of the prisoners in Guantanamo. As a matter of fact Himmler did allow the Red Cross to visit Dachau and Theresienstadt after they had been spruced up for the visit. Mr. Ashcroft has yet to do so. Not only are the Red Cross and Red Crescent barred but so are the media. The main difference between Camp Delta and the Nazis seems to be that the fences are not electrified and the prisoners are not worked to death, just caged. In both instances the prisoners are regarded as undesirables and national security risks by the government. In the Nazi era they were considered opponents to the regime either on religious or political grounds, while here they are labeled "Taliban," "Al Quaeda" or simply "terrorists." The names of the people who are held in Guantanamo or the actual crime they are accused of having committed have never been published and they are simply held under the mentioned generic terms, just as Jews or communists could be sent to KZs (as they were called) not for anything they had actually done but simply on a "pre-emptive" basis.

The German and Austrian people have been, and to some extent still are, accused by some that they tolerated the repressive unjust regime, and especially the concentration camps, without speaking out. The people who do so have never lived under a totalitarian system of government because it would have meant volunteering for KZ or death by guillotine which had been renamed "Fallbeil." What I find so remarkable, however, is that in our country where we still have some freedom of speech there is hardly anyone in the media or even among Democrats in Congress who brands Guantanamo as a disgrace on America's honor. Consider for a moment the massive outcry that would have resulted if the prisoners were Jews instead of Arabs. There is a double standard in regard to human rights and we must face up to it. Once you label somebody his fate is sealed, his individuality and with it all civil rights are gone. To order or even condone these abuses of power is incompatible with the Christian religion and this is the tragedy of Attorney General Ashcroft's tenure.

The second mistaken belief on my part was that I thought politicians in our country are reasonable people who listen to their constituents. This is why I published Whither Zionism? as a short booklet, which provides facts that they can read on the plane to and from their constituencies. This would allow them to cast intelligent votes on matters pertaining to the Arab-Israeli conflict which was bound to get worse unless the United States made its weight felt. To make sure that they had access to the publication I put my money where my keyboard was and sent it to everyone in power. The result was, of course, predictable. The booklet got intercepted by the various staffs and promptly disappeared in the proverbial circular file. But even if you have the good luck to be able to see your Congressman or Senator in person and hand it to him he'll still ignore the contents as documented in the June 2001 issue "Metaphysical Guilt," and the September 2002 issue "October Surprise?."

Nevertheless these efforts were not totally in vain because losing illusions and facing reality is always helpful. There was another aspect where my prognostications have not yet come true. Yassir Arafat has proved more resilient and Sharon less determined than I had assumed in April 2002. The Israelis abstained from killing or deporting him although they were on course in regard to the other aspects mentioned in that article entitled "Palestinian State or Israeli Protectorate." Arafat clearly proved himself a survivor and if Sharon were indeed to lose his job over the bribery scandal, which wends its way currently through the Israeli legal system, he would have outlasted yet another Israeli Prime Minister. One is reminded of Castro in this respect. They stare down their respective superpower for decades and retain the loyalty of a fair proportion of their people in spite of providing mainly misery for them.

The Afghan invasion, which I regarded as unfortunate has not brought about the result the administration had hoped for. The Taliban are regrouping and although the Afghans now have a Constitution on paper, Karzai is still mainly the mayor of Kabul and international relief agencies are weary of going into the provinces, which are ruled by warlords. The Iraq predictions were unfortunately on target and the outcome of that experiment to bring democracy to the Arab people is still highly doubtful.

In all of these events the Bush administration has shown its true colors. In retrospect it has become obvious that our president had no intention to ever bring the Palestinians and Israelis to the peace table and that he espoused a hands-off policy, which has turned into a disaster for all parties concerned including us. Our policies are now hated by most of the Arab world because our "honest broker" stance has been exposed as a sham. In addition it has become obvious that we really have no use for genuine democracy in the Arab world not even in Iraq. A caucus system of election, as espoused by our government and resisted by the Iraqis, is no substitute for one person one vote, cast in secrecy, which is the true hallmark of democracy. We don't want democracies in the Middle East; we want client states that do what they are told, especially in regard to their oil resources. In addition we are very happy to have a dictator like Musharraf in charge of Pakistan rather than democratically elected Mullahs who would then have their fingers on atomic weapons. The administration was also not very pleased with Turkey's democracy when their lawmakers refused to allow our troops to invade Iraq from the north. While the White House justifies its conduct with "bringing democracy to the oppressed" it has become obvious that this is merely a slogan in order to gain public approval. To tell the truth to the American people about the much more mundane reasons for invading other countries or pressuring them by other means into obedience is simply not feasible politically. You can't get elected to public office, or if appointed retain it, when you speak the truth as you see it.

This brings me to David Suskind's book about the experiences of the former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill. The Price of Loyalty has received some praise in Democratic circles and vituperation from Republicans especially in the weekly journal Human Events. Although not all the details and impressions contained in the book may be accurate there are important aspects, which shed light on the Bush administration in general and the president in person. According to the book Mr. O'Neill was about to retire as Chairman of the Board of Alcoa when he was approached by his long-term friend Dick Cheney to join the Bush administration. O'Neill had served with Cheney under Presidents Nixon, Ford and Bush senior but was reluctant to enter public service again. He had a good job, made lots of money and his wife was against a move back to Washington. His main reluctance stemmed, however, from the fact that he was an outspoken person who told the truth as he saw it, did not mince words and he didn't know how this would work in Washington's politicized climate. As it turned out he should have listened to his wife because his tenure lasted only two years. The reason why was so unceremoniously fired by Dick Cheney in December 2002 was a profound disagreement with the administration about fiscal policy. O'Neill and his long-standing friend Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, were fiscally conservative. They disliked deficit financing and were never enthused about the Bush tax-cuts, to rescue the economy from the doldrums. They did not trust the fanciful projections of massive surpluses over the next ten years and suggested that if taxes were to be cut provisions should also be enacted that if the surplus projections were proven wrong the cuts would no longer be continued. When O'Neill stated that he saw no reason for a further tax cut after the November 2002 election, especially with the Iraq war on the horizon, he had exhausted the president's patience with this "maverick."

As it so happens The Salt Lake Tribune published last week the actual surplus and deficit figures from 1970-2004 as well as the projections for 2005-2008. There were only four years of surplus from 1998-2001 and as expected from the administration's response to 9/11 the deficit not only resumed in 2002 but is expected to soar to 477 billion dollars during the current fiscal year. A Secretary of the Treasury is supposed to be prudent but that was not tolerated by Bush, and the conservative Human Events praises the new Treasury Secretary Snow for going along with the wishes of the administration. Some of the tax cuts slated to expire soon are, according to the president's recent State of the Union speech, to be made permanent in spite of the fact that we may not be able to afford them. A federal tax cut, which not only leads to higher state and local taxes but also progressively higher interest payments on the massive debt can't be good for the average tax payer. But politicians are not swayed by reality; electoral votes count and John Q Public is not supposed to think.

All of this would not necessarily have raised substantial Republican ire had O'Neill abstained from giving his impression on how our president governs and compared it with the habits of previous presidents he had served under. Mr. Bush II's stature as chief executive of the US does not come off well even in comparison with his father. Although there may be a case of "sour grapes" in his assessment there are nuggets which suggest the type of person our president really is.

O'Neill had not known George W. Bush personally before he was summoned to Washington by Dick Cheney in December of 2000 to meet with the President-elect. The message was clear: O'Neill's concerns were noted but dismissed and the $1.6 trillion tax cut Bush had promised during the election campaign was carved in stone. "You've got to pursue what you said you're going to pursue. And I I'm not going to negotiate with myself. I don't do that." Keeping promises is obviously an admirable trait, and so is steadfastness but when it turns into obstinacy, an inability to change one's mind when circumstances demand a different approach it becomes dangerous in a chief executive and especially when he is president of the United States. O'Neill allowed himself to be persuaded to take the job in the hope that he might be able to steer the new and relatively inexperienced administration onto a responsible course. The second time he met the president was in the Oval Office on January 24, 2001 where he was confronted with reality. O'Neill had known about the president's penchant to affix nicknames on everybody but to be greeted with "Pablo" was somewhat of a shocker. Although it may have been meant as a gesture of friendliness it was inappropriate because it showed lack of respect for a person who was clearly his senior in age as well as professional experience in the field. Henceforth he was Pablo until a year or so later he became the "Big O" which was likewise no compliment because it is the trade mark of an automobile tire company. Little things like that matter; they allow one to take the measure of a person.

O'Neill reported that he had come prepared for the January meeting with answers to questions he had expected to be asked but none were forthcoming from the president. Bush sat impassively listened to his Treasury secretary's monologue for more than fifty minutes and when the hour was up the meeting ended with Bush telling O'Neill: "Get me a plan on global warming." Global warming had simply been an afterthought on O'Neill's mind to fill the time for the last five minutes of what was supposed to have been a discussion on how to best manage the country's economy and finances. Sure, global warming is important and has financial implications but it really was in the bailiwick of the Environmental Protection Agency under Christie Whitman.

The president's defenders attacked O'Neill for his characterization of Bush being aloof during meetings and leaving the cabinet ministers in doubt about what he was really thinking, but I am inclined to believe O'Neill because his experience with Bush as related above was identical to mine with our Congressman as reported here in the June 2001 installment on "Metaphysical Guilt." I was granted an interview where I explained to Mr. Matheson that America's policy toward Israel is short-sighted and he should take the contents of Whither Zionism?, which I put in his hand, to heart. He sat impassively like a Buddha for twenty minutes, then thanked me and that was it. There was not a single question why I thought the way I did or on anything else. This was the attitude of my congressman, but I thought that the president at least would be more inclined to a give and take exchange of views with his cabinet officers who after all are supposed to have the expertise he cannot be expected to have in all areas. That he did not do so is troubling.

So is Mr. Bush's management style. As reported previously he is disinclined to read newspapers and magazines but relies on "Condi" or "Dick," as the case may be, to feed him the information he is supposed to have. Independent verification of their opinions does not seem to have a priority for our president. At the first National Security Council meeting on January 30, 2001 the president announced: "Condi will run these meetings. I'll be seeing all of you regularly, but I want you to debate things out here and then Condi will report to me. She's my national security advisor."

This stance is highly problematic. The president is responsible for the security of the United States, not a political appointee regardless of how gifted she or he may be. Not to know first hand the discussions which these meetings are supposed to provide and to rely on a filtered version may border on dereliction of duty. I believe this may be the basic reason why the White House is not releasing pertinent documents to Congress and the Independent Commission which has been created to elucidate the antecedents of the 9/11 tragedy. The administration is also dead set against extending the term of the commission, which is supposed to have its report ready during the spring of this year. Under those circumstances the American public cannot expect to have the truth revealed because under the guise of National Security documents are withheld and underlings blamed. Who makes the decisions, apart from the president, as to which documents can and should be released? As far as we know these persons are: Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Karl Rove and possibly Karen Hughes. Each one of these people has their own agenda and divulging the truth to Congress or the media may not be on the list.

This situation carries even greater danger in the current election campaign where the main Republican issue is likely to be a "proven strong national security policy." If vital issues of national security and the economy are indeed ideology driven, as Suskind's book suggests, a second term for the president may lead to even greater difficulties for the country than we are experiencing already. Secretary of State Powell has indicated that he may not want to continue in another Bush administration, which given the facts as they have evolved over the past three years is perfectly understandable. It has also been reported in the press that Paul Wolfowitz may be his likely successor. This would be in all probability a disaster because he has little or no credibility abroad.

When one looks at the current field of Democratic contenders for the Presidency there is also reason for concern. Senator Kerry seems to be a decent and competent person but to what extent he would pursue as president the leftist positions he has espoused in the campaign is an open question. My colleague, Dr. Dean, has in my eyes disqualified himself by his inappropriate outburst in Iowa. He had come in third and acted like a coach whose high-school football team had just had just won a game and they are now on the road to a national title. Senator Edwards is not likely to get any votes from physicians because as the foremost trial lawyer specializing in suing them he will not win friends in those circles. More importantly, his political position seems to be even further to the left than that of Kerry. General Clark, the latecomer, did not handle himself well in the New Hampshire debate among Democratic contenders. The question why he became a Democrat after having previously supported the Republicans could have been answered in a straightforward manner. All he needed to have said was, that the Republican Party had been highjacked by the neoconservatives and led down a road many Republicans cannot condone. The question why he did not distance himself from Roger Moore, when the latter asserted that president Bush had deserted from the National Guard during the Vietnam war, could also have been answered more cogently. The issue arose from a report that Bush had not shown up for duty when he was supposed to have; but this report has never been followed up. General Clark could have pointed to that report and said: "I don't know if this report is true or not, but I shall inquire and let you know what the facts are." Those answers would have given him credibility, which the General currently lacks. The other three remaining candidates: Senator Lieberman, Dennis Kucinich and the Reverend Sharpton are not in serious contention and are likely to drop out from the race within the next month or so.

In sum and substance, the U.S. voter will be confronted with a very difficult choice. The Bush administration with its hallmark of secrecy, the manner how vital decisions are reached and false assertions to get the country into the Iraq war does not inspire confidence. Unless the Democrats manage to put forth a candidate and a goal most Americans can agree with, the turnout in November may be even lower than in past elections.

In the meantime promises will be made by both sides, the country will be allowed to drift and the oligarchy in the White House will concentrate on re-election. If the outcome were to be in serious doubt the country and the world might even have to brace themselves for another foreign policy adventure. Going gently into the night does not seem to be the White House's style. I am saying this because of two small items in Suskind's book. There seems to be a vindictive streak in the administration which the country has usually associated with President Nixon's enemy list. Suskind reported in the Epilogue that the former head of the "Faith-based Initiative" John Dilulio had sent him a memo: "articulating his concerns that the administration lacked even the most basic policy apparatus and was being run by the 'Mayberry Machiavellis,' his description of the political operation directed by Karl Rove." This memo formed the centerpiece of an article Suskind had published in Esquire. As a result of that publication DiIulio received calls from the White House and retracted the statements he had made calling them "groundless and baseless," which were the identical words White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer had used earlier in a press conference. Suskind related the story to O'Neill with the obvious implication how he would react when pressure was put on him by the powers for the statements he had made to Suskind about the administration's modus operandi. O'Neill reflected and then said to Suskind: "'But here's the difference. I am an old guy and I'm rich. And there's nothing they can do to hurt me.'"

After the book was published O'Neill gave an interview on Sixty Minutes, where he repeated the statements made here. I saw the interview and felt that he had handled himself in a somewhat detached manner to the extent that he even waved a document before the camera which had "Secret" stamped on it. Next day the storm broke. He was threatened with a law suit for distributing secret government documents, and the former Secretary who thought that he had nothing to fear for telling the truth as he saw it, recanted. As we said in our family when we discussed the situation: "They got to him!"




March 1, 2004

THE SILLY SEASON



What has been dubbed "the silly season," namely the quadrennial circus of presidential election campaigns is in full swing. Sordid charges and countercharges fill the airwaves as well as the print media, while the real business governments are elected for has to take a back seat. Neither side wants to offend its core constituencies, which leads to the postponement of unpopular decisions. This may not be so easy this time because America can hardly afford in this day and age to waste practically the rest of the year on internal squabbles, which will become progressively more vicious and each side will blame the other for "negative" campaigning and "dirty tricks."

The world will, however, not take a vacation until Americans have decided who is going to lead them for the next four years. On the contrary, America's perceived turning inwards is likely to encourage others to take advantage of this seeming vacuum at the top and may make the rest of this year one of the more dangerous ones for the world. The Middle East is in turmoil. Sharon has a green light to do whatever he wants until the end of next January, or possibly beyond if Bush wins, and he will surely use this once in a lifetime opportunity. He is building his wall on occupied land, raids Palestinian banks and as a matter of policy assassinates leading Palestinians all under the name of fighting terrorism. Iraq's occupation, with concomitant loss of lives and property will have to continue even if we stick to the July deadline of turning power over to the Iraqis because a nation, especially one based on tribal loyalties, can't be rebuilt in a few months or a year.

The real problem is that America's 9/11 catastrophe was a Godsend to certain circles because President Bush turned what was a crime immediately into a war. This was a fundamental mistake and has opened the door to all the disasters that have already followed and will continue to come to pass. Even if there were to be a "regime change" in Washington next January the clock cannot be turned back to September 10, 2001. Events have been set in motion that can no longer be undone. I have always maintained that the 9/11 tragedy was a crime rather than an act of war because private organizations cannot make war. They can rob, kill, maim, and destroy property on a previously unprecedented scale but war has always been the final outcome of a dispute between states. A state has to commit aggression for war to ensue. The pretext for invading somebody else's country because it harbored terrorists has in the past been regarded as a prerogative of empires run by an aristocracy, or after their demise that of totalitarian dictatorships. "Democracies don't make war" has been the slogan dutifully recited at least since Wilson and this is why the "world has to be made safe for democracy." The Bush administration has taught us that this was merely rhetoric and that whoever has the power in a given arena will use it for perceived gain, regardless of what the electorate wants.

While the rationale for even the Afghan invasion was not quite as lily white as administration supporters made it out to have been there was no question that the Taliban government did indeed harbor Osama and his Al Qaeda fanatics. But as subsequent information has proven Afghanistan was a sideshow. The goal had always been Middle East oil. This was one of the reasons why Saddam had to be removed from power by the Bush administration even if there had never been a 9/11. Israel's security and a personal hatred by Bush jr. for Saddam were the other two essential ingredients. It was a personal vendetta against the man who had retained his power in spite of a devastating defeat while the victor, Bush senior, lost his job. This was not allowed to go unpunished as Kevin Phillips in American Dynasty. Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush tells us. Weapons of mass destruction and atrocities by Saddam were excellent pretexts for the war but not the cause of it. The coming together of these three ingredients: Oil, Israel and Personal Revenge made the Iraq invasion foreordained. Although 9/11 was the catalyst, it was neither the necessary nor sufficient cause.

In the process of writing these lines another war against a country which harbored terrorists came to mind. It was none other than the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As mentioned in War and Mayhem private secret nationalistic terrorist groups in Serbia, the Narodna Odbrana and the Black Hand, dedicated themselves to the destruction of their powerful neighbor in the north and were responsible for the assassination of the Archduke and his wife on June 28, 1914. But the ruling circles in Vienna used this crime as a pretext to declare war on Serbia although the government of that country had not been involved in the crime and had actually made wide-ranging concessions to cooperate with the investigations to bring the culprits to justice. We know the outcome of that pre-emptive war against a state harboring terrorists and all our current troubles can be laid at the feet of the decision makers in the summer of 1914. But the war could have remained limited to Europe, had England stayed out of it. Although Germany's invasion of Belgium was officially proclaimed as the reason for England's entry into the war, it was not the real cause, and her overseas empire made it into a worldwide war.

As Niall Ferguson writes in Empire. The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power: "[Germany's invasion of] Belgium was a useful pretext. The Liberals went to war for two reasons: first, because they feared the consequences of a German victory over France, imagining the Kaiser as a new Napoleon, bestriding the Continent and menacing the Channel coast." Ferguson then goes on to state that even if the fear was legitimate both political parties of the time, the Liberals and the Conservatives, should have acted earlier to prevent a potential German menace. But the second reason, and this is where we enter familiar territory, was that: "By 1914 Herbert Asquith's government was on the verge of collapse. Given the failure of their foreign policy to avert a European war, he and his Cabinet colleagues ought indeed to have resigned. But they dreaded the return to Opposition. More, they dreaded the return of the Conservatives to power. They went to war partly to keep the Tories out."

These are some of the real reasons why countries went to war then, why they do so now and why the rest of this year is potentially so dangerous. To understand this danger we need to look at the men behind Bush. I do indeed mean men in the sense of male because although "Condi" had influence in the past she seems to have at best been a reluctant player and has already announced that she will be leaving the administration in January regardless of who wins the election. Prior to July 2002 there was another woman in the White House to whom Bush listened and who ran the show for him. She was Karen Hughes who had guided, together with Karl Rove, his election campaigns in Texas and for the White House. She got high marks from everyone who had been in contact with her but she left the administration at the mentioned time. The ostensible reason was that her husband and teenage son were quite unhappy in Washington and everybody wanted to get back to Texas. These are noble sentiments which probably did play a significant role but my clinical mind suspects that there may have been another reason. She must have seen the inexorable push toward the Iraq war which was hyped by Karl Rove for winning the November midterm elections. If she was indeed as smart as people report, she may well have had second thoughts about the wisdom of this enterprise and quietly left the scene before shouldering part of the blame for this experiment in first ruining a nation and then putting it back together in whatever fashion.

In July 2002 Ron Suskind published an article in Esquire (available on the Internet): "Mrs. Hughes Takes Her Leave," which is well worth reading. The caption states in bold print: "The single most influential adviser to the president of the United States is going home to Texas with her family to live a simpler life. Perhaps Andy Card, the White House chief of staff, says it best: Oh, God.'" The reasons why her departure was regarded by knowledgeable people with such a sense of foreboding are as follows. Suskind quotes Card: "She's irreplaceable. The cost of her absence will be huge. . . . Listen, the president's in a state of denial about what Karen's departure will mean, so is the First Lady, and so is Karen herself. The whole balance of the place [the White House], the balance of what has worked up to now for George Bush is gone. My biggest concern? Want to know what it is? That the president will lose confidence in the White House Staff. Because without her, we'll no longer provide the president what he needs, what he demands. Karen and her family, will be fine. It's the president I'm concerned about. . . . She's leaving when the president has one of the highest approval ratings on record. From here it can only go down. . . . The key balance around here has been between Karen and Karl Rove. . . . That's what I've been doing from the start of the administration. Standing on the middle of the seesaw, with Karen on one side, Karl on the other, trying to keep it in balance. One of them just jumped off. . . . Karl will miss Karen. He may not want to admit it to the level he should, but he'll miss Karen a lot. . . . It's like she's a beauty to Karl's beast."

When the "beauty" resigned the "beast" was left in charge. Suskind explains the difference between these two people who were: "the president's right hand and his left. Rove is much more the ideologue, a darling of the Right, who often swings a sharp sword of partisanship on matters of policy and politics. Hughes always more pragmatic, mindful of how to draw the most support across a balkanized political terrain, somehow figures how to beat that sword into a plowshare. That is at the core of what has worked so well politically for the president. Both have been with Bush for many years - Rove first met the president twenty nine years ago - and are ferocious personalities."

Well, Card was correct. Karen Hughes was irreplaceable. Karl Rove was now in complete charge of policy and although he won the November 2002 elections for Bush the subsequent downhill slide in the president's approval, shortly interrupted by the early Iraq success, began and is likely to continue. Suskind's article also explains the difference between the president's rhetoric during the campaign of being "a uniter and not a divider" and his subsequent actions in office, which polarized the country even further. It seems that Karen Hughes was actually the uniter, rather than the president, and it was she who smoothed out the sharp ideologic bent of Rove.

Which brings us to the next question. Who is Karl Rove? There are two recent books about him: Boy Genius. Karl Rove, the Brains Behind the Remarkable Political Triumph of Georg W. Bush by Dubose, Reid and Cannon; and Bush's Brain. How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential by Moore and Slater. The portrait which emerges from these books is that of a political consultant who is highly intelligent but also totally ruthless in pursuit of his goal. This can be summarized in the desire to create a conservative political majority in the country which will outlast a given president and endure for at least a generation. It is to be achieved by handpicking personable, conservative candidates for public office, be it on the state or federal level, and overseeing their election to the desired job. The borders of Congressional districts may be redrawn to maximize his candidate's chances and no effort is spared to annihilate the opposing candidate even to the point of character assassination. His guiding light is Machiavelli's The Prince and since he is in charge of the current election campaign he will do anything whatsoever to ensure the president's victory. In as much as this may even include starting another "preemptive" war his dealings must be exposed and should be legitimate targets for the Democrats. To focus on Bush who is a likeable person but a political lightweight is, in my opinion, mistaken. The opposition should instead concentrate on the people who really run the show. Their conduct should be scrutinized in a non-malicious but thorough manner. Democrats should: expose Rove's dealings and dirty tricks; expose Cheney's current connections to the oil and military procurement magnates; expose Rumsfeld's early and relentless push for war regardless of justification; and expose Wolfowitz's as well as Perle's connections with the state of Israel. If all of this were brought to the attention of the general public not just in books, which only a few people read, but on the TV talk shows, the Bush presidency would be finished. But who has the courage to do so?

Are the Democrats really capable of defeating Rove? One may wonder. The field of candidates has narrowed down to two since last month. Lieberman, Clark and Dean have called it quits and although Kucinich and Sharpton are still theoretically in the race they have no chance of winning and they know it. Even Edwards is not likely to get the nomination because Kerry has won so far all but two primaries or caucuses while Edwards won only once. Although he denies it, he may be running for the Vice-presidency.

Conventional wisdom has it that Kerry will be the nominee at the Convention in Boston and will give Bush a run for his money. This will be difficult because Bush has already twice as much as he could possibly need and Karl will spare no effort to dig up whatever dirt he can on the gaunt senator. One effort to smear him as a Clinton clone with an intern scandal has already failed but that will hardly be the last. We are just warming up for the "silly season." Although Kerry will have the votes of all the "progressives" this may not be enough to get him over the top, especially since Ralph Nader has rediscovered his indispensability for the welfare of the American people. The Bushies could not be more delighted and Karl may buy him a dinner in November.

There is potentially another scenario if Kerry were made to stumble or implode. Gore has committed political suicide by first endorsing Dr. Dean, without even telling his former running mate Joe Lieberman beforehand, and then by putting on, in all seriousness, an imitation of Dean's Iowa performance which was painful or hilarious to watch depending on one's political viewpoint. This leaves us with the junior senator from New York our former First Lady. No one has any doubt that a return to the White House with Bill as First Husband in tow is Hillary Clinton's abiding dream and she, like Karl Rove, will do anything to make her dream a reality. Right now it is assumed that she will be running for the presidency in 2008 when after eight years of Bush the country will be ready for her. On the other hand if there were to be a major stumble by Kerry she might "consent" to being "drafted" during the Democratic Convention. This would be a desperation move by the Democrats, because she can't win this time around. On the other hand the Democrats might want to write this election off and give her a chance to test the waters for the real event in 2008.

This is how politics are played in our country and the article by Günter Nenning in Vienna's Kronenzeitung, supplied to me by my brother, entitled "Three Cheers for America!" (Hoch Amerika!) is premature. Nenning, an old Social Democrat in both senses of the word, congratulated us to the self correcting powers of democracy. He told his readers that Americans first elected the wrong guy but now comes Kerry, the new hero, to the rescue. This is his hope anyway. But not so fast Dr. Nenning: remember Stalin; both of us do. One of his classic statements was: "It doesn't matter who votes what matters is who counts the votes." As we have seen in the fall of 2000, no truer words were ever spoken. Vote counting is likely to become a major issue in the upcoming election. There are no uniform standards across this vast country of ours how the votes are being cast in the first place and then tallied. It'll all be high tech in most states where you merely touch the name of your candidate and/or your party of choice on a computer screen and presto your vote is registered. What senior citizens' trembling fingers and poor eyesight will really accomplish in this way is a good question. What glitches will there be in the computer programs that can either invalidate your vote or send it to some other candidate? Let us remember Miami in 2000 where an inordinate number of Jewish voters endorsed Pat Buchanan whom they regard as anathema. The issue of the actual voting process and who the company is which writes the software has not yet been publicly addressed to the best of my knowledge. Nevertheless, it is likely to become a major point of contention. Unless Karl Rove sends us into another war this election may well turn into another cliff hanger and might again be resolved by judicial fiat rather than the will of the people.





April 1, 2004

MEL GIBSON'S PASSION


"Were you there, when they crucified my Lord? . . . . Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble . . ." is an old gospel hymn, which has somehow gone out of favor. But Mel Gibson took us there and produced what I regard as a Rorschach test. Each viewer saw what his preconceptions and conditioning led him to see and the criticisms, which were so vigorously expressed simply prove the point. How else are we to understand a review in The New Yorker which called it, "a sickening, unilluminating, and ignorant show . . . . It's a deeply angry film, and one wonders how believers can react to it with anything but guilt, fear, or loathing." On the other hand a Christian lady, as reported in U.S. News & World Report, felt: "'It's hardly more graphic than the junk many adults allow their kids to see on TV. And this violence', she said, 'has a purpose.'"

The most vociferous protests came from some Jewish intellectuals of the secular as well as religious variety who felt that the film depicts anti-Semitism and would lend fuel to currently increasing anti-Jewish sentiments around the world. But Christian theologians and biblical historians also found fault with the film apart from its excessive violence. They complained that Gibson was loose with the facts because he picked from the four gospels those aspects which suited his aim and thereby violated their historicity. But most of all he neglected to drum into the audience that Jesus was a Jew who suffered his fate because the Romans didn't like Jews and especially Jesus whom they regarded as a rabble rouser. It was also argued that Pilate, a cruel autocrat, was portrayed as wishy-washy, which does not conform to the picture drawn by ancient Jewish historians such as Josephus and Philo.

Although I am not a theologian I did acquaint myself fairly intimately with the Old as well as the New Testament during the years after retirement from professional duties, and I also devoted myself to studying historical sources dealing with Greco-Roman times. This was brought about by my attempt to understand anti-Semitism, to which I had been personally exposed during Nazi times. The first result was War&Mayhem, which gave my version of the events of WWII and why the leaders in the various countries did what they did. Since this personal history conflicts to some extent with what is officially taught in schools and in the media the book failed the publishing test. It was rejected not only by editors of major publishing firms but even agents did not want to expose themselves to unorthodox views. In as much as I felt sufficiently strongly about the topic I went subsequently the print on demand route. At the same time I began working on The Moses Legacy because in my opinion the Second World War would probably not have achieved its world wide dimension and attendant atrocities without the Nazis' persecution of Jews.

These books were written because I do not share the simple minds of others who merely declare anybody they don't like as "evil" and be done with it. As a scientist and student of human behavior I want to know why people do what they do. This included Nazis and why they hated Jews with such vigor. In The Moses Legacy I traced anti-Jewish sentiments from biblical and extra-biblical sources throughout the ages and demonstrated their reasons. But the legacy of Moses did not end with Jews, it led to Christianity and subsequently to the Muslim religion. This puts us squarely into the current Middle East dilemma and our War on Terrorism which cannot be understood without its biblical background. Therefore, while Moses made his rounds to publishers, I began working on the next book "Understanding Jesus," which brings us to Gibson and his film. The Jesus book was finished for preliminary viewing by friends and acquaintances in January of 2003 and I also sent it to a senior editor of a New York publishing firm with whom I had personal contacts. By the middle of last year the Gibson film was already being talked about and I tried to convince the editor that since the movie would be regarded as highly controversial it would be appropriate to publish the book around the time of the film's release because it would then be able to get additional publicity. He thought it over; months went by and when reminded he told me that he needed the advice of one of his colleagues. By early winter the final rejection arrived. Now both Moses and Jesus sat peacefully together in my computer and went nowhere.

Inasmuch as the Jesus book is a sequel, the decision was reached to self-publish Moses first and then partly rework the Jesus book to incorporate some valuable suggestions by friends who had really read the book rather than scanned it. As matters stand now Moses is likely to become available to the public some time in April.

After this preamble which was intended to give my credentials for saying what I am going to say we can now discuss the criticisms leveled against Gibson's film. As has been pointed out by others they are really not so much against Gibson but the gospels and their historical truth. The crux of the problem, and there is no pun intended, is Jesus. He is probably the single most controversial person in human history and in the Introduction to the Jesus book I provided a multiple choice test for the reader. "The word Jesus refers to: A) an expletive when one is angered or distressed. B) a prophet of God. C) a deluded itinerant Galilean preacher and miracle worker. D) a dangerous false prophet. E) the savior of mankind." These choices exist and it is up to the individual which one is subscribed to.

Let us now examine some of the criticisms from the Jewish and the Christian community. The main one from Mr. Foxman's Anti-Defamation League constituency is that "the Jews" are being blamed for Jesus' death. This is regarded as anti-Semitic slander because it was really "the Romans" who did the crucifying. Matthew's verse 27:25 "His blood be on us and our children!" was also found so offensive that Gibson relented and took it out of the final version. Our current religious-political climate demands that Jews are exonerated in Jesus' death, for fear that otherwise anti-Jewish sentiments might be rekindled. In the article entitled: "The Real Jesus. How a Jewish reformer lost his Jewish identity," U.S. News & World Report wrote: "Some say he was the Messiah, some say, a prophet. But Jesus was, indisputably, a Jew." Now that finally settles it!

In The Moses Legacy I have devoted a full chapter to definitions including the ones dealing with the word "Jew." It is, therefore, appropriate to ask: In what sense was Jesus "a Jew?" When one places oneself into first century Palestine there were various national groups which can be listed when going from South to North as: the Idumeans, the Judeans (Jews), the Samaritans, the Galileans and then the Syrians. Although some of these people shared, to varying degrees, the mosaic religious code they were not necessarily "Jews" in the modern sense of the word. Thus, a statement such as, "Jesus was a Galilean who was brought up in a mosaic religious milieu" would have been more appropriate. The "Jews," which were so vigorously condemned, especially in the gospel of John, were the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judea, or more correctly their religious leadership and mob following. This is why we also read in the pre-resurrection story by John that Jesus' disciples (most of whom, if not all, were Galileans) were afraid of the "Jews." To insist today on Jesus having been foremost a Jew is like saying that Buddha was a Hindu, St. Paul was a Pharisee and Luther was a Catholic. Yes they were, until they saw the abuses of their respective religions, decided to do something about it and moved into a totally different realm.

Those pundits who pride themselves on "historical accuracy" commit, in my opinion, a fundamental intellectual error. To look for historical facts in religious history is futile. There is no history; there are only historians and each one brings his one bias to the topic. Right now we can't even ascertain what our President did or did not know about the impending 9/11 attacks; so how are we going to know what "really happened" 2000 years ago? It can't be done and each historian will take those data that fit a given stereotype, especially when one deals with faith rather than facts.

Let us now agree that in the eyes of the populace on Palm Sunday Jesus was hailed as the Messiah. This meant in Jewish tradition that he was to be a redeemer of all who lived under the law of Moses and establish a Jewish kingdom forever. This was and still is the job of the Messiah! It is obvious that they misjudged Jesus whose "kingdom is not of this earth" and when they found out that he was unwilling to lead a rebellion against Rome, as was expected of the Messiah, they had every reason to be furious. They felt that they had been duped and that he was merely one of many other pretenders to messiahship. Caiphas really had no choice either. For a Galilean to admit that he was the "Son of the Most High" was the ultimate blasphemy, which deserved a death sentence. When the gospels relate that the Jewish authorities handed Jesus over to Pilate because in John's words 18:31 "it is not lawful for us to put anyone to death," someone bent the truth. The death penalty did exist in various forms, as discussed in The Moses Legacy, and different methods for different crimes were in place. Blasphemy required stoning as was carried out for instance with Stephen and reported in The Acts of the Apostles.

But let us now put ourselves into that particular Passover week in Jerusalem. How can you stone a blasphemer who has been hailed as the Messiah by the crowd a few days earlier? What options did Caiphas have? If he just arrested Jesus and hid him away somewhere until the holy days had passed he would have had a riot on his hands because the crowd would have wanted to know where their Messiah was. To hand this troublemaker over to the Romans, as a troublemaker, was really the only valid alternative. Jesus became under these circumstances no longer a Jewish but a Roman problem.

Pilate, the procurator, was in town precisely to either avoid or put down a riot by the inflammable mob, wich tended to occur especially around holy days. Pilate's goal in life was simple: to get his tour of duty over with, while fleecing the populace as much as possible and to put down rebellions whenever they occurred. Gibson's portrait of Pilate, which is merely that of the gospels, is not inherently unbelievable when one reads all of Josephus rather than the excerpts we are currently being treated to, which show him as a brutal fore-runner of Saddam Hussein. In Chapter III of Book XVIII of The Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus describes in great detail how Pilate backed down when the Jews threatened him with rebellion for having brought Roman ensigns into Jerusalem which had "Caesar's effigies." Pilate relented for religious demands but when it came to health problems such as Jewish protests over financing an aqueduct with temple money he brooked no interference and cut down the mob.

The experts of our day who get quoted in the media about Pilate's villainy also refer to Philo's opinion about that man and it may be useful, therefore, to give a full excerpt of what Philo wrote. It can be found in the chapter "On the Embassy to Gaius." Gaius, better known as Caligula, had intended to have his statue erected in the Jerusalem temple and his friend Agrippa warned him in a long letter that this would inevitably lead to a war with the Jews. In the letter Agrippa told Caligula how previous emperors had dealt with the restless province of Judea. When Pilate violated Jewish religious law by having "dedicated some gilt shields in the palace of Herod in the holy city," the Jewish leadership petitioned him to remove this offense.

"But when he [Pilate] steadfastly refused this petition (for he was a man of very inflexible disposition, and very merciless as well as very obstinate), they cried out: 'Do not cause a sedition; do not make war upon us; do not destroy the peace which exists. The honour of the emperor is not identical with dishonour to the ancient laws; let it not be to you a pretence for heaping insult on our nation. Tiberius is not desirous that any of our laws or customs shall be destroyed. And if you yourself say that he is, show us either some command from him, or some letter, or something of the kind, that we, who have been sent to you as ambassadors, may cease to trouble you, and may address our supplication to your master.

But this last sentence exasperated him in the greatest possible degree, as he feared least they might in reality go on an embassy to the emperor and impeach him . . ."



Although the two historians don't agree on the nature of Pilate's offense both state that he gave in to pressure from the crowd. Thus, when the mob yelled that if Pilate did not condemn Jesus to crucifixion he was "no friend of Caesar," this was indeed the ultimate threat. It was well known that Tiberius was profoundly paranoid by that time and when there was a choice to be made between a poor Galilean's head and his own, it surely was not difficult. What was one more crucifixion anyway?

This little episode brings up another question. I am not a professional Bible historian but if I can unearth these data why don't the professionals who criticize Gibson and the gospels for historical inaccuracy? I believe the answer is simple and deals with our socio-political climate where accuracy has to take a backseat in order to placate a vociferous minority. In addition, only a person who no longer works for money and is not beholden to any institution can freely speak the truth as he sees it when it goes against the prevailing political wind.

It is true that Matthew's verse 27:25 has brought great harm to the Jewish community throughout the ages because it has been interpreted in a literal sense. This is also the reason why we have such difficulty to understand Jesus intellectually, especially as depicted in the gospel of John. Only when we realize that we are dealing with spirit rather than flesh will he come to life for us and then we begin to understand that, while the person Jesus can be killed, the spirit which animated him is immortal and immune to all insults and suffering. To kill Jesus was expedient and everybody had a hand in it but Jesus knew that only by his suffering all insults, and ultimately a cruel death, might mankind be reconciled to God and mend its ways. How did he know? I discussed this in Understanding Jesus in detail but believe that it was a personal decision which grew into a conviction from which there was no return.

Jesus intended to wash away the sins of all generations, past - present- and future with his blood. The idea of the cleansing power of blood was deeply ingrained in the Jewish religion, except that it was animal rather than human blood and limited to Israel's tribes. Exodus 24:8 reports that after reading the words of the covenant: "Moses took the blood [of the slaughtered oxen], and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord has made with you concerning all these words." But while Moses thereby sanctified the tribes of Israel, Jesus went further and proclaimed that his blood was shed not merely for one nation but for all nations and all individuals therein. From that point of view we might even hope that the cleansing power of his blood can come upon the children of Jews so that they too will at long last find rest from persecution and persecuting. But for a person to sacrifice himself for another, let alone the rest of the world, was a distinctly un-Jewish thought. Its parallels and antecedents come from the Hellenic and Buddhist world. It is in that world where one also finds the essence of Jesus' teachings.

But what does this mean for us today? Everything! The question for everyone of us is not necessarily Hamlet's, "To be or not to be?" But, "Who am I?" As Kipling has put it in his novel about the Great Game, which is currently being re-enacted again, "Who is - Kim - Kim - Kim?" Who is this that says "I" to itself and what is its purpose? This is the fundamental question of mankind from which it always runs away so diligently. Nevertheless, the question remains, at least for some of us, and keeps nagging until an answer is found. When the answer comes we see the world in a new light. We can then truly say not only with Socrates: "Anytus and Meletus may kill me; they cannot harm me," but also with Jesus: "Father forgive them they know not what they do."

Gibson tried to bring us into contact with ourselves because Jesus did not seek his death merely for the sins of Jews but for the evil which lurks in every one of us. Did Gibson show us too much brutality? Yes; but on the one hand he is Mel Gibson after all and can't jump over his shadow, and on the other hand we do inflict brutality on others on a daily basis. We just don't want to be reminded of everything that is being carried out in our name. Condemning the film because it might provoke anti-Semitism is blinding our eyes to the real causes of anti-Jewish sentiments which sweep this world now and which we fan by our government's blind endorsement of Sharon's policies. These are infinitely more harmful than any film Gibson or anybody else can make.

I believe that The Intermountain Catholic was correct when it suggested that "The Passion of the Christ" should have a sequel called "The Resurrection of Christ." It will be considerably more difficult to produce because to put Spirit on the screen rather than bleeding flesh will require artistry which may not be readily available. In addition Spirit doesn't sell tickets as readily as violence does. Nevertheless, unless we move from flesh to Spirit we have failed in our prime task and Jesus will indeed have been a deluded fool whose suffering was in vain. This is where the multiple choice questions come in again. It may come as a surprise to some readers that the choice "a prophet of God" is the official teaching of the Koran, while that of "a dangerous false prophet" is the firm belief of a group of ultra-orthodox Jews. The followers of the Lubavitcher Rebbe also declare unequivocally that Jesus had to be killed according to the Torah which had warned of false prophets. This information is readily available on the Internet at www.noahide.com/yeshu.htm and one wonders why the people who so fervently argue for Jesus' Jewishness do not take note of it. For those who are so eager to make Jesus conform to their image of a Jew it might be better to come to terms with him and live up to his message. This would not require conversion but simply a change in personal conduct. It would make his sacrifice meaningful for everyone and put all enmity to rest for ever.

Jesus showed us the way from a human to a humane society. Looking at the world objectively we must say that so far he has failed. But it is up to us whether or not this failure is permanent. Whether we will continue to nail him and ourselves to the cross or if finally critical mass will be achieved and people will say: no more hate, no more torture, no more killing,. It may take several more hundreds of years or even millennia for this to come to pass but this ought to be our task: to graduate from the human to the humane race.





May 1, 2004

THE GREAT LIBERATOR


The past month provided us with the opportunity to get more information on how our leadership really thinks and works. First we had Dick Clarke’s book Against All Enemies and his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. Clarke was president Clinton’s Chief anti-terrorist officer who had been retained by the Bush administration but had lost his access to the president and was effectively sidelined. In essence Clarke said that the new administration was so absorbed by its preoccupation with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq that they ignored, or at least put on the back burner, the gathering threats posed by Osama bin Laden. When the president was briefed on August 6, 2001, while vacationing on his ranch in Texas, and was told that Osama planned to strike at the homeland this did not raise any particular concerns because, “the threat was not specific enough.” August is vacation time anyway one might add.

The administration, especially in the person of Condoleezza Rice, vigorously denied that they had been asleep at the switch or that concerns about terrorist attacks were not taken with the seriousness they should have deserved. Clarke, similar to former Treasury secretary O’Neill, was duly vilified as another disgruntled ex-employee and the Bush people thought that this would suffice. It might have worked but another problem arose with Bob Woodward’s book Plan of Attack, which essentially corroborated what Clarke and O’Neill had said. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld’s Defense department were indeed obsessed with Iraq to the exclusion of everything else in foreign affairs. Woodward’s book will be discussed later because other events occurred before its publication.

The Iraq war was not going well, the 9/11 hearings were a potential disaster for re-election, so the decision was made to trot the president out for a news conference where he would present his vision for the future. Since Mr. Bush is not particularly articulate when it comes to spontaneous speech his staff thought it best to immunize him as much as possible by first having him read a 17 minute declaration and then prep him for all the potentially embarrassing questions he might be asked. The speech can be summarized in a few words: We will not yield to terrorists, we will stay the course and we shall prevail. He fully presented a picture of the resolute leader who is embarked on a mission, which has been thrust on him and from which there is no flinching. This is precisely the image Karl Rove has designed for him as will become apparent in the discussion of Woodward’s book. But image is not substance and the real Bush emerged when he was asked by a reporter, “had he had made any mistakes?” The question was open ended and could have referred to 9/11, Afghanistan, or Iraq. Bush was visibly embarrassed, complained that he had not been warned previously that this question might come up, tried to find an answer and eventually said apologetically that he was not quick on his feet. He then asserted that he couldn’t think of a single mistake.

In the meantime the “Silly Season,” as discussed in the March issue, continued in full swing. Florida is regarded as a must win state by the Bush people and no effort is being spared to obtain that state’s electoral votes. This led to a disaster for the Palestinians and an absurdity for cruising sailors.

Sharon is in considerable trouble in Israel. His “unilateral withdrawal plan” from Gaza is vigorously opposed by other members of his own party and in addition he is facing a possible conviction for a bribery scandal. His good friend George immediately rode to the rescue. In a press conference right after the meeting with the Prime Minister he congratulated him to this courageous and historic step. Although not all of the fine print of that unilateral withdrawal is available as yet enough is known to indicate that a fundamental shift in American foreign policy has occurred. Up to that news conference the fiction of America’s evenhandedness in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian war - we have to call it that because it is now more than just a conflict - could be tenuously maintained. This fiction disappeared when Bush gave Sharon a green light for whatever he wants to do in the occupied territories. In Gaza certain Israeli installations will remain; air and coastal waters will be under Israeli control and so will be the border between Gaza and Egypt.  In the West Bank the illegal wall, which in part annexes Palestinian territory, will continue to be built and only a few settlements in the northern part will be removed while the main ones in the heart of the West Bank will stay put. Although Jerusalem was not mentioned the “realities on the ground” will make sure that the Palestinians can shelve any plan for ever having a substantive presence in that city. They can also forget about hopes that DP’s of the 1948 wars, or their descendants, may ever return to their former homes. All of this is, of course, contrary to international law and numerous U.N. resolutions. Having made these concessions Mr. Bush asserted that, “the United States support the establishment of a Palestinian state that is viable, contiguous, sovereign and independent.It seems not have occurred to him that he had just torpedoed this idea because Sharon’s plan, which he had so vigorously endorsed a moment earlier, is designed precisely to prevent this from ever happening. For the Palestinians, whose only task, as far as Bush is concerned, is to eliminate terrorism against Israel this is the analogue of Munich, where Chamberlain and Daladier signed away Czechoslovakia to Hitler. Although these two men are now chastised for their cowardice they had at least an excuse because Hitler had threatened them with war for which they were not yet prepared. They did declare war on him one year later. Bush does not have this excuse. Sharon cannot make war on us and the entire despicable performance was merely to gain the Jewish vote for re-election.

But Jews are not the only large swing bloc in Florida which has to be wooed; there is also the Cuban vote that needs to be secured. Now we are really in the theater of the absurd and unless one is a sailor who subscribes to Cruising World or Sail one would never know the height of foolishness this administration will go to in order to win votes.

What follows has not been reported by any of the major news outlets and I found it only in the May 2004 issue of Cruising World. The Editor’s Log states under the title of Bushwhacked:

“On February 26, 2004, in language that American sailors can only describe as stunning, President George W. Bush issued a decree that is unprecedented in both its scope and purpose. Citing his all-encompassing war on terror as the principal impetus behind a proclamation fired straight across the bows of that unlikely band of terrorists – cruising sailors! - Bush granted the Secretary of Homeland Security the immediate power to seize any vessel, at any time, anywhere in the territorial waters of the United States, if for any reason officials believe ‘it may be used, or is susceptible of being used, for voyage in Cuban waters.’”

This is bound to have been the brain child of Karl Rove who unearthed what is called The Espionage Act of June 15, 1917; two months after the U.S. had declared war on Germany! The language cited above comes from that Act. Only the “Whereas” justifications were rewritten specifically for Cuba and the power to board and confiscate vessels is no longer in the hands of the Treasury Department but that of Homeland Security. Since cruising sailors are negligible as a voting bloc but Miami’s Cubans are not, the “Freedom of the Seas” has just been cancelled. Since this act applies not only to U.S. citizens but to “any vessel in any U.S. port,” my Canadian friend Roger, who keeps his catamaran in the Bahamas, better sail directly to Cuba henceforth rather than stopping off in the Florida Keyes where he could lose his boat. The Great Liberator who promises to free the world can now liberate anyone of us even from our own boats!

But the prime event of the month clearly was Woodward’s book and during the week of the 18th – 25th there was not a single day where he did not appear on at least one of the TV talk shows. This attention was justified, and to his credit he stuck to his guns even under tough questioning. Although he did not present much that was news, at least to me, he gave detailed quotes from the key actors and had the documentation to back them up. What emerged was a president who had made up his mind to bring Saddam down as early as November 21, 2001. On that day Bush collared Rumsfeld and told him in utter secrecy to prepare a military plan against Iraq. Instead of following through with the stabilization of Afghanistan, money and military resources were to be diverted to the preparation for an invasion of Iraq.

Woodward is careful throughout the book to point out that Bush had not actually made a firm decision to go to war at that point but he wanted to have the option. Nevertheless, Bush had clearly resolved to bring about “regime change” in Baghdad “one way or another.” The justifications for doing so and the means were left to the future. It was not a matter of “if” but only “when and how.”

There are so many nuggets in this book that it is difficult to select some of the most significant ones but European readers especially will be interested to learn how the “axis of evil” phrase got into the president’s 2002 State of the Union speech. Mr. Bush has a whole stable of speech writers among whom Michael Gerson and David Frum were the most prominent. The speech was meant to put the world on notice that America will no longer wait for attacks to occur but will act preemptively in the future. It was clearly directed against Iraq because as mentioned above military planning was already on its way. On the other hand Bush couldn’t just single out Iraq because that would void all the secrecy so some other way had to be found. This was the problem for which Gerson sought help from Frum. It is not surprising that Frum, who is Jewish, would have come up with the phrase “axis of hate,” since axis and Nazis are synonymous. But Gerson, the evangelical Christian, is not supposed to hate. He is much more concerned, just like the president himself, with evil in this world which has to be eradicated. Thus, the word hate was exchanged for evil. Iran as well as North Korea was added to deflect intentions from the real goal. That is how phrases which galvanize the world come about. 

In regard to the chief players in the run up to the Iraq war, Condoleezza Rice comes across as having been over her head in the power struggle between Colin Powell on the one hand and Cheney-Rumsfeld on the other. Rumsfeld sounds like a bureaucrat who loves to throw out questions but answers few. When he does, the answers tend to be convoluted or “Greenspanesque.” Cheney on the other hand is the Sphinx who has the answer to all the riddles, rarely talks about them in public but when he does he forecloses options. For reasons, which Woodward has not yet explored, Cheney was always firmly bent on war and openly so since his speech in Cincinnati on August 26, 2002. He was dead set against involving the U.N. in a diplomatic solution, favored by Powell, and did his level best to undercut it.

Powell was handicapped by his military background and inherent loyalty to the Commander in Chief. When Bush confronted him on January 13, 2003 point-blank with his plan to invade he raised some warning thoughts, but when asked, “Are you with me?” saluted mentally and said, “Yes, sir, I will support you. I’m with you Mr. President.’” Woodward feels that Powell thought he might still be able to deflect the inevitable but this was, of course, a forlorn hope. It is my opinion that had Powell emerged to his position from civilian, rather than military, life he might have said, “I’m sorry Mr. President I can’t,” and handed in his resignation.

This leaves us with Bush whom Woodward presents in a sympathetic but puzzled vein. He clearly likes the man but it seems equally clear that he cannot subscribe to his policies. Bush is not the European caricature of the “cowboy” but conforms more to the picture of the idealized movie version of the Texas sheriff who rides into town to bring order out of lawlessness. He doesn’t shoot for the heck of it. He is concerned about civilian casualties, but he is on a mission from which nothing, except electoral defeat, will deflect him. Bush believes, as he has said also in public, that he has been sent by God at this time in history to confront and root out the evil in this world, which is summarized in the word terrorists. When asked by Woodward if he had had any doubt before engaging into the war he denied it. No doubt whatsoever. “Had he discussed the pros and cons of the decision with his father?”  “No.” That answer may surely strike one as strange, because the son was embarking on the same war his father had led a decade earlier, but it does make sense when one sees the real human being instead of the “Persona” which is paraded before us.

Karl Rove whose only goal in life at this time is to get Bush re-elected gave him a power point presentation at the ranch during the Christmas holidays in 2002. He wanted Bush to get started on fundraising but the president waved him off with, “We got a war coming, and you’re just going to have to wait.” As Woodward notes the first slide of the presentation as to how Bush was to be portrayed was entitled  PERSONA and it listed in bold letters, “Strong Leader; Bold Action; Big Ideas;  Peace in World; More Compassionate America; Cares About People Like Me; Leads a Strong Team.” This is the background for the “photo-op” on May 1 of last year where the president emerged in full flight combat gear from a Navy jet on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and gave his speech under the sign “Mission Accomplished.” The intended campaign ad will now be fodder for the Democrats.

For those of us who grew up under Hitler this evokes eerie reminiscences. Rove’s phrases were exactly the same Goebbels showered us with and one has to realize that “Leader” translates, of course, into Führer. All that is missing now is the additional adjective of “heissgeliebte” (ardently loved) and the picture is complete. Fortunately this is still America and it won’t come to that. But this is precisely the reason why Europeans are so skeptical about our president’s intentions. They’ve been there, seen the disasters “strong leaders” with “bold ideas” create, and want no part of it.

But as mentioned earlier this is all sham and for public consumption because the real Bush does not conform to it. We saw him in the mentioned press conference where he was flustered when asked about mistakes because nobody had told him that this would be coming. We saw it also when it was announced first that he would not testify before the 9/11 commission at all but later had to relent under public pressure to the point that he would, but only in presence of Dick Cheney! That takes care of the persona right there and his insecurity is also the reason why, in all probability, he did not discuss the intention to go to war with his father. He knew that the father might try to talk him out of this adventure and that was a risk he was not willing to take.

So the American public has to be treated to the fictitious Rove persona who is convinced that it his destiny to “bring freedom to the world.” This will have to be accomplished within maximally five years, because a third term was, thank goodness, eliminated by Eisenhower. In addition there are limits as to who is to be free. As we found out above Palestinians are not necessarily included and the Afghans are also no longer of concern. They have been handed over to the tender mercies of the warlords who profess to fight the Taliban and al Quaeda. Neither are the citizens of a well functioning democracy such as Taiwan assured of their freedom if they wanted to vote for independence from China. They were warned recently to abstain from such dreams. Although we would lodge a protest against China if she were to take military action against the island that would be the extent of our involvement.

So what does all this amount to? The president is motivated by religious fervor, which he actually shares with fundamentalists of other persuasions. The people around him play Realpolitik and use him for whatever suits their purposes. These tend to be the old fashioned ones: lust for power, couched in flowery rhetoric. Unfortunately the Democratic contender falls into the same mold. Not to be outdone by Bush in the grab for the Jewish vote he also immediately embraced the Sharon plan and thereby disqualified himself from being a genuine hope for the future. He stands now exposed as just another politician who will say and do anything to get elected. This is a tragedy because America surely deserves better.

But the world does not stand still for our election antics. While the political parties engage in smearing each other’s candidate the situation in Iraq goes from bad to worse. Our ex-Trotskyite neoconservatives can surely congratulate themselves. They have succeeded in molding us in the image of the state of Israel and we now have our very own West Bank and Gaza. Our troops have been trained by Israelis in counterinsurgency and are using the same methods as the IDF with the same abysmal results. Doors are smashed in, prisoners hooded, adults humiliated in front of their children and homes bulldozed. Due to the lack of security foreign contractors are leaving, the electricity grid is not being improved and a hot summer without adequate air-conditioning is in the offing. That tempers are going to flare and violence is bound to get worse rather than better is utterly predictable.

Our government says that we shall turn sovereignty over to the Iraqis on June 30 but we have our own definition of the word, which does not conform to what is found in a dictionary. We’ll let them do some chores under our supervision but the power will remain in U.S. or, its euphemism, “coalition” hands. This is not likely to work because although we pay lip service to have the U.N. involved we want to keep the contracts and, therefore, the oil, which is the main problem. We would have to let go of the dream of developing the oil resources through Halliburton et al. and really give it back to the Iraqis. It’s their oil after all and not ours.

So far we have not shown the slightest indication that we are indeed willing to make the Iraqis full partners in the reconstruction of their country. Regardless of rhetoric about freedom and democracy “facts on the ground” are created, which tell the Iraqis that we have every intention to continue to run their country from behind the scenes. The largest U.S. embassy is being built in Baghdad which, we have been told, will house up to 3000 employees, although the most recent numbers have been reduced to 1000 Americans and 700 Iraqis. What does Mr. Negroponte need all these people for? Another fact is the contracts, which are bound to irritate the locals. On the Internet one can find a document from the U.S. Department of Commerce on Prime Contracts and Subcontracts awarded for fiscal year 2004, dated March 26, 2004. Of the 52 Prime contracts listed, 45 went to American firms, 3 were joint U.S./U.K ventures; 2 went to Israel, 1 to the UK and 1 to Jordan. The Israelis are supposed to procure armored vehicles and the Jordanians are allowed to deliver fuel to southern Iraq. These are actions Iraqis and the world see, even if the average American doesn’t pay attention to them. This is why we are hated in that part of the world, and why the U.N. is not eager to help us out of the mess our government has created for us.

There seems to be only one honorable exit strategy. The Iraqi army and police have to be reconstituted and given power to establish internal security. If we were indeed willing to turn security in Falluja over to the locals this would  be a good start in the right direction, as long as we don’t insist on having “joint patrols” in that city. American soldiers are regarded as an irritant and if the Iraqis can handle the situation we would be well advised to keep a low profile. If the Falluja experiment were allowed to work it could serve as a model for other “hot spots” where local Iraqis should be fully empowered to provide law and order. The Iraqi interim, and eventually permanent, government would have to be given power to award the contracts for reconstruction of their country to companies of their choosing rather than ours. They will need money and some oversight that it doesn’t go into corrupt hands. We have distributed literally hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to buy ourselves Iraqi informers before the war; surely we could spend a fraction of that amount to let the Iraqis re-build their infrastructure which we helped destroy during it. The Iraqis are proud, intelligent, and educated people. They have the ability to rebuild their country and will do so if we treat them as equals rather than demanding that they do our bidding. When the Iraqis see that we are serious, in our desire to turn their country over to them good will can re-emerge. The violence will subside over time and eventually all of our troops, with the reservists and National Guard first, can come home. This is the way to support our troops and not blind obedience to the dictates of Cheney-Rumsfeld and their neoconservative friends.

Unfortunately this is likely to be pie in the sky because in the real world greed rules and tends to bring the best meant plans to ruin. Nevertheless, it would seem that our great would-be liberator of the people of this world may still have a chance to extricate himself and us from the problems he has created. To do so he would have to abandon his crusading spirit, which has nothing to do with genuine Christianity, relieve Wolfowitz and company of their jobs, and begin to listen and act on the advice of the State rather than the Defense Department. He may well find himself unable to do so. But under those circumstances he is likely to suffer the same fate as his fore-runner Woodrow Wilson who had entered the war ostensibly to create democracy around the world. He won the war but lost the peace at Versailles where he was forced to sacrifice his ideals to the rapaciousness of Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Orlando. Wilson’s example: from being hailed as a savior in November 1918 to a ridiculed irrelevancy a few months later, should surely give our president some food for thought.





May 26, 2004

DEMOCRACY ON TRIAL


This issue appears a few days earlier than usual because next week I shall be attending a scientific meeting in Europe. The key event of this month was the public airing of photographs, which documented the scandalous behavior of some members of the U.S. military in Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison. Although everybody, Republicans and Democrats alike expressed immediate shock and outrage the political polarization of the country soon took over thereafter. Defenders of the administration labeled the incidents as shameful and regrettable but insisted that it was simply the behavior of some “bad apples,” relatively junior people, who acted out their sadistic impulses. The Democrats who want to win the upcoming election used the scandal as another example why thorough house cleaning is needed in Washington on Tuesday November 2.

When one looks at the published pictures, and I have no interest in seeing more, it is quite apparent that especially Pfc Lynndie England and Spc Charles Graner thought that the type of behavior they showed in the photos was a joke and they had a good time documenting it. As Pfc. England testified, [it] was basically us fooling around.” Yes indeed but England and Graner didn’t come up with these ideas by themselves. They were put up to it and that is where the “few bad apples” explanation loses validity. We are now told that the abuse of prisoners was designed to “soften them up” to get information that would lead to a suppression of the ongoing insurrection. We have also been told that the pictures were to be used to show other detainees what would happen to them if they did not divulge any and all information about ring leaders, weapons caches etc. This seems reasonable and clearly puts the entire situation into a different light.

The Bush administration was increasingly frustrated by the way the Iraq invasion had turned out. Weapons of mass destruction, the ostensible reason for the attack, could not be found and the Iraqi people were no longer overjoyed by the anarchy the US army had brought in its wake. Some began to rebel against the Americans while others settled intra-Iraqi scores.

From the Defense department’s point of view, which is encumbered by tunnel vision, this problem was simply one of inadequate intelligence. If detainees were properly, or improperly as it turned out, grilled they would lead our troops to the hidden weapon’s treasure and the nasty people who might use them. This was the fantasy and, as usual, it totally ignored the realities of human behavior.

If one really wants to understand the Abu Ghraib problem one has to go back to the Afghanistan invasion and the decision that captured Taliban and Al Qaeda members are not prisoners of war but “unlawful enemy combatants” and as such not entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions. This is where the problem started and why it will continue to fester unless and until this issue is addressed. The president has declared that we are in a war against terrorism and since the terrorists don’t wear uniforms they are not soldiers and can only expect the same treatment as they inflict on others. This is a repudiation of all the principles civilized societies are supposed to stand for. Yet it is still official policy of the United States. The detainees in Guantanamo, for instance, have no civil rights and we have no idea what goes on there, except that “useful information has been obtained.” But what this useful information consisted of we have no idea. Furthermore, journalists, the supposed guardians of our democracy, are not allowed to visit. Since General Miller, who was in charge of Guantanamo, had initiated procedures in that facility which supposedly led to confessions, he was the person chosen to bring these practices to Iraq. Thus, the ultimate responsibility lies with the persons who authorized the policies to extract confessions by physical and mental abuse and not only with the underlings who did the dirty work and in their ignorance enjoyed it.

This whole sad affair brings back memories of WWII and shows that people the world over when put into similar circumstances will behave in a similar way regardless of sex, religion, ethnicity or nationality. Since behavior of this type does not conform to the norms society expects, it is shrouded in secrecy. I personally knew that Dachau existed and that the prisoners in that facility were not treated kindly. But this is where my information ended and I had no interest in pursuing the matter further because it would have led to a long term first hand acquaintance with that place. But is the average American really interested in knowing what goes on in Guantanamo today, or in Abu Ghraib, or any of the other places where we hold prisoners?

Martha and I live about 10 miles northeast of Bluffdale, which is Utah’s state penitentiary but we have not faintest idea how the prisoners are being treated. Since Utahns are good God-fearing people one assumes that nothing bad can happen there. But The Salt Lake Tribune reported recently that two of the Abu Ghraib prison guards (not directly involved in the scandal) were from Utah, had served in Bluffdale, and stated that humiliating naked prisoners is routine procedure there. It is obvious, therefore, that human beings, whenever they are given absolute power over others may well be prone to abuse that power. This is a fact of life and the existence of sadism, in most of us needs to be recognized. This is what civilization is supposed to be all about: to curb our negative traits and enhance the positive ones. When the rules of civilized behavior are officially declared as non-applicable and provisions of the Geneva Conventions as “quaint,” one is encouraging sadism. It’s as simple as that.

Leaving morality aside, now comes the next question: how useful is the information obtained under these cruel circumstances? This is the real problem, which has so far not been properly aired. Even when detainee and interrogator speak the same language fear and pain can lead to useless confessions as any criminal lawyer will readily testify to. But with our Arab or Taliban prisoners we have a profound language barrier. The question arises, therefore, who are these interpreters and “civilian contractors” we rely on? What is their background and what are their motives to serve in this capacity? It seems obvious that they are volunteers because if they were drafted their interpretations could not be trusted. But even under the best of circumstances how do we know that what is being interpreted is what the prisoner really said?  We don’t, and that puts the utility of the whole interrogation process into question. The language problem has additional ramifications, which directly impact on the military conduct of the current guerilla war. We rely on informants to lead us to enemy strongholds in Iraq as well as Afghanistan but they may deliberately mislead us to attack innocents. This has occurred in Afghanistan and may have happened recently on the Syrian border. Patriotic Iraqis and Afghans have only one primary goal: to get us out of their countries. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that they may intermittently feed us false information and when civilians get killed America stands exposed as a brutal oppressor.

President Bush expressed outrage and said that the Abu Ghraib behavior “is not the America I know.” Yes, that’s probably true but had he cared to inform himself about the seamy side of American life he would have been less surprised. In the May 20 edition of The Christian Science Monitor one can read, “‘Simply stated, the culture of sadistic and malicious violence that continues to pervade the ... prison system violates contemporary standards of decency.’ That conclusion written by Judge William Wayne Justice, does not describe Abu Ghraib in Iraq last fall, but the Texas prison system in 1999 when George W. Bush was still governor there.”

The president could also have benefited from having read about the behavior of some American troops in Germany after the end of WWII. Ways to bypass the Geneva Conventions had their precedent in the spring of 1945 when General Eisenhower was confronted with millions of German soldiers who had surrendered to the Americans. Their numbers were augmented by a deliberate Wehrmacht policy to leave only a relatively smaller force in the East in order to delay the Russian advance. The intention was to save the bulk of the men from destruction and allow the Western Allies to occupy the country rather than the Soviets. In this way more than five million soldiers ended up in American captivity. James Bacque, a Canadian, chronicled the events in Other Losses, An investigation into the mass deaths of German prisoners at the hands of the French and Americans after World War II. This book ought to be a “must read” for all those, including the president, who insist that Americans are, by nature, morally superior to people of other nations.

On March 10,1945 Eisenhower requested from CCS (Combined Chiefs of Staff of Britain and the USA) that prisoners of war taken after VE day not be accorded POW status but identified as “disarmed enemy forces (DEF),” which placed them outside the limits of the Geneva Conventions. The request was approved, but only for prisoners in American hands. The British refused to go along with it. The ostensible reason for Eisenhower’s request was simple: he did not want to feed the millions of prisoners he expected. That was supposed to be left to the German authorities, although he must have known that in the post-war chaos German authorities would not exist because all organizations, including those concerned with social welfare, had been run by the Nazi party. The real reason for the request was punitive and part of the Morgenthau plan, which was to guide America’s post-war conduct towards Germany. The plan was designed to return Germany to the pre-industrial age so that the country could never again play a leading role on the world stage. Since the DEF status clearly contravened international law it was kept secret from the public.

Bacque reported that, “On a trip to Europe in the summer of 1944, Morgenthau [Roosevelt’s Treasury secretary] discovered that the Allies under Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower had some first-rate plans for getting into Germany, but no idea of what to do once they got there. Foreign Secretary Eden read to him from the minutes of the Teheran Conference the discussion of the proposed dismemberment of Germany, but no one had figured out how to carry this out. Morgenthau could not understand the lackadaisical British.” The only person who impressed Morgenthau was “Eisenhower, who, Morgenthau said, wanted to ‘treat them rough,’ when he got to Germany.” When Morgenthau reported to Roosevelt that “‘No-one is studying how to treat Germany roughly along the lines you wanted;’” the reply was “‘Give me thirty minutes with Churchill and I can correct this. We have got to be tough with Germany and I mean the German people, not just the Nazis. We either have to castrate the German people, or you have got to treat them in such a manner that they just cant go on reproducing people who want to continue the way they have in the past.’” This attitude was the groundwork for the catastrophe which descended on the Wehrmacht soldiers who had surrendered in good faith believing in the ideals America is supposed to stand for. They were to be sorely disappointed.

By April 1945 the U.S. army had already set up huge detention facilities for the masses of soldiers who surrendered. These consisted of barbed wire enclosures in open fields without any form of shelter, exposed day and night to the elements. There were no sanitary facilities and only minimal food rations. While U.S. troops received about 4000 calories a day the allotment for the prisoners was officially set at 1150 calories per day for non-workers and 1,850 for workers. As Bacque notes, “This was sentencing them to death in a fairly short time, especially considering the lack of shelter and clean water.” Although the German civilian population was eager to help feed their captive soldiers they were not allowed to do so. On May 9, 1945 Eisenhower issued a proclamation which expressly forbade civilians to provide food. “Those who violate this command and nevertheless try to circumvent this blockade to allow something to come to the prisoners place themselves in danger of being shot.” This order also applied to American troops who felt pity for their incarcerated fellow human beings. “Private Martin Brech, a guard at Andernach in spring 1945, was told by an officer, ‘that it is our policy that these men not be fed.’” He was also informed that disobeying this order would lead to court martial.

While the food and water situation was terrible so was in some instances the space allotted to the prisoners. The official figure was 175 square feet per person but at times the enclosures were so crowded that people couldn’t even lie down. But even when overcrowding was not the issue absence of protection from the weather was the most pressing problem apart from lack of food and water. As one prisoner, who had a PhD, put it in his notes, which he penned on toilet paper, the only available material, “Our only wish is finally after six weeks to get a roof over our heads. Even a savage is better housed. Diogenes, Diogenes, you at least had a barrel.”

Bacque puts the blame for these conditions clearly on Eisenhower and makes the point that while other generals like Patton and Mark Clark discharged their prisoners within a few weeks Ike did not. He even transferred some of the ex-soldiers, who already had discharge papers issued, to the French where they lingered in captivity and forced labor for several more years. In addition while German POW’s were allowed to get mail through the International Red Cross in the British and French occupation zone after a few weeks, those in the American zone had to wait for over one year for this privilege. The American public gets a steady dose of Nazi atrocities in TV documentaries but it is deliberately kept in the dark about those which the American government instituted during those years because that would shatter the carefully maintained myth of America’s moral purity. Why was Eisenhower so punitive towards the German people? There may have been a number of reasons but as he wrote in a letter to his wife in 1944 he “hated Germans.” 

Thus, the Abu Ghraib scandal is new only in the methods used for harassment and intimidation of prisoners, but not in its purpose which is to break down the morale of the adversary by whatever means available. The pronounced sexual humiliations of the current scandal are clearly a legacy of our popular culture, which continually promotes sex in all its forms on our video screens. So is the role of women. They must no longer be depicted as caring mothers but gun-toting, physically aggressive amazon warriors. Should one be surprised that other cultures, especially those dominated by the Muslim religion, want no part of this type of democracy?

By calling the punitive expeditions on the Taliban and Al Qaeda a war on terror president Bush has opened the door to the abuses we witnessed. Furthermore, some defenders of the war do not hesitate to call the current situation World War III and insist, along with the president, that it may go on longer than the previous wars. If this is what they want they will get it but they may not like the eventual outcome, which can only be a further brutalization of our society. I will never forget listening to Goebbels’ speech in February of 1943 when he asked the attendees in Berlin’s Sportpalast,Wollt Ihr den totalen Krieg? (Do you want total war?)” And the crowd roared Yes! Whereupon he followed up with “Wollt Ihr in totaler und radikaler als sich irgend ein Mensch in Deutschland heute noch vorstellen kann? (Do you want it more total and more radical than anybody in Germany can even imagine today?), which was likewise answered by a resounding: Yes! What their country looked like two years later they really could not have imagined. But that is what war brings and why those of us who have seen war first hand are so dead set against its repetition.

Hitler and Goebbels told us that the war they had initiated, and that had gotten out of hand, was one ofSein oder Nichtsein (existence or nonexistence). The Asiatic hordes must be prevented from overrunning Europe and the German soldier was the only bulwark which stood in the defense of Western civilization. Hitler was chosen by providence to fulfill this historic role as defender of the Western world. As Goebbels wrote in his diary on January 23, 1943, “All of us know that if Germany were to lose this war Europe would become Bolshevist and the Reich would, of course, also be lost.” Please note that this was not propaganda in Goebbels’ mind but knowledge, “wir wissen. What does our president tell us? He believes that he has been chosen by God to lead the American people in the defense against evil terrorists, who intend to destroy our nation. This can only be done by pre-emptive strikes against nations “who harbor” them because the alternative of further and more devastating 9/11 attacks is too terrible to imagine. What Bolshevism and the Jews were for the Nazis, Islamic terrorists have become for the Bush administration. Let me emphasize that Bush is no Hitler but he uses the same rhetoric and is also convinced of its truth.

This is the point where genuine democracy must come into play. In Nazi Germany we had to keep our collective mouths shut and do our assigned tasks, but thanks to the founders of this republic we are allowed to play by different rules. Not blind obedience to a Fuehrer is required now but a thorough investigation into motives and means with which the present war in Iraq was initiated and is being conducted. The Abu Ghraib scandal could become the catalyst for a scrupulous soul searching. Reprehensible as the conduct of the prison guards was, they did not create the climate in which they operated. That originated with decisions made in Washington. It will be interesting to see if our media are up to this task and really follow through with investigating how this stain on our national honor came about. Will they be content with parading salacious photographs and the court martial of a few misguided low level “bad apples,” or will they be able to expose all the secrets about 9/11 and the administration’s response to it. There is no doubt that the American people have been deceived. The question still is: by whom and why? 

American prestige around the world has never been as low as today and the only way we can salvage our integrity is by honesty, which has to emanate from the highest levels. Pep talks as given by the president on Monday will not suffice. We cannot trust our government at this time and it is the medias responsibility to uncover how and why our country has lost its way. This has nothing to do with partisanship and everything with what kind of a country we want to live in. This airing of facts needs to be done not only in some books or magazines, which few people read, but in the mainstream daily press and not just on cable but also the regular TV networks. When larger segments of the public become fully informed they will demand action from Congress and genuine nonpartisan hearings can follow.

We are involved in a guerilla war in Iraq as well as Afghanistan and it will not be won by “staying the course.” We have sufficiently aggravated the Muslim world that mere words will no longer “win the hearts and minds of people.” This administration and/or the next must come to understand that peace in the Middle East cannot be achieved unless there is peace in Palestine. As long as Muslims are denied access to the third holiest shrine, in Jerusalem, religious fanaticism will flourish and casualties will mount on both sides. A genuine non-punitive armistice between Israelis and Palestinians is essential and long overdue. It will not automatically usher in peace in the rest of the Middle East but it will allow moderate Arab governments to survive and gradually institute democratic reforms.
Unless America renounces its unconditional support for Israel’s current policies, there is grave danger that moderate Arab governments will not be able to survive and will be swept away by religious fanatics. What are we going to do if the Saudi monarchy falls and Osama becomes their Ayatollah Khomeini? What are we going to do if this sets off a reverse domino effect and the Kuwaitis get rid of their Emir and the Pakistanis of Musharraf? Bomb all of them? Invade their countries? Those are the nightmare questions, which have to be put before the American public, not just in these pages but shouted from the rooftops. We cannot postpone facing them because an election is at stake. The fate of the country and the world hangs in the balance and that is the reason why our democracy is on trial right now.





July 1, 2004

THE MOSES LEGACY



Just like the book, the title of which appears in the headline, this report comes in two parts. The first deals with the book itself and the second with the legacy of Moses as it is currently unfolding in the Middle East.

After several years of writing and another few years of trying to find a publisher The Moses Legacy; Roots of Jewish Suffering is now finally available through Internet commerce. It had to be published through the “print on demand” medium because I no longer have a life expectancy that will allow me to pursue reluctant publishers or agents for several more years. In as much as the content of the book does not conform to current political ideology editors of well known publishing houses are reluctant to tackle a topic that is not only highly emotionally charged but also presents both sides of Jewish-Gentile relations.

On the other hand I do feel sufficiently strong about the ideas expressed in the book that one should be willing to “put one’s money, where one’s mouth” is and make them available to the public. This attitude has to do with my upbringing where I saw injustices being done to the Jewish members of our society and was unable to do anything about them. I shall never forget the sense of shame I felt one day while traveling on the Stadtbahn in Vienna during WWII when I saw a Jewish girl of my age with a downcast demeanor and the Star of David on her overcoat, as was required by law. I did not decide then and there to rectify injustice all over the world wherever it might exist but the impression was lasting, kept resurfacing intermittently throughout my life and the question kept nagging me why such hatred against Jews could have existed.

After retirement from executive duties, and seeing patients, time was available to study the “Jewish question” with the book under discussion the result. After reading a considerable amount of Jewish literature it became apparent that the problem of anti-Jewish attitudes is an ancient one and there were reasons why people felt the way they did. I shall refrain from using the European term antisemitism, spelled currently anti-Semitism in America, for their feelings because the term implies a racial homogeneity which is inappropriate. When people express dislike or hatred of Jews it is directed against Jews, regardless of racial background, and not Semites in general.

Thus, the book stresses first of all clarity of language. Imprecise language is associated with muddled thinking and subsequently inappropriate behavior. This will be discussed further in the second part of this essay. It may seem strange to connect a religious figure like Moses with 21st century politics but when one reads the book the reasons will become obvious.  Without the figure of Moses there would be no Judaism, no state of Israel, no Christianity and no Islam. Historians and theologians can argue whether or not Moses existed as an individual, what laws he promulgated and what benefit accrued thereby to the world. For the purposes at hand these questions are not relevant because The Moses Legacy deals only with ideas which are expressed in Jewish literature about Jews and their place in the world. The book is about Gentile-Jewish relationships since the inception of the Jewish religion.

Currently it seems to be no longer polite in official American society to speak of a Jewish tradition and a Christian tradition. The two religions have been amalgamated under the term Judeo-Christian thereby blurring the differences between them. It may, therefore, come as a shock to some well meaning Christians that observant Jews not only reject the term but one of them has even regarded it as “an antisemitic lie.” As Neusner has pointed out the “the two religions … really are totally alien to another.” Thus, the purpose of the first part of this book was to explore how such a fundamental misunderstanding between well-meaning people had come about.

One of the fundamental misconceptions Christians harbor about Judaism is that it is a religion like others and has no political implications. Yet Moses intent was not to create a religion but to make an enduring nation out of the diverse group of people he had led out from Egypt. Again it doesn’t matter whether or not the Exodus is a historic reality, it has become so by being enshrined in the Bible and millions of people around the world believe in its veracity. The purpose of Moses’ Law was to set the Hebrews apart from the rest of their neighbors and to make them into a “holy nation [Ex. XIX.6];” “a kingdom of priests” and as such a society unto themselves. But inasmuch as the Hebrews, and later on their descendants the Jews, always lived in the midst of people who worshipped other deities not only was constant strife foreordained but so were increasingly more stringent regulations over all phases of daily life. Once the Jews lost Jerusalem and the Temple the rabbis were confronted with a massive problem how to keep their people together in the Diaspora. The answer was the creation of the Talmud, which has become the “central pillar” of authentic Judaism.

Christians have very little, if any, information on the Talmud and this ignorance has given rise to the misconceptions about the essence of Judaism. The importance of the Talmud for Gentiles lies not necessarily in its religious doctrines but in what has been called “Talmudic thinking,” which differs markedly from that of the Gentile world. Only when one is aware of this fact can one understand Ben Gurion’s comment about the British. He explained to some of his friends that, “You can do many things with an Englishman but you cannot change him into a non-Englishman. The Englishman does not see things with Jewish eyes, he does not feel things with a Jewish heart, and he does not reason with a Jewish brain.” The term Englishman referred to a specific situation but really means Gentile in general and perpetuates a theme of separateness.

The Moses Legacy shows why Ben Gurion’s statement is true and the consequences that flow from it. As mentioned the book is divided into two sections. The first part starts with definitions so that all of us know what is being discussed at a given moment. This is necessary because “Talmudic thinking,” which assigns the meaning of a word to whatever a given person wants it to mean at a particular point in a discussion, pervades the literature. This has to be shunned in a scientific exploration of a topic. The chapter on definitions is followed by what is known about the origins of the Bible, the cornerstone of the religion. Its importance for current political events cannot be stressed enough. This is the reason why various key biblical figures are subsequently examined for their actions and their capacity to serve as role models for behavior in our day and age. Specifically it is shown what type of conduct has been reported, who was rewarded or punished by God and for what reasons.

As a result some rather surprising findings became apparent and demonstrated how the past, present and future intersect. Since the present is based on the past the future is not totally unknowable. It can be predicted to a certain extent, barring divine intervention, if one knows the character and motivations of key players. The first part of The Moses Legacy ends with a discussion of the Pharisees and the essential features of the Talmud. This section demonstrates how Jewish authors during the first century A.D., prior to the establishment of Christianity, responded to attacks. The means with which they defended their views will be found remarkably similar to present day practices.

The second part of the book shows how the world-view, which was derived from the biblical stories and the Talmud, has now been put into practice in America. Its influence on the domestic as well as foreign policy of the United States is documented by quotes from contemporary Jewish authors. It explains why the Constitution of our country is currently constantly re-interpreted and why aspects of American life, which have been constitutional for two hundred years or so, are no longer tolerated. The prime example is the vigorous enforcement of separation of Church and State and re-interpretation of the “free speech” amendment. These are largely driven by “secular” Jewish legal professionals (i.e. atheistic, or “non-Jewish Jews” as Deutscher called them), although atheists coming from other religions have also joined the fray.  The subsequent chapters deal with Jewish perceptions of the past and future, attitudes on justice and death, and Jewish power. As mentioned these observations are presented in discussions of relevant books by Jewish writers, and show how these authors perceive the difficulties their people are confronted with and the ways to overcome them. But as the final chapter, “Are anti-Jewish attitudes curable?” demonstrates the proposed remedies fall short of the mark. The chapter, therefore, presents suggestions which, if adopted, would not require state or other legal intervention. They would cost nothing and simply make us humane beings who work for the benefit of all rather than persisting in a “them and us” attitude where “us” is obviously favored over “them.”

The book clearly reveals that a great many Jewish authors see their people as a beleaguered minority in a hostile environment, which has to be either shaped to conform to their views or, whenever feasible, opposed militarily. The examples presented make it quite apparent that militant nationalistic Jews operate on different assumptions from Christians, Muslims and members of other religions. Fanatic, radicalized Muslims are currently regarded as the greatest threat to the U.S. and the world but the equally grave potential danger not to but by the state of Israel is not being addressed publicly. The main reason seems to be that the “Judeo-Christian tradition” puts us into the same boat as the Israeli leadership and any criticism immediately leads to cries of anti-Semitism by well organized Jewish organizations. Anyone in professional life can ill afford a label of this sort and the injustices perpetrated by Israeli policies against the Palestinian population in the occupied territories, for instance, are only rarely commented upon by the media and ignored by our political establishment.

The book can be obtained through amazon.com or booksurge.com. Excerpts are available on this site and by simply clicking on the book cover on the Contact page a direct link to booksurge is established.

 

 

This brings me to the second part of this essay. Our current War on Terrorism is a classic example of inappropriate language. The term serves only to arouse passions but hides the true battle, which is going on behind the scenes. This obfuscation is useful for politicians but a disservice to our citizens, who pay in blood and money for this war. Terrorism is a means towards an end rather than an end by itself. A war on a tool makes no sense and in reality we are dealing with a war between ideas. This cannot readily be admitted to because ideas cannot be defeated militarily and that is the way this war is being conducted.

In order to deflect attention from this war of ideas we are being told, in print and on the TV screens that people around the world hate us because we are rich and powerful, which has always led to resentment and jealousy. But this is not the real cause of America’s current dilemma. It is, instead, how we are using our resources and the fact that the Bush administration has created the world-wide impression that Americans are above the law and do not have to abide by internationally recognized norms. Unless this perception is rectified, not by propaganda but concrete actions which the world can see and agree with, the very real war we are engaged in cannot be won.

We are also being told that this is a war between good and evil where good must triumph regardless of length of time or cost. But good and evil are philosophical concepts and no agreement can be reached on this basis because good is “us” and evil is “them” regardless which side of the conflict you find yourself on. Mohammed Atta, the purported leader of the 9/11 attack, did not regard himself as evil. On the contrary he prayed to God that “all doors may be opened” to him while carrying out his mission. This consisted of delivering to sinful America, which is promoting “secularism” over spiritual values, a foretaste of the punishment it deserved.

Our leadership, politicians and media people, will also have to recognize that the idea of the “One God” is putting us into a dilemma vis á vis the Muslim and Jewish world. The Muslim creed, “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is His prophet,” establishes unequivocally the unity and identity of God for all three monotheistic religions. For an American general to tell his Muslim counterpart that “My God is bigger than your god” betrays utter ignorance. Unfortunately this ignorance is pervasive and bodes ill for the future. To cast this war into apocalyptic terms makes good propaganda but cannot lead to a satisfactory resolution of the conflict. The Jewish creed (Shema) which is to be recited twice daily also asserts, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One.” This establishes the unity of God and theoretically all three monotheistic faiths should have equal access to the “One.” But if the emphasis in the Shema recitation is on “Our” all non-Jews pray to the wrong deity. They are idolaters and as such unacceptable.

This is the interpretation given by some of the settlers on the West Bank. One of them told Jeffrey Goldberg (The New Yorker May 31, 2004), “All my ideas are formed from the Torah. It’s not complex. This land is ours. God gave it to us. We’re the owners of the land.” This mentality leads also to the destruction of Palestinian olive groves, which as Goldberg points out, is a grave sin in Judaism even if the trees belong to an enemy. When Goldberg confronted the rabbi of the settlement, whose youths were carrying out the destruction he said, “I’m not hearing you. I’m not hearing what you’re saying. You don’t understand me. I’m not hearing and I will continue not to hear.” Another person from the settlement when asked about the cutting down of the trees was more concerned with access to Joseph’s tomb. “What is an olive tree compared to the burial place of Joseph, the son of Jacob?” When Goldberg pointed out that those trees are the livelihood of the farmer and his family, the reply was, “But the farmer is an Arab [italics in the original]. He shouldn’t be here at all. All this land is Jewish land. It is meant for the Jews by God Himself.” Thus, the God of Israel is not the God of the Muslims and the settlers in the occupied territories are right while everybody else who disputes this is wrong! Can peace occur with a mindset of this type?

But the internal Palestinian problem is not the only festering sore which infects body politics. There is also the concern of Israeli politicians with external security. There is no doubt that every nation has the right to internationally guaranteed secure borders. There is also no doubt that Israel is a small country and vulnerable to assaults from the neighbors. It is, therefore, equally understandable that in the 1950’s Ben Gurion wanted to have a deterrent against aggression from Arab countries by developing a nuclear bomb. The details about how this was accomplished can be found in Seymour Hersh’s 1991 book The Samson Option. Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.  But what may have made sense in the second half of the previous century when even Soviet missiles could be targeted on Tel Aviv is now becoming an increasingly dangerous liability.

This brings us back to today’s events and nuclear proliferation. We are currently in Iraq not because Saddam was a threat to U.S. security but he was a potential threat to Israel. This is not yet admitted to in public but it may be only a matter of time before it will be. When I published the essay “The Neocons’ Leviathan” in April, 2003 on this website hardly anybody had heard about “neocons” and what they stood for. Now everyone knows and although their ideas stand discredited because of the Iraq problems, the full implications have not yet been drawn. Israel’s security concerns are still identified with those of the U.S. and although we have been willing to remove the Iraqi threat we are now supposed to eliminate potential threats from Syria and Iran. Neither of these countries presents a danger to America and even the threat to Israel appears exaggerated. The Syrian army is no match against the IDF and Iran does not share a common border. Even if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons the country could not use them against us because we would obliterate Tehran in an eye blink and the mullahs know it. The idea that because they support terrorists they will, therefore, send a bomb via willing helpers to our shores also does not make sense. These men are not stupid; they know that nuclear terrorism cannot destroy America and that the retaliation would be unacceptable. So why do they seem to be willing to build themselves a bomb? One reasonable answer may be that they regard it as the “great equalizer” against Israel’s arsenal of WMDs. Once we have nuclear capability, they might reason, we can no longer be shoved around by the Americans. This is likely to be also the rationale for the North Koreans. Let us remember that we have officially branded these countries as members of an axis of evil. The United States has declared a preemptive war strategy and followed through by invading the first of the three evil ones. They may thus think that they need bargaining chips to assert their independence, just as France did when she developed her bomb and then took a leave of absence from NATO in the nineteen-sixties.  Since Israel is determined that no rival nuclear power will be allowed to exist in the Middle East the risk for a showdown is becoming increasingly higher. There is no doubt that the Iranian Mullahs represent a highly repressive regime and the world would be better off without them. The question is not whether or not they should be put out of office but only how. Bombs and/or military occupation will not work. The change must come from within the country, even if it takes longer than impatient American policy makers would like.

In the current issue of The New Yorker (June 28, 2004), Seymour Hersh writes about Israel’s “Plan B” in Iraq. According to Hersh Israel had warned the United States early last summer to seal the border against Iran because Iranian intelligence officers and foreign fighters were crossing at will in increasing numbers. The border remained open and the Iraqi insurgency gathered steam. One may ask why the U.S. military did not follow through with the well meant advice but one likely reason may be that we simply didn’t have enough boots on the ground to do so.  Israel’s preoccupation with security against a potential Iranian threat has now led to a highly dangerous “Plan B.” Hersh stated, “Israeli intelligence agents and other military operatives are now quietly at work in Kurdistan, providing training for Kurdish commando units and most important, in Israel’s view, running covert operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria.” It seems obvious that the Israeli government is not doing this for love of the Kurds, so that they may enjoy a Greater Kurdistan, which encompasses all the Kurdish people who have been parceled out between Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. It is simply using them to destabilize Syria and Iran. But in the process the Israelis are likely to undermine America’s effort to establish a democratic Iraq in its current borders and bring a semblance of order to the region. The Kurds are already concerned that they will lose rights once a strong central government is installed again and demands for autonomy, if not outright secession, are going to become increasingly louder. But the establishment of an independent Kurdish republic will be opposed by Turkey, Syria and Iran out of fear of uprisings within their own Kurdish population. While we can ignore Syria’s and Iran’s concerns, Turkey is a NATO partner and if it were to get involved in major military operations against the Kurds we would have a real problem on our hands. Israeli actions of the type reported by Hersh are clearly against the best interests of America. The newly installed interim government of Iraq will also need all the help it can get to hold the country together rather than encouragement of separatism. Furthermore, if Turkey, Syria and Iran were to get involved militarily innocent Kurdish people would again be slaughtered just as they have been in the past.

There is another potential tragedy brewing in the Middle East and America stands by helplessly. We have an election coming, while the Israeli government is stirring the pot in Iraq, and no one can tell Jerusalem to “cease and desist.” Yes, Israel should be able to live in security but the current security concerns are exaggerated. There is no army that can invade the country and if a missile were to strike one of its cities not only Israel but the United States would retaliate. The fear-mongering needs to be curbed by responsible Jews both here and in Israel so that a degree of sanity can finally emerge in political conduct. A second Auschwitz, Israel’s recurrent nightmare, is not around the corner unless irresponsible Israeli politicians yield to paranoia, or religious fantasies of a Greater Israel, and initiate policies which will escalate the dangers rather than defuse them. While the turning over of even limited authority to the Iraqis two days prior to the promised date is cause for hope meddling with the Kurds is surely not what America and the new Iraqi government need.







August 1, 2004

HERZL’S DREAM

 

It may seem incongruous that after a month during which such major events occurred as: the turnover of “full sovereignty” to Iraq, the Senate’s report on the “intelligence” failure leading up to the Iraq invasion, the 9/11 Commission’s report and the Democratic convention in Boston, that I should instead devote an essay to happenings, which transpired more than a hundred years ago. But as will become apparent, all of the past month’s events are to some extent related to thoughts hatched in Vienna during the end of the nineteenth and beginning twentieth century. Events were set in motion at that time, which will affect not only us but our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

I have put full sovereignty and intelligence in the previous paragraph in quotation marks because they represent typical examples of the misuse of language that was discussed extensively in The Moses Legacy. The secret services of various countries around the world do not produce intelligence, they produce information. It would have taken intelligence to sift facts from fancy, but that quality was sorely lacking in our leadership. Full sovereignty is, of course, another euphemism for what has happened in Iraq.The name of the person Dr. Allawi  reports to is Negroponte and the U.S. wouldn’t be building its largest embassy in Baghdad if it didn’t have the intention to retain its influence over Iraqis regardless whether they like it or not.

Now what has all of this to do with a Viennese journalist who was hungry for fame as a playwright? And why does he have to be remembered at this particular time?  It just so happens that this July was the one hundredth anniversary of Herzl’s death and a Symposium was held at Vienna’s City Hall to commemorate the event. I have a certain affinity with Dr. Herzl (he had a law degree from the University of Vienna) because 1904 was not only the year he died but also when my mother was born and my grandfather opened his first leather goods store in the Währingerstrasse, a few blocks from Haizingergasse 29 where Herzl used to live.

Herzl, whose parents had come from Hungary, was deeply perturbed about his Jewishness and the anti-Semitic sentiments he encountered at the university as well as elsewhere. Initially he thought that the cure for anti-Semitism would be complete assimilation. But try as he might he found out that there was no escaping from being regarded as a Jew by others. This fact of life subsequently led him to the opposite extreme by embracing nascent Jewish nationalism and over a period of about eight years he became its most fervent apostle. He traveled from one end of Europe to the other to drum up support from the ruling circles of the day for his intent to solve the Jewish question, as it was called, by an organized mass exodus of European Jews to the land of their ancestors. From rich assimilated Jews he wanted money for his project; from Germany and England he wanted guarantees that the Jewish state he envisioned would not only be accepted but also politically protected; from Russia he wanted exit visas for the millions of the “huddled masses” that were to be the backbone of the emerging country, and from Turkey’s Sultan he wanted to buy the land.

With the assimilated rich Jews he struck out immediately. They obviously saw no reason to give up the privileged positions they had finally attained, even in spite of anti-Semitism. In addition they regarded the idea that Jews are a nation rather than merely a religion as highly dangerous and grist for the mill of anti-Semites. The Sultan was equally adamant. As mentioned in the September 2003 issue (For the goyim they sing) he let Herzl know that the land his ancestors had fought for and conquered with their blood, was not for sale and that the Jews should keep their money.

Anybody else might have given up when it became apparent within the first year of  trying that persevering with this dream would not gain one fame only notoriety, and might actually bring harm to oneself as well as others, but Herzl soldiered on. When no money was forthcoming he convened the first International Zionist Congress in Basel. In Munich, where he had really wanted to hold it, the local Jews told him that he and his ideas were not welcome so the venue had to be changed to the more hospitable climate of Switzerland, where there were hardly any Jews and no Jewish problem. The Congress resolved that the Jewish people needed a Heimstätte in Palestine and its creation was the goal of political Zionism. I am saying political Zionism to mark the contrast with religious Zionism, because religious Jews, as individuals, were always allowed to live and die in the Holy Land if they so desired. The word Heimstätte, a term which is only partially translatable into homeland, was chosen because the word state would have lead to political repercussions the Congress wanted to avoid. “National home” became also the official term in the Balfour declaration of 1917, although everybody knew that a state was really meant rather than a place where Jews would live on ancient soil under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire. Living as Jews with Jewish customs was already possible in the Pale of settlement in Russia but there were, of course, intermittent pogroms and those Jews from the Pale who wanted to escape from its restrictive environment and enter Holy Mother Russia proper did not find a warm welcome there. These were the sentiments Herzl banked on.

But the idea of political Zionism did not originate with Herzl. He had several fore-runners although he claimed to have been unaware of them. One of the most interesting ones was Moses Hess who published in 1862 a treatise Rome and Jerusalem. A study in Jewish Nationalism. The book was inspired by the emergence of European nationalism and for Hess Rome was the symbol for the unification of Italy Garibaldi was engaged in. If the Italians could get their state why not the Jews? seemed to have been the thinking. There are several points in the book which deserve to be quoted because they reflect how the idea of Jewish nationalism was to be sold first to Jews and then to the Gentile world. Hess wrote:

“Fortified by its racial instinct and by its cultural and historical mission to unite all humanity in the name of the Eternal Creator, this people [the Jews] has conserved its nationality, in the form of its religion and united both inseparably with the memories of its ancestral land. No modern people, struggling for its own fatherland, can deny the right of the Jewish people to its former land, without at the same time undermining the justice of its own strivings. …

The great teachers of the knowledge of God were always Jews. Our people not only created the noblest religion of the ancient world, a religion which is destined to become the common property of the entire civilized world, but continued to develop it, keeping pace wit the progress of the human spirit. And this mission will remain with the Jews until the end of days …
The Jewish race is one of the primary races of mankind that has retained its integrity, in spite of continual change of its climatic environment, and the Jewish type has conserved its purity through the centuries. …

The pious Jew is above all a Jewish patriot. The ‘new Jew,’ who denies the existence of the Jewish nationality, is not only a deserter in the religious sense, but is also a traitor to his people, his race and even to his family….

In reality, Judaism as a nationality has a natural basis which cannot be set aside by mere conversion to another faith, as is the case in other religions. … 

 

When one reads these words not from a Jewish point of view but that of a German of the second half of the nineteenth century it is understandable that they would raise eyebrows among the educated and create anger and hate in the mob. Let us summarize what we have been told here. In contrast to Count Gobineau’s books, published in the previous decade, which had extolled the virtues of the Aryan race as the main bearers of culture, Hess had asserted that it was the Jews who had been the major benefactors of the world. Classical Greece and Rome, which had found a renaissance in German culture was not the inspiration of the Western world but Judaism. Furthermore, not only are Jews primarily a race rather than a religion but their religion nevertheless is destined to become the one acknowledged as the true one throughout the world. The assertion that a pious Jew is a traitor to his people if he does not accept membership in the Jewish nation also had to immediately raise questions about loyalty to the countries Jews were citizens of. When one is aware of this aspect of Jewish literature it should come as no surprise that the Nazis took these Jews at their word and regarded race as the determining factor in legislating who is a Jew.

But Hess, Pinsker, Birnbaum, and others who wrote in this vein during the last half of the nineteenth century were ignored until Herzl came along and energized the masses. While Birbaum’s pamphlet Die Nationale Wiedergeburt des jüdischen Volkes in seinem Lande, als Mittel zur Loesung der Judenfrage (the national rebirth of the Jewish people in its country as a solution to the Jewish question), published in 1893, had no resonance - Herzl’s Der Judenstaat (1897), saying essentially the same all the others had previously said, did make an impact. The difference was that while the others had been content to publish their thoughts, Herzl created an organization and relentlessly pursued his course to the detriment of his health as well as his personal and his parents’ finances. He was scrupulously honest and it was this reputation, as well as his position with the Neue Freie Presse, which inspired trust and gained him access to high political circles. This particular newspaper was the equivalent of The New York Times or the Washington Post and as such respected throughout the world

As mentioned above, before Herzl became what one may call a professional Zionist he wrote plays. While still in Paris as foreign correspondent for his newspaper he wrote in 1894 during 17 hectic days and nights what was to be his last play, Das Ghetto. The play, which has been renamed Das Neue Ghetto (the new ghetto), is of considerable interest in the current context because it was Herzl’s first attempt to tackle the Jewish question publicly. The action of the four act drama took place in contemporary Vienna. The protagonist, Dr. Jakob Samuel, is an honest, just married young Jewish lawyer, who devotes himself to progressive social causes and defends the less fortunate in court. He is obviously modeled on Herzl’s view of himself. His major antagonist, Rittmeister von Schramm, is an aristocratic cavalry officer who had insulted Samuel on two occasions. Once for a minor altercation but when he accused Samuel of cowardice and for having been responsible for his financial ruin Samuel lost his temper and slapped him on the cheek. This insult required satisfaction obtainable only by a duel in which Samuel got killed. Herzl used this condensed plot to highlight the Viennese Jewish scene of the day. Samuel’s best friend, Dr. Wurzlechner, is a Christian of impeccable character, who as Samuel states had been his model how to conduct himself in upper class society, took leave of him before going into politics because after Samuel’s marriage he had become too involved with his Jewish family. By maintaining their close friendship Wurzlechner would be seen by his political enemies as a friend and lackey of Jews (Judenknecht), which would have been harmful to his career. While Samuel’s parents were honest, middle income, hard working God-fearing people, the family he had married into represented Jewish upper class wealth with money as their main concern. Hermine, Samuel’s wife who called him Jacques instead of Jakob, was also more concerned with clothes and jewelry, which Jakob couldn’t afford to buy her, than her husband’s work. In addition there is a Mr. Wasserstein, the quintessential parody of the Jewish venture capitalist who is obsequious when down on his luck but arrogant once he had made money again on the stock market.

What has all this to do with the ghetto and the events of the first decade of the twenty first century? The ghetto resides in Samuel’s mind. He knows that the external walls of the medieval ghetto have disappeared but in spite of emancipation Jews are still segregated, although not quite so overtly any more. As he sees it there are two barriers. One is external as represented by anti-Semitism but the other is internal and resides within the minds of Jews themselves. The external barrier can be removed by working with well-meaning Gentiles but the internal can only be overcome by Jews themselves. The play ends when the mortally wounded Jakob floating in and out of consciousness, surrounded by his family and Wurzlechner, who had been his adjutant at the duel,  murmurs;

 “Mother forgive me this pain … (kisses his father’s hand) You will understand father! You are a man! ... (With stronger voice) Jews, my brothers, one will only let you live again - when you … Why do you hold me - so tight? (murmurs) I want – out! …  (With very strong voice) Out – Out from the ghetto!”

The drama is, therefore, both the end of one phase and a prologue for the final phase of his life. He would bring the Jews to the Promised Land, cost what it might, thereby ending anti-Semitism and earn the gratitude of the world.

But this dream had a fatal flaw it ignored reality on two counts. One was the Jewish people themselves whom he saw as an idealistic brotherhood who would follow his call towards a better future and the other that he regarded Palestine as an empty land. He also assumed that the few Arabs who did live there would welcome the Jews as bringers of modern civilization and accompanying prosperity. Jews were to be the colonizers, the Western bulwark against Asiatic hordes and at the same time providing the gateway for the West, especially England, to India. The notion that nationalism might not be limited to Jews but could also affect Arabs, Herzl was not willing to entertain.

He did create a Jewish state but its present condition is a far cry from his imagination in 1902 when, in his novel Altneuland, he foresaw a prosperous state in which the deserts bloom as a result of technologic marvels and most importantly where Jews and Arabs live in peace and harmony together. In the conclusion of this novel, people recount their good fortune after the funeral of one of their revered elders who had passed on in peace.

 

“In this mood Friedrich Lőwenberg raised a question which each one answered in his own manner. The question was: ‘we see here a new, a truly happy way of cooperation among people – who is responsible for this?’

The old Littwak said: ‘Distress’ [Die Not. The word could also be translated as necessity or grief].

Steineck, the architect, said: ‘The reunited people.’

Kingscourt said: ‘The new means of transportation.’

Dr. Marcus said: ‘Science’ [Das Wissen. It could also be translated as knowledge].

Joe Levy said: ‘The will’.

Professor Steineck said: ‘Nature’s forces.’

The British pastor Hopkins said: ‘Mutual tolerance.’

Reschid Bey said; ‘Self-confidence.’

David Littwak said: ‘Love and suffering.’

But the old rabbi raised himself solemnly to his feet and said: ‘God!’’

 

It is noteworthy that Herzl put “mutual tolerance” into the mouth of the Christian rather than the Arab who stressed “self-confidence.” It is obvious that this hoped for state of affairs did not arrive and if Herzl were to return today he would be appalled at what he had wrought and say, like Wilhelm II at the end of WWI, “das habe ich nicht gewollt (I did not intend this). Herzl’s goal was to “have a state, not according to the European model, but a community joined on a voluntary basis with mutual cooperation.” A state of this type does not exist anywhere in this world. Although Herzl didn’t mention it, the idea behind the creation of the United States of America might have come closest to it. But as we all know our country is also sorely rent apart with conflicting interests.

Three and a half years ago when the Bush administration arrived I was still hopeful that a solution to the perennial problems of the state of Israel could be achieved with America acting as the impartial arbiter between Arab and Jewish claims. This is why I wrote Whither Zionism? and sent it to the powers who control our lives. It was not of no avail. Today we in the U.S., the Israelis, and other countries around the world are worse off than in February 2001.

Even in Israel the Jews have not escaped from the Ghetto, as Herzl thought they would. They continue to live now not only in their mental ghetto, but are actually in the process of building a physical one by the creation of a wall to separate themselves from Arabs. This wall is regarded as essential for the security of the country. Although it defies international law some writers like Mr. Zuckerman, editor of U.S. News and World Report, supports it with articles like “Good fences make good neighbors.” If Israel were to build its ghetto wall within the pre-1967 war borders nobody would object. But if Mr. Zuckerman’s neighbor were to build a wall which takes in part of Mr. Zuckerman’s backyard he would surely take the neighbor to court. This is the problem in a nutshell. As long as Jewish writers and politicians see only expected benefits for the members of Jacob’s tribe and ignore the legitimate aspirations of others, the Jewish people and their benefactors are condemned to dislike, hatred and ostracism.

Why has America, which was admired four years ago, sunk so low in the eyes of the world? The true answer, which no one wants to admit to, is our unconditional support for Israel’s policies. It is this support in addition to a quest for oil and a personal vendetta of President Bush against Saddam Hussein which has driven us into the Iraq war. Now we are stuck with a failed dream, just like the Israelis, and are hated for it.

What I am writing now will never be admitted to by the Bush administration even if it were re-elected because it would offend their “base.” But the Democrats can’t say it either, at least during the election campaign, because they would be tarred and feathered as anti-Semites. This is America’s dilemma and this is what Herzl’s followers did to us. It was the neoconservatives in the defense department who hatched the Iraq strategy on the model of Herzl’s dream: we will bring culture to a civilization which actually preceded ours by millennia and our soldiers will be welcomed with open arms by happy Iraqis. As mentioned in the essay on “The Neocons’ Leviathan” (April 2003) the foreign policy of the Bush administration did not originate from its legitimate source, the State Department, but from the Defense Department’s ex-Marxists. They first wrote for incoming Prime Minister Netanyahu a document “Defense of the Realm” and subsequently they simply exchanged the word Israel for United States of America. They were the ones who brought us “angst” and as long as our main friend is a pariah nation we cannot succeed.

Senator Kerry gave an excellent acceptance speech and there was no “angst” during the convention. All of the participants brimmed with optimism for a bright future and great expectations. But for those to be translated into reality senator Kerry, if he were to be elected, would need the same courage he has shown on the battlefield at his desk in the Oval Office. He would have to recognize the existence of “the Jewish brain,” as ben-Gurion has called it, and deal with it in a constructive manner. This would include a full disclosure of the sources which led the British, the Russians and Americans to believe in Saddam’s weapons of mass destructions. The Senate’s report did not address this question and Americans are led to believe that the Mossad, the best spy agency in the Middle East if not the world, had no role. As mentioned in “The Niger Forgery” (August 2003) I don’t know whether or not it did, but to hide behind “sources” only feeds conspiracy theories and these are anathema to a well functioning informed democracy. Indeed, much is at stake in the November elections and it is a sad fact of life that the most important issues cannot be publicly discussed at this time. 







August 26, 2004

PERCEPTIONS OF REALITY

This installment appears a few days earlier than usual because we will take a week of vacation visiting the Caribbean.

As the November elections finally draw nearer the American public is deluged by claims and counterclaims from the two major parties. These tend to leave the average citizen in a state of bewilderment, unless one is a faithful party hack who does what one is told. But for those of us who like to think for ourselves the question of: what is fact and what is fiction? does become important. I shall deal with the dilemma of the American voter, which results from this problem, in next month’s installment and intend to limit myself here to how we perceive reality or, if you like, the truth. This is the fundamental issue from which all else flows.

In May of 1980 I published in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease an article on, “The Reality of Death Experiences. A Personal Perspective.  It was prompted by a rash of publications on near-death experiences, which were taken as proof for survival of the soul after death. The question whether we are simply electro-magnetic-biochemical machines, which have to decay and perish, or whether there is an additional element in the human being which survives the destruction of the body is obviously important for how we conduct ourselves in our lives. Inasmuch as the idea of “ashes to ashes” as the end all and be all has always been unpopular, religious thinkers and philosophers have come up with various models of an afterlife. In our skeptical and agnostic society these ideas have lost credence because scientific evidence for retention of consciousness after destruction of the brain is lacking. The near-death experience by survivors of catastrophic life situations was, therefore, hailed as the long sought proof. Reputable physicians and psychologists published books on the narrations of these obviously sincere people who stated that during the time when they were regarded clinically dead, or were in extreme life-threatening circumstances, had been aware that they had died. They were welcomed by deceased relatives or other helpers, but were eventually told to return to earth, which they reluctantly agreed to. The near-death experience (NDE) had all the intensity, if not more, of waking life rather than dream consciousness and became the ultimate reality for the particular person. It affected future conduct because fear of death was lost and the people directed their lives with foremost regard to the benefit of others, rather than strictly selfish purposes.  

I would not have written the article had I not experienced earlier in life the knowledge of, “I am dead, I am free,” accompanied by an indescribable feeling of bliss. The circumstances under which this arose are detailed in the paper (reprint available on request) and need not be repeated here but the important aspect is the word “knowledge.” I did not “believe” that I was dead; I “knew” that I was dead and it was wonderful. The subsequent awakening in a hospital bed, wracked with pain, was a severe disappointment. I never talked about it to anyone except for my wife, Martha, who stood at the bedside and heard me say as my first words, “let me die, let me die.”  

The experience convinced me that the people who claimed to have had a NDE were indeed truthful and had experienced something that is out of the realm of the ordinary; but it also demonstrated the fallibility of human knowledge. The knowledge of that moment, which I will remember for the rest of my life, was wrong because I had not died I only thought so. Life altering as the experience was it also confronted me, as a neurologist, with: what do we call knowledge or reality? If absolute knowledge, experienced as beyond any shadow of a doubt, can subsequently be proven patently wrong it behooves us to look for the reasons. I tried to come to grips with the problem in the mentioned paper because it was obvious that the NDE phenomenon cannot be taken at face value for survival of the soul after death.  Although the experience occurs under clearly altered brain function, the brain is not dead and the question what consciousness, if any, survives a dead brain remains unanswerable.

This problem is, however, not urgent and is likely to remain unsolvable in the foreseeable future. The question of how we perceive our internal and external environment can be examined, however, and conclusions can be drawn. In the mentioned paper I made a distinction between: subjective reality, shared subjective reality and objective reality. In my own situation I was dead subjectively but alive objectively to everybody else. Thus, subjective and objective reality can be vastly different and should not be confused. In everyday life we tend not to make this distinction. Subjective impressions tend to be relegated to dreams, daydreams and fantasies and we act as if they were unimportant. The fact that our subjective reality, unconscious bias resulting from previous life experiences, flavors how we perceive objective reality is only rarely fully acknowledged. We believe that we act on objective reality, or facts, when we actually conduct our lives on shared subjective reality. This fundamental point needs to be grasped and kept hold of.

As mentioned we like to think that we conduct ourselves in an objective, dispassionate, manner most of the time, but this is a fallacy. Unless we are engaged in a specific task which requires fullest concentration our thoughts wander into daydreams and fantasies. These tend to reinforce each other and provide the background for how we meet the next life situation.  Thus the question arises: how do we know when something, anything, represents objective reality? The term is defined here as an observable fact, which does not involve judgment, and is verifiable by anyone with a healthy central nervous system who uses the same means by which the particular fact was arrived at in the first place. For instance the content of this essay is my subjective reality, which you may or may not share, but that it contains a definable number of words can be verified by anyone and is objective reality. This is, of course, what science strives for but this is not how we live our daily lives because it would require pure reason and that commodity is not readily used by the human being most of the time.

This brings up another question: how do we know what we think we know? As a result of the experience mentioned above I began to examine my thoughts in the waking as well dreaming state rather carefully and the result was quite surprising. In general we do not accord to dreams the same reality as to waking consciousness. So: how do we know that a dream is “only a dream” rather than waking reality? Recently the movie “Oh God,” with John Denver as a supermarket assistant manager and George Burns as God, was shown again on television and I was struck by the following conversation:

 

Denver: “How do I know that you are real and I’m not just dreaming this?

Burns: “What color are my eyes?”

Denver: “Blue”

Burns: “Do you dream in color?”

Denver: “No.”

Burns: “So, there you have it.”  

 

Well, for me and some others this type of reality testing would not work as the following example shows. I dreamt that it is a Saturday morning. I am heading down the pier at the marina to my sailboat to get ready for the race when the thought hits me, “could this be a dream?” Then I look up and say to myself, “No; the sky is so blue, the clouds are so white, I feel the wind on my cheek; this can’t be a dream.” When I woke up eventually I found out that it wasn’t Saturday after all and I had to go to work. Thus, this type of reality check doesn’t work. With continued examination of my dreams I found out that during the dream it is impossible to draw a distinction between waking and dream consciousness. Whatever test one may devise is futile as another example shows: It is a Thursday afternoon and I find myself walking around in my neighborhood rather than being at work. I have no memory whatsoever why I am not a work and this raises serious concerns. The neurologist then confronted himself with two possibilities: either I have a serious brain disorder or I am dreaming. I concluded that I was dreaming, woke up contentedly in the knowledge of having dreamt and got up to shower. But even this was merely a continuation of the dream as I found out when the alarm went off at 7 a.m. 

There are also sometimes so called “lucid dreams” where the dreamer realizes in the dream that he is dreaming. This has happened to me on a few occasions and was actually quite hilarious. For instance: I am talking with a group of people when the knowledge hits me: this is a dream! I then proceed to tell the bystanders that they don’t really exist; they are just pictures in my brain. You can readily imagine the expressions on their faces that resulted.

This fundamental fact of life that we cannot tell during the dream whether we operate on dream or waking consciousness has profound repercussions for our last moments of life. The distinction that “it was a dream” becomes apparent only upon awakening, but when we die there is no awakening, at least not on planet earth, and whatever pictures our brains choose to conjure up during the process of dying will be taken as objective reality although it exists only in our heads. This leads to the remarkable conclusion that we are indeed immortal to ourselves. By definition the human being cannot experience unconsconsciousness. Even if the thought, “I am unconscious” were to occur it would be a conscious experience. Since we are subjectively immortal to ourselves the content of consciousness during our dying moments may be of crucial importance but that is for each individual to ponder about.

The reason why we cannot distinguish objective from subjective reality in our dreams is probably due to relative absence of activity in what is called the prefrontal lobes. These portions of our brains are the latest acquisition in human development and are present only to a rudimentary extent in the monkey. They endow us with foresight, judgment, concentration, critical thinking and what is generally called executive function. The prefrontal lobes, rather than the rest of the brain, enable us to act potentially as Homo sapiens. The tragedy of the human race is that they are not always put into gear. We tend to operate on automatic pilot and this is where perception comes in.

When a sensory impulse travels from its specific peripheral receptor organs via specific pathways to the specific central receptor stations it does not remain there but gets subsequently relayed to a variety of other brain structures. These may or may not allow the sensory impression to reach consciousness. It could be shown experimentally that there are two types of responses in the brain to a peripheral stimulus. These have been called the primary and the secondary. While the primary is limited to the specific brain sensory area, the secondary response is widespread and can be changed by conditioning. Pavlov has shown this in his animals more than a hundred years ago on a behavioral level and we can now study its electrophysiological basis. Conditioning is not limited, however, to producing salivating dogs at the ring of a bell but goes on constantly in our brains. This is how habits are formed and this is the grist for the mill of politicians who want to us to think the way they do. Conditioning proceeds in an entirely unconscious manner and there is nothing we can do about it unless we are fully aware that it is indeed happening to us. Once this insight is reached we can act in a rational rather than impulsive, conditioned, manner. We stop being, in the words of our President, “gut-players” and put our prefrontal lobes into gear.

How can this be done? Buddhist philosophy provides the answer. The seventh point of the “Eightfold Noble Path” is “Right Mindfulness.” I have always had a problem with the precise meaning of the term until I came across a book by Nyanaponika Thera. The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (available on amazon.com) is a superb example of how a Ceylonese monk, who explains two thousand five hundred years old thoughts, can benefit modern Americans. The first and most important aspect is the effort needed to “Know Thyself;” an admonition which also graced Apollo’s temple at Delphi. Only when we understand how we as individuals operate can we hope to understand others by noting the similarities and differences. To achieve this goal the Buddha has proclaimed the “Four Foundations of Mindfulness.” They deal with the accurate perception of one’s internal world. Namely: one’s body, one’s feelings, one’s state of mind, and the pictures the mind produces. Once this has been accomplished one can deal appropriately with the external world. For the purposes of this essay only the first three aspects dealing with action will be discussed at this time. These are: bare attention, clear perception of purpose, and clear perception of suitability of means for achieving that purpose.

Bare attention exhorts us to register only the primary sense impression without jumping immediately to the conditioned secondary responses which are judgmental. For instance when one is stuck in traffic one is not supposed to get exercised over the consequences of being late to wherever one is headed but instead register the fact and direct one’s attention to the car ahead of one. Its color, its make, its license plate and so on can be examined in detail. All of this is to be done in a objective way as if one were expected to report it to someone else. In essence: look at each event as it occurs with a scientific, detached mind and move on when the situation changes. Immediate judgment, which is the conditioned response, needs to be held in abeyance. This is also what “living in the present” really means. When a new action needs to be initiated, the second principle ought to be adhered to and one should ask oneself immediately: “what is the purpose?” Once that question has been examined and a decision has been made to move ahead the final question arises: are the means to be employed to achieve this purpose really appropriate?

When we look at our world in this manner we can immediately see how wrong the Bush administration’s response to the 9/11 tragedy was. Had our leadership been reared on the above stated principles instead of the Old Testament they would have spared us and the world untold suffering. Bare attention would have registered as: Two buildings were completely destroyed, one partially, four commercial jets were lost and nearly three thousand people were killed. Those were the facts and our so-called Judeo-Christian heritage cried out for vengeance. Not on the people who actually committed the crime, because they were dead already but on those who had sent them on their mission. Some response was obviously required and this is where the next two aspects of mindfulness should have come into play.

The prime purpose of a reaction should have been to a) compensate, to the extent possible, the victims and b) take measures that will minimize the chances of a recurrence. A fund for the victims was indeed set up but the measures to prevent a recurrence did not take “suitability of means” into account. The appropriate means to deal with bin-Laden’s organization would have been through international cooperation to deprive it of its finances, as well as limited specific special forces operations to destroy his sanctuary in Afghanistan, and make life difficult for him, wherever he moved to subsequently. Only the financial route was pursued but for the rest ulterior motives came into play. The Taliban regime had to disappear and for good measure the whole Middle East has now to be turned into reliable American satellite states under the name of democracies. Clear perception of purpose and especially “suitability of means” would immediately label these fantasies as serious delusions.

This brings us back to shared subjective reality. Since the vast majority of the American public has only limited awareness of Buddhist thought it can easily become prey to propaganda which feeds feelings of vengeance, fear, and pride. Our reality is not supposed to be dominated by rational thought but by emotions and conditioned reflexes. This is the true evil in our society and it will destroy us unless taken cognizance of.

The next two months may become some of the most dangerous in the history of our republic. If the “swift boat” attack on Senator Kerry misfires, Karl Rove may yet push for some Iran mission to save his boss’s re-election, or engineer some homeland disaster. The way he has been described is that for him winning is everything and defeat is “not an option.” The book Bush’s Brain by James Moore, which depicts the workings of Rove’s mind, has now been made into a movie and one hopes that it will be widely shown. Only when the bright light of public awareness is directed into the murky shadows of the corridors of power, where policies are hatched in secrecy, can we hope that a more reasoned approach to world affairs will emerge. In this way reality perception will stick closer to observable facts and we can rationally develop proper solutions to our problems.







September 29, 2004

A VOTER’S DILEMMA

This installment appears again a few days earlier because I shall be attending another international conference on clinical neurophysiology later this week. The main advantage of these meetings is that it keeps the mind grounded in science, which is conducive to realistic rather than wishful thinking. The disadvantage of this particular one is that I shall be literally in the air, flying over Quebec, during the first of the three Presidential debates.

As every one knows the upcoming election is one of the most crucial ones Americans have faced in the past fifty years. Yet, it is also one of the most polarized and voters can find significant problems with either of the two main contenders. These render an intelligent decision so difficult. Let us, therefore, look at the two candidates in the light of what we know rather than how they wish to be seen. 

When President Bush came into office on January 20, 2001 he stated in his inaugural address, “And this is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity. . . .  We will reclaim America’s schools. . . .  We will reform Social Security and Medicare. . . .  We will reduce taxes. . . .  We will build our defenses beyond challenge. . . .  We will confront weapons of mass destruction.  . . .  I will live and lead by these principles: to advance my convictions with civility, to pursue the public interest with courage, to speak for greater justice and compassion, to call for responsibility and try to live it as well.”

This was the agenda of “compassionate conservatism” Governor Bush had campaigned on. The speech dealt entirely with domestic issues and the problems of foreign policy were notably absent. No other country was mentioned by name and neither was the word terror or terrorism.

The President’s lack of interest in foreign affairs became soon apparent when he refused to engage constructively in the Middle East’s hot spot – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Furthermore, as Richard Clarke, President Clinton’s chief advisor on international terrorism noted, “al Qaeda just wasn’t a priority.” When the President was briefed on August 6 about bin Laden’s plan to attack the “homeland” the message was disregarded and he continued with his vacation for the rest of the month. While everyone is entitled to a vacation there is hardly any American who can afford to take off for four weeks. Even if it was a “working vacation”, as it has been billed, one might have expected that he would call the man with the greatest experience in the area of counterterrorism, Richard Clarke, to the ranch in Crawford; order him to get to the bottom of that threat and provide recommendations as to what should be done about it. There are no records to indicate that the President did so.

With the tragedy of 9/11 the country rallied and we were for one brief moment indeed “one nation under God.” This was the opportunity to look into the causes of the disaster; to come up with a measured response that fit the crime and begin work that would minimize the chances for a reoccurrence of a similar one. This course was not pursued. Instead a policy of “liberating countries that harbor terrorists” was initiated.

Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership was rapidly eliminated and a regime friendly to the U.S. installed in Kabul. This would have been fine had the President subsequently concentrated on pacifying and rebuilding the country. This was not done because the neoconservative agenda, the President and Vice-president had endorsed, demanded pre-emptive wars on the model of Israel to “secure the realm” (see The Neocons’ Leviathan on this site). Thus, the focus shifted immediately to Iraq. The reasons for this shift in policy have been discussed at length in previous installments and sad to say practically everything I have written from October 2001 on has come to pass. Afghanistan is still a battle zone and its main export consists of opium and heroin. This keeps warlords in business and finances international terrorist organizations. We are told that Afghans will be able to vote for a democratic government next month but what powers this government is going to have in the provinces is far from clear. In Iraq Saddam sits in jail but there is also for all practical purposes a guerilla war going on against which our “smart weapons” are useless.

The current chaos in Iraq was entirely predictable and the President was told beforehand, not only by our state department but even by his friends the Saudis, that an invasion of Iraq would be a serious danger to the region. The BBC News of February 17, 2003 (available on the Internet) carried the headline, “Saudis warn US over Iraq war.” The article quoted Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud-al Faisal as saying that “any unilateral military action by the US would appear as an ‘act of aggression.’ . . .  ‘Independent action in this, we don’t believe is good for the United States. It would encourage people to think . . . that what they’re doing is a war of aggression rather than a war for the implementation of the United Nations resolutions. . . . If change of regime comes with the destruction of Iraq, then you are solving one problem and creating five more problems. . . .  If the choice is you destroy Iraq in order to get Saddam Hussein, it is a self-defeating policy, isn’t it? I mean, you destroy a country to get a person out – it doesn’t work. We are living in the region. We will suffer the consequences of any military action.’”

This well meant advice was ignored and so was bin Laden’s exhortation as to how the Iraqis should meet the imminent military threat. His taped message published by BBC on February 12, 2003 encourages Iraqis to first let the Americans roll over them and then start a guerilla war in the cities because that is what Americans are afraid of. The Iraqis should also “build trenches.” He cited the effectiveness of this strategy during the battle for Tora Bora, “We were about 300 mujahideen. We dug 100 trenches that were spread in an area that does not exceed one square mile, one trench for every three brothers, so as to avoid huge human losses resulting from the bombardment.” He continued saying that in spite of the most intense around the clock bombardment by America’s most sophisticated weapons the attack was a complete failure. According to bin Laden only 6% of his people were injured and, “If all the world forces of evil could not achieve their goals on a one square mile of area against a small number of mujahideen with very limited capabilities, how can these evil forces triumph over the Muslim world?”  He then used this event as an example for the “mujahideen brothers in Iraq.” “The smart bombs will have no effect worth mentioning in the hills and in the trenches, on plains, and in the forests. They must have apparent targets. The well-camouflaged trenches and targets will not be reached by either the smart or the stupid missiles. There will only be haphazard strikes that dissipate the enemy ammunition and waste its money. Dig many trenches.”

He stressed also “the importance of martyrdom operations.”  “Whoever supported the United States, including the hypocrites of Iraq or the rulers of Arab countries, those who approved their actions and followed them in this crusade war by fighting with them or providing bases and administrative support, or any form of support, even by words, to kill the Muslims in Iraq, should know that they are apostates and outside the community of Muslims. It is permissible to spill their blood and take their property. God says: ‘O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends and protectors: they are but friends and protectors to each other.’ And he who turns to them [for friendship] is one of them.”

I have quoted extensively from bin Laden’s tape because it is crucial to our understanding of the events as they are now unfolding not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but in wider regions of the world. The quoted sura from the Koran (5:51) should be seen in its historic context. The prophet Muhammad had been forced to flee from Mecca to Medina. The Jewish members of that city supported him initially but when it was besieged by a superior force from Mecca in 627 AD they switched sides. This betrayal had a terrible consequence. When the besieging army retreated to Mecca, after what is regarded as a miraculous victory by the prophet, only a few Jews were granted a pardon. The vast majority was, according to Karen Armstrong, “tied together in groups and beheaded.” Her book: Muhammad. A Biography of the Prophet deserves to be read by everyone who wants to understand the times we live in and especially by media pundits and politicians. Bin Laden’s exhortation to “build trenches,” also dates from that period. It was trenches that enabled the faithful to withstand the siege.

But our President is not well versed in history and refused to listen to advice by those who were aware of it. We are now facing the results of that ignorance that led to wrong choices. It is abundantly clear that the foreign policy of the President was based on a series of mistaken assumptions and has left our country without any real friends in the world. As I said earlier in these pages: to make mistakes is human, unavoidable, and mistakes can be forgiven but they must be owned up to. To deny them, to persist that one was right all along and promise to continue on the same course with “strong leadership” is tragic. It reveals a subjective reality that cannot be squared with the facts as they appear on the daily news. Even if bin Laden were to be captured now, a few weeks before the election, it would only be a propaganda victory. The seeds he has sown have borne abundant fruit and the extremist Muslim jihad is going to continue even if he were killed. With the 9/11 attack he has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams because he is bankrupting our country. Our resources are being spent on foreign and domestic “security” and regardless who is voted in, or appointed as the case may be again, this process is now irreversible.

This is the legacy the President has left us with on the world scene. What has he achieved domestically? He did cut taxes; he signed the “no child left behind” bill; a prescription drug benefit bill for seniors was passed, and most recently he has begun to deploy a “missile defense shield” in Alaska. The civility he had promised for his administration has been notably absent and those who disagree with his views tend to be denounced as “leftist liberal extremists” or even unpatriotic Americans.  Although testing for academic progress was mandated for public schools, the program was not appropriately funded. Even if it were it would not address the most fundamental problems of the public schools. These are: poor quality of teachers, inadequate curricula, rampant drug use and sexual activity. This happens not only in inner city schools but the parents of our own school age grandchildren are forced to send them to private schools at great financial sacrifice. While Martha and I only had to pay for the college education of our children they now have to pay from practically grammar school on for theirs. Is this the progress and promise of America? The prescription drug benefit is also a fraud. We are seniors and the deduction the drug cards offer are in percent of the cost of the drug. This leaves the pharmaceutical industry free to manipulate their prices upward so that even the same drug might now cost more with the deduction than it did before. So is the missile defense deployment. The interceptors have not yet been adequately tested and even the “patriot” missile has been shown to have serious problems. It shoots down our planes or explodes on some other target, yet this deficiency is not discussed in Congress or the media. This is the record upon which President Bush wants to be re-elected and in his acceptance speech before the Republican Convention he promised essentially the same domestic agenda as he did in his inaugural address. Although he likes to drape himself in the mantle of Ronald Reagan he cannot afford to ask the voters Reagan’s question of 1980 in regard to Jimmy Carter’s policies, “Are you better off then four years ago?” The answer from practically all of us would be a resounding: No!

How does Senator Kerry stack up? He is well versed in foreign affairs, has lived abroad and is acquainted with the views of the world outside the U.S.  This is a plus he banks on in his assurances that he would be able to bring more allies to help us out of the Iraq quagmire. Domestically he is being portrayed as a leftist “tax and spend liberal” who will ruin the economy; he will appoint “progressive” judges to the Supreme Court who will re-interpret the Constitution according to their socio-political ideas and he will put the country on a thoroughly socialist course. In addition we are told over and over again that he is a “flip-flopper” who can’t be trusted because he adjusts his positions to whatever is politically opportune at a given moment. There is also controversy about his conduct during the Vietnam era. Everybody agrees that he volunteered for service, performed well under fire, but some of the purple hearts he won for having sustained wounds in battle are questioned.  Were they severe enough to merit the decoration or were they simply a way to get back to the U.S.? He is also being harshly attacked for having joined and led the “Veterans against the Vietnam War” organization after his discharge from the Navy. What galls some of his detractors most was his Senate testimony where he supposedly accused the U.S. servicemen for committing atrocities and war crimes in Vietnam. These are not trivial issues because they go to character and deserve public airing.

There are several books out that deal with Kerry’s past, most of them blatantly partisan. The one I found most helpful in understanding the man was: John F. Kerry. The Complete Biography by the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best. The book places the Vietnam situation in perspective. Kerry volunteered for Navy service, although he had doubts about the wisdom behind the war, because his group of close friends did so and it was unthinkable that they would not go together. Dick Pershing, the grandson of General Pershing who had commanded the American forces during WWI, was Kerry’s closest friend, and while Kerry was on a frigate in the Pacific heading for the Gulf of Tonkin he was told that Pershing had been killed in action. This had a profound impact on Kerry and may well have flavored his subsequent conduct, including the desire to get out alive as soon as possible from that hell hole. It also led, in all probability, to his vigorous anti-war stance thereafter which brought him to public attention and the testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971. It is now used to stamp him as a disloyal person who smeared his comrades and helped the North Vietnamese to win their victory. I don’t know how many people who use these catch phrases have actually taken the time to read the transcript of that hearing, which is available on C-Span.org. If they had they would be more circumspect in their judgment. The testimony covers 35 pages and I shall present only some highlights.

The meeting was for the purpose of “Legislative Proposals Relating to the War in Southeast Asia” with Senators Fulbright, Symington, Pell, Aiken, Case and Javits in attendance. In the opening statement the Chairman, Senator Fulbright, said that he was glad to hear from Kerry and some of his fellow protesters because, “These are men who have fought in this unfortunate war in Vietnam. I believe they deserve to be heard and listened to by Congress and by the officials in the executive branch and by the public generally. You have a perspective that those in government who make our Nation’s policy do not always have and I am sure that your testimony today will be helpful to the committee in its consideration of the proposals before us.” Fulbright added, “I want also to congratulate Mr. Kerry, you, and your associates upon the restraint you have shown, certainly in the hearing when there were a great many of your people. I think you conducted yourselves in a most commendable manner throughout this week. Whenever people gather there is always a tendency for the some more emotional ones to do things which are even against their own interests. I think you deserve much of the credit because I understand that you are one of the leaders of this group.” This set the tone for the meeting and the crucial question was: how do we get out of this war, we shouldn’t be in anyway? This is also the reason why we have to face Vietnam again today.

Kerry started out with recounting a meeting that had been held in Detroit during the previous January where, “over 150 honorably discharged and many highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to- day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command .” He went on to detail stories of people who “had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam  in addition to the normal ravages, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.” These are the charges that are now held against Kerry although he merely recited what he had heard and some of it may well have been exaggerations.

The essence of his testimony was that Vietnam was not a threat to the United States; that the South Vietnamese lived under an unpopular government; that the war was part of a longstanding national liberation movement and the Americans were simply seen as successors of the French whom the Vietcong had defeated a few years earlier. It was impossible to tell friend from foe, body counts were inflated and unimportant battles over hills that were evacuated a few weeks later were hailed as military triumphs. The war cannot be won the way it is waged, it is unpopular here and abroad, innocents are dying daily for no good cause and a country is being destroyed “in order to save it.” Those who sit at their desks in Washington and order our troops into battle where atrocities are unavoidable are the real culprits and not the soldier on the ground who fights for his very life and gets at times carried away by his emotions.

What was the reaction of the senators? Did they condemn him for speaking out? No! When Kerry had finished his testimony he thanked the panel for listening and for having, “put a resolution on the floor, to help us in the event we were arrested and particularly for a chance to express the thoughts that I have put forward today. I appreciate it.” Fulbright’s response was, “You have certainly done a remarkable job of it. I can’t imagine their [Vietnam Veterans against the War] having selected a better representative or spokesman. Thank you very much.”

This was the testimony the senators were grateful to hear at the time and for which he is put through the wringer in the current campaign. Arrest was clearly a danger because Kerry was investigated by Nixon’s staff for his conduct. He did urge an immediate withdrawal from Vietnam because we would eventually have to leave anyway and further sacrifice of life and property was useless. We all know what happened: within a couple of years Congress cut funding for the war; Nixon resigned before being impeached and removed from office; the South Vietnamese were no match against the North; the country was overrun; a massacre ensued in Cambodia and today we have friendly relations with a still communist united Vietnam.

And what does Kerry do with this part of his past? He tries to write off his Senate testimony as due to anger and immaturity. I believe this to be a mistake on his part and regard it as evidence that he listens too much to his advisers rather than standing on his own two feet. It would be so simple. All he would have to say is, “Yes, I was angry and I had reason to be. If you had seen what I saw in Nam you would have been too. That the war was sold to the American public under false pretenses (the Gulf of Tonkin resolution) is a fact everyone agrees on nowadays. I did not castigate the soldiers who committed acts which violate the Geneva conventions, because they were under duress. I did chastise those who ordered them into those situations where acts of the type described by some, rather than the majority of individuals, are bound to occur. This is what I was against then and this is why I am against the Iraq war now.”

This simple statement would have gone a long way to define his character. Instead he has unfortunately chosen to play it safe and go the “Me too” route. He is trying to outBush Bush and his campaign up to now could be summed up in the simple statement from Annie Get Your Gun, “Anything you can do, I can do better.” I admit that he has finally said most of the things about the Iraq war and America’s overall foreign policy I have published here for the past couple of years but he, just as Bush, has failed to come to grips with the Israeli problem which fuels the hate against us in the region. The reason is obvious: he has been told that this will cost him votes. Yet this may not be entirely true. The American people want to hear the truth and the equation of criticism of Likud policies with anti-Semitism should no longer be tolerated.

This is terribly important because the next act of war, against Iran, is already preprogrammed. Iran’s budding nuclear reactor has to be destroyed. The official reason is that the mullahs would export the bomb to our shores because they hate us, when they actually might want to have a counterweight against the nuclear threat from Israel. Instead of insisting to make the entire Middle East (including Israel) a nuclear free zone it has just been reported that we are exporting “bunker busters” to Israel. You couldn’t possibly give a greater present to bin Laden and his followers as proof for the sura he quoted from the Koran.

Kerry’s promised domestic policies also seem to outspend Bush, who has verbally adopted most of the traditionally democratic agenda. Kerry might yet win the election if he would really show us strength of character. Here is a small example of what he might have done last week. The Republicans have just come out with a new TV ad which shows Kerry constantly tacking back and forth on his windsurfer to indicate that he just keeps “flip-flopping.” The ad is cute, effective, and the Democrats are fuming. Instead, Kerry might have immediately countered with something like, “Yes I am a sailor and a windsurfer! But both of these take skill and require one to learn to read the weather properly. The sailor knows that you can’t sail directly into the wind. Sometimes you have to tack, even back and forth, to get to where you want to go. I have always kept the goal of the journey in mind and brought whatever boat I was captain of, including its crew or passengers, safely back to port. This is who I am; I am a sailor and you can accept or reject these qualities! But, you can also pick an analogue of Captain Edward John Smith who ordered his ship on her maiden voyage to go “full steam ahead,” even after he had been told by his officers that there was fog and icebergs ahead. He ignored the warning because he wanted to make history and break a trans-Atlantic record. He did make history, but not in the way he had imagined. He lost his ship, his life, along with more than 1500 others who had been entrusted to his care, and I don’t have to tell you the name of that ship. My opponent claims leadership, but true leadership is not a stubborn refusal to listen to experts and plowing ahead regardless. True leadership is not ordering other people around. True leadership is the example you set so that others will follow willingly and this is what I shall provide.”

This is what Kerry might have said. If he did, it wasn’t reported.  Instead there were only complaints about dirty politics. Kerry’s next and final test will be the debates and we’ll see how he handles himself there although they are already highly scripted. But Kerry has an additional burden. Not only will he inherit a massive financial and economic problem, which is bound to limit his abilities on keeping domestic spending promises but there is another ghost of Vietnam that will come back to haunt him. In his 1971 testimony before the Senate he had also said, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” It was relatively easy to tell President Nixon to pull out of an unpopular war in Southeast Asia but how do you, as President, get out of a war in the Middle East that was clearly a mistake, when there are not only lives at stake but oil and the entire global economy? This is what he faces and why he may not at all be enamored by the prospect of having to become responsible for the mess a previous administration has created and from which there is no easy way out.

So what are our choices on November 2? We can vote for whomever we consider less harmful regardless of flaws; cast a protest vote for Nader; or stay home altogether because under the current electoral system our vote is meaningless anyway apart from “battleground states.” Maybe one way to register our dissatisfaction would be to vote for the Presidential ticket of one party and for Senators and Representatives from the other. This would mitigate the damage either branch of government can inflict upon us and is after all the reason why the framers of our Constitution so wisely insisted on a separation of powers.

Buckle your seatbelts; we are in for a rough ride. Who knows what kind of “October surprise” Karl Rove might have up his sleeve if re-election were to become doubtful. There is even some talk about postponing the elections in case of an assumed or genuine terrorist threat. As they say, “stay tuned.”







November 2, 2004

ELECTION CAMPAIGN OBITUARY

Thank goodness the seemingly interminable election campaign that lasted more than a year is now finally over and Americans are heading for the polls. We also have to be grateful that there were no last minutes real nasty October surprises such as a heralded Iran bombardment. Instead we were treated to a Television visit from Osama bin Laden but more about that in another issue.

Whether or not the administration ever seriously considered an aggressive act against Iran prior to the elections I don’t know, but on October 25 I received an e-mail from a Canadian colleague to that effect. It was distributed by a Canadian organization, “The Centre for Research on Globalization,” and featured an article by Wayne Madsen entitled, “A Bush pre-election strike on Iran. White House Insiders report ‘October Surprise’ imminent.” In the article Mr. Madsen asserted that he had been told by White House Insiders that the Bush administration was poised to bomb Iran’s nuclear reactor at Busher, as well as other targets throughout the country. The article also stated that the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy was deployed to the Arabian Sea in order to coordinate the attacks.

This brought up the question: who is Mr. Madsen and how does he know what he says he knows? All answers are provided on the Internet and when one punches in his name one is informed that he is a “Senior Fellow of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) a non-partisan privacy public advocacy group in Washington DC” and that he also works as a free-lance journalist. In addition he has written the Introduction to Forbidden Truth. U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy and the Failed Hunt for Bin Laden. This particular book, available through amazon.com, was published by two Frenchmen J. Brisard and G. Dasquie in 2002. How reliable Mr. Madsen’s sources are I have no way of knowing.

Apparently even Karl Rove might have thought that bombing Iran a week or so before the election was not a good idea because it might backfire and the plan was put on hold. But as we say in the German language aufgeschoben ist nicht aufgehoben - to postpone doesn’t mean to abandon – and we as well as the Iranians can look forward to it after the election. If Bush were to lose he might even give it to Kerry as a final good bye present in the waning days of his administration. If he wins it is full steam ahead anyway.

But back to the past month’s campaign which was certainly the nastiest I have witnessed in the past 54 years. As mentioned in the previous installment, I was arriving in Montreal during the first Presidential debate and saw only the tail end, although I did have access to the full version upon returning home. Nevertheless, even what I saw on that Thursday night made me embarrassed for our country. The “Leader of the Free World” was so inept that one felt one had to apologize for being an American citizen while in a foreign country. On Saturday Toronto’s Globe and Mail had an Editorial headlined “The Evil of the Lesser Two,” which certainly hit the nail on the head. Although Kerry appeared considerably more “Presidential” the substance one might have expected from him simply wasn’t there. Another interesting feature was in an article that had come out from an American research group which analyzed the language level the two candidates had used during the debate. Bush spoke at a 6.8 and Kerry at a 7.3 grade level.  This may not be meaningful for readers outside the U.S. but translates into the speech patterns of 12-13 year old teenagers. The article also mentioned that Kerry had deliberately “talked down” because this is the level the American electorate understands. If this is not an indictment of our current “culture” I don’t know what is.

Prior to the second Presidential debate Bush apparently was told by his “handlers” that smirking and grimacing doesn’t work because it makes the contrast to Kerry even starker and that he has to show more “leadership.”  He took the advice to heart. We saw him running around the stage and at one point shouting the poor moderator down, which is generally regarded as a no-no. I taped the debate and when I played it back on fast forward to catch a certain segment it really became hilarious. Our President appeared precisely as, what some of us had suspected since 9/11, a puppet on a string. If you happen to have access to a tape of this debate please watch a segment on fast forward because as the Chinese said,”a picture is worth a thousand words.”

The Vice Presidential debate was meaningless and so was the third Presidential debate.  The candidates simply answered whatever question was asked with a hand-me-down well-worn mantra, which frequently had nothing to do with the question that had been asked. There was only one memorable phrase uttered by the President in regard to what he would do to create more jobs in the country. Believe it or not, he replied that the “No Child left Behind” school project was the answer to the problem. This is what he told college graduates whose jobs disappear due to “’outsourcing,” “downsizing,” or bankruptcies!

Apart from this gem, Bush insisted throughout the campaign on having shown strong leadership, which is an absolute necessity for winning the war on terrorism and that it would be outright dangerous to entrust the country to Kerry because the Senator would ask the United Nations for permission to go to war in case America were to be threatened by a “rogue” state. This is what he, Bush, would never do. Kerry’s mantra was that he would do better than the President if we were to elect him. He promised not only to be strong in regard to the defense of our country but that he would also create a genuine alliance from nations around the world to establish a stable and peaceful Iraq, which would allow us to bring our troops home within the next four years. In addition he intends to spend billions of dollars to improve the various domestic problems he will inherit. A seasoned observer, steeped in realism, can only say, “Good Luck” to that.

The reasons why intelligent people, who are not dogmatic party hacks, find themselves unable to vote for Bush, even if they are more comfortable with conservative rather than “progressive” ideas, have been abundantly explained in previous installments. But what about Kerry? In the previous issue I have already touched on some of his liabilities. The most outstanding appears to be that he seems to have lost the fervor of his younger years when he spoke from the heart, especially in his 1971 Senate testimony. He now relies on what his handlers tell him as to what he should or shouldn’t say. This is potential poison for a person’s soul. He played it “safe” and avoided direct answers to Republican attacks. In regard to interviews on national cable TV he did not accept the challenge thrown at him by Bill O’Reilly, host of the “No Spin” evening news program. This was a mistake, and as O’Reilly keeps hammering:  not showing up on his show cost Al Gore the election. This may or may not be so but it is a fact that O’Reilly has the largest audience in the country, as far as journalists go. It is also true that the “no spin” exists only in O’Reilly’s and his partisans mind because he is frequently rude and acerbic to his guests on the program, when they disagree with his very firmly set views. But Kerry would surely have had the stature and intellect to put him in his place and answer questions forthrightly rather than with canned statements. Kerry missed this chance.  Regardless whether or not one likes O’Reilly the fact is that he does have a nightly audience of an estimated 3 million viewers most of whom vote in the election.

Kerry missed another chance to show substance. As his Vice-Presidential running mate he chose John Edwards, the junior Senator from North Carolina. This was also a mistake. I have been told from family members who live in that state that Edwards ran for President only because he would have lost this year’s re-election to the Senate. He has made his reputation and millions of dollars as a trial lawyer who specialized in suing physicians for malpractice. During the campaign he defended himself by asserting that he really didn’t go after the doctors but only the insurance companies when he achieved millions of dollars settlements. This is misleading on two counts. First of all there is the common misconception that “the insurance company will pay anyway.” Yes, the insurance company pays first but then drives up the rates so that malpractice insurance coverage becomes nearly unaffordable and the individual physician has to deal with that. The other point is that Edwards’ specialty was to sue obstetricians when a baby was born with cerebral palsy. This was regarded as the physician’s fault, which is incorrect. In most instances there are prenatal or unavoidable perinatal factors at play and the physician has no role in their causation. The malpractice problem is currently a massive one around the country. Not because we have so many negligent physicians but frivolous law suits are filed on a daily basis. These drive insurance rates up and responsible physicians out of high risk specialties. Who suffers as a result? The patient of course! As physicians we were used to thinking of the patient first but medical practice has changed since I first came to this country. Now, the thought of potential law suits is ever present. Defensive medicine is being practiced, which not only drives up the costs but in some instances puts an additional mental barrier into play. Not only do you have to worry about whether the medical insurance company will pay for what you think the patient really needs, but in addition you have to be concerned about how the case will look in court if and when you get sued. It is actually no longer an if but only a when and that is no way to practice good medicine.

Edwards and Kerry promise tort reform but we know how pre-election promises compare with post-election legislation.  Since Edwards may not even carry his home state in the election, does not bring significant domestic or foreign policy experience to the ticket and carries the above mentioned baggage, Kerry has gained nothing from his choice and lost the potential support of a number of well-meaning practicing physicians.

Within the last two weeks it also became apparent that there is not enough influenza vaccine to cover all the people who want to have preventive inoculations. The immediate reason was that vaccine batches from a major supplier in the UK, to whom the production had been outsourced, were contaminated. Why couldn’t we produce the vaccine here? Ask Senator Edwards! The “deep pockets” pharmaceutical industry is a prime target for litigation. Since vaccines have potentially the most dangerous side-effects from all pharmaceutical products the industry simply abstains from producing them. It’s a free country after all and the buck rules.

While we are on medicine let us not forget that stem cells have also emerged as a campaign propaganda tool. When Christopher Reeve died last month from complications of his debilitating spinal cord injury, the stem cell proponents went into overdrive. I have nothing against stem cell research and actually wrote an article about it on this site in August of 2001. At that time I mentioned not only the hyped benefits but also the state of the art and that it will take not only years but may be even decades before we really know how to use their potential constructively and safely. Although the article is three years old it is still correct and can be read profitably.

As mentioned, the Republicans kept insisting that Kerry cannot be trusted. Not only was he portrayed as weak on national defense but also as being unable to make up his mind and “flip-flopping” on every issue. Since I was blessed with a classical education in high school, even during the Nazi years, a historic analog, Fabius Cunctator, immediately came to mind. Let me explain. When Hannibal invaded Italy, after crossing the Alps with his elephants, he found the Romans totally unprepared. In the spring of 217 B.C. he promptly defeated a Roman army under the consul Flaminius near Lake Trasimeno, which is only about 80 miles north of Rome, as the crow flies.  Faced with this calamity the Senate put Quintus Fabius Maximus, a prudent man, in charge of the Roman army. Instead of giving battle he simply followed the Carthagenians around the country thereby depriving them of the opportunity for other cities to flock to their victorious banners. This earned Fabius, as he was referred to, the anger of the masses. He was regarded as a coward and given the nickname Cunctator, the Hesitator. But QFM, as we might call him, knew what he was doing. He realized that the outcome of battles was never guaranteed and by avoiding losses he would eventually triumph because Hannibal would run out of steam in a hostile country. This policy did not sit well with the impatient Romans. They appointed a new general, Varro, who promptly attacked Hannibal and suffered a massive defeat at Cannae (216 B.C.). Hannibal’s tactic of encirclement has become a text book example for military strategists that has been followed by generals ever since. It even appeared last week on the History channel. To appreciate the magnitude of this catastrophe one needs to know that from a Roman army which consisted, according to Plutarch, of 88,000 men, 50,000, including a considerable number of senators, lost their lives and 14,000 ended up as prisoners. As an aside one might mention that in those days the officials who were responsible for war were really leading their soldiers into battle rather than remaining safely behind desks.

With this catastrophe at hand the Romans recalled Fabius who managed to stabilize the country. He was helped in this effort by Hannibal’s decision not to follow up on his victory and march on the defenseless Rome. Fabius again employed his strategy of merely harassing Hannibal rather than attempting to throw him out if Italy. This went on for more than ten years. Understandably the Romans attributed Fabius’ conduct to his advanced age and a younger more aggressive spirit was called for. The plan by Publius Cornelius Scipio to bring the war to Africa rather than fighting it in Italy was, therefore, approved by the Senate over Fabius’ objections. The Carthaginians recalled Hannibal to defend the homeland in 203 but apparently he was also no longer in his prime and was decisively defeated at Zama, one year later. A proverbial Carthaginian peace was imposed by Rome and became the foundation for the emerging Roman Empire. Fabius did not live to see the triumph of his rival but he was buried with full honors at public expense.

This little excursion into history may not be irrelevant for our Senator who wants to be President. Prudence can indeed stave off disaster but when carried to excess people get tired after ten years and demand more dramatic action. Thanks to the wisdom of President Eisenhower our Constitution now limits to eight years the maximum time a given President can create harm.

There is one additional aspect one might have considered in one’s vote for President and one can learn potentially a great deal by looking at the women political candidates are married to. We were able to get to know them to some extent because they were drafted to appear on the campaign trail.

Laura Bush came across as a very nice, pleasant lady whom one would want to have as a neighbor any day. But she is not likely to provide counsel on important political decisions. She is neither being asked nor does she want to. As she has reportedly described herself in the past, “I read, I smoke and I admire.” She has probably given up smoking in the meantime but she still admires and a balancing role to check the messianic fantasies of her husband cannot be expected.

Teresa Heinz-Kerry on the other hand is spun from different cloth. Born into a physician’s family in Mozambique, educated in Switzerland, fluent in several languages, married to Senator Heinz, she has seen the world in all its splendor and poverty. She gave up professional life for raising her children but when her husband was killed in a tragic plane accident she took over the Presidency of the Heinz philanthropic foundation, which dispenses vast sums of money for humanitarian purposes all over the world. In 1995 she married Senator Kerry who does not appear to be in the least disturbed by her strong will and outspokenness on any and all issues. It is to his credit that he doesn’t try to dictate to her what she should say on the campaign trail, because as he said, “nobody tells Teresa what to do or what to say.” Kerry’s opponents obviously had a field day with her off-the- cuff remarks but she is a woman of substance and if she were to run for President rather than her husband I’d have absolutely no problem voting for her. Teresa is just as important an element in Kerry’s life as Maria Shriver is in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s. These women can take the rough edges off their men and guide them into reasonable channels. In both marriages there is bipartisanship because Teresa is basically a Republican and Maria a Democrat. This has to reflect on the candidate’s behavior and we are much more likely to see cooperation with the opposite political party under those circumstances than when only one party exists in the marriage or one party dominates the Executive as well as Legislative branch of government.

So where do we stand today? As far as Utah is concerned my vote for President is irrelevant because the state is so heavily Republican that not even Senator Bennett, who is up for re-election bothers to campaign. The electoral system guarantees a Bush victory. All one can do is register a protest vote for Kerry, Nader or any of the Libertarians which does not effect the outcome of this election. It was, therefore, rather comical that The Salt Lake Tribune, which has been reasonably honest in its political coverage, found it necessary to officially endorse Bush in an Editorial. What was surprising, however, was the reaction of the readership. Numerous Letters to the Editor were published in response which denounced the paper and several of the writers officially canceled their subscription. This was heartwarming because it shows that there is a substantial segment of voters, at least in the Salt Lake area, that has no use for the direction Bush has taken the Republican Party and is ready to cast a protest vote. The editorial was actually written somewhat tongue in cheek and it seemed that the writer had done so under duress from the owner of the paper. Freedom of speech ends when your job is on the line. This is just as true in democracies as in dictatorships.

Today the good citizens of our country obediently trot to the polls and an unusually large turnout is expected. But don’t hold your breath that we’ll know the outcome by tomorrow morning. An unprecedented army of lawyers is standing by in the various states to challenge the election results unless there were to be an unexpected landslide victory for either side. The polling stations will be manned by numerous overseers, especially in the so-called battleground states, who will challenge some prospective voters for their credentials and then provide them with provisional ballots until their bona fides are established. How long it will take to count those votes is anybody’s guess. In Florida extra precautions are taken. We have been told that representatives from 15 nations will watch the goings on and may be Vladimir, who is busy reassembling the pieces of the old Soviet Union, will also have his deputies there. Florida actually is again one of the battlegrounds par excellence and we have already been told that tens of thousands of absentee ballots that had been sent out never reached their intended recipient.

As mentioned in an earlier installment there is also the problem of the complexity of the actual ballot that is to be cast. In some instances, as reported last week, the candidate’s name and the hole to be punched don’t line up and are in reversed order. The voting machines differ from state to state and with some there is no “paper trail” that would allow a recount. There is also no possibility for outside monitors to check on the accuracy of the computer programs that tally the votes and the door to intentional or unintentional fraud is wide open. It’ll be an interesting month and it may be December 1 before we’ll know who won or was appointed as the case may be. If the 2000 election is a precedent it may even take till Christmas or whenever.







December 1, 2004

WHY BUSH WON

The concerns expressed in the last paragraph of the previous installment, that we may have to wait till Christmas before the election results are final, were fortunately unfounded. Kerry conceded defeat with remarkable speed and the country seems, so far, to have been saved from court battles. The reason for the cautionary note will become apparent when you keep reading.

When one considers the record of Bush’s first term in an unbiased manner one is forced to conclude that a chief executive who: squandered the world’s good will towards America; allowed the dollar to drop to unprecedented levels against the Euro; embroiled the country, on false pretenses, in a war; and turned a substantial surplus into a massive deficit, ought to have been fired. The election was really Kerry’s to lose rather than Bush’s to win. Kerry probably lost because he failed to meet the criticisms that were leveled at his character, with vigor and honest, plain speech. Suggestions as to what he should have done were made in previous essays and need not be repeated here. They can be found under the key word “Kerry” in the compilation. The most important reason for his loss may, however, have been a lack of desire to take on an inheritance that would cause him only grief and, as mentioned previously, would also bring him into direct conflict with his Senate testimony of 1971. “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” would have been the words that could have been thrown in his face. There simply was no plan how to end the war in Iraq. Just as Nixon could not have gotten out of Vietnam unless he turned the South Vietnamese over to a victorious North, Kerry would have been saddled with an unpopular war that cannot readily be brought to a successful conclusion. In his heart of hearts Kerry may well have concluded that Bush brought this misery on by himself so let him eat the broth he has cooked. 

When one reads the papers and listens to newscasters one is told that Bush won for two main reasons. One is that he is a “strong leader” who will protect us from future terrorist attacks and on whom one can rely in times of war. The other is that he stands for “moral values,” which is the code word for denouncing the permissive society we have become. These are important aspects and deserve to be discussed separately. The “strong leader” image comes straight out of Karl Rove’s power point presentation on the ranch during the Christmas holidays in 2002. As mentioned in the essay on “The Great Liberator” (May 1, 2004). Karl Rove’s winning strategy was to portray Bush’s “Persona” as: “Strong Leader; Bold Action; Big Ideas; Peace in World; Cares about People Like Me; Leads a Strong Team.” This was indeed the image, which dominated the propaganda waves during the campaign while Kerry was painted as a “waffler” and “flip-flopper,” who cannot be trusted in these dangerous times.

That this so called Bush Persona had no basis in reality was irrelevant. Every skilled propagandist knows that whatever you say long enough and vigorously enough becomes the truth that people will buy into. I was especially intrigued that during the campaign Democrats and others who saw Bush as he really handled himself rather than what he ought to be, in Rove’s mind, never took him to task for it. The slogan that “he kept us safe from terrorism” was never repudiated by the simple fact that 9/11 happened on his watch and not on somebody else’s. From the propaganda one was led to assume that Bush had been inaugurated on September 12 rather than January 20, and that his conduct during the preceding months was really of no concern, when the opposite was true. He ignored the bin Laden threat and the resulting 9/11 tragedy was not “unforeseeable” as Condi Rice testified to before the Senate. If Bush had taken the August 6, 2001 briefing seriously, as a responsible leader should have, he might have knocked heads together at the CIA and FBI to get at the bottom of the threat. He did not do so and it is this failure which should have been brought out in the election campaign. From it everything else flowed and the consequences will haunt us for years to come.

There were indeed “Bold Actions” and “Big Ideas,” which essentially boiled down to “bringing democracy” to the Middle East at the point of a gun. That this does not tend to work well has not yet sunk in, in spite of the fact that by following Israel’s Likud model we now have our very own West Bank and Gaza problem in Iraq. This is not hindsight but was entirely predictable. “Peace in the World” is farther than it has been even four years ago. But “Cares for People Like Me” was a real hit. It was boiled down to a simple question the proverbial Joe Six Pack can readily understand, “Who would you rather have a beer with: Bush or Kerry?” When this is the level upon which the “Leader of the Free World” is supposed to be chosen, the country is in trouble. Nevertheless, the slogan resonated and worked.

This brings us to the second aspect, “moral values.” These have attained unexpected prominence when it was reported that exit polls ranked the item as the number one concern why people voted for Bush. There is indeed a considerable groundswell of unhappiness in Middle America that our society has lost its bearings but this is hardly the main issue that mattered. The finding confronts us, therefore, with the science and magic of exit polling. As mentioned on another occasion it doesn’t matter so much who you vote for but how the votes are counted and winners are projected. Projection is the key word and it relies on exit polling the results of which are then forwarded to the TV networks and the Associated Press. There was the nasty flap in the 2000 elections when the crucial vote of Florida was first awarded to Gore then to Bush and finally settled by the Supreme Court’s single vote. The networks vowed that this would never happen again. Projections for a given state would no longer be made until all the precincts had closed their doors and in addition a new company would be hired to conduct the polls and provide the results to all the networks. This much is readily known but as usual the devil is in the details and for those one has to go to the Internet.

The exit polls of the November elections are currently regarded as seriously flawed because they predicted Kerry as the winner, especially earlier in the day. Yet the same exit polls are used to document America’s fondness of moral values in its quest for President. This incongruity led me to investigate how exit polls are conducted. This is not a trivial post hoc exercise but shows how election results are actually obtained nowadays. Since it is unlikely that exit polling will be abolished by executive fiat we might as well know what happens in the real world.

The company responsible for exit polling is the so-called National Election Pool. It is run by a partnership of Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International and has a well deserved reputation for producing reliable results. So how does the process work? The company sends out letters to professors of various colleges and universities and asks them to engage the help of some of their students to hand a questionnaire to x number of people in a random fashion as they emerge from the voting booth. The precincts from which the samples are obtained are carefully pre-selected for known demographics in order to get as accurate and divers a sample as possible. One may immediately object that the students, well meaning as they are, may not be truly random in their handing out of the questionnaires because hippy type students may prefer similarly attired voters and vice versa, but these preferences tend to come out in the statistical wash. On the other hand there can be a bias as to who accepts a questionnaire and who runs out of the precinct in order to get back to work or home as soon as possible, especially after a long wait. But again, past experience has shown that this factor is negligible.

The next item is the questionnaire itself. I was so far unable to get a sample of one that was used in November but I do have one from the New Hampshire 2004 Primary which apparently served as the model. It consists of boxes to be marked for questions labeled A-Z, starting with “1 Male, 2 Female,” and ending with “2003 total family income,” where 1 is “under $15,000” and 6 “$100,00 or more.” Column C has the names of the presidential contenders and column H is the crucial one from which the “moral values” emerged in first place. For the November election the column read, “Which One Issue mattered most in deciding how you voted for President.” There were seven choices that were listed in the sequence shown and I have added the percentage results in brackets: Taxes (5), Education (4), Iraq (15), Terrorism (19), Economy/Jobs (20), Moral Values (22), Healthcare (8). Although moral values did indeed land on the top of the heap and 80% of Bush voters checked that box; Economy/Jobs were a close second. They were Kerry’s forte who got his 80%.

These data were subsequently tweaked to assuage the grief of the losing Democrats who pointed out that “moral values” is an ambiguous term anyway and if one were to combine Economy/Jobs with Iraq and Terrorism those concerns would clearly appear on the front burner. Thus, multiple choice questions are not necessarily the best way to get at true answers. It has also been pointed out that when the question was open ended as in an October Harris poll only 1% of prospective voters volunteered moral values as their prime concern. But be that as it may; there are more important issues at stake in the exit polls.

We are told that the complete sample, depending upon which site you visit, consisted of 11,027; 13,531 or 13,660 respondents. This fairly small number is, however, not the main issue because there is some indication that something happened with the data later in the day to bring them more in conformity with actually tabulated votes. We don’t know what happened but one set of figures was clearly out of line with the other. The margin of error between projections and actual results tends to be rather small and ranges in general around 1-2 percentage points. But there were instances during the November elections were the early results reportedly differed by 12 or 14 percentage points, which is practically unheard of. This information comes from www.globalresarch.ca under “Footprints of Electoral Fraud: The November 2 Exit Poll Scam” by Michael Keefer and I have no independent information to prove or disprove his claims. At any rate Keefer says that in Ohio the exit poll data reported by CNN at 7:32 p.m. EST favored Kerry as leading Bush by a little more than four percent. But by 1:41 a.m., when the final exit poll had been updated, Bush was leading Kerry by 2.5 percent. Many of us saw on TV the long lines of voters during the evening of November 2 and it is difficult to believe from their appearance that they were all staunch Republicans. But appearances aside something else had happened that defies logic, if the mentioned report is accurate. To quote from the report, “At 7:32 p.m. EST there were 1,963 respondents; at 1:41 a.m. on November 3, the final total consisted of 2,020 respondents. These fifty-seven additional respondents must all have voted very powerfully for Bush – for while representing only a 2.8% increase in the number of respondents, they managed to produce a swing from Kerry to Bush of fully 6.5 percent.” A similar event occurred in Florida, the other key state. At 8:40 p.m. EST exit polls showed Kerry and Bush in a dead heat, but by 1:01 a.m. EST the final poll gave Bush a 4 percent lead over Kerry. Now comes the clincher, “The number of exit polls respondents in Florida had risen only from 2,846 to 2,862. But once again, a powerful numerical magic was at work. A mere sixteen respondents – 0.55% of the total number – produced a four percent swing to Bush.” Thus the question arises: were the exit poll projections completely wrong or was the actual vote count interfered with to provide a victory for Bush? Furthermore, was The National Election Pool forced to massage their data for the final update in order to retain credibility for the future? Something happened but we don’t know what.

One may now say, so what, forget about exit polls and just count the votes. But it’s not as simple as that.  First of all exit polls are regarded as so accurate that their numbers are taken at face value when elections are monitored in third world countries. If the counted votes (remember Stalin: never mind who votes, what’s important is who counts the votes) differ markedly from the exit polls the vote count is suspected of having been fraudulent. This is especially á propos in regard to the Ukrainian vote which is making headlines all over the world at this time. The good people of Kiev, and we must really congratulate them, defied miserable weather to protest an election result that showed Yanukovich as having won the election by 49.4 percent over his rival Yushchenko who supposedly garnered 46.7 percent. The exit polls, on the other hand, had essentially the same result of 49.7% versus 46.7% but in favor of the opposition candidate, Yushchenko!  Now back to the critical state of Ohio and the 7:32 p.m. EST exit poll before the data had undergone a miraculous transformation. At that time Kerry had a four percent lead and on that basis he should have won the election.

The question arises therefore, how the votes that had been cast were counted. At this point we must thank the Internet for keeping democracy alive. If one types “US elections 2004” into Google one is overwhelmed with articles about irregularities and outright fraud. Obviously Internet sites cannot necessarily be checked for accuracy, and there are some very disgruntled citizens around, but it is possible to glean some rather surprising facts. The most important one is that 2 companies: Diebold Election Systems (DES) and Election Systems & Software Inc. (ES&S) were responsible for registering and counting about 80 percent of our votes. Now comes the real surprise: those are not completely separate entities but are run by the brothers Bob and Todd Urosevich, second generation immigrants from the Ukraine. While Bob is responsible for Diebold, Todd’s major contribution is the touch-screen voting machine that runs under the name of Accu-Vox-TSx. The company advertisement states that the equiment “represents a major leap forward in voting technology. Our reliable system accurately and securely captures each vote.” Is this true?

To examine this claim one need to know that Diebold and ES&S use the same software which is Windows based and can readily be hacked into. Diebold found itself in major difficulties after the California Primary in March of 2004 where the machines malfunctioned to an extent that according to The San Diego Union-Tribune of May 1, 2004 California’ Secretary of State asked the State’s Attorney General to open a criminal investigation on charges of fraud and deliberate misleading advertisements. The Attorney General did not bring criminal charges but went the civil court route in September of 2004 and Diebold settled with the State for 2.6 Million dollars on November 10.

These were the same touch-screen systems that had been used in about one third of the votes cast on November 2 around the country. It has now been reported that some of the touch-screen voting machines recorded the wrong choices. When voters checked their vote against the review screen at the end, some found out that their vote for one candidate had been changed to another. When they tried to correct the error the obstinate machine refused to do so and when supervisors were notified of the problem they promised to fix it.

How widespread were the voting irregularities on November 2? This is a difficult question to answer because Internet information tends to be highly anti-Bush on this topic and one does not know what to credit and what to discount. One of the somewhat more objective articles is by William Rivers Pitt in the November 8 edition of www.truthout.org   Some of the “strange things” that did happen were that in Broward County Florida, a Democrat stronghold, machines started counting backwards after 32,000 votes had been cast. In one of Ohio’s precinct in Franklin county Bush got 4,258 votes to Kerry’s 260 but only 638 voters had actually cast ballots. In another Democratic stronghold LaPorte County Indiana “the electronic voting machines decided that each precinct only had 300 votes.” Thus, for more than 79,000 registered voters only 22,000 could be counted. The list goes on and the article is well worth reading.

It is apparent, therefore, that widespread and to some extent systematic irregularities favoring Bush over Kerry seem to have occurred. We also know that they were predicted as early as the spring of 2004.  Lynn Landes published on April 28, 2004 in www.onlinejournal.com a fascinating article. She wrote, “Voters can run, but they can’t hide from these guys. Meet the Urosevich brothers, Bob and Todd. Their respective companies, Diebold and ES&S, will count (using both computerized ballot scanners and touchscreen machines) about 80 percent of all votes cast in the upcoming U.S. presidential.election. . . . The ability to rig an election is well within easy reach of voting machine companies. . . . And don’t count on recounts to save the day. In most states recounts of paper ballots only occur if election results are close. The message for those who want to rig elections is, ‘rig them by a lot.’  . . . There is no federal agency that has regulatory authority or oversight of the voting machine industry. . . . The 2004 election rests in the hands of the Urosevich brothers who are financed by the far-out right wing and top donors of the Republican Party. The Democrats are either sitting ducks or co-conspirators. I don’t know which.”

On 10-10-04 William Thomas wrote an article “Rigged.” It starts out with “GW Bush has already won the Presidential election. It doesn’t much matter that the actual vote has yet to be held . . . “ Thomas based this conclusion on the fact that as mentioned around 80% of the votes are registered and counted by Diebold and associates while the remaining are divided between Sequoia and SAIC. Sequoia was, according to the article involved in a corruption case that led to jail sentences of some top Louisiana state officials, while SAIC also has “a long history of fraud charges and ‘security lapses.’ in its electronic system.” Articles of this type may explain why Karl Rove had not presented us with an anticipated last minute October surprise. He may not have needed it when the election was already in the bag.

There is another interesting aspect to this story. Our media report diligently on suspected vote fraud in the Ukraine but there is hardly a word about the Internet furor in regard to our own problems. The Boston Globe wrote a rather non-committal article on November 17 entitled “Media accused of ignoring election irregularities,” but it did not address some of the major issues that were raised here. We might, therefore, add to their headline the words, “for now.” The 2004 election chapter seems far from closed and the Kiev protesters may actually help our democracy here.

But regardless of what happens in the future about the election results for now we have Mr. Bush who has claimed to have been given a mandate (some of his supporters even say that it came from the good Lord Himself) and promised us that he will “spend the capital he has earned.” He feels vindicated and we know, therefore, what we can expect: more of the same. While reformatting his cabinet he is turning it into an echo chamber. He is separating, in biblical fashion, the sheep from the goats where the sheep have to bleat in unison and the goats are banished to outer darkness. This could have worked in an authoritarian state but we still have a democracy where it can’t. There are responsible moderate Republicans in Congress who will try to make their voices heard.

While Bush seems intent to pursue a domestic agenda, such as tax and social security reform, he is likely to be hamstrung by foreign events that are not under his control and will sap his ability to spend money the way he wants. If he tries to nominate ultra-conservative judges to the Supreme Court the Democrats will filibuster and he does not have the necessary two thirds majority in Congress to overrule them. In foreign affairs he will be confronted by the fact that there is precious little he can do about Korea’s nuclear weapons or Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He doesn’t have the troops to invade the rest of “the axis of evil.” “Bombing them back into the stone age,” as his Dad promised the Iraqis in days gone by, will likewise not bring peace on earth and good will to men. If and when elections are held in Iraq they will probably not bring the democracy Mr. Bush envisioned and a victorious “exit strategy” is also likely to remain elusive. Although he now proclaims his willingness to bring about a viable Palestinian state it is in all probability too late for that. The chance was in the spring of 2001 and that was missed. Arafat was not the major problem as the accord between him and Rabin showed. But the Likud party, first under Netanyahu and thereafter under Sharon was just as intent on preventing a Palestinian state from arising as some Palestinian factions are on the disappearance of Israel. Regardless what the new Palestinian leadership does, they are likely to get only words from Jerusalem while the deeds will consist of wall building and increasing the settlements in the West Bank. Sharon holds all the cards and he has no interest in allowing this Bush vision to come to pass.

As if that was not enough of the problems our “strong leader” will face there is also still Osama around whom Bush vowed to capture three years ago “dead or alive.”  In October we saw him on our TV screens. Not only did he look remarkably healthy but outright regal in his flowing gold-braided robe. This was not the picture of a hunted fugitive who hides out some place in a cave or hut on the Afghan-Pakistan border, as popular propaganda has it. I also used to subscribe to this opinion but not any more. The man looked too well cared for. So, where he does he live at present?  The Pakistanis gave up looking for him last week and I believe with good reason. Although I have no inside information common sense provides an obvious answer, which has in all probability also occurred to others including members of the Administration who do have facts. Bush’s words that, “we will pursue the terrorists wherever they hide out and we will hold the countries which hide them responsible” ring very hollow indeed if my suspicions are correct.

Ask yourself for a moment what you would do if you were the son of one of the richest families in Saudi Arabia and you find yourself with a price of $25 million on your head? Where would you go and who could you trust? I believe that the answer is obvious: you go home where the family ties are strong and nobody would dare to deliver you to the enemy. This obviously occurred also to the Saudi Royals who are hanging on to their monarchy by the skin of their teeth. They would be more than happy to make some quiet arrangement with the Mullahs for whom Osama is a hero, while expressing “plausible denials” abroad. In Saudi Arabia, in the bosom of his family and likeminded friends, Osama can now wait patiently for the fruits of his labors to ripen. If I am correct in my assumption about Osama’s whereabouts we are not likely to hear much about him from our administration because there is absolutely nothing it can do. What the Arabs have going for them is patience. This is what we lack and that is what they know and bank on.

Osama doesn’t have to send terrorists to the US any more. Our government is doing all the terrorizing of the population by itself with intermittent alarming news and increasing strictures on our lives to promote “security” and thereby produces further drains on our resources.

Our intelligence services are now blamed for the 9/11 failure and the Iraq debacle. A brand new super agency is about to be created which will consume considerable amounts of money and will be even more unwieldy than what we have at present. It is also predictable that if it were to come up with facts which don’t fit the purposes of Bush&Co. they will be ignored again. While some reform of the CIA and more collaboration with the FBI may well have been appropriate, the current effort seems to have as its main purpose to divert attention from the person who was really responsible for getting us into this fix, the President.

Let us wish the President and his family a happy Christmas season but the way things look this may be the only peace he is likely to enjoy for some time to come. If even only half of what we are told on the Internet is true the resulting scandals, if they were allowed to hit the major media, may well dwarf ENRON and Watergate. Let us remember that President Nixon had won the election by a landslide in 1972 and by 1974 he had to resign in disgrace.  There are now more than enough scandals in the administration to potentially bring both Bush as well as Cheney down, if the media were to follow up on them. Even John Edwards, who is currently out of a job, and who has promised us that he’ll make sure that every vote will be counted might find his calling and he will be difficult to ignore.

The hand-picked new Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, may not be able to provide immunity for the administration either. Although the President had praised him with, “His sharp intellect and sound judgment have helped shape our policies in the war on terror,” Gonzales’ advice to disregard the Geneva Conventions was not particularly enlightened. The resultant abuses in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib have brought him sufficient enemies that each and every one of his actions will be examined with a fine tooth-comb, even if the appointment were to be confirmed by the Senate. Finally, if the administration keeps insisting on having been elected to provide “moral values,” for our country the American people may well demand them from those who govern us. When that happens our leadership is likely to be in deep trouble, because morality goes beyond what has been called “pelvic issues.”






January 1, 2005

LOVE YOUR ENEMY

This is the season of the year when hope is rekindled and resolutions are made to do better than in the past. It is not easy to be optimistic nowadays when one looks at the world realistically and watches all the natural as well as man-made disasters unfold. Nevertheless, giving in to despair and/or resentment does not solve problems it only makes them worse.

Let us, therefore, separate the natural disasters such as hurricanes and now the devastating tsunami, over which we have no control, from the man-made ones that are our responsibility.  Nature’s upheavals may well become worse because our climate is changing. We don’t know the cause for certain. We don’t know how much is due to industrial pollution and what is the role of a wobbling earth, changes of solar emissions or a shifting of magnetic poles. But that does not absolve us from the duty to study our climate and take prudent rather than excessive action. Inasmuch as natural catastrophes are likely to become increasingly costly it would behoove us to husband our financial resources to be able to meet the demand when it arises.

Prudence and foresight ought to be the key words that allow us to meet the challenges nature as well as our politicians create. They are the antidote to fear with which those who are in power over our lives in the economic and military sense try to rule us. We are being told, for instance, that we are confronted with mortal danger to our way of life by an evil ruthless enemy and unless he is defeated, regardless of the cost to ourselves and others, civilization as we know it will perish. Some authors even prophecy as the goal of Islamist revolutionaries the creation of a United Islamic Republic of America. This is not my fantasy; I read it in the pages of the conservative Jewish publication Commentary. It is an old axiom that you can rule people, like donkeys, with carrots and sticks. When there are not enough carrots to go around then you have to frighten them into submission. Remarkably enough this has worked for millennia and puts into question the theory of the perfectibility of the human race as a whole rather than merely of some few gifted individuals.

We are currently living in a truly paradoxical age. One the one hand we want to spread secular democracies around the world and on the other hand we are doing this in the name of protecting our Judeo-Christian heritage. What is even more astonishing is that these policies are promoted and enacted by people who regard themselves as “born again Christians.” With other words, from our President on down, these individuals believe that they have found Christ in their lives who has saved them from evil and it is their duty to now bring this good news to the rest of the world regardless whether the world wants it or not. But who is this Christ or personal Jesus they have taken to heart and why did he get himself crucified?

I am not about to engage in theological speculations about unprovable assumptions so let us look instead at comparative religion and history as recorded in the holy books. This is a wholesome enterprise because it shows how the American people are being misled by skillful propaganda. Furthermore, many of the people who are doing so are acting in good faith and are simply not aware of the profound differences between the Jewish and the Christian religion which are patched over under the term Judeo-Christian. I have discussed some of these differences in The Moses Legacy but this is a book that tends not be read. I shall, therefore, attempt to profile here the essential distinctions between the teachings of Moses and those of Jesus. This is not merely a theoretical exercise but involves choices by what principles we intend to live our lives.

Moses, as he comes across in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible ascribed to Moses), is relatively easy to understand. He took a diverse group of people who had lived in Egypt, united them under a single God and in the name of that God gave them a law code that set them apart from all other nations. The laws were designed to create a warrior ethos that would allow a numerically inferior group to overcome the people living in the country which they were to conquer and occupy. For the natives of the land no mercy was to be shown. They had to be exterminated in toto because their customs would deflect the immigrants from the worship of the true God to whom alone they were responsible. Thus, there was to be no fraternization, no sharing of meals and, of course, no intermarriage.  The conquerors were to live in a world of Israelites ruled by Israelites for the benefit of Israelites. Under those circumstances the Lord would shower blessings upon them but if they reneged on the contract with the Lord, which they had entered into at Sinai, supposedly voluntarily, severe long lasting punishment including the expulsion from the land would follow. Since Moses’ laws were stringent, backsliding was to be expected and this is why the most terrible calamities that would befall them in that case were listed in Deuteronomy, which is essentially a summation of the first four books. Moses ruled by fear and the last verses of Deuteronomy make this quite clear. It is stated that there has not been a prophet in Israel like Moses “whom the Lord knew face to face; in all the signs and the wonders, which the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land; and in all the mighty hand, and in all the great terror, which Moses wrought [emphasis added] in the sight of all Israel [Dt XXXIV 10-12].”

The Israelites or Jews as they were later called were people like everybody else. They could neither live up to the lofty admonitions nor were they capable of exterminating all their enemies and were, therefore, conquered and dispossessed twice from their land. Now they are engaged in a repeat performance in Palestine. Since their leadership has apparently not drawn the appropriate lessons from the past failures this experiment may well end up the same way as the previous two. Whenever one disregards the rights of others and attempts to remake an existing society into one’s own image one is asking for trouble. This is the lesson that has not yet sunk in but pertains equally to the leadership of Israel as well as to some Jews in the Diaspora.

This is what we know about Moses: a thoroughly autocratic, even tyrannical, flesh and blood ruler of a reluctant people. Now, how about Jesus? Here the situation is considerably more complex because we don’t have one account of his life but four, which differ in a number of details. Furthermore, the gospel of John is mainly a theological document, which takes Jesus out of the realm of humanity and places him into that of the divine.  But let us again leave theology aside and concentrate on the essence of Jesus’ teachings.

We don’t know for certain what Jesus said and what the evangelists have put into his mouth. Since he spoke, in all probability, Aramaic rather than Hebrew, Greek or Latin and no written publication of his is extant we are dealing with translations of translations. All of us who have played silent mail as children know what can come out under those circumstances. This problem was attacked by a group of academics, the so-called Jesus Seminar, who met ever so often and discussed what words that have been ascribed to Jesus he might actually have uttered. Their final report entitled:  The Five Gospels. What did Jesus really say? was published in 1993.

The seminar consisted of 76 eminent professors from North American and European religious colleges who devised a rigorous scientific protocol where the words attributed to Jesus by the gospel writers could be graded for presumed authenticity. Each gospel, including that of Thomas, was examined and a color code was assigned to every one of Jesus’ sentences. A colloquial way to define the words for authenticity as proposed by one member was: red for, “That’s Jesus!,” pink for, “Sure sounds like Jesus,” grey, “Well, maybe,” and black for, “There’s been some mistake.” A vote was cast by each member of the seminar and a probability score was assigned to each color: Greater than 75 percent for red, between 50 and 75 percent to pink, between 26 and 50 percent for grey, and 25 percent or less for black. When the scores were tallied it was found that of the more than 1500 passages only 90 received a red or pink score, and only 10 were unequivocally placed into the red column! I have a feeling that even the members of the seminar may have been surprised at the outcome of this academic exercise.

What does this tell us about Jesus? The answer seems to be that he lives in the minds of beholders; but even so a minimalist consensus is achievable. Regardless of the academicians’ scientific problems what do we, ordinary people, associate the Christian way of life with? I believe that it deals with love, forgiveness, repentance and sacrifice of self for others. Furthermore, and this is the essential difference to Judaism, these virtues are to be extended not only to members of one’s ethnic or national group but to everyone we come into contact with. St. Paul’s doctrine: In Christ there is “not Jew nor Greek, not slave nor free, not male and female [Galatians 3:28];” did away not only with national and class distinctions but also repudiated the Jewish national concept of separateness. If we are all one then we have to truly treat each other as members of one family where when one falls ill all feel the pain and come to each others’ help. The parable of the Good Samaritan was the illustration where Jesus broke with Jewish tradition which had limited the concept of “neighbor” to members of the tribe. Thus, there are fundamental differences in the authentic (biblical) Jewish and Christian view of the relationships that should govern our conduct to “the other.”

Although the Jewish rituals were demanding they were not in conflict with basic human nature. An eye for an eye, namely retribution for ills that have been suffered, is infinitely easier than letting bygones be bygones. Deuteronomy is quite specific. For instance: the tribe of Amalek that did not let the wandering Hebrews pass through the land, but attacked them, has to be held in perpetual dishonor. The slight must never be forgotten (XXV: 19]. A malicious murderer who has escaped to a city of refuge needs to be tracked down. “No pity” shall be shown and he has to be placed “into the hand of the avenger of blood that he may die [XIX 12-13].” Vengeance is, therefore, not only sanctioned but encouraged and this keeps the cycle of revenge and counter-revenge going. This is not only ancient history but explains, what others may regard as, the fanatical obsession with past Nazi war crimes towards Jews and the continued reprisals against Palestinian suicide attacks.

Jesus, who grew up in a milieu of intense civil and religious strife, saw that violence and resultant retribution only perpetuate violence and without forgiveness there can never be peace in this world. He found himself, however, not only in direct conflict with Jewish orthodoxy but also of human nature. A “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do” uttered when nailed to a cross is not part of it. This requires a degree of other-worldliness hardly any one of us is capable of. So does the exhortation to not only love our neighbor but also our enemy, to do good to those who hate us and pray for those who abuse us. Nevertheless this is the only authentic Christian message and those “Christians” who preach and practice vengeance, for the 9/11 tragedy for instance, do not act in accordance with Jesus’ teachings.

Precisely because the Christian message is more difficult it should be followed to the extent we are indeed capable of. Muscle is strengthened by exercise and spiritual muscle is no exception to that rule. Of all the demands the Christian religion places on us “Love your enemy” is surely the most difficult to follow. But let us not be trapped by semantics. As mentioned earlier the sayings of Jesus represent translations of translations. We don’t know the word he used for love, but we do know the word that occurs in the original Greek New Testament and subsequently in the Latin Vulgate. Our language has become impoverished because we no longer distinguish between erotic love, the love of family members towards each other, and the love for music or any other artistic enterprise. The Greeks did and they had several words for what is now lumped under a single one. The word agapao, which was used in the biblical context, denoted not only the love for family but also the concept of esteem. The same applied to the Latin diligete. What this means is that Christians are not necessarily ordered to hug and kiss Osama bin Laden for instance, but we are to see him as a fellow human being, albeit misguided. We can ask ourselves: what does this man really want? and what can he teach us in regard to our own shortcomings? Under those circumstances progress is possible. It is foreclosed when we simply regard him as an evil monster whose actions are beyond comprehension and if he were to be caught and done away with our problems would be solved.

As long as we adhere to this what may be called Old Testament ideation we will stumble from one disaster to the next because our actions, determined by righteous anger, will provoke equal anger on part of those whom we harm in our pursuit of a goal as elusive as instant secular democracy in Iraq. It is not the end that justifies the means; it is the means we employ which determine the outcome of whatever we do. Breaking down doors in the middle of the night and terrifying Iraqi families may be in the interest of finding suspected insurgents but is hardly the way to bring us good will in the long run. Shock and awe is apparently still the motto and our leadership seems to be oblivious to the fact that although you can shock somebody with brute force that doesn’t mean he will be awed by it and will willingly do whatever you want him to. The ill-will the battle for Fallujah has created and is still creating among the former inhabitants of this currently uninhabitable city is likely to simmer for a good long time. We believe that if we just give them money to rebuild their destroyed homes that will solve the problem. It is not likely to in that part of the world where the same tribal loyalties as in Israel hold sway. Blood needs to be washed away by blood is the law and our failure to understand this fundamental doctrine will be the reason why our Iraqi experiment in nation building on secular democratic principles is likely to fail.

The current issue of Time magazine has our President once again as “Person of the Year” on its front cover. There is also extensive reporting about him and what is called the “Bush dynasty” in the inside pages. Although slightly cautious the overall tone is one of approval. I happen to see him differently and after 9/11 I couldn’t help being reminded of Goethe’s Faust. There is a scene where Mephistopheles appears in Faust’s study and when asked by Faust who he is he said, “I am a part of that force which forever desires evil and yet creates good.” With our President it seems to be the opposite. I believe that he truly desires to do good but the means that are employed create evil. Does he know or care how many innocent Iraqis we have killed, maimed, deprived of their homes and livelihoods or that as a result of our liberation of Iraq from a secular dictatorship he seems to be paving the way for a religious one? As The Christian Science Monitor reported recently, Christian families are beginning to leave their country because they are afraid of a Muslim resurgence. This is the tragedy of our time: good Christians pursue noble goals with means that come out of the Old Testament rather than the New. A truly Christian foreign policy, which places the wishes of others on the same level as ours and subsequently achieves a mutually agreeable solution, would truly be a first in human affairs. This may be an impossible dream but it needs to at least be put on the table. Precisely because it is the most difficult thing to do, because it goes against human selfishness, it needs to be worked towards on a case by case basis.

We are being told that the President reads the Bible on Sundays. My only wish is that he would devote himself to the study of the New rather than the Old Testament because there is an additional aspect of the Jesus story which can transcend sectarian and personal strife. Christians are taught to regularly recite “The Lord’s prayer.” I have a suggestion which can even be turned into a New Year’s resolution for anyone. We do not need to regard the sentences contained in the prayer simply as a request to the Deity but as commandments how to treat each other! 

Non-Christians might want to delete the introductory statement of, “Our Father who is in heaven” but, “hallowed be thy name” can be applied. It can be taken as a request not to slander each other, call each other names we don’t want to have applied to ourselves, and refrain from using Jesus’ name as an expletive. The words, “Thy kingdom come” order us to create circumstances on this very earth of ours where help is gladly extended to everyone who is in need, where suffering is reduced to its bare minimum and where we abstain from actions that will produce it. “Thy will be done,” when confronted with a reasonable request and it is in our power to grant it we should do so. “Give us this day our daily bread,” we should see to it that the hungry are indeed being fed; but in addition when Jesus used the word bread he also meant spiritual sustenance. This is what we frequently fail to give to each other. Not only our bodies but our souls require nourishment and we should provide it. “Forgive us our trespasses” is surely something we can and should do. “Lead us not into temptation” is perhaps today the most urgent in our secular capitalistic society. We are being bombarded by promises of instant gratification of most of our desires. Advertisements on billboards, radio, TV, the Internet that play on our greed and sexual urges are only one part. The entire “entertainment industry” tends to be geared now towards emotional, especially sexual, gratification. There is active incitement of our baser qualities to the neglect of the intellectual and spiritual needs of the human being. Neither you nor I can change the industry but we can change the emotional climate in our families and we can make every effort to protect our children from this barrage of falsehood. “Deliver us from evil” follows from the foregoing. Let us carefully consider our actions not only in respect to the hoped for outcome but how the means we employ will impact on others. If this had been done by our leadership we would not be faced with the current daily tragedies to innocent families of Iraqis as well as those of U.S. troops.

In these perilous times lip service to Jesus’ words will no longer suffice, we must take the message to heart including, “Fear not!” In regard to “loving” our enemies the first order of business ought to be to reduce their numbers rather than increase them by ill considered actions. As to those who are determined to harm us we should take them as individuals and examine their personal motives and capabilities rather than lump them under amorphous names such as the Taliban or al Qaeda. In regard to these people we don’t even know how many there are who want to harm us rather than establish religious regimes in their own countries. It is up to those countries how to deal with them. We ought not to be the sheriff of the world where “My will be done” rules. The Cold War strategies where we defended ourselves against nations are currently inapplicable because we deal with probably quite small groups of individuals who may or may not have state support. To use those strategies i.e. reliance on superior military power, is not only fruitless but counterproductive.

For our “Christian” leadership to deserve that name it would have to abandon the old ways of tit for tat and the reliance on fear to maintain power. Instead we should engage in selfless cooperation with the peoples of the rest of the world. There ought to be no favorites but impartial justice towards all and for those nations whose leadership violates international law the United Nations is the appropriate forum to settle disputes. The money we save on useless military expenditures could be set aside not only to restore fiscal balance and domestic programs but also to create a fund for the inevitable natural disasters that are bound to occur in the future.

Unless we follow the road, as shown in the New rather than the Old Testament, Jesus will have died in vain as a deluded idealist. The theology that has grown around the person of Jesus need not deter us. He is honored in the Koran as well as in Buddhist literature and it is now up to us to grant him the stature he deserves. When we truly do what Jesus asked us to, as expressed in the Lord’s Prayer, everybody will benefit. You will tell me that what I have proposed here is not likely to ever come to pass. I know that it won’t for the people who currently are in power but we can adopt these suggestions as our personal New Year’s resolution.







February 1, 2005

ROOTS OF EVIL

            Before entering into the topic at hand a word of explanation is required. This is the fourth anniversary for this website and just like everything else in life it has evolved beyond its original conception. Not only have the essays gotten longer but there are now three books instead of one which I hope to bring to the attention of the readership. The purpose of the books is to present a view of the forces shaping our society which differs from what is generally available and hopefully makes the reader question conventional wisdom. This is, however, not popular in our day and age and there is little incentive to read, let alone buy, this type of material especially in the United States. I have, therefore, decided to make The Moses Legacy and its companion piece Whither Zionism? available in .pdf format so that they can be readily viewed by anyone with computer access. They will, however, also remain on the market and can be ordered through this site.

            Now to the problem of evil, which will not be discussed in a metaphysical-philosophical context but in a very practical one. Furthermore, I shall limit myself only to those evils that are wrought by man rather than unreasoning nature over which we have no control. Like Socrates I don’t believe that most people who create evil desire to do so for the sake of evil but it is the outcome of the desire for some good that is expected to result from their action. The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions and some examples from recent as well as past history will illustrate this principle.  

            Among man-made evils war can surely be regarded as the greatest. Yet American politicians seem to be fond of “War”, not necessarily in its general military sense where it is a disaster to individuals, but as a cause to engage in. Europeans are sick and tired of war and don’t even want to hear the word but since America has never suffered the serious consequences of it, and on the contrary experienced prosperity and increasing stature on the world scene, the word War is popular. Since the 1960s we had a War on Poverty, a War on Cancer, a Cold War, and now a War on Terrorism, apart from those that are fought by the military. It may be time to ask ourselves what these wars have accomplished and how useful these metaphors really are.

When Lyndon Johnson declared a War on Poverty and announced as his goal the creation of a Great Society he surely intended to do good. As he said early on in his Presidency, “I want to be the President who is loved by all the people!” When I heard this I said to myself: good luck and Machiavelli immediately sprang to mind, “It is better for a prince to be feared than loved!” One of the aspects of the Great Society was that children from the suburbs needed to be bussed to the inner cities and vice versa in order to achieve racial balance. The idea was that every child would learn more and better in integrated schools and the public good would be enhanced. The old proverb, “birds of a feather flock together” was, and still is, disregarded by social planners. The result of bussing was exactly the opposite of its intentions. People are mobile and when laws are forced upon them with which they disagree they move to areas where their children get the best possible education rather than what is provided in inner cities. “White flight” began, the inner cities were abandoned in the 1960s, their tax base was eroded, and they decayed. I happened to work in Detroit at that time and we saw first hand the fruits of government idealism. Forty years later we still have a public school system which is a disgrace and American children tend to score poorer on objective tests than their counterparts in, what are called, the developed nations. President Bush’s “No child left behind” act is also in the process of creating more problems than it will solve because it does not address the causes of poor schooling. These are: inadequate preparation of the teachers for the subject matter they are supposed to transmit to their pupils, wrong teaching methods, and lack of discipline in the classrooms. No amount of money that is thrown at schools for smaller class sizes, computers, teachers’ salaries or whatever, will succeed unless the three R’s are properly taught in elementary school and the foundations are laid there for future intellectual growth.

            Let us stay with Lyndon Johnson a moment longer because he provides an excellent example of a failed presidency and of good intentions gone awry.  His foreign policy, admirable in its goal to prevent the spread of communism in South East Asia, turned into the disaster of the Vietnam War. Why did America lose that war? The reason is rather simple: the ideas of the locals conflicted with ours. We saw the war as preventing enslavement of the South by the Communist North while a substantial portion of the Viet Cong did not fight for communism but for an end to colonial domination. We were seen simply as the successors of the French and had to be dealt with accordingly.

When South Vietnam’s President Diem imposed his own totalitarian rule on his portion of the country Buddhist monks took their master’s parting words, “Make of yourself a light,” literally and started immolating themselves in public places. Under those circumstances our government thought that a “regime change” in Saigon was necessary. Our ambassador colluded with some generals who first arrested and then murdered Diem. By the way all this happened already on Kennedy’s watch rather than Johnson’s who merely continued with the mistakes. Madame Diem, the President’s widow, told the U.S. government in no uncertain terms that no good would flow from this murder and she was right. Kennedy was killed about three weeks later and religious people might wonder about divine justice, which differs considerably from the human version. The rest is, of course, as the popular phrase goes “history.” We tried to prop up a series of unpopular generals to rule a country that just wanted to be left alone and in the end had to abandon our embassy via helicopters among scenes of appalling confusion and outright horror.

            We had the best intentions but the highest ideals when pursued with wrong means are bound to come to grief. Our current President seems to ignore these nasty facts of history and believes that he can accomplish in Iraq what the Brits failed to do about three quarters of a century earlier. When one reads his second Inaugural Address it becomes apparent that he seems to be afflicted with what one might call the “Wilson complex.” He does not seem to realize that Wilson’s presidency was an even greater disaster for the world than Johnson’s was. If the President follows through on his promise to end tyranny all over the world he will not only suffer profound personal disappointment but leave the country and the world even worse off than it is now.

Although historians know it, the general public is not aware of the forces that propelled America into the First World War, which in turn created all the difficulties we find ourselves in today. There are two recent books dealing with the subject which are very worth while reading. One is The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson and the other The Illusion of Victory by Thomas Fleming. Students of the history of WWI can also profit from www.firstworldwar.com, which provides primary documents. These sources present a considerably more objective picture than what we are treated to by the media about what Ferguson has called, “nothing less than the greatest error of modern history.”         Ostensibly Wilson entered WWI to end all wars and to “make the world safe for democracy.” Yet, he unleashed even greater evils than those committed up to

April 1917.  Had the U.S. remained on the sidelines it is likely that the Western Allies and the Central Powers would have fought themselves to a stalemate and a compromise peace might have been achieved. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was certainly eager to drop out in 1916 already when it had become obvious that the ill fated decision to punish the Serbs militarily had gone sadly awry. When Franz Josef died in November of 1916 Karl, the 29 year old nephew of the murdered crown prince Franz Ferdinand, inherited the crown. In his Ascension Proclamation he said, “As I implore Heaven’s grace and blessing for Myself, My House as well as My beloved Peoples I vow before the Almighty, to faithfully administer the realm my ancestors have bequeathed to Me. I shall do everything to banish the horrors and sacrifices of war at the earliest opportunity in order to return the sorely missed blessings of peace to My Peoples, as soon as the honor of our arms, the living conditions of My nations and their faithful allies, as well as the defiance of our enemies allow it.” As Shakespeare said in other context, “Ay there’s the rub.” It takes only one to start a war but at least two to end it. Karl also promised the nations which comprised the monarchy that, “I shall be a just and loving Sovereign to my peoples. I shall carefully preserve their constitutional freedoms and other laws including equality before the law for all. . . . Permeated by the faith in Austria-Hungary’s indestructible vitality, animated by the deep love towards My peoples I shall devote my Life and all My strength to this noble task. [Reichspost November 22, 1916].”

              Karl meant every word he said, but events had spun out of control. Although he tried his level best and sent out peace feelers to the Entente they came to naught. Italy became the stumbling block. She had been bribed by London with secret promises during  the previous year to join in the war. These consisted of considerable territorial acquisitions, the most important of which could only be gained by a complete defeat of Austria. Although Austria had given her no offense in 1915, there was the promise of hay to be made and why not, “strike when the iron is hot?” The government of Italy was not evil just greedy.

But Italy’s entry into the war in 1915 had another consequence no one had thought of at that time. The Italian army didn’t win any battles and in November of 1917 it suffered a massive defeat at the hands of combined German and Austro-Hungarian troops. The government was in disarray and there was fear that if Italy lost the war she would be dismembered. In the context of November 1917 this fear was quite realistic. As a result of Russia dropping out of the war German divisions could be removed from the East and thrown to the West as well as South where they could help the Austrians who weren’t good at winning any battles either. There was universal war weariness among the people of Europe and with Russia out of the picture the West was in danger of losing the war. America had to come to the rescue.

While America’s declaration of war against Germany on April 2nd, 1917 was in part due to German submarines sinking American merchant vessels, Wilson’s request to Congress in his State of Union speech of December 4, 1917 to declare war against Austria-Hungary had nothing to do with any misdeeds the Austro-Hungarian government might have committed. On the contrary Emperor Karl had assiduously courted the American ambassador in Vienna in the hope of keeping America at least semi-neutral. He had warned the German government against the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare and desperately wanted to separate his monarchy from that of Wilhelm’s. Instead of recognizing Karl’s desire for a separate peace, Wilson acceded to incessant Italian demands during November of 1917 to enter the war against the Danube monarchy. First greed by the government of Italy then fear became co-responsible for prolonging the war with its accompanying miseries for the peoples of Europe.

The average American obviously had no quarrel with the Habsburg monarchy and probably hardly knew of its existence so the question how to sell the extension of the war, rather than making peace, became acute. To tell Americans that they should die for Italian ineptness would not have worked. Wilson, therefore, produced a rhetorical masterpiece in his address to Congress that deserves to be carefully studied because it became a model for how to successfully camouflage the real reasons for going to war. I shall, therefore quote the relevant portions as they refer to Austria-Hungary from A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. First he placed the blame for the war clearly at the feet of the “sinister masters of Germany.” They had been greedy, not content with the rightful powers they had enjoyed before August 1914, and the world was now confronted with “this intolerable thing of which the masters of Germany have shown us the ugly face, this menace of combined intrigue and force which we now see so clearly as the German power, a thing without conscience or honor or capacity for covenanted peace, must be crushed.” Then there would be the permanent peace of, “No annexations, no contributions, no punitive indemnities.” This peace,

 

“must deliver the once fair lands and happy peoples of Belgium and Northern France from the Prussian conquest and the Prussian menace, but it must deliver also the peoples of Austria-Hungary, the peoples of the Balkans and the peoples of Turkey, alike in Europe and Asia, from the impudent and alien domination of the Prussian military and commercial autocracy.

We owe it, however, to ourselves, to say that we do not wish in any way to impair or to rearrange the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is no affair of ours what they do with their own life, either industrially or politically. We do not purpose or desire to dictate to them in any way. We only desire to see that their affairs are left in their own hands, in all matters great or small. . . .

What shall we do, then, to push this great war of freedom and justice to its righteous conclusion? We must clear away with a thorough hand all impediments to success, and we must make every adjustment of law that will facilitate the full and free use of our whole capacity and force as a fighting unit.

 One very embarrassing obstacle that stands in our way is that we are at war with Germany but not with her allies. I, therefore, very earnestly recommend that the Congress immediately declare the United States in a war with Austria-Hungary. Does it seem strange to you that this should be the conclusion of the argument I have just addressed to you? It is not. It is in fact the inevitable logic of what I have said. Austria-Hungary is for the time being not her own mistress but simply the vassal of the German Government.

We must state the facts as they are and act upon them without sentiment in this stern business. The government of Austria-Hungary is not acting upon its own initiative or in response to the wishes and feelings of its own peoples, but as the instrument of another nation. We must meet its force with our own and regard the Central Powers as but one. The war can be successfully conducted in no other way.

The same logic would lead also to a declaration of war against Turkey and Bulgaria. They also are tools of Germany, but they are mere tools and do not yet stand in the direct path of our necessary action. We shall go wherever the necessities of this war carry us. But it seems to me that we should go only where immediate and practical considerations lead us, and not heed any others.”

 

Let us examine these words in some detail because the relevance to our own time ought to be apparent to anyone. The adversary who is portrayed as totally evil and depraved must be crushed. But the enemy is only the government and not the governed. The people yearn to be free and they will receive this freedom from a gracious America which is unselfishly shedding her blood towards that goal. This establishes the moral high ground. The fact that you can’t crush a government without killing its citizens and destroying its economy, did not enter into the equation.

Only the German government was greedy and Italy, which had entered the war strictly for territorial gains and had become the cause for the declaration, was never mentioned. Neither were the efforts of Emperor Karl to get out from under the wings of the German eagle. It is a perfect example of what results from the “good versus evil stance.” It precludes consideration of the concerns the other side might have. If Wilson had made the effort to talk to Emperor Karl personally he might have learned how unrealistic his ideas were. He would have found out that not interfering in the internal affairs of Austria-Hungary in one sentence and yet championing the principle of “self-determination of nations” were incompatible with the continued existence of the multinational Austro-Hungarian Empire. Needless to say this wonderful phrase also flew in the face of all colonial powers including Britain. What would the British government have done had Wilson insisted on free elections in India for instance? Even more close to home the Irish certainly wanted to be free from their domination by the Brits and for their aspirations Wilson showed not a shred of concern. Germany’s unrestricted submarine warfare, which was designed to starve England into submission, was a crime against humanity in Wilson’s eyes but the fact that a British blockade of Germany existed for the same purpose ever since 1914 was never mentioned.

There was an additional sleight of hand in Wilson’s distinction between Austria-Hungary, upon whom war must be declared immediately, and the rest of the Central Powers where this necessity did not exist. The rhetorical device of  talking about an ”instrument” of German power on the one hand and “mere tools” on the other strikes one as a distinction without a difference. Nevertheless, it served its purpose to camouflage the real reason. Congress approved and on December 7 Wilson issued the Proclamation wherein he announced the war against Austria-Hungary. In it he simply stated that “Whereas the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Government has committed repeated acts of war against the Government and the people of the United States . . .” None of them were detailed because, to the best of my knowledge, none had occurred. Thus, the declaration was issued not because of a high moral reason but out of fear that Italy might drop out of the war enabling Germany to win.

With the fall of Russia in December 1917 there was a brief moment for achieving a negotiated peace but it was missed. The evils of war had to continue because a misguided idealist had fallen victim to the propaganda of the press and a messianic vision of himself. A wiser person, who had no ulterior motives, but had only the well being of all at heart, might have seized the opportunity by throwing his considerable weight on the scales of peace rather than those of war. Wilson won the war but lost the peace and the world has not yet overcome his fateful legacy. Even the current war in Iraq has its roots in the colonial ambitions of the British Empire.

There was a corollary to Wilson’s fear that Germany might win the war. A similar fear by Roosevelt led him to announce the “unconditional surrender” demand during the January 1943 conference with Churchill in Casablanca. Roosevelt was deeply concerned that Hitler might once again come to some arrangement with Stalin and the Western allies would be left holding the bag. He knew that Stalin was deeply unhappy with Churchill’s opposition to an immediate second front in France and he regarded the Mediterranean campaign, justifiably so, as a side show. Stalin had to be kept on board and Roosevelt would do whatever it took to reach that goal. The side-effect of the unconditional surrender formula was to stiffen German resistance and thereby prolong the war.

It may now be argued that there was a profound difference between what Hitler represented and what Wilhelm II had stood for. Wilhelm was just a fool while Hitler was thoroughly evil.  But this difference evaporates when one reads how the West including America had described “the Kaiser” during the war years. The same epithets were hurled at him, with considerably less cause, as were against Hitler thirty years later. When one reads the old newspapers one is impressed that there is not a shred of difference in the language used to describe the enemy. Since Hitler, apart from the “Butcher of Baghdad,” is nowadays regarded as the personification of evil he provides us with an example how evil evolves and there can be no doubt that the concentration camp system with its systematic industrialized killing of “undesirable” human beings represented an evil of the first magnitude.

Hitler surely did not see himself as evil and neither did those around him. He was a man on a mission who had to restore the German greatness she had been robbed of by the evil democracies – plutocracies who in turn were run not by their people but by Jewish capitalists. Jews were not a religion but a race and a nation. As such they were aliens in Germany (regardless of how long they had lived there) and had to conform to German laws for aliens. Germany was for Germans and there was to be no room for aliens, i.e. Jews, in leading positions. That was the Nazi faith and as any other faith it was to be accepted and not to be reasoned with. By the spring of 1939 Hitler’s image in the world differed considerably from that of his followers for whom he had provided tangible benefits. Yet, he felt he could safely disregard world opinion because he was put into his job by Providence who guided his steps. The high point of his career was not after the fall of France in 1940 because there was still recalcitrant England, but at 4 a.m. on March 15, 1939. After having bullied President Hacha of Czechoslovakia into placing his country “under the protection of the German Reich” Hitler met his two secretaries in private and asked them to give him a peck on each of his cheeks with the statement, “Children, this is the greatest day of my life. I shall enter history as the greatest German.”

He had indeed accomplished, without shedding one drop of blood, a unification of most of the Hohenzollern and Habsburg Empires. Germany was now the strongest power in Central Europe. That he had set himself on a collision course with England which had never tolerated one dominant continental power regardless, whether it was France under Napoleon, Germany under Wilhelm II, or now under Hitler did not occur to him. While Hitler saw himself as the crusader for German rights the West saw him as a menace and robber baron who had to be, in Wilson’s words, “crushed.” Hate escalated on both sides with the outcome of the total destruction of German cities on the one hand and Auschwitz on the other.

Last week saw commemoration services at that death camp and Elie Wiesel, the most prominent survivor, wrote in an article for the Los Angeles Times, “What made Auschwitz possible? How could a nation known for its culture and education have dreamed up such a place? . . . Most of the questions that I had 60 years ago . . .  remain unanswered. Even if there is an answer I refuse to accept it.” Auschwitz has indeed become a defining symbol but I believe that the proper lessons have not been drawn as long as one sees evil only in “the other.” I have discussed this aspect in War&Mayhem but I doubt that the explanations provided will satisfy those who have made the Holocaust their profession. The key aspects how this tragedy could have happened were: the dehumanization of the adversary, the desire for revenge, the capability to extract it, and perhaps most importantly: secrecy.

Secrecy is the key word where the past, present and the future merge. Can anyone conceive that Hitler could have done in public what he ordered to be done in secret? This is the heart of the problem. The desire for gain resides in every human being. When it is accompanied by fear that the means to obtain it might conflict with commonly accepted mores, it is carried out in secret and camouflaged under a variety of excuses. These excuses become outright lies when they are challenged by others. This process is part of our human nature and, unfortunately, we find it at work even in our own government at the present time.

Democracies are not immune from government secrecy and “oversight by Congress” or the media are profoundly deficient. The country was led into the Iraq invasion under false pretenses and one would sorely wish that Nixon like tapes came to the surface that presented us with the conversations between our President and his Vice-President starting with February 2001. The American people now, just like the German people during the first part of the twentieth century have no idea what is being perpetrated in their name. When the Abu-Ghraib photos first emerged, which showed the degradations Iraqi men were subjected to, an attempt was made to hide them, when that failed their importance was minimized and the blame is still being laid on a few sadistic soldiers. This is wrong because it ignores the culture under which these abuses occurred.

This is the evil that should be addressed but it is not and continues to flourish. Seymour Hersh wrote in “The Coming Wars” (The New Yorker January 29, 2005) that the war on terrorism will be placed under the Defense Department. “The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia.” These can be “run off the books – free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A.  Under current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized by a presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees.” In other words Congress has no business knowing how the administration conducts its war on terrorism, which is likely to include its extension into Iran, and its duty is simply to put up the money for the costs. What we can now expect is that all questions will be stonewalled with the mantra of “national security” or “executive privilege.” Since our “interrogators” in the war on terrorism overseas and at Guantanamo can do whatever they want to get “information” we should not be surprised at all when practices will come to light that are clearly beyond the standards of decent behavior. Yet we are paying for it and by our silence become co-responsible.

Hersh’s article has profound implications but has, of course, been called unreliable and is quietly hushed up. Condoleeza Rice was confirmed as Secretary of State and she has told Congress that now is the time for diplomacy rather than military actions. Theoretically it is, but is she capable of carrying out the wishes of the more rational State Department or those of a President who is clearly on a mission just as were some of the other people mentioned above? She was appointed because Bush likes her, respects her and appreciates her loyalty. But the country demands loyalty not only to a given President but to the principles it was founded upon and these do not include the excesses that are currently being perpetrated. Dr. Rice is well educated, she knows history but does she have the stamina to become what Thomas Becket was to Henry II? The King thought he’d get a toady and wound up with a moral force he could not control. For the good of the country we can hope that this will be so because unchecked our President is likely to continue to follow in Wilson’s footsteps with potentially even more disastrous results. The same statements apply to our newly confirmed Attorney General who, in his capacity as counsel to the President, had labeled provisions of the Geneva Conventions as “quaint.”

So what are the roots of evil? They are: 1) To desire more than what you have or is freely given; 2) To conduct your actions designed to fulfill your desires in secret; 3) To ignore the legitimate aspirations of others and pursue a course of “My will be Done.” Ultimately it boils down to a relationship to “the other” regardless who “the other” is. If we show respect and understanding all is well and cooperation will ensue. If we feel that we can force our will upon others nothing but grief will ensue. Whatever high moral phrases our President and his followers may continue to utter they will ring just as hollow as those of his fore-runner about whom the French President Clemenceau said in 1919, “He thinks he is another Jesus Christ come upon earth to reform men.”







March 1, 2005

FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY

When one read the newspaper and magazine headlines of the past month one was led to believe that spring is finally here, after a long hard winter, and freedom and democracy were breaking out all over the world. The Palestinians had a free election and “Sharon extends an olive branch.” The Iraqis had an election of sorts and “U.S. Senators in Iraq optimistic.” “Iraqi leader says violence won’t divide the nation,” and the subheading proclaims, “Suicide blasts: Fifty-five die in the attacks on the Shiite holy day, but the number is far less than last year.” We have also been told that, “Israel’s parliament approves plan to remove Jewish settlements.”

The Bush administration is currently engaged in a charm offensive. First Condi Rice was sent to Europe and the Middle East to assure their leaderships that the wind that is blowing from the West is changing to a gentler breeze and subsequently our President himself followed up with a quickie trip to Brussels, Mainz and Bratislava, of all places, where he met with Mr. Putin. In spite of all the charm that is currently exuded there were also stern warnings what Iran, Syria and Russia “must “ do in order to keep enjoying spring-time weather sent by the U.S.A. The American public laps it up because unless one is motivated to pursue the facts and has Internet access that’s all the news one gets. Time magazine had a most revealing statistic that demonstrates the type of information the average American is exposed to. It was a short blurb under “Numbers” and cited diverse figures from a 57% increase in AIDS in Africa, through 157,281 illegal immigrants shipped back to Mexico, to $452,800 as the winning bid for one of Kennedy’s maple desks. The item under discussion reads, “6 min. 21 sec. Amount of time a typical half-hour local TV-news broadcast devotes to sports and weather. 38 sec. Amount of time a typical half-hour local newscast devotes to U.S. foreign policy, including the war in Iraq.” The rest of the time is spent on advertisements and local mishaps. Is it any wonder that with this type of information the average proverbial Joe-six-pack gets a distorted view of the factors that will impinge on his life in the long run? What is even worse is that he has been trained not to care because high-schools do not teach world history as a compulsory subject in any degree of depth. Under those circumstances it is no wonder that people are satisfied with headlines and catchy phrases.

But let us look at the facts which remain as unpleasant as they have been for the past several years. Mahmoud Abbas who is now a genuinely elected leader of the Palestinian government can do all the reforms he wants but it will not get him anywhere unless Sharon gives him more than a smile, a handshake, the release of a few prisoners and the dismantling of some settlements, which he really doesn’t want anyway, especially in Gaza. The bedrock of Palestinian demands namely genuine freedom from Israeli occupation, removal of the major settlements, rather than some ram-shackle ones, the rights to their water and air space, and East Jerusalem as the seat of their internationally recognized government are still non-negotiable. But as long as these are not met and olive trees are cut down to expand current settlements and to permit the building of the “wall of separation” no “olive branch,” will have credibility. As mentioned in “Palestinian State or Israeli Protectorate?” (April 1, 2002), Sharon does not want an independent Palestinian state he wants the equivalent of Hitler’s “Reich Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.” That means they can have their own police, postage system, currency, sewage removal etc. but they have to toe the line and do what Berlin, or in Israel’s case the Knesset, wants them to do.

There can be no Middle East peace under those circumstances and this is where the second part of this month’s headline comes in. Sharon, even if he wanted to, which is doubtful, cannot accede to the Palestinian’s demands because not only would it lead to the fall of his government but possibly even to some sort of civil war within Israel itself. This is the point where his freedom to act ends. Barring massive demonstrations in Israel which demand the total withdrawal from the occupied territories and for granting the Palestinians their rights, there is only one group of people who is, theoretically at least, indeed free to act in this sphere and bring an end to the bloodshed and the waste of our tax payers’ money in Palestine. As has been repeatedly pointed out in these pages it is only the leadership of Jewish organizations in the U.S. who enjoys this freedom. Neither Congress, nor our President is free to enforce their own wishes in this thorny problem unless the grassroots Jewish population in our country demands from their own Jewish leadership a change of direction and the granting to the Palestinians all the rights that they have been deprived of for so many years. Although the Jewish people in our country are considerably better educated and interested in world affairs than our average citizens, they have not yet confronted this challenge. This may become one of the greatest tragedies of this century because without genuine peace in Jerusalem there cannot be peace in this interconnected world.

The freedom loving American taxpayer who reads only headlines and gets snippets of world news on TV doesn’t realize that it is our money that keeps the Israeli government afloat. First we pay for the military buildup, then we pay for the settlements, now we will pay for the removal of some settlements from Gaza and we pay for the wall. I will be challenged on this because we really don’t pay directly for these items but we do so indirectly. Creative book-keeping on the Israeli side assures that while the letter of the law is obeyed, the spirit is, in good Talmudic fashion, disregarded. Unless one knows, what may be called, “the Talmud mentality,” negotiations with the Jewish leadership is likely to run on parallel tracks which meet in infinity. This is the reason why I wrote The Moses Legacy and made it freely available. Please download it at your leisure and read the chapters on the Talmud as well as on Jewish Power.

The Iraqi elections, although important, are a side-show. The freedom in which they were conducted was severely hampered in the Sunni part of the country and when we heard at first that the Shiites won about 67 per cent of the vote it seems that Bush the son decided to emulate his father in this particular situation by silently vowing “this must not stand.” Mr. Negroponte had to get into the act. The data were massaged in what was called a “recount” and the Shiites 67 per cent majority shrunk into a more manageable 48 per cent. That this, now elected but still interim, government is free to write the constitution it wants rather than what is compatible with U.S. demands is questionable. What would have been the purpose of our invasion if we abolished  a secular Iraqi dictatorship where women and Christians had guaranteed rights provided they kept their mouths shut and did not agitate the pot, to an Islamic one that is governed by the law of Sharia? What if that government were to become friendly with Iran and to make matters worse if both of those countries were to decide to sell their oil not for dollars but the Euro? Why should the oil producing countries continue to pay with dollars when our currency has been devalued considerably over the past years? Those are the questions an educated American government ought to ask itself, an educated Congress should debate, and an educated public take part in.

What is the reason for our belligerency against Iran and the demand that it must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons? Who are the mullahs really threatening if they have the bomb? Are they going to annihilate, Rome, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, or Vienna? Hardly, but Tel Aviv and possibly Jerusalem, would surely be on the list. Even the achievement of peace with Iran depends, therefore, on the interests of the mentioned key players in Jerusalem and Washington. Nuclear proliferation is obviously undesirable and we should have less of those weapons rather than more. A sane American foreign policy, which would be enthusiastically supported by the Europeans and the rest of the world, would not only demand that Iran gives up its nuclear ambitions, but that Israel destroys its nuclear arsenal as well as its assorted other WMDS under international inspections. It is that arsenal and Israeli nuclear subs in the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean that give Teheran the shivers. Unless and until Americans learn to put themselves into the shoes of others and begin to see the problems from both sides there will not be peace in our time.

Consider also some other headlines that tell us about our “overflights” of Iranian airspace and that a Syrian intelligence officer admitted to training Iraqi insurgents. How would we feel if the Iranians had the capability to spy on us either via satellites or drones? What are our CIA and other operatives currently doing in Iran (see previous installment) and possibly Syria if not to foment rebellion? Do the Mossad and their agents just sit on their hands? When foreign governments try to protect themselves this potential freedom from interference into their internal affairs is intolerable to our government.

These are the fundamental problems our President should have discussed with the European leadership but he played it safe. Smiles and partially conciliatory words were to take the place of substance. When I read the President’s itinerary I had to laugh. While Kennedy had met with Khrushchev, at the height of the Cold War, in Vienna Bush went to Bratislava for his meeting with Putin. Americans don’t know this but every Viennese of my generation is familiar with the “Preszburger Bahn.” Preszburg, or now Bratislava, being about 18 miles to the east was regarded more or less as a suburb of Vienna and connected during the monarchy by light rail- the Preszburger Bahn, similar to the Badner Bahn (still in existence) that connects the center of Vienna with that spa resort. The local analogy would be if the President were to visit Utah but eschew Salt Lake City because of its potentially more cantankerous populace and head instead to the safety of the Mormon bastion Provo.

What did the President really accomplish during his visit with Mr. Putin in that new democracy of Slovakia, which actually was given its very first birth through the good graces of Hitler when he disassembled Czechoslovakia in 1939? Is “Vladimir,” whose soul he had looked into a few years earlier and found spotless, now less willing to support the Syrians and Iranians? Did he promise to grant the Chechens their freedom and allow American style smut on his state-run television? Obviously not; Russian democracy has limits and her citizens are left in no doubt about it. But so does ours, only that we don’t talk about it and nobody else is supposed to point it out to us. Fortunately The Salt Lake Tribune and especially its Opinion page cartoonist Pat Bagley are at times still willing to risk their freedom by voicing some dissenting notions as the cartoon from February 24, reproduced with his permission at the bottom of the essay, shows. The subtle truth about the President’s real opinions, which is contained in the change of one vowel, may, however, escape the attention of many readers.

Let us now leave the present for a moment and step back into the past, the cradle of democracy Athens, and see how people felt about it at that time. Fortunately we do have the contemporary voices of Thucydides and Plato, who paraphrased Socrates. America is commonly likened to the Roman Empire but this is not quite correct because a) we don’t have obligatory emperor worship as yet and b) we don’t have the legions. The Athenian League and its rise as well as its demise might be the more appropriate analogy. Thucydides, who served in some of the campaigns, informs us in Chapter IV of The Peloponnesian War about Athens’ “progress from Supremacy to Empire.” For the Greek city states Athens’ naval victory at Salamis over the Persian fleet and the subsequent route of the Persians at Plataea by the Spartans was the equivalent of America’s victory in WWII. While the Spartans, a continental power, were content to go home after a while the Athenians, who had relied on their navy, exploited that success and “liberated” several Aegean islands and Ionian cities from their Persian overlords. That liberty came, however, at a price. The members of the “Athenian League,” as it was officially called had to contribute taxes and/or ships. When they were no longer willing to do so, and joined instead the Peloponnesian League dominated by Sparta, punishment was brutal, swift and effective. After some decades it was no longer love for Athens but fear of retribution that held the League together. Athens’ high-handed conduct led to fear and loathing and became co-responsible (apart from the foolish greediness of the leadership in Corfu and Corinth) for the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war that finished Athens’ years of glory.

To what extent was Athens a democracy in her prime and what were its virtues? First of all the vote was limited to free, native born, male citizens who made up only a minority of the total population. A person like Socrates who challenged popular wisdom was tolerated for a while but when he preached his ideas to youngsters of the establishment class he was put on trial and convicted of not honoring the time-honored gods as well as of seducing the young. The judges would have let him pay a fine but Socrates, ornery as he was, suggested such a ridiculously low one that they were forced to let him drink hemlock juice for his insolence. From Plato’s account it is obvious that Socrates wanted to die in this manner because not only was he already 70 years old, he had a nagging wife, sons who may or may not have been wastrels, and the future had only slowly progressive physical and mental decay to offer. While Caesar, when asked what kind of a death he wanted, said “a quick one,” Socrates opted for a noble one and both got their wish.

What was Socrates’ opinion of democracy and what does it tell us about human behavior? It is no secret that he was not enamored with the rule of the people by the people. His first choice was philosopher kings: rulers who were skilled in the art of public service as well as war. This was essentially Sparta’s model where there were two kings; one presided over domestic affairs and the other led the army in foreign campaigns. But since everything in life degenerates the next best idea of government was “timocracy,” which means rule by honor. When the most honorable and meritorious citizens were in charge the city-state would be well administered. But again human nature does not lend itself to this blessed state very long so oligarchy – rule by a few – comes next, which is a further degradation of the art of government. People then become dissatisfied with having no voice and demand democracy which is next to the worst form of government on the Socratic scale, because its excesses of freedom lead to the destruction of morals and eventually anarchy. Since people can’t live in an anarchic society a strong leader emerges who then becomes a tyrant and that completes the cycle. Thus, very little has changed in the intervening twenty-four hundred years.

It becomes positively funny when one reads subsequently how Plato, through the mouth of Socrates, describes Athenian democracy. Here are excerpts from Book VIII of The Republic with Socrates as the speaker:

 

“The good which oligarchy proposed to itself and the means by which it was maintained was excess of wealth-am I not right?

Yes.

And the insatiable desire of wealth and the neglect of all other things for the sake of money gathering was also the ruin of oligarchy?

True.

And democracy has her own good of which the insatiable desire brings her to dissolution?

What good?

Freedom I replied; which as they tell you in a democracy is the glory of the State – and therefore in a democracy alone will the freeman of nature deign well.

Yes; the saying is in everybody’s mouth.

I was going to observe, that the insatiable desire of this and the neglect of other things introduces the change in democracy, which occasions a demand for tyranny.”

 

Socrates then details some of the changes he and the audience have observed. With unlimited liberty:

 

anarchy finds its way into private houses. . . . the father grows accustomed to descend to the level of his sons and to fear them, and the son is on a level with his father, he having no respect or reverence for either of his parents . . . .

In such a state of society the master [teacher] fears and flatters his scholars [pupils], and the scholars despise their masters and tutors, young and old are alike; and the young man is on a level with the old, and is ready to compete with him in words or deeds and the old men condescend to the young and are full of pleasantry and gaiety; they are loath to be thought morose and authoritative, and therefore they adopt the manners of the young. . . .

            . . . at length they [the citizens]cease to care even for the laws, written or unwritten; they will have no one over them. . . .

            Such my friend, I said, is the fair and glorious beginning out of which springs tyranny.”

 

            In addition to these evils Socrates found it intolerable that slaves should have the same rights as free men. That women should have the same civil rights men and even animals could do whatever they wanted on a public road thereby menacing passers-by.  The statement about animals’ rights brought to mind a little incident that occurred at the time when Clinton was liberating the Yugoslavs from Milosevic by bombing the citizens of Belgrade. The good wife, Martha, who loves all living beings, had received in the mail from the Animal Legal Defense Fund a bumper sticker, “Abuse an animal . . . go to jail!” My immediate next thought was, “bomb a city . . . become a hero!”

            When we look at the state of our democracy we’d hardly know that 2400 years have gone by since Plato penned those words. Among other aspects the enforced equality and concomitant lack of respect have become all pervasive. First academic titles were abolished when addressing someone, subsequently Mr., Miss, or Mrs. before last names, thereafter last names, and now we are all Tom, Dick, and Harry’s. I am not sure that President Putin relished being referred to as Vladimir in public. The sad part is that people in our country don’t even know any more that this is disrespectful and breeds dislike rather than friendship. In Europe and elsewhere in the world the use of first name by others is a privilege that must be granted rather than a right to be usurped. But it seems that in parallel with an excess of freedom - coupled with disrespect - we also experience increasing coercion. This is justified by the so-called War on Terrorism for which we are now supposed to sacrifice our lives, liberty and fortunes. The invasions of Afghanistan and subsequently Iraq were supposed to have gotten rid of this evil but now we are told in another headline, “Intelligence, military officials say the U.S. faces a growing terror threat.” What have we been paying all these billions of dollars since 9/11 for and why have we invaded other countries when this does not achieve the stated aim? The answer is, of course, obvious, the reasons we are being given are not reasons but excuses to justify policies that are hatched in secret for the benefit of a few rather than the citizens of our country or those in the rest of the world.

            This brings me to the final question, “What freedom does the individual citizen have regardless of the type of government one lives under?” This will be explored in greater detail in the April installment. For now it is important to state that absolute freedom does not and cannot exist for the human being. Statisticians introduced the useful concept of “degrees of freedom,” and those also apply to people living in a given society. In authoritarian states personal degrees of freedom are restricted but can be retained as long as one does not belong to a persecuted minority and does not criticize the government in word or deed. In our democracy we are given greater latitude but we still have taboos that must not even be discussed, lest one is in danger of losing one’s job. 

            When our President talks about bringing “Freedom and Democracy” to the rest of the world he would be well advised to look back on history and see the cyclical progression rather than expect that democracy will be the end all and be all. But as Mr. Pat Bagley so astutely noted in his cartoon, this is really not what it’s all about and readers of this essay will be well advised to look beyond the obvious humor to the deeper message. Nevertheless, we are witnessing a moment of hope but Lady Opportunity has restless legs and unless she is firmly grasped now she may take her leave again for a long time.








April 1, 2005

PAIN AND SUFFERING

In last month’s essay I discussed the political and external freedoms a human being possesses under different forms of government and had intended to follow it up with a discussion of internal freedom. This is the ability of the human being to deal with the vicissitudes of life in a constructive fashion regardless of external circumstances. Two events transpired subsequently which made this decision highly topical. The first one was the airing of the movie “Million Dollar Baby” and the other the Schiavo tragedy. They present different aspects of suffering and serve as good examples of how our society reacts to dying.

Martha and I hardly go to the movies any more because the fare tends to be atrocious. Furthermore, as a neurologist I have a high respect for the brain and don’t enjoy watching people, especially women, beating each other into unconsciousness.  But “Million Dollar Baby” had good reviews, Clint Eastwood is an excellent actor and a surprise ending was promised, so we went. By now the story is well known and I’m not giving away any surprises by summarizing it. Clint Eastwood, as Frankie, ran a training gym for would be boxers and a young woman by name of Maggie begged him to take her on as a student. He was reluctant to do so but eventually relented and she became a star on the women’s boxing circuit, earning considerable amounts of money. She had come a long way from her trailer home upbringing, and subsequent work as a waitress, to enjoy wide acclaim and the respect she had craved all her life. It had been her own achievement through grueling and punishing years of painful work of which she was justly proud. But when she thought that her mother would be grateful for the house she had bought for her she was rebuffed because all the woman wanted was money to spend rather than a decent house to live in. At the pinnacle of her career for the world championship fight Maggie was dealt a vicious and illegal blow that sent her crashing into a chair, which severed her spinal cord at the highest levels. When she regained consciousness, several days later, she found herself on a respirator and permanently quadriplegic. Frankie, who had become the father she never had, promised that he would always be taking care of her. He did in fact provide the assistance she needed, and the encouragement to make the best of a disastrous situation. She seemed to respond but when the family arrived and they only wanted her to sign her money over to them, something snapped. She lost her will to live and begged Frankie to do for her what she couldn’t do for herself namely terminate, what was for her, an intolerable existence. When he refused she severely bit her tongue so that she might choke but prompt medical care prevented the desired outcome.

Frankie had been a severely troubled person for several years who carried a burden of guilt for reasons we were not told. He went to mass daily but also annoyed the young priest no end with theological questions for which there were no genuine answers. Maggie’s’ request added to his spiritual dilemma. He felt that he was responsible for having made her into a star by giving in to her wish but he had also rendered her now a permanently disabled person dependent on artificial life support. Frankie tried to discuss Maggie’s wish with his priest but this particular caretaker of souls was not yet old and wise enough to be able to express anything other than standard theological platitudes that only added to Frankie’s guilt. Eventually Frankie sneaked into the hospital at night, terminated Maggie’s life in a loving manner and then disappeared forever.

The film has a profound impact on viewers because it raises the inevitable question of what we would want to have done for us by others, who indeed have our best interests at heart, when we are no longer in charge of our bodies. This is the point where our ultimate freedom comes in. We still have choices, limited as they are. We can do what Maggie did and what a great many of us in her situation might also do, or we can use the steely resolve that she exhibited in her boxing life to lend purpose even to a tragedy of this magnitude. Christopher Reeves comes to mind immediately. But when one puts one’s hopes entirely on regaining lost physical function, which is currently medically impossible and is likely to remain so for years to come, one will suffer inevitable disappointment. Even if stem cell research will yield positive results in this respect in future decades it will be too late for all the quadriplegic, ventilator dependent, patients who are ill now.

The fictional Maggie’s case and the real life quadriplegic patients are faced with a spiritual problem and the individual patient as well as society at large will have to come to recognize it as such and not pin  hopes entirely on physical recovery. Furthermore, we have here a clear example of the difference between pain and suffering. Maggie had no pain, before she severed her tongue, but she surely suffered. Although we commonly tend to lump pain and suffering into one phrase as if they were synonymous, they are not and this neglected distinction needs to be kept in mind. Pain is a physical sensation in one or more parts of one’s body which does lead to suffering by its perception and mental elaboration. How much suffering is associated with pain is not merely due to its intensity but also, and perhaps in our daily lives most importantly, the mental burden we add to it.

At this point I would like to invite the reader to the August 2004 essay on “Perception of Reality”. It discusses the difference between sensation and perception on a physiologic level and explains the basis upon which suffering arises and what can be done to reduce it. As mentioned at that time, sensory impulses from our bodies, or the external world, trigger responses in the appropriate area of our brain. These responses consist, in the normal individual, of two types: one is the primary, which is specific to the area that is stimulated and the other, a secondary one which elaborates on it and relays it to distant structures. It is the latter, which is tied to perception and adds the emotional quality. When the sensation is one of discomfort and/or pain it also gets relayed to the prefrontal lobes, those parts of the brain which make us truly human and which exist only in a rudimentary state even in the monkey. The prefrontal parts of our brain allow for planning and foresight, but are also responsible for ruminative, obsessive thinking. When our thoughts are allowed to dwell exclusively on past events or future expectations suffering will become inevitable. The remembered past was never as happy or unhappy as our imagination paints it and the unknowable future is likewise just that – unknowable. We tend to dwell on fantasies, regard them as reality, and poison our present lives to the detriment of the future.

Let us stay with the fictional Maggie for now. She had intact prefrontal lobes and instead of ruminating over the loss of functions, and past glory which was gone forever, she might have put them to use with Frankie’s help. There are things, even ventilator dependent quadriplegic patients can do. For a person with strong religious faith this may be easier but the human spirit need not be limited by theology and a broader spiritual perspective, above and beyond conventional religions, is potentially available even to agnostics. It simply needs the will to recognize this possibility and act on it. What might have been done in Maggie’s case? She had two options. If there was a shred of a will to live left it could have been nourished by spiritual sustenance with the help of an experienced guide. Indian philosophy which emphasizes, “I am not my body,” or appropriately modified to “I am not only my body” could have been helpful, especially if she had been provided with training in the control of the mind. The emphasis should have been not only on physical rehabilitation but also on that of mind and spirit. If on the other hand she was absolutely determined to die she might have asked Frankie to bring her a lawyer; dictate a living will, demand that no further efforts be made to save her life, that artificial respiration be discontinued, and that her money was to be given to a charity of her choice. This was her right as an autonomous human being and would have removed the burden of guilt she had placed on Frankie. I don’t know if such a step would have been successful if it were argued in the courts, but I am suggesting it because “the right to life” versus “the right to die” peacefully is currently not only a personal but legal and political problem especially because of the Terri Schiavo case.

Here we were faced with a real person who presented us with a medical, moral and legal dilemma. The tragedy of the case was not only what happened to Mrs. Schiavo but that the American public is inundated on hourly basis with allegations, rumors and conflicting opinions that did not allow the truth to emerge. The real problem is that we have been given too few facts and, therefore, too many opinions, most of which are based on emotion rather than reason and now on politicians’ desires.

Let me summarize what is actually known. The Internet is full of opinions, many of them quite spiteful, but there are also some facts to be gleaned. I shall rely now on Dr. Jay Wolfson who was appointed by the Court as Guardian ad Litem for Mrs. Schiavo and his duty was to provide a report and make recommendations to Governor Jeb Bush as to lifting an injunction against the removal of  Terri Schiavo‘s feeding tube. The report can be found under http://jb-williams.com/ts-report-12-03.htm. Although it is somewhat dated no new medical facts have come to light to invalidate any aspect of it and it presents the most precise summary of the case.

Terri Schindler was markedly obese up to age 19 when under appropriate medical care she reduced her weight from 250 to around 150 pounds. At that time she met and later married Michael Schiavo (1984). Since they desired children but Terri failed to get pregnant she and her husband went to an obstetrician, for counseling and fertility services, three years after the marriage. Terri’s weight had by that time dropped to 110 pounds and she was proud of her stunning figure. During the early morning hours of February 25, 1990 she suffered from cardiac arrest for reasons that are still being debated. By the time emergency medical crews arrived and she received a tracheotomy as well as artificial respiration her brain had been sufficiently long without oxygen to produce permanent irreversible damage. The cause of her cardiac arrest was a potassium deficiency. She had been engaged in an aggressive weight loss regimen with inadequate diet and drinking 10-15 glasses of iced tea each day.

Terri remained comatose with intermittent epileptic seizures and then emerged from coma into what used to be called “apallic syndrome” (absence of a functional cerebral cortex) but was renamed in the 1980s to “persistent vegetative state.” Since she was unable to chew and swallow, nutrition was provided by a gastric feeding tube. In June of 1990 her husband was appointed by the court as her legal guardian and there were no objections from the Schindler family. On the contrary excellent rapport existed between the two families and Michael as well as Terri’s mother were intimately involved in her care. When attempts at rehabilitation, were unsuccessful and a firm diagnosis of persistent vegetative state (PVS) had been made Michael took her in the fall of 1990 to California for an experimental treatment which consisted of the implantation of a “thalamic stimulator” into her brain. Deep brain stimulation was abandoned after several months when it was found ineffective and the Schiavos went back to Florida where Terri resided since in nursing homes. She had received excellent care as evidenced by the absence of bedsores during an illness that has lasted for 15 years.

The good relationship between the Schindler’s and the Schiavos broke down after Michael won a malpractice suit he had initiated against the obstetrician who had treated Terri for the infertility problem (1993). The settlement consisted of more than $750,000 for Terri – which was placed in a trust fund – and $300,000 for Michael. This was a watershed for the two families and the Schindlers instituted court proceedings to have Michael’s legal guardianship revoked. They also insisted that Terri was not in PVS in spite of having previously acknowledged the presence of that condition. The Schindlers’ petition was denied by the court on repeated occasions; because there was no evidence that Michael was negligent in Terri’s care.

In as much as there was no hope for his wife’s recovery Michael entered in May of 1998 a petition to have Terri’s feeding tube withdrawn. He had in the meantime begun a long-term relationship with another woman whom he wanted to marry and Terri had become a hopeless impediment. The court appointed a Guardian ad Litem, Richard Pearse, to review the request.  His recommendation was that unless the court found convincing evidence to the contrary the feeding tube should remain in place and a permanent Guardian ad Litem be appointed. Michael appealed this suggestion, Mr. Pearse withdrew from the case and the battle over guardianship and the feeding tube grew increasingly more acrimonious.

In February 2000 after having reviewed the available evidence Judge Greer ordered the removal of the feeding tube. The Schindlers fought the decision but the court set April 24, 2001 as the date on which the tube was to be removed. Court actions by the Schindlers persisted but on the mentioned date the tube was clamped rather than completely removed and the Schindlers filed a civil action as “natural guardians.” A temporary injunction was issued and the tube unclamped. The court also agreed to an additional medical review where both sides would select two expert physicians (neurologists or neurosurgeons) and agree between them on a fifth. If no agreement could be reached the fifth physician would be appointed by the court.

The neurologists provided by Michael had good academic credentials in their profession. The Schindlers provided one neurologist (Dr. William Hammesfahr) and a “radiologist/hyperbaric physician.” Since the families could not agree on the fifth neurologist he was appointed by the court. These three neurologists “presented scientifically grounded, academically based evidence that was reasonably deemed to be clear and convincing by the court,” while the evidence presented by the Schindlers expert witnesses was regarded as “substantially anecdotal.”

Another appeal resulted but the court ordered that the tube be removed on October 15, 2003 on which date the tube was disconnected for the second time. The Schindlers then appealed to the Florida legislature, which passed a bill on October 21, 2003 “to stay the disconnection of the artificial feeding tube and required, among other things, the appointment of a Guardian ad Litem to produce this report.” The tube was re-inserted the same day and the battle between the families, and now the general public, resumed.

Dr. Wolfson concluded in his report to the Governor that the weight of the evidence indicates that Theresa Schiavo “is in a permanent vegetative state with no likelihood of improvement,” and that the Florida court was clearly within its legal rights when it ordered removal of the tube. He also recommended that the Guardian ad Litem appointment be extended until a final resolution could be achieved.

This was not done, the battle persisted, increasingly absurd claims have come forward and the case reached its climax during the past weeks when another date for the removal of the tube was set. The U. S Congress got into the act and the President had to leave his beloved Crawford ranch abruptly on a Sunday night to sign the legislation that the case again be referred to the Florida Federal Court system. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist also forgot that he was a cardiac surgeon rather than neurologist and showed that he was foremost just another politician.  The case then went all the way to the Supreme Court who mercifully refused to get involved. The gastric tube was removed but intensive public lobbying by the Schindlers continued with renewed efforts to get the Florida legislature, as well as the Supreme Court to reconsider their decision and have the tube reinserted. In spite of truly frantic efforts by the Schindler family, with massive collusion by the media, their attempts failed and Terri was pronounced dead on the morning of March 31.

What we were witnessing during these past weeks on TV was a society that had lost its rational bearings and it must have left the ordinary citizen thoroughly bewildered. We don’t expect to get the truth from politicians or lawyers any more but one might have expected it from religious authorities and bio- ethicists. On the other hand even these individuals cannot provide valid opinions unless the facts are clear.

This brings us to the crucial question: How can physicians who are supposed to know what a persistent vegetative state is and what recovery, if any, can be expected disagree to such a marked extent? The answer is simple. Those neurologists, of good standing in their profession, who have actually examined the patient, are in agreement that Terri was in a persistent vegetative state and needlessly postponing death by keeping the feeding tube in place was not indicated.

Precise guidelines as to diagnosis and treatment of patients with PVS have been published by the American Academy of Neurology, which is the main voice for neurologists in the country, and they specifically mention that continuation of artificial feeding through a gastric tube, after the patient has been definitively diagnosed as being in PVS is not indicated.  Terri’s condition clearly fell into those definitions so why should there be disagreement by neurologists, as reported in the press and on TV, about Terri’s diagnosis? The answer is that there was no disagreement by specialists who had actually examined the patient apart from Dr. W. Hammesfahr who had been seen Terri on request of the Schindler family.

I happened to see him being interviewed by Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel, who has done an outstanding job in misleading the public. He introduced Dr. Hammesfahr as a famous neurologist who has done such outstanding work that he had been nominated for a Nobel Prize in medicine. Mr. Hannity could hardly let a sentence pass without informing us about this honor. His counterpart Alan Colmes who is supposed to provide the “fair and balanced” part was also so awed that he forgot to ask the most important questions as to who had proposed him, what had happened to the nomination and what the academic credentials of Dr. Hammesfahr were. At any rate Dr. Hammesfahr told us that he carefully examined Terri over a ten hour period, while others had spent only one hour; that a four and a half hour video was taken during the examination which documented that Terri was intermittently aware of her environment and could respond with voluntary action. The interview was frequently interrupted with showing the same few seconds of the video which purports to demonstrate that Terri smiled at her mother and that she followed a plastic balloon with her eyes.

Since I had never heard of Dr. Hammesfahr before I tried to look him up in the Directory of the American Academy of Neurology but found his name missing. I subsequently contacted the Academy office and they told me that he neither is nor has ever been a member. This is certainly curious for someone deemed worthy of a Nobel Prize in medicine. Thereafter I checked for his scientific work on PubMed, which is maintained by the National Library of Medicine and one of the positive aspects of our tax dollars at work, but came up again empty handed. He does not have a single publication in any peer reviewed medical journal in any field. He does exist, however, on the Internet. In his biography he is listed as having had training in neurology and neurosurgery, that he was Board certified in Neurology and has published medical information on an Internet journal. He is in private practice and not associated with a University. I can’t blame Judge Greer for having preferred the information provided by the other three Board certified neurologists, as well as that of the Guardian ad Litem Dr. Wolfson who testified to the absence of voluntary activity on Terri’s part. The only other neurologists who appeared on on our television screens were Dr. Cranford who has published extensively on PVS and Dr. Bambakidis. The latter was the court appointee and is certified not only in neurology but also clinical neurophysiology. Both physicians recommended the removal of the feeding tube.

The Schindler family and their supporters have succeeded to sow doubt and confusion but unfortunately they have not been of any help to their daughter or to the numerous other patients who linger in PVS all over the industrialized countries of the world. PVS is not a naturally occurring illness; it is a medically induced condition that resulted from our technology which enables us to keep death at bay for a given period of time. It is a disease created by our society and society will have to face up to its consequences. 

Let us examine what really happened and why. The moment one dials 911 for emergency medical assistance the so-called “health care industry” shifts into high gear. The patient loses his/her autonomy and becomes a number. The EMS technicians are duty bound to apply resuscitative measures and thereby initiate a series of events that are difficult to reverse. Advanced medical directives e.g. living wills, tend not to be available in young adults and a loving family will initially insist on continuing life support which includes artificial respiration and nutrition. If the family after some time agrees to the futility of the effort all is well, support is withdrawn and the patient is allowed to die. But here is the problem; family members may not agree among themselves, especially when money is involved, as was the case in the Schiavo situation. Although both sides to the dispute probably had the best interests of the patient in mind one cannot help but wonder whether the case would have assumed such proportions had the malpractice suit either never been filed or been denied. With the husband as legal guardian whatever is left of Terri’s trust fund would probably go to him or if he had lost guardianship, as the Schindlers desired, it would have gone to them. Churchill said that, “In war the first casualty is the truth,” and this is what we have also witnessed in this case. It was money that drove the families apart and will continue to do so. This is also the common denominator between the fictional Maggie and the real Terri. But otherwise they present a completely different aspect of pain and suffering. Quadriplegic patients can be in pain and they certainly suffer, PVS patients cannot feel pain and cannot experience suffering. If this simple distinction would come across for the “right to die,” versus “right to life” proponents we would have made a step forward towards a rational society.

Let me now explain what I would have done, above and beyond a clinical neurological examination and CT or MRI scans, had Terri been admitted to the hospital where I was in charge of the electrophysiology laboratory. I would have made sure that the EEG was not contaminated by movement of the patient, as had been alleged by Dr. Hammesfahr, in Terri’s case. Subsequently I would have performed evoked potential recordings in the same manner as I reported in an article on “Brainstem Death” in 1985. An absence of expected responses would have provided objective evidence for the cessation of higher cortical functions. I have not come across any information whether or not evoked potential recordings had been carried out in Terri’s case. But these relatively simple tests, rather than a PET scan which is only available in very few facilities, could have gone a long way to settle the doubt whether or not cognition existed. They could also have been repeated in any competent teaching hospital, if another opinion had been requested. This would have settled the question whether or not Terri was in any position to have wishes.

Recently we were told that Terri intended to say “I want to live.”  This assumption was based on repeated coaxing to utter that phrase and a grunt of “Aah Wah” resulted. This was interpreted by the family as, “I want to live.” Did she really? Would you want to live in a totally incapacitated situation, dependent on others for every one of your bodily needs? Would you want to live with a minimum of consciousness that makes you aware of your condition and its hopelessness? I doubt it, but that is precisely what the advocates for prolonging Terri’s PVS were asking for.

Can some good come out of the Schiavo tragedy? Yes, under several provisos. We should discuss with our family members our wishes in regard to the care we want to receive if we were to be rendered unable to make them known when tragedy strikes. A living will alone, important as it is, is not enough unless there is agreement within the family. The will can always be contested and lawyers are not in the least averse to making a buck. If we do not want to end up on a respirator after cardio-respiratory arrest we also need to inform the people we live with not to make the 911 call that mobilizes the EMS and automatically triggers artificial life support. It is more difficult to remove these systems once they have been started and full functional recovery is highly unlikely. If there is agreement within the family on these important matters of life and death and if in addition financial aspects are agreed on beforehand we don’t need lawyers, politicians or ethicists to ensure a death with dignity and a minimum of suffering. Death is a normal, natural and inevitable event that needs to be stripped of the fears surrounding it, as well as the potential secondary gain by others. Once this premise is accepted all else will fall into place.

Can Terri and her case now finally be laid to rest? Hardly; law suits will be filed, Congress will pass laws to further interfere with good medical practice, books will be written, movies will be made, lawyers will make money, an industry providing “do not resuscitate” dog tags or bracelets will spring up and Terri will become the Patron Saint of the extreme wing of the right to life group.

The fact that her illness had been self-inflicted by a desire to lose weight that had gone to absurd proportions will not receive much attention by the media. Yet this is the crux of the case and of the suffering she has thereby inflicted on her and her husband’s family. This was the original cause; her celebrity status resulted from a fight over money between the Schindlers and the husband. Greta van Susteren, who follows the Hannity and Colmes show on the Fox News Channel, had on March 30 the attorney who had won the malpractice suit for Michael as her guest. Here we learned for the first time that the Jury had regarded the physician as being at fault for only 30% of her condition (not having recognized that she suffered from bulimia), while 70% was due to Terri’s behavior. If this were publicized it might put a dent into the efforts of some people to turn her into a martyr.

What this case really proves is the truth that was enunciated 2500 years ago. Suffering is caused by desire! Since we can’t live without desires I would like to reformulate it to “craving.” It is the small mental step from “I would like to have,” to “I have to have,” that starts the process of suffering. At first it is limited to the person who craves but subsequently grows inevitably to involve family, friends and in extreme cases even entire societies because of ill considered actions that are supposed to remove suffering. As has been mentioned repeatedly in these pages, we can’t do anything about what lawyers, judges and politicians do to us, but we can and should avoid in our lives the above mentioned small change in our mental attitude. This is the only way to achieve peace of mind regardless of circumstances.







May 1, 2005

PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

            The past two installments discussed the “rights” Americans are supposed to possess. The debate over the right to life versus the right to die has become increasingly acrimonious and our politicians and ethicists are straining to define when a fetus starts to deserve this right, and under what circumstances an adult has the right to end a life that he/she has come to regard as intolerable. In addition we are in the process of exporting these “human rights” all over the world and our administration feels compelled to force those on other cultures regardless whether or not they want them.

I grew up at a time and in a country where instead of “rights,” obedience to parents, teachers and the law was stressed as well as one’s duty toward society at large. These concepts were reinforced by a conscience that produced a sense of guilt and shame when one could not fully adhere to them, as well as rapid, effective punishment. Now they have not only become obsolete but are regarded with disdain. But when people don’t have a conscience where the ultimate judge of good or bad behavior is God, and when even the word conscience has been replaced with a nebulous “super-ego,” the fabric of society begins to tear. This is what we are witnessing in our country and why there is now a “culture war.” This is supposedly fought between what is erroneously called “people of faith” versus the equally misnamed “progressives.” In an inversion of historical precedent the Democrats, who in general have always espoused more socialistic types of ideas, which would have entitled them to the color red, are now painted in blue and the Republicans who stood for private property and limited government are the reds. Since the “people of faith,” which is the euphemistic title of the extreme right wing of the Republican party and the “progressives” who represent the extreme left wing of the Democrats make up when taken together probably no more than about forty percent of the total population, the majority of us is currently not properly represented by our political system. Nevertheless our politicians pretend to know what’s good for us and judges have no problem inventing new rights that are supposed to guarantee and increase our well-being if not happiness.

For a non-aligned detached observer of the political scene this brought up the question where do all these supposed human rights, which are proclaimed so vigorously, come from. One might obviously think that they are anchored in the Constitution but one will search in vain for a right to abortion or equal societal rights for homosexual couples to those who have married a member of the opposite sex. The founders of the republic would never have entertained such thoughts; therefore a right to “privacy” had to be stretched to allow for the former and a right to “equality” for the latter.

So where do all these rights, which are so liberally bestowed upon us by a benevolent Congress and Judiciary really come from? The answer to that question makes an excursion into history inevitable, regardless of how irrelevant the younger generation thinks history really is. The Declaration of Independence tells us,

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights: that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed: that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it . . .”

The Declaration goes on to list the sins George III had committed against the colonists by his tyrannical rule and that in view of his transgressions against the laws of free people, the colonies “are, and of right ought to be free and independent states.” As a first generation immigrant to this country I was not steeped in American history and although the slogans of equality, life and liberty have since been taken up by other nations, pursuit of happiness seems to have remained uniquely American and I was curious how that phrase became enshrined in the founding fathers’ first official document.

Paul Johnson informs us in “A History of the American People” that the task for writing the declaration had been delegated to a committee of five men who agreed that Thomas Jefferson was the best person to do so and after he had produced his draft version the committee was justly delighted. Benjamin Franklin changed only the words “sacred and undeniable” to “self-evident,” which removed any taint of what one might call “churchiness.” Since the members were also products of the Enlightenment they shied away from the word “God” although no one had any doubt as to who was meant by the Creator. But in as much as these “self-evident truths” and “unalienable rights” were not seen as such by the mother country, which still believed to some extent in the divine right of kings, war was the inevitable outcome. This outcome was foreseen and the language of the document was crafted to be a perfect rallying cry for which to pledge one’s “life, fortune and sacred honor.”

It is true that George III who suffered from a serious illness, which is believed to have been porphyria and may have intermittently affected his reasoning faculties, behaved as an autocrat in his islands and regarded himself above Parliament. His ministers were appointed by the Crown and Parliament, not too dissimilar from our current Congress, was expected to rubber stamp the decrees and procure the money for whatever purposes George deemed appropriate. It is also true that the colonists labored under severe economic hardships in terms of taxes, import duties and restriction of trade, which could be conducted only via British ships. The colonies were supposed to procure the raw materials which were to be shipped to England and the manufactured goods thereof were re-imported to America. This was, of course, a prescription for disaster because free born Englishmen would never stand for such limitations to growth. As another tidbit of British rule one might add that South Carolina had petitioned against further importation of slaves because the colonists felt that they might become too numerous for them to control. Their request was denied because the slave trade was simply too lucrative to be abandoned. If we look at the situation of 1776 objectively it is apparent that apart from liberty there were serious difficulties in acquiring and keeping one’s property at home rather than having it siphoned off to England. Thus, the American War of Independence was also, to a considerable extent, about money. But since people are in general not inclined to undertake the pledge mentioned above simply for Mammon they had to be inspired with a creed of honor and divine sanction.

This leaves us with the question where and when did this divine right of the people originate and in searching for the answer I am indebted to William and Ariel Durant’s “History of Civilization.” The “divine right of kings” had received a severe blow in 1649 when the executioner’s axe separated Charles I’s head from his neck. He had unwisely, thought that he could rule as absolute monarch but was mistaken on two counts. First he didn’t have the money to raise an adequate army equal to that of the Parliament under Oliver Cromwell. Secondly his Catholic wife and his lenient treatment of Catholics had raised fears of a counter reformation where not only blood would flow but where there would also be a massive redistribution of wealth from Protestants to Catholics.

Nevertheless, it was not necessarily an easy matter for the Parliament to execute their king, rather than using some other expedient to curb his power. The civil war between the forces supporting the king and those in favor of his removal had led to his capture and Parliament had to decide what to do. The fascinating aspect in connection with our topic is that Parliament in January of 1649 consisted of only fifty-six members, from the original 650 that had been voted for in 1640. The rest had fallen victim to repeated purges during the civil war. This remainder consisted, in the overwhelming majority, of Cromwell’s soldiers and other Puritans who had no love for the king’s Catholic leanings. It was this “rump parliament” that declared it had been “treason for a king to make war upon parliament” and called for his execution with a majority of six votes. The House of Lords rejected the ordinance stating that the Commons had no authority for such a bold statement,” whereupon the Commons resolved the people were, ‘under God, the original [sic] of all just power’; that the Commons as representing the people, had the supreme power in this nation.’”  It is worth while considering that “the people” whose supreme power was asserted consisted of 31 men, because 25 of the delegates had either voted nay or abstained.

One hundred-thirty five Commissioners were then appointed to try the king and when one of them told Cromwell that they had no legal authority to do so Cromwell had enough of the affair and cried, “I tell you, we will cut off his head with the crown upon it.” When the votes were tallied 59 judges had voted for execution. Although this did not amount even to a simple majority the divine right of kings died on that day, that of “the people” was born, and Louis XVI of France would have been better off, had he remembered the precedent. So how did “the people” rule thereafter? Cromwell became Lord Protector and ruled as an autocrat just as harshly as Charles had done except in the name of God and the Puritan – Calvinistic – religion. Since this did not allow “merry old England” the fun it had been accustomed to in former times the people soon soured on the benefits they had expected from the new regime. Wars with foreign powers continued, this required taxes even beyond what Charles had demanded. “Taxation without representation or parliamentary approval, arrest without due process of law, trial without jury, were as flagrant as before; and rule by the army and naked force was still made more offensive by being coated with a religious cant. ‘The rule of Cromwell became as hated as any government has ever been hated in England before or since.’”   

Like Caesar, Cromwell refused the crown when offered and personally continued to live the simple life. But unlike Caesar he managed to escape several assassination attempts and died wracked with illness in his bed in 1658. Nevertheless, in good monarchical fashion he appointed his son Richard as his successor. Similar to some sons of anointed monarchs he proved to be incompetent and had no desire for a life of politics. Within a year Parliament was recalled; Richard resigned and went to France. Another year later the son of Charles I crossed the channel in the opposite direction and started his reign as Charles II. The monarchy was restored and universal happiness reigned again in England as well as on the Continent over this turn of affairs.

But the story which has a direct bearing on today’s America is not over. After the death of Charles II his son inherited the throne as James II. His pursuit of personal happiness as well as for his people soon discovered the pleasures of absolutism and in addition he started to re-Catholicize the country. The birth of a son who was to be brought up in the Catholic faith was the last straw and the Protestants turned to William of Orange for help. He was happy to comply and arrived in England with an army. James resisted, was outgunned and fled to France. But Parliament had learned its lessons. Prior to being crowned as William III former members of Parliament assembled in a Convention (February 1689) and promulgated a “Declaration of Right” which was accepted by Parliament in December of that year as the “Bill of Rights,” which in turn became a model for the Americans not quite a hundred years later. Like our Declaration of Independence it listed the trespasses of James II in language fairly similar to what was used in America, but then entrusted the government to the new king under the proviso that he would also remove forever any taint of Catholicism from his realm. Although we keep talking in America of our “Bill of Rights,” there was originally the assumption that the Constitution would suffice for that purpose. The proponents of this idea were overruled and the Amendments to the Constitution took its place, but even in that document “pursuit of happiness” no longer figured.

We might stop at this point with our historical excursion had not the past month riveted all eyes on St. Peter’s Basilica and the changing of the shepherd of Catholics around the world. The fact that this magnificent edifice was actually the proximate cause of the Protestant Reformation is hardly appreciated. Leo X (1513-1541) had inherited upon his ascendancy to the throne of St. Peter full coffers and a clergy that was in part fonder of the good life than the monastic virtues of chastity, poverty and obedience. Instead of putting a stop to the abuses that had occurred within “the body of Christ,” as a Medici, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Leo’s personal preference was also for “la dolce vita.” Since he was not only bishop of Rome but also in charge of Florence he spent lavishly on the arts as well as on wars to keep the Papal States intact from the rapacious French. Furthermore, there was the construction of the Basilica which had been started under his predecessor because the original church, built under Constantine in the fourth century, had fallen apart. But to create as magnificent a renaissance building as we now see required a great deal of money since the builders and artisans did not work pro bono. Within two years the Vatican was bankrupt and money had to be extracted from the reluctant emperor, kings and other potentates. This obviously did not sit well with the rulers of the various countries and provinces who would rather have kept their money at home than sending it to Rome in order to support a splendid life-style.

Since one couldn’t get money for what were regarded as frivolities a Crusade against the Turks was proposed. The German Emperor Maximilian and Francis I King of France were supposed to lead the army, while England, Holland, Spain as well as Portugal were to provide the navy. The goal was to sail into the Bosporus take Constantinople and get rid of the Turkish danger to Christendom once and for all. The danger was actually quite real because a few years later Soliman the Magnificent (also spelled Suleiman) arrived with an army of about 270.000 men before the gates of Vienna (1529).  For the benefit of those who felt a few years ago that Saddam’s rhetoric with “the mother of all battles” was somewhat over the top I am going to translate here, from Wien Chronik, excerpts of Soliman’s proclamation which demanded the surrender of the city. He introduced himself as,

“We, Sultan Soliman, God on land and water, Almighty Emperor and Sultan of Babylon [now come several other regal titles] . . . king of precious metals in India, a preserver of the gods and sovereign and guide from sunrise to sunset. Guardian of Muhammad’s earthly paradise, providing comfort and salvation for Turks and heathens, and a destroyer of Christendom; a protector of the sepulcher of the crucified god and king of Jerusalem:”

Thereafter he promised Ferdinand of Austria, who was at that time also in charge of Bohemia, Moravia and parts of Hungary, “I shall, god on earth, send you and all your helpers in the most miserable way we can think of to your death. You might as well know that we shall shortly besiege and occupy all of Germany – our empire - with our might.”

 Well, it didn’t quite work out that that way. Soliman lost the battle for Vienna and a second attempt by Kara Mustafa in 1683 also failed. Christendom in Europe was saved for the next several centuries only to be endangered now by secularism and a new, albeit peaceful, incursion from Turkey. When one is aware of these historical facts it is apparent why America’s desire to have Turkey speedily admitted to the European Union is not met with equal enthusiasm in Europe. They were very happy to have finally driven “the Turk” completely out of Europe - apart from a foothold in Constantinople, renamed to Istanbul - after the First World War. Although the Europeans current Christianity is not reflected in visits to the churches this does not necessarily make them any fonder of Muslim ways and customs which are infiltrating their countries. This makes it also understandable that the new Pope Benedict XVI will not look with favor on a speedy integration of Muslim Turkey into what he feels should be at heart a Christian civilization, which needs to be brought back into the fold. A conflict with America in this area seems foreordained. Europeans feel towards Turkey just about like Americans feel toward Mexico: good neighbors yes, but everybody should stay on their own turf. Ronald Reagan’s, “mi casa su casa” is not in the cards for the immediate future.

But Leo’s Crusade against the Turks did not materialize in the first years of his rule because the various potentates had their own quarrels and preferred to fight each other rather than a common enemy. Thus by 1517 Leo was again in dire financial straits. The money that had been collected from Germany for the Crusade did not arrive in Rome and especially “Frederick the Wise” of Saxony lived up to his title. He withheld the contributions until there was actually a Crusade. No Crusade no money, which left Leo high and dry. But the Church was not quite without resources because it could always extract funds from the faithful by promising remission of sins for an outstretched palm. These “indulgences” were reasonably lucrative and in March of 1517 Leo issued the most famous of all in order to get his building funds, which led to the irrevocable split of Western Christianity. The Archbishop of Mainz, who had bought himself the office from the Pope, entrusted the task of collecting the funds for St. Peter’s to the Dominican monk Johann Tetzel. But in his marketing zeal the good friar promised more than he could deliver. He not only promised remission of past sins but also of all future ones and at death “the gates of punishment shall be shut, and the gates of the paradise of delight shall be opened.” The idea that by buying this indulgence one could then live merrily to one’s heart’s content without contrition was already tough to swallow for the true believers but Tetzel apparently went even a step further. He promised that one could also release the souls of loved ones who were lingering in purgatory with a financial contribution which led to the ditty, “As soon as the money rings, the soul from purgatory’s fire springs.”

This is where the drama began. Frederick the Wise refused permission for Tetzel to peddle his indulgence in Saxony. Nevertheless, some curious citizens of his realm visited with Tetzel at the border and then brought these indulgences to the Professor of Theology at Wittenberg University, Martin Luther, to have them examined for theological correctness. When Luther, a man of strong convictions and equally strong language, saw these documents one can readily imagine the expletive he used. When this was relayed to Tetzel he called Luther “immoral” and the fight which continues to this day was on. There was simply no way that Luther would tolerate such outlandish promises especially in regard to souls in purgatory, for whom even the Pope could only pray rather than redeem. This required a reply and he issued it in form of the famous 95 theses, nailed to the doors of Wittenberg’s Cathedral, which served as a bulletin Board. By doing so on October 31 he ensured wide circulation because on November 1, All Saint’s Day, it was customary to put holy relics on display for the people to view, which always drew a crowd. To make absolutely sure that his opinions would be heard he not only had a German translation circulated among the people but he also sent a copy to the Archbishop of Mainz, Tetzel’s immediate superior.

The theses were meant as an invitation for discussion to clarify the power of indulgences but since both sides to the conflict stood their ground no agreement could be reached. For the German princes this was a gift from heaven because now they had a good local theological excuse for no longer having to send their money to Rome but could keep it under their own wing. “Los von Rom,” became the rallying cry under which the Reformation was fought with fire and blood. It might have fizzled had Leo understood the seriousness of the problem because disobeying the Pope was not an easy undertaking and the various Christian kings had serious reservations, since it involved risking one’s immortal soul. But things became a great deal easier when Henry VIII’s wife, Catherine of Aragon, failed to deliver a male heir to the throne. For Henry this was a necessity because the house of Tudor was still on shaky ground and could be challenged at any time. Petitions for annulment of the marriage were sent to Rome but Leo refused. This was not due to obstinacy but he was in the hand of the German Emperor Charles V who had driven the French out, and Charles was also the nephew of Catherine who would not tolerate this insult to his aunt. Thus, there was a stalemate and when Anne Boleyn arrived on the scene Henry fell head over heels in love with the maiden. He became obsessed with her and when it came to a choice between the Pope and sex, with the intent of procuring an heir, and there was in addition the precedent in Germany that one could disobey the Pope but remain a good Christian the outcome was obvious. Kings no longer needed papal and, therefore divine sanction; they could receive their mandate directly from heaven and could run their kingdoms to their hearts content as heads of the local Church, which was subservient to their wishes. Henry’s pursuit of happiness in the arms of Anne also soured when from her offspring only Elizabeth survived and Anne had to pay for that failure with her blood under the executioner’s axe. The rest is, as they say, history.

What does all of this teach us? It is quite apparent that the pursuit of happiness by secular or ecclesiastic princes tends to lead to profound unhappiness of a portion of their constituents and in most people of the countries they make war on. We have also seen that there is always a handy excuse by invoking the name of God for their enterprises and when God is out of favor it becomes the “Will of the People” that provides the sanction. Whatever government people live under it is always a small oligarchy that feels itself entitled to rule in the name of the governed. This is swept under the rug and one can bask in moral superiority over the benighted other.

In private life the pursuit of happiness is equally fraught with complications. If one looks back at one’s own life one can count the unmitigated experience of happiness in moments, the experience of pain and distress in days, months or years, and run of the mill tedium interrupted by some joy in decades. If this were not so there would be no market for all the religions as well as self-help books all of which pursue the same goal: to increase the individual’s contentment if not outright joy in this tumultuous world human beings keep creating for themselves.

Happiness can be likened to a butterfly; one can pursue it and it will elude one’s net. Even if we catch it what do we do? We can spear it and put it into a collection to show the dead fading beauty prideful to others. But what have we really gained thereby? On the other hand we can sit still and the butterfly may, out of its own volition, settle for a while on one’s leg or arm. We can admire its delicate beauty and wish it well on its further journey. There are moments in life when we experience what is called the “Grace of God.” It is a sudden, spontaneous, and uncalled for sensation of a “yes” to the world combined with a sense of intense gratitude. This is what Schiller was talking about when he said “death is not too high a price for having lived one moment in Paradise.” The reasons why we are unable to hang on to those moments will be explored in the next installment.







June 1, 2005

LIVING WITH DUHKHA

As mentioned in the previous essay, happiness is a state of mind that can be experienced for relatively brief moments but not retained for any length of time. Philosophers and theologians have grappled with this fact of life throughout recorded history and numerous reasons have been adduced. For the ancient Persians it was simple because they believed in a dualism of the forces of light versus those of darkness where sometimes one side and then the other would win. This cosmic battle involves all of nature and includes the human race.

The situation became more complex when Jewish monotheism rejected the idea of dualism and instead postulated one Almighty and benevolent God. This did not change the facts of life and misfortunes persisted. The Jewish answer to the vicissitudes of life was the concept of sin. The person had disobeyed the will of God and needed to be punished. This notion also had its merits but fell short of the mark because disease and other tragedies befall even saints. The attempt of Jewish theologians to address this problem is the well known Book of Job. When Job questioned why the Lord was piling more and more miseries upon him the answer he got was not particularly satisfactory. To put it simply, “Who are you to question Me?” may well reflect the state of our insignificance in the context of the cosmos but it is of no major help to a person in distress. But all was not lost for Job because the Lord did provide a happy ending of sorts when Job got more than all of his previous property back including brand new sons and daughters. A more modern answer to Job’s question was provided by the well known author Rabbi Kushner, who had also been confronted with a personal tragedy of major proportions. It is contained in his little book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” Since the Lord’s answer to Job did not address Dr. Kushner’s justified anguish he fell back on the ancient Greek notion of Moros (fate or destiny) against which even Zeus was helpless. This idea may also have its merits but it does conflict with that of an Almighty God. Since it is important, however, to end one’s contemplations on the problems of mankind on an optimistic note Dr. Kushner assured us that the Lord will never put more burdens on us then we can carry.

St. Paul solved the problem by expanding the concept of sin to include newborn babies. According to this opinion all of us come into this world tainted by the disobedience of Adam who brought death into this world. By firmly believing in Jesus who by his death on the cross and subsequent resurrection has atoned for all past, present and future sins we overcome death and enter into an eternal life of the blessed. The “original sin” concept was subsequently elaborated on by Christian theologians and as a genetic defect it had to be expunged by baptizing the newborn. Unfortunately baptism early or later in life did not lead to prolonged states of happiness by the believers. The imminent arrival of the Kingdom of God announced by John the Baptist, Jesus, St. Paul and others did not materialize either. On the contrary the Jews lost whatever meager independence they had in Jerusalem and Judea for nearly two millennia. Christians, ignoring the teachings of Jesus, delighted in that historical fact and regarded it as the just punishment of the nation by God for having been stubborn and denying that Jesus had been the promised Messiah. Since this denial persists to this day and both can’t be right, conflicts between the two religious systems of thought are unavoidable.

Christianity fared better as a religion but only by initially accommodating itself to the secular power structure and later on developing its own. The persistence of evil even in nominally Christian realms did require further explanations so the ancient Persian Ahriman as adversary of the god of light was resurrected under the Greek name of Satan. His main reason for existence is to torment the human race and especially the believers when they stray from the straight and narrow. The name and concept were taken over by the Muslims where he is referred to as Shaitan. In the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance Satan was a very popular excuse when bad things happened and Luther, especially, was tormented by him throughout his life. Satan’s wiles, which included the Church of Rome, and subsequently the Jews when they failed to listen to him just as they had to St. Paul, had to be resisted. These efforts made him quite pugnacious but did little to promote personal happiness. Jesus’ admonition, “resist not evil” had found no echo in his soul. Since this particular commandment goes directly against the very fiber of humanity, which demands retribution for genuine or perceived misfortunes, it continues to be ignored in the private as well as political arena to the detriment of all of us.

With the so-called period of Enlightenment, “secularism” arose. The emergence of empirical science first did away with the “ghosties and ghoulies” which had tormented our ancestors, and then their boss the devil. In as much as further scientific endeavors showed that some of the teachings of the Bible were in conflict with emerging facts, the role of God came into question. But when you do away with God you not only remove sin but also the moral conscience that has been built up around it as the foundation and preservation of Western civilization. For “God given” laws “man made” ones were substituted. This process had two disadvantages. One was that it created armies of lawyers whose main function is to find ways to circumvent these laws, while new ones are created on a daily basis. The other is that the absence of a helping or punishing hand from above has left a vacuum in the human mind. I use the word mind instead of soul because when you do away with the concept of God that of the immortal soul also tends to disappear. By the “secularists” this vacuum is now either ignored or filled by the restless “pursuit of happiness” in the material or emotional sphere. This has in turn created rising crime, the drug culture and sexual promiscuity with its attendant dangers to the health of the individual as well as its ill effects on society at large. The so-called “culture war” in the U.S. is the attempt to turn the clock of time back to an era where God reigned supreme and His laws were supposedly obeyed. Since one cannot uninvent science, and its most destructive outgrowth the bomb, these efforts will prove futile and mankind is likely to stumble from one disaster to the next always blaming someone else for misfortunes that are bound to occur.

The Western outlook on life is based on thoughts that were largely hatched in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. The ancient Indians who lived in the foothills of the Himalayans developed different ideas about the origin of the vicissitudes of life. Although the Hindus had a vast pantheon of gods, some good and others bad, they also produced the Upanishads as a basis for moral living. These documents are in some ways opposite in spirit to the Old Testament. While Moses’ laws were intended to create a nation that would conquer territory and amass material fortunes the Indian sages concentrated on the inner life of human beings and the question how harmony can be achieved within a given person. The nation was of no concern. It would take are of itself if all the individuals that make up the nation would behave according to the precepts laid down.

As in all societies eventually the will to power became dominant in some people and so did the critical faculty which gave rise to a splintering of the religion into numerous sects.  Conflicts between the two ruling classes the Brahmins - guardians of the faith - and the Kshatyras – the military, secular arm of government – became inevitable and the misery of the common people persisted. At some point between the 6th and 5th century BC a spiritual revolution took place under the leadership of Siddhartha Gautama who became known to the world as the Buddha – the Enlightened One. This is another interesting confluence of terms. In post-Renaissance Europe the “philosophes” found the concept of God unappealing and substituted science under a term that had been coined two thousand years earlier by a different civilization of which they did not as yet have solid notions. Siddhartha had also thought deeply about the reasons why human beings are subject to suffering and had found that putting the blame on the gods was not an adequate way to reduce the problems that living entails. All the human being can do with gods, or God as the case may be, is to ask for forgiveness and beg for help which may or may not be granted. Although he did not put it in these words the concept as expressed in the German language, “Selbst ist der Mann!” arose. The Brahmins had argued endlessly about the “Self” what it is and what it is not but the consensus was that it was Brahma, the ultimate reality and therefore God, as well as its extension in every human soul. Siddhartha who had been endowed with a thoroughly practical mind abhorred religious speculations and tried living by the precepts of the various sects which were then prevalent in India. None of these efforts led to inner peace and the solution to the question why there is so much suffering in this world. At last the answer came with utmost simplicity which is always a hallmark of truth. Suffering is a fact of human existence, it has a cause and when the cause has been eliminated suffering will cease. The way to make suffering disappear is outlined in the Eightfold Noble Path.

So far so good; but when we read that the cause of suffering is desire, it does become more complicated. The human being constantly wants something and the mind flits about like a monkey, desiring now this and immediately thereafter that and if the end of suffering can only be achieved  by giving up everything, including the needs of one’s body, the Western mind has difficulty accepting a philosophy of this type. The rewards of a Nirvana, which when translated literally simply means extinction, are also not particularly appealing.

As an educated European I had a nodding acquaintance with Buddhism but as the lines above indicate it was another “so what” experience until I was invited by Japanese colleagues to go on a lecture tour about various aspects of epilepsy. I was treated royally by my hosts and although the schedule was exacting I shall always be grateful for the courtesies that were extended to me. The tour also took me to Nara the very first capital of Japan and in the evening after dinner I found in the drawer of the nightstand a book “The Teachings of Buddha.”  It had been placed there by the Buddhist Promotion Society of Japan just as the Gideons place Bibles into hotel rooms and Mr. Marriott the Book of Mormon in some of his hotels. When I began reading the book and found the theory of the supremacy of the mind over everything else, the neurologist perked up and decided that I needed to study this book in detail. I was tempted to keep it but then I thought, “No, you don’t start your acquaintance with Buddha by stealing” and reluctantly put it back in the drawer before going to sleep. The next morning on the way to breakfast I passed the gift shop and there was the book on display for purchase. I gladly paid the nominal price and it has become a valuable companion on the trip through life from then on.

On that particular day in Nara there was no lecture scheduled and my local hosts, including one of my former students and the Professor of Neurology with his charming wife, took me to the Deer Park which houses one of the oldest Todaiji temples in Japan and has fortunately survived the ravages of WWII. Inside was a colossal bronze statue of a seated Buddha who stared serenely at the crowd. I was told that it was cast around the 8th century is 53 feet high and weighs 500 tons. The left hand is depicted with the palm up and I was informed that this expresses his infinite compassion, although an open palm tends to have another connotation in the West.  Since Siddhartha had to beg for his food both ideas are probably right because the giver receives a blessing in return. The right hand is raised in the manner of a stop sign and signifies that it wards off evil.

While I took all this in I also saw a huge wooden post, somewhat off to the left side of the statue, which extended up to the ceiling of the building. It had a relatively small hole in the bottom and little Japanese kids had a great deal of fun crawling through it. It was explained to me that the hole is the size of the Buddha’s nostril and whoever gets through it is saved. But it wasn’t only children that availed themselves of this opportunity adults participated likewise and my hosts, concerned about my spiritual well being urged me to try. Obviously I resisted because there was no way a nearly 6 foot frame of 170 pounds would fit through that narrow tunnel. But they insisted and since I didn’t want to disappoint them I took my jacket off and to the great delight of the on looking crowd laid down on one side with an outstretched arm to demonstrate that this simply wouldn’t work because I was stuck. Never underestimate Japanese perseverance. While I was trying to shove myself through and get a hold of something in that tunnel with my fingers, eager little Japanese pushed at my feet with all their might. The moment my outstretched hand appeared on the other end another group of onlookers grabbed it and with pushing and pulling I emerged eventually to joyous laughter and congratulations, although the work had been theirs rather than just mine. It was a demonstration of Buddhism in action, the hallmark of which is compassion.

I can’t say that there was some kind of spiritual revelation associated with that scene but I was glad to have provided my friends with some moments of happiness and laughter. Nevertheless, a seed was put into the ground on that day and I decided to learn more about Buddhism and Siddhartha, its founder. The words “suffering” and “desire” had turned me off when I first read about Buddhism but when I learned that the word which is translated as “suffering” is “duhkha” in Sanskrit the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. Although duhkha does mean suffering it has considerably wider connotations and in the Dalai Lama’s little book, “The Opening of the Wisdom Eye” these are explained in an endnote. To quote from the book:

 

“DUHKHA- a very important term. Often rendered as ‘suffering,’ it is then inadequate and we [the translators of the book] have preferred either the cumbersome but more accurate ‘unsatisfactoriness’ or else to leave the word untranslated. Duhkha may be physical (pain) or mental (anguish), it refers to the facts of ‘birth, old age, disease and death,’ to the common enough ‘grief, lamentation, pain, anguish and despair,’ to being ‘conjoined with what one does not like’ and ‘being separated from what one likes, not to getting what one wants.’ The very components of our personality are, because we grasp at them (as ‘I’, as ‘mine’), bound up with Duhkha. ‘Duhkha should be understood’ within one’s ‘own’ mind and body and when it is understood one will know true happiness. Phrases in parentheses in these notes are quoting the words of the Lord Buddha.”

 

In view of this expanded meaning of the term I shall leave it untranslated in the future. We can now see that duhkha instead of being due to external events is part of our beings and there is no escaping from this companion.  When the roots of the Sanskrit word are explored one finds that it is a composite of “dur” which means “bad” and “kha,” which means “state;” ergo a bad state. When I read this another thought from Egyptian mythology immediately came to mind. It was assumed that every person consisted of two elements: one was the visible body and its actions, the other his “Ka.” This twin was born with him, acted as his invisible “Doppelgaenger” and guardian angel. At death it preceded the person to the Western realm. If we were to render this idea into a modern context we might regard the Ka as a series of computer files which are created by our actions (The Hindu-Buddhist Karma) and which are delivered at death to some central registry which may or may not render a judgment. Thereafter the function of the Ka was to inhabit the statue of the deceased in his mortuary temple, thereby guaranteeing the continuation of life. The soul of the person was the Ba and depicted as a little bird that was released from its earthly bounds. I have often wondered whether the ancient most holy Muslim shrine, the black stone cube in Mecca the Ka’ba, has any connection to these Egyptian ideas. 

But leaving these theoretical speculations aside the concept of duhkha can have considerable implications for daily living. First of all we will come to “expect the unexpected” not out of pessimism but simply as a fact of life that will be with us in some form or other as long we are on this planet. When it comes as minor annoyances we can shrug it off by saying “duhkha” to ourselves and in case of major disasters we will recognize our obligation to deal with the consequences in a constructive manner. The favorite American “blame game,” where everything bad that happens is automatically somebody else’s fault, stops when duhkha is incorporated into one’s daily life. The aggrieved person knows that loss is part of life, can never be fully restituted, and as the saying goes “it’s time to move on.” If more people were to adopt this attitude the numerous lawyers who at this time engage in litigations of genuine or assumed grievances would have to find themselves another profession.

This brings me to the second word I had problems with, “desire.” What is meant is not the wish for ordinary aspects of daily living, but craving and clinging. It is the mentality of “I have to have” regardless of object. When this attitude is abandoned mental freedom is achievable even under adverse circumstances. The advantage of practicing Siddhartha’s insight of the four noble truths and the eightfold noble path is that it does not require a change of one’s religion. They can be lived by a Jew, Muslim or Christian just as much as by an agnostic or atheist. There are no “thou shalts” and there is no prerequisite for belief in a supernatural force that dispenses good or evil.  All that is required is the will to tame the vagaries of one’s mind. The practice does not come easy, however, it needs considerable mental effort and there is no instant Zen. On the other hand it can round out our lives in the West. We tend to be “this world oriented” and ignore what one could call “the eyes closed state” where our fears, hopes and aspirations reside. If we are equally comfortable within ourselves when we are not engaged in frantic activities chasing after the “American dream” of material well being then our conduct in the eyes open state including our scientific pursuits will be in harmony and that ought to be a worthy goal.

The philosophical system called Buddhism has grown quite complex over the centuries. But this is equally true of what one may call the Christology which has arisen over the person of Jesus. Yet when one compares the teachings of Siddhartha and Jesus it is quite apparent that considerable parallels exist, although they did start from different premises, which were conditioned by the milieu they had grown up in. Nevertheless the goal was the same, namely to free the individual from what was called mental stains by Siddhartha and sin by Jesus. It is also interesting to note, that the concept of duhkha as an aspect we are born with has its counterpart in the original sin. The fundamental difference between these two world views is, however, that the Christian religion sees the human being as a tainted fallen creature which has to be redeemed by faith and certain rituals. For the Buddhist the human being is the most desirable state to be born into because only the human brain can apprehend the infinite and strive for the full development of one’s mind which in turn leads to an amelioration of suffering for others.

This point needs to be emphasized because there exists even in learned Christian circles some misunderstanding about what the Buddha tried to accomplish. Pope Benedict XVI, was reported to have referred to Buddhism as “auto-eroticism,” while he was still Cardinal Ratzinger and in charge of defending Catholic dogma. If this report is correct nothing could be further from the truth. Although the Buddhist does spend a great deal of time in meditation this is not solipsism for personal gratification. Auto-eroticism implies love of self but this is precisely the opposite of what the Buddha taught. In Buddhism there is no Self. There are only constantly changing aggregates, which include the human body and mind, and it is therefore foolish to cling to a notion of self. Meditation is performed for the sole purpose of gaining mastery over one’s mind in order to better understand oneself and thereby others. This in turn enables the practitioner to provide genuine help to all.  This is, by the way, also the basis for the Greek admonition on the temple in Delphi, “Know Thyself.” The Christian and Jewish religions demand that “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God and thy neighbor as thyself.” But love cannot be commanded; it is spontaneous emotion and when absent the commandment becomes either a duty or worse, hypocrisy. The Buddhist knows this. He is not ordered, “thou shalt have compassion” but the emotion arises as a direct consequence of his mental training and is therefore genuine.

Let us consider now how our world would be different if the principle of duhkha and its causes had been incorporated into the lives of our political leadership. Apart from clinging, the root causes are: greed, ignorance and delusion. Let us be honest with ourselves. What was the invasion of Iraq really all about? Saddam sat on about half the world’s supply of oil and we wanted it. That was greed because other arrangements for obtaining some of his oil could have been made. The idea that we would be welcomed as liberators was based on ignorance because our neocons who also pushed for the invasion, for reasons of their own,  did not have the faintest inkling how much dislike the U.S. government has earned in the Arab world during the past decades. There were two reasons for the hatred of America among fundamentalists. One was the establishment of military bases in Saudi Arabia, the Muslim Holy Land, which was seen as a precursor to a penetration of Muslim society with the moral decay as presented in our movies and TV shows. The other was our constant unilateral support of the policies of the state of Israel. The fact that we vetoed every single UN Security Council resolution that would have forced the Israeli government to adhere to international legal standards was ignored here but not by the Arabs who see our government simply as an extension of the one that sits in Jerusalem. But in spite of this ignorance of Muslim sensibilities our Iraq policy was pursued with a fervor that can only be called delusional as subsequent events have proven. There is enough duhkha in this world due to natural causes we don’t have to add man made ones.

While personal duhkha resulting from illness, accident or loss of life and property is serious enough, that produced by politicians is immense. This is the reason why governments need to be held accountable. Simply voting the ruling circles out of office is not enough. Accountability should be ongoing while they are in charge of the government. Only under those circumstances can the average person say that we live in freedom and democracy. We would then no longer need to export it by force for “our security” because others will be happy to emulate it on their own turf and under their own cultural values. We also need to look at the forces that control our economy and popular culture. They are based on the precise opposite of the teachings of Buddha. Instead of limiting desires we are egged on to want more and more in the material and sexual fields. That this does not promote happiness but merely increases duhkha, because every unfulfilled wish will create unhappiness in the person, has yet to be learned. But since this is the death knell for capitalistic society, which is ultimately based on greed, this learning experience will be a long and arduous process.







July 1, 2005

WORLD WAR III

            The middle of June brings Father’s Day and the family tends to honor me on that occasion with some books. The first one arrived from our daughter by mail and was Thomas Friedman’s Longitudes & Attitudes. Exploring the World after September 11. After glancing at it I knew that I had to discuss it in these pages. But I had also heard that he has a new one out called The World is Flat so I had to get that one too. I felt a little stingy and thought I’d get a copy from the library but was told that although they have altogether 54 in the Salt Lake County Library system 95 people were on the waiting list. When I mentioned this to Martha and said that I’ll go to amazon.com for it rather than waiting for several months I got a stern: “No!” Then she went to a cupboard and pulled out a brand new copy which she had intended to give me on Sunday. The good wife truly anticipates my every wish. But since she never gives just one book I got another one on Sunday: Collapse. How Societies Chose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. This particular tome has 575 pages and I haven’t gotten to it yet because I’m still on Mr. Friedman.

Changes in Longitudes reminds, of course, every sailor worth his salt of Jimmy Buffets song, “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” which is in a considerably lighter vein. We like Tom Friedman because he calls the shots as he sees them and is not afraid of offending his Jewish co-religionists by telling them that Israel needs to evacuate the settlements not only in Gaza but also the West Bank, which is the only logical way for any semblance of peace to arise in that part of the world. The book consists actually of some bi-weekly columns he wrote for The New York Times from December 15, 2000 up to July 3, 2002. In order to flesh it out he added some excerpts of his travel diary during those days. He called these 84 pages, “Diary: Travels in a World without Walls” but they add little new information to what is in the columns. I believe that he chose this particular title because it feeds directly into the theme of The World is Flat, which celebrates the Internet society where there are no borders. I’ll deal with this particular notion later; for now we have to address his opinions on the post 9-11 world.

Newspaper columns have to be written several days before publication date and the editorial that appeared under the September 11 dateline was called “Walls.” Friedman was in Jerusalem at the time where Intifada II was in full swing. Although the so-called “security fence” or “wall of separation” that is supposed to keep Palestinians from sending suicide bombers into Israel, was not yet being built, Friedman comments on the many private walls that existed to protect Jewish settlements from snipers and most of all the mental walls which prevent a constructive dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis. He realized that a just solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is imperative if there is ever to be a what one might call “cold peace” in the region and, as mentioned, he even favors Israel’s withdrawal from the territories captured in the 1967 war.

In this connection I was surprised to read that an educated and knowledgeable person, as Friedman obviously is, keeps repeating in some form or another the mantra that: Arafat walked away from the best deal Israel had ever offered at Camp David and answered Israel’s and America’s demonstrable good will with suicide attacks. For instance, in the February 8, 2001 column he wrote about Barak: “He offered Mr. Arafat 94 percent of the West Bank for a Palestinian state, plus territorial compensation for most of the other 6 percent, plus half of Jerusalem, plus restitution and resettlement in Palestine for Palestinian refugees.” If this were true why should anybody, including Arafat reject such an offer? But the offer never existed in this form.

I have presented some of the facts that led to the rejection of the proposal in the article “Palestinian State or Israeli Protectorate?” in April of 2002 on this website. If I, as a private citizen, can get them surely Mr. Friedman with access to infinitely more sources must also have been aware that this “offer” was a propaganda ploy and never meant to be enacted. The information for that essay came from www.mideastweb.org and The Israel-Arab Reader by Laqueur and Rubin.

            I am calling those Camp David “negotiations” a propaganda ploy for two reasons. One of the ground rules was that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.” This statement comes directly from Bill Clinton after the failed talks on July 25, 2000. Under those circumstances the stronger will dictate to the weaker and you get a Versailles of WW I memory. The second reason was Jerusalem. Before Ehud Barak left for Camp David he issued a statement which can also be found in the mentioned Israel-Arab Reader in which he said among other aspects:

           

            “If there is an agreement, it will only be one that will strengthen the security of Israel, its economy, and its regional and international standing. Otherwise, there will be no agreement.

            If there is an agreement, it will only be one that will comply with the principles to which I committed myself before I was elected, and principles that I have consistently and clearly stressed:

                        --A united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty;

                        --The 1967 borders will be amended [in Israel’s favor]

--The overwhelming majority of the settlers in Judea, Samaria and the     Gaza strip will be in settlement blocs under Israeli sovereignty;

--No foreign army in the entire west of the Jordan River;

--A solution to the problem of refugees outside Israeli sovereign territory.

           

These are the principles – these and no others.”

 

 The entire tone of the message was: We are in charge, we will remain in charge and if you don’t like it: tough luck. Under those circumstances why go through this charade unless you want to make political points to blame your adversary. But there is more to the “most generous offer” that emerged from these 14 days of “negotiations.”

1) Israel would have retained its authority over the Jordan valley, control of its water resources and could re-deploy its troops there at any time it felt threatened.

2) The access roads to the settlement blocks would have remained under Israeli control.

3) There would not have been contiguous borders within the proposed Palestinian state, which would have consisted of a series of disconnected municipalities and the same would have applied to Jerusalem. Palestinians would have lived on islands within a Jewish city.

4) Border crossings with Egypt and Jordan although under Palestinian control would be under Israeli supervision.

            5) The Palestinian state would be demilitarized and alliances with other countries would be subject to Israeli approval. Although Israel would accept some refugees from previous wars the rest would have to be absorbed elsewhere.

 

In essence: The so called Palestinian state would not have had contiguous borders and Arafat would have become mayor of an assortment of disconnected Palestinian municipalities. Even in Jerusalem there would not have been contiguity for the Palestinians because they were only granted some islands in a Jewish city. One may legitimately ask: would any Jew have accepted such a state if it had been offered by the UN in 1947? The answer is obvious!

What is so remarkable about this propaganda ploy is that the Jewish people in Israel and abroad have deluded themselves with the notion that they are granting favors when they propose to adhere partially to international law. This conduct flies in the face of the UN charter which specifically prohibits territorial acquisitions by war. It also disregards the UN Security Council resolution which demanded that Israel withdraw from territories she conquered in 1967 as well as those which repudiated the annexation of East Jerusalem and declared the settlement policies as illegal. It is even more remarkable how well the Jewish leadership has succeeded to convince the majority of the American people, and certainly its political and intellectual leadership to accept their point of view. By waving the twin banners of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust they have effectively silenced public opposition including the media.  

We may now ask why spend all the effort on these 14 days at Camp David when the outcome was doomed from the start? The answer is politics. Barak knew, or should have known that the conditions he had laid out in his speech on July 10, 2000 would be unacceptable not only to the Palestinians but the Arab world at large. “A united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty” is incompatible with peace in the 21st century. The clock cannot be turned back to David and Solomon or the Maccabees! The sooner the Jewish world realizes this, the better off all of us will be. So why make the demand in the first place? There was an election in the offing and by speaking of “painful concessions,” Barak tried to create a local climate where he would be seen as peacemaker while at the same time taking the wind out of Sharon’s sails who wanted no part of any concessions. It was a smart move and it worked. Knowing that the Arabs had to reject the plan the onus would be shifted from Israel to them.

Why did Arafat go to Camp David? He had no choice. Had he refused outright he would have personally offended Bill Clinton and would have been seen by the whole world as intransigent.

Why did Clinton instigate the talks in the waning days of his Presidency? There were probably mixed motives. Maybe he was genuinely uninformed about how the situation had changed since Jimmy Carter’s Camp David breakthrough, which he may have thought to emulate. With an eye on the Nobel Prize he would surely be remembered for that rather than the Lewinsky affair.

What would have happened had Arafat done the impossible and signed on to the Barak-Clinton dictate? He would have signed his death certificate and he knew it. He would have been murdered by his people, just as Sadat was and there would have been civil war among the Palestinians.

Although the “peace process” was not entirely dead after July 25, 2000 it was dealt its final blow by Sharon who wanted to win the upcoming election. His visit to the Temple Mount, as it is called by Jews, and Haram al Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) by Arabs, was a deliberate provocation and the Arabs swallowed the bait. This incident which led to Intifada II has been downplayed in the American media. Even Friedman makes only one passing reference when it deserves to be discussed in full because this event and not just the rejection of the Camp David talks was the cause of our ongoing troubles. For what happened on September 28, 2000 we cannot rely on the “spin” that has grown up around it but we have to go on the Internet either to CNN.com of September 27 and 28 or the BBC of September 28.

Sharon was explicitly warned on September 27, 2000 that if he were to go through with his intended visit to the Temple Mount the next day, it would be seen as a deliberate provocation not only by the Arabs but also the peace faction within Israel and it would for all practical purposes kill the peace process. But that is precisely what he wanted. He never had any use for the Oslo accords and he was engaged in a power struggle with Netanyahu for the leadership of Likud. In addition, he knew that if the Palestinians reacted the way he expected them to and responded with violence he would defeat Barak in the upcoming election. This is precisely what happened. The BBC report states:

“The violence began after a highly controversial tour of the mosque compound early this morning by hardline Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon. Under heavy guard, Mr. Sharon entered the compound with a right-wing Likud party delegation. He crossed from the west side of the compound to the east and back again, to the sound of enraged protests from demonstrators outside. BBC correspondent Hilary Andersson said the visit was clearly intended to underline the Jewish claim to the city of Jerusalem and its holy sites. . . .  As he left the compound Mr. Sharon denied the visit was a provocation, insisting he had come ‘with a message of peace.’ ‘I came here to the holiest place of the Jewish people in order to see what happens here and really to help the feeling that we are now ready to move forward,’ he said.”

“Move forward” they did. Violence started immediately after Sharon and his party left. The Palestinians hurled stones and whatever else they could pick up; the Israeli police retaliated with tear gas and rubber-coated metal bullets. As they say: The rest is history.

For the election campaign Barak had outlined his idea of the future: Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount compound as the Israeli capital; Al Quds (Arab name for Jerusalem) with undefined geographic borders as the Palestinian capital. This was not good enough for Sharon and Likud. Any deal with the Palestinians had to be negated and as Sharon said in a letter to Madeleine Albright on October 20, 2000: “The united city of Jerusalem, which you are all very familiar with, as well as the Temple Mount, are under full Israeli sovereignty. Neither I, nor any Israeli citizen, need to seek permission from the PA or from any foreign entity to visit there or any other site which is the sovereign territory of the State of the Israel.” That Israeli sovereignty was unilaterally usurped, rather than internationally agreed to, did not play any role in Mr. Sharon’s thinking because he firmly believes in “facts on the ground.” He subsequently assured Mrs. Albright that he remains “fully committed to achieving peace with all our Arab neighbors including the Palestinians” but it must be “based first and foremost on complete negation of violence.” The message to the Palestinians was clear they have to put down whatever arms they have and Israel will dictate the conditions under which they will subsequently live. Small wonder that the more militant factions of the Palestinian society did not agree with this type of peace Sharon had in mind.

The statements cited above come from contemporary documents and yet even Tom Friedman tries to whitewash Sharon’s role in provoking Intifada II. Since al Haram al-Sharif is for Muslims the third holiest site, after Mecca and Medina, and belief has it that the Prophet Muhammad ascended to Paradise from there it is obvious that exclusive Jewish control of the Al Aqsa compound and the Dome of the Rock is unacceptable to Arabs.

Friedman seems to have blinded himself not only to this aspect of history but also to the extent to which American policy is co-responsible for the Israeli-Palestinian dilemma. This is exemplified by a fictitious letter from President Bush to the key members of the Arab League which Friedman published on February 6, 2002 under the title: Dear Arab League. As such it represents Friedman’s rather than Bush’s views:

 

[Bush telling the Arabs] We are just bystanders. You’re the ones with the power to reshape the diplomacy, not me. And here is my advice for how to do it. You have an Arab League summit set for March in Lebanon. I suggest your summit issue one simple resolution: ‘The twenty-two members of the Arab League say to Israel that in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 lines – in the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, and on the Golan Heights – we offer full recognition of Israel, diplomatic relations, normalized trade, and security guarantees. Full peace with all twenty-two Arab states for full withdrawal.’ . . .

Sharon was unelectable in Israeli politics. What allowed him to reemerge was Arafat’s rejection of the Barak plan and the Clinton plan, and then the launching of an Intifada with suicide bombings of Israeli pizza parlors. Did Sharon provoke the Palestinians by going to the Temple Mount? You bet. But he wasn’t Prime Minister at the time. Barak was. How could you let Sharon provoke you and lose the best opportunity for a Palestinian state?

 

In these excerpts the secular Friedman shows that he seems to be unfamiliar not only with America’s complicity in Israel’s political conduct but also the religious sensitivities of Muslims and Jews. The statements “We are just bystanders” and “You’re [the Arabs] the ones with the power” are not grounded in historical facts. America has supported the Jewish state from its inception economically, financially and militarily. We have spent hundreds of billions to equip the Israeli military and to prop up the country’s economy. Between 1972 and 2004 forty-seven resolutions critical of Israel’s conduct have been introduced in the Security Council and the U.S. vetoed each single one of them. This is not the role of a bystander who does not have power.

            The Saudis did put forth a “peace” plan in Beirut a month later but as I discussed in the mentioned April 2002 installment it was doomed to failure. Not only did Sharon reject it out of hand but the  Arabs were not fully committed either and Bush was preoccupied with his forthcoming invasion of Iraq, which in his mind would have solved not only all the Mid-East political problems but also America’s oil shortage. As a result the situation got worse instead of better. Crucial time was lost and America’s resources are bled in a futile Iraq enterprise.

            This brings me to the title of this installment which is taken from Friedman’s first post 9-11 column published on September 13, 2001, which was called “World War III.” The phrase was picked up by Osama bin-Laden later, and this week even President Bush repeated it. In that article Friedman wrote, “Does my country really understand that this is World War III? And if this attack was the Pearl Harbor of World War III, it means that there is a long, long war ahead.” His suggestions as to how to win this war were: 1) we have to “put our best minds to work combating them [the Muslim fanatical terrorists] –the World War III Manhattan Project – in an equally daring, unconventional, and unremitting fashion.” 2) “A country like Syria has to decide: Does it want a Hezbollah embassy in Damascus or an American one? If it wants a U.S. embassy, then it cannot play host to a rogue’s gallery of terrorist groups.” 3) “We need to have a serious and respectful dialogue with the Muslim world and its political leaders about why many of its people are falling behind.” Friedman did not neglect the Palestinian problem but reiterated that “the United States put on the table at Camp David a plan that would have gotten Yasir Arafat much of what he now claims to be fighting for. That U.S. plan may not be sufficient for Palestinians, but to say that the justifiable response to it is suicide terrorism is utterly sick.”

            When one knows that this was written in Jerusalem the emphasis on Hezbollah and Syria is understandable but they had nothing to do with Osama and his grievances which led to 9-11. I would suggest that readers compare Friedman’s analysis with mine which was published on this site in October 2001 under the title “September 11th.” What I said then is still true today with one exception. I had greater expectations for President Bush’s potential statesmanship and was severely disappointed therein. He has identified with Israel’s desires to the detriment of America’s overriding national interests and it has been downhill for us ever since. This did not have to happen. The Bush administration used the 9-11 tragedy to advance the goals of a small group of neoconservatives and members of what Eisenhower had called the “military-industrial complex” with our Vice-President at its head, seconded by our Secretary of Defense Mr. Rumsfeld. They got us into the hole we are in and instead of trying to get us out they dig it deeper.

            The suggestions Friedman made are reasonable and suicide bombing is not the answer to the Palestinian’s problems. But let us not fall victim to war rhetoric. Europeans know what WW II was like and they have absolutely no interest in igniting or sponsoring a WW III. This is one of the fundamental differences between Europe and America. For America wars have up to now been mostly good business but if we were to fall into what I like to call the “Goebbels trap” namely believing our own propaganda and truly regard the current situation, bad as it is,  as WW III we will sink into real desperate straits. Right now the genuine WW III is still avoidable but it will need unconventional thinking and most of all foresight. Although the spark might come from Israel, especially if there were to be an attempt by Jewish fanatics, aided by Zionist Christians, to destroy  Haram al-Sharif in order to build the third temple, WW III will not be just between Arabs, or Muslims in general, and us. The genuine WWIII will have the U.S. on one side and China with or without Russia on the other. This is the real nightmare of the future and not some suicide bombers even if they were to set off an atomic blast in one of our cities. Just as in the 9-11 situation it is not the act which causes the final disaster but the reaction to it.

            The situation in Iraq as well as in Israel is out of control and is likely to go from bad to worse unless the U.S. changes course, which Bush is unwilling to do. We are being told that it will take years, if not a decade, before the Iraqi army will be ready to fight and win against the insurgency. I beg to differ. They know how to fight but they don’t want to fight for us and that is the difference.  They know how to build their infrastructure. But they don’t want it to be done by Halliburton. That is the crux of the problem and unless Americans realize this we will continue to pour money and resources into this black hole.

            I mentioned unconventional thinking. Serious analysts of the foreign scene already speak of the growing might of China and the problems it is likely to create for the U.S. in the next decades. This is a considerably greater problem than Osama and his gang will ever be and requires rethinking of what America’s role in this new century should really be.  Attempting to create democracies by bombs and tanks will not work and insightful diplomacy is the only chance for averting the real WW III. Unless the CIA succeeds in undermining the Chinese regime, so that the country breaks up again into feuding fiefdoms, China will challenge America’s interests in the Far East. We now have a choice. We can either make the Chinese full fledged partners - with no ifs ands or buts – or we can treat them already as the enemy they might potentially become. If the latter course is pursued we are likely to get WW III the disasters of which will dwarf those of WW II because atomic weapons will in all probability come into play.

The Associated Press reported recently from Singapore that, “Defense Secretary Rumsfeld issued a blunt challenge to China at a regional security conference today, questioning its recent military buildup and saying Beijing must [emphasis mine] provide more political freedom to its citizens.” Rumsfeld said: “‘Since no nation threatens China, one wonders: Why this growing investment?’”  This is merely another example of the arrogance of the Bush team. Who are we to tell a huge country like China what they “must” do? What are we going to do if they aren’t frightened by Mr. Rumsfeld and company? We have proven that we can’t even occupy Iraq successfully so what are we going to do with China? Are we going to cut off trade relationships and ruin our economy, or “nuke” them?  We behave as if we had the power to enforce our will on the world when we are actually a country that is deep in debt to foreigners and have a populace that is highly averse to military adventures. In addition there is the obvious double standard that we regard ourselves as entitled to develop any and all types of atomic weapons for the sake of “our” security, but when others want to emulate our example that’s a no no. This attitude of false pride may well ruin us.

What should be done to avert WW III?

Iraq: to merely “stay the course,” as the President promised us on Tuesday will not work. We can’t “cut and run” either but we can show the Iraqis and the world, including the Chinese and Russians, that we have no ulterior motives in that country and we can engage them, through the Iraqi government, in competitive bidding for the contracts to rebuild the infrastructure of the country. As long as Halliburton and their friends are in charge nobody is going to believe that we are there only for the good of the Iraqis.  Trust in our government is currently sorely lacking and this has to be rebuilt in small steps. When the rest of the world sees us as genuine partners who are willing to share rather than dictate we are giving “peace a chance.”

Israel and Palestine: the situation has now become even more desperate because Abbas will not be able to hold on unless there is some give on Sharon’s part. But Sharon is now hamstrung by his own creation. It was he who was responsible for the settlements which are a millstone around his neck. We have already seen the difficulties that accompany the proposed relocation of a few thousand settlers from Gaza. What is he going to do with the hundreds of thousands he has placed, as housing minister, into the West Bank? The idea of Israel’s peaceful return to the 1967 borders is obsolete. Unless the US and the international community were to enforce and supervise, with fully adequate boots on the ground, the UN resolutions which call for the status quo ante in regard to Israel’s 1967 borders I am afraid that there will be a civil war in that country. Israeli politicians and the Jewish leadership in our country need to recognize the facts of the 20th century rather than live by biblical myths and legends. The State of Israel arose from a 1947 UN vote and its God Parents were Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin. Israel cannot legitimately remain in the UN and defy its wishes without creating animosity within the world body. If Israel feels that the UN is dominated by anti-Semitism and does not want to play by international rules it can leave that body just as Japan and Germany left the League of Nations in the 1930s and thereby paved the way to WW II.

The Palestinians also need to change their strategy. Targeting civilians with suicide bombers is reprehensible. Their legitimate grievance should be aired by weekly (after Friday prayers) massive peaceful protests which are broadcast throughout the world, hopefully even by CNN and Fox News. This would put the Israeli government on the defensive and eventually achieve the Palestinian’s goals without further massive bloodshed.

America: We need to strengthen, rather than weaken the UN and this is why the Bolton nomination sends the wrong signal. Only by full cooperation of the five members of the Security Council can WW III be avoided and the “War on Terrorism” be brought to a successful conclusion. This is a task for the entire civilized world and we cannot go it alone. WW II was avoidable had America joined the League of Nations and brought its power to bear rather than standing aloof until it was too late. The future of the world depends now on how we handle Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian quandary as well as Russia and China. This is a tall order for any president and it may well be too tall for Mr. Bush. But regardless of who is President as long as AIPAC (American Israel Political Action Committee) retains its marked influence over the executive and legislative branch of our government, as documented in the recent article by Jeffrey Goldberg: “Real Insiders” (The New Yorker, July 4, 2005),  the above suggested changes are not likely to come to pass.

Finally let us return to Tom Friedman and his books. I have mentioned his current one “The World is Flat,” where he deals with the global access we enjoy through the Internet, as well as its consequences. But as George Orwell once said: “some are more equal than others.” While global access is easy for him, the average person has at times serious difficulties getting one’s e-mails answered, let alone to give one’s ideas wider circulation. To expect replies from politicians is hopeless and the same applies when one tries to contact our major media pundits. One might have expected that this would not be a problem among scientists where no ulterior motives should come into play. That this is not the case will be demonstrated in the next installment which will deal with Tutankhamen’s recent CT scans and which continues the “Saga” originally presented here on October 17, 2002.







August 1, 2005

THE PLAME AFFAIR

The good intention of discussing Tutankhamen’s CT scan, as expressed in last month’s installment, ran temporarily aground and it will require time for the tide to lift it off. Contrary to Tom Friedman’s opinion, walls are not coming down, instead new ones are created every day and although the Internet allows instant letter sending this does not translate into timely replies nor does it guarantee any reply at all. This pertains even to the scientific arena where one might have expected that what was once regarded as “common courtesy” would prevail. Since I am still waiting for some key answers a continuation of the Saga will be postponed until they have either arrived or it has become obvious that further waiting is fruitless.  

While this pertains to private individuals it is, of course, worse when it comes to politicians. Some examples of how our elected officials shield themselves from their constituents have been presented earlier on this site especially in the “October Surprise?” issue (August 1, 2002). I know by now that it is hopeless to try to see one of our Congressional Representatives or Senators in person but we are encouraged, as good citizens, to write to them. Here is an example of what happens if you do so.

Orrin Hatch is the senior Senator from Utah and the country as well as the world  might soon hear more about him because he may be in line for the Supreme Court Chief Justice position once the ailing Justice Rehnquist relinquishes his job. If I were the President I would surely nominate Mr. Hatch because you can’t have a more conservative person than a life-long devout Mormon, and it would be very difficult for the Democrats to filibuster one of their peers who has been in his job longer than most can remember. But be that as it may. The question arose how to send him some of my views which he is free to disregard thereafter. When one visits his website one is overwhelmed with news about all the good he is doing for our state but there is also contact information and “mail policy.” It starts out that “we love to hear from you” but if you are not from Utah don’t expect an answer. You do get an answer on “Email Me” after you have dutifully filled out an identification form, chosen from a list of topics the one you are concerned about and compressed your message to less than 10,000 characters. I don’t object to any of that but the exercise is futile because you get back a form letter. It thanks you for your effort, appreciates your support and goes on with the Senator’s accomplishments in the area you have listed as being of concern to you. All of this comes straight out of a can that gets periodically updated and has very little to do with what you wanted to achieve. I am not singling out the esteemed Senator it’s just typical for how the leadership of our country insulates itself from the common people and their concerns.

 This applies especially to the current occupants of the White House and it is small wonder that many people don’t trust them any more. Mr. Bush has isolated himself to an extent where only a small coterie of devotees has access to him, they feed him the information he likes to hear and reading is not his forte. When outsiders attempt to find out what happened in the inner sanctum they are stonewalled with “executive privilege,” “national security” and similar words which in plain language mean “leave me alone, you bother me!” If that happens to become impossible because the media have created a stir that cannot be ignored the fallback strategy is to “shoot the messenger.” With other words the person who has made a nuisance of himself has to be discredited even when the message he wanted to get across was correct. A typical example that started to bubble during the last month was the Valerie Plame leak. Let me explain, especially for my non-American readers, what happened and what is at stake.

In February of 2002 rumors had reached the White House that Iraq either had been or was in the process of buying uranium from Niger. The Vice President’s office then contacted the CIA to find out what that was all about. The CIA didn’t know but Valerie Plame, one of their undercover operatives, had a desk job at Langley as one of the experts on WMDs. As such she had a secret identity and her name was not to be divulged. Neither the neighbors nor her kids knew what mommy was really doing. It just so happened that her husband was Joseph Wilson who had been an ambassador to various African countries, had previously been in Niger for the National Security Council, and had contacts with current as well as former Niger government officials, When Ms. Plame was told by her bosses about the Niger question it was natural that she would point out to her superiors that her husband was familiar with the country and its politicians and they might want to talk to him about it.

Talk they did and a few days later they sent him to Niger to get a first hand look at what’s what. His expenses were paid but he received no other remuneration. In Niger he met with the American ambassador who told him that she had also heard about that rumor but in the embassy’s opinion there was no substance to it. First there is an International Consortium that has control over the mines, which in turn reports to the International Atomic Energy Agency, rather than the Niger government. Secondly Niger government officials, even if they could lay their hands on  the quantities that were alleged to have been sold to Iraq, would not be so stupid as to endanger American aid with such a foolish venture. Wilson then interviewed the former officials under whose tenure that transfer was supposed to have been carried out and they all denied that anything of that sort had happened. Wilson told the ambassador, went back to Washington where he was debriefed by the CIA and expected that they would inform the White House and especially the Vice President, who had started that whole thing, on what the facts were.

This should theoretically have been the end of it but it wasn’t. The White House, especially the Vice President and Condi Rice as national security advisor, kept hyping the nuclear threat from Iraq in spite of the fact that those yellow cake documents had in the meantime been exposed as forgeries. In spite of the CIA having known that there was no nuclear threat from Iraq the President was given the famous 16 words to utter in his 2003 State of the Union speech. Mushroom clouds were just too tempting to frighten the American people with and thereby create war fever.

When Mr. Wilson heard this he became an activist because it was obvious to him from personal experience in February of 2002 and from what he had learned subsequently that the charge was false and that the country was being deceived to condone an unnecessary as well as dangerous military adventure. First he did so in private with government officials he knew but when that did no good and it was clear that at least some Iraqis had not agreed with our President’s May 1, 2003  “Mission Accomplished” assessment, the ex-ambassador went into overdrive. He wrote an article for the New York Times: “What I Didn’t Find in Africa” which was published on July 6, 2003. The article is worth while to read. I will quote only the second paragraph which has relevance to what Michael Barone wrote in a recent U.S. News and World Report article to which I shall return later.

 

“Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.”

 

This bomb shell could not be ignored. Reporters immediately contacted the White House for clarification and the “outing” of Ms. Plame began. As of now we don’t know who the “high level source” was who leaked her name although Karl Rove and the Vice President’s Chief of Staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, have been mentioned. The immediate response by the White House was in line with Mr. Rove’s previous tactics whenever Mr. Bush found himself in some kind of trouble either as candidate for Governor or the Presidency. The best defense is offense; and when the facts are undisputable the bearer of bad news has to be discredited. This was done by suggesting that the Niger trip was instigated by Wilson’s wife implying that there was some sinister motive behind it. The problem was that the wife, as mentioned above, was working undercover for the CIA and to knowingly reveal the name of one of these agents is a criminal offense. This is what the ongoing Grand Jury investigation by the Special Prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, is all about. Who was the person, or persons, who leaked Ms Plame’s name to the press and was he/she aware that she was still an undercover agent?

Now back to Mr. Barone’s article from August 1, 2005. U.S. News and World Report lists itself as “Rated the Nation’s Most Credible Print News Source” and in small print “by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.”  I have not yet investigated how the Pew Research Center obtains its facts but that is not important right now. Mr. Barone, and what he wrote under the title: “Bush Bashing Fizzles,” is:

 

“Now the unsupported charges that ’Bush lied’ about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have been rekindled via criticism of Karl Rove. A key witness for the Democrats and mainstream media was former diplomat Joseph Wilson. Unfortunately for his advocates, he turned out to be a liar. A year after his famous article appeared in the New York Times in July 2003 accusing Bush of ‘twisting’ intelligence, the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a bipartisan report, concluded that Wilson lied when he said his wife had nothing to do with his dispatch to Niger and Chairman Pat Roberts said that his report bolstered rather than refuted the case that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq sought to buy uranium in Africa.”

 

This sent me to the Internet and MSNBC from July 9, 2004 has the full text of the Conclusions of the “Report on the prewar intelligence assessments” by the Senate Intelligence Committee. It starts with:

 

“Overall Conclusions Weapons of Mass Destruction

(U) Conclusion 1. Most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community’s October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, either overstated, or were not supported by the intelligence reporting. A series of failures, particularly in the analytic trade craft, led to the mischaracterization of the intelligence.”

 

If one were to take the liberty to exchange the polite word “mischaracterization” for the more commonly used falsification or as Wilson said twisting, one would not be far off the mark. Some people deliberately duped the country and the real question is who did so rather than who sent Mr. Wilson to Niger. This problem is deftly side-stepped by Mr. Barone as well as the rest of the media and the political establishment. The Commission’s Conclusions also go on to say that there was disagreement between some analysts in the CIA versus those from the State Department:

“(U) Conclusion 13. The report on the former ambassador’s [the official reference to Mr. Wilson] trip, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analyst’s assessment of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq.

(U) Conclusion 14. The Central Intelligence Agency should have told the Vice President and other senior policy makers that it had sent someone to Niger to look into the alleged Iraq-Niger deal and should have briefed the Vice President on the former ambassador’s findings.”

 

Conclusion 13 implies that there were no facts and it was up for grabs whom you wanted to believe which strikes me as political whitewash. The blame was put on the CIA rather than where it actually belonged; the Neocons in the Pentagon. Conclusion 14 stretches our faith in the truthfulness of government. Is it really credible that the CIA sends somebody to Niger on the request of the Vice President’s office and does not tell that office what the result was?

Michael Barone would like us to believe that his assertion that “Wilson lied” came from the bipartisan report. It did not. Instead it was contained in an addendum of 2 conclusions that the Democrats had not put their signature to. The addendum as presented by the Republican Chairman Pat Roberts is quite explicit:

 

“Despite of our hard and successful work to deliver a unanimous report, however, there were two issues on which the Republicans and Democrats could not agree: 1) whether the Committee should agree that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s public statements were not based on knowledge he actually possessed, and 2) whether the Committee should conclude that it was the former ambassador’s wife who recommended him for his trip to Niger.”

 

Ergo, they did not agree. These Conclusions are not in the bipartisan report but represent a political statement by the Republicans and the American public is again being deceived by statements in Mr. Barone’s article. Furthermore, Mr. Barone fails to let us know that ex –Ambassador Wilson took exception to this formulation and wrote a letter to that effect to Senators Roberts and Rockefeller. One may now feel that this is much ado about nothing, because who cares who had sent the former ambassador to Niger. But the foregoing represents only the tip of the iceberg and the bipartisan Committee report to the public is heavily censored as shown by repeated fat black stripes through key words or portions of sentences. One may, therefore, legitimately ask: Who is being shielded by this censorship? It can’t be the CIA because that agency is obviously made the scapegoat; it can’t be the State Department because its dissent is listed. It can’t be the Brits either because in his State of the Union Address the President publicly cited them as part of the source for that disavowed statement. So who is the real source for the forged documents that sent Joe Wilson on his trip? Whatever is being written now about that trip and the “outing” of Wilson’s wife seems to be an attempt to avoid this crucial question from being aired in public. 

That these documents were indeed forgeries and that the State of the Union sentence, which was based on them, should not have been uttered is now agreed to by the bipartisan Commission and the White House. One would have expected that the Commission would have addressed the crucial question as to the authorship of the forgeries, but they did not. In the “Niger Conclusions” one can read:

 

“(U) Conclusion 12. Until October 2002 when the Intelligence Community obtained the forged foreign language documents on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal, it was reasonable for analysts to assess that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa based on Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reporting and other available intelligence. (BLACKED OUT) In March 2003, the Vice Chairman of the Committee, Senator Rockefeller, requested that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigate the source of the documents, BLACKED OUT the motivation of those responsible for the forgeries, and the extent to which the forgeries were part of a disinformation campaign. Because of the FBI’s current investigation into this matter, the Committee did not examine these issues.”

 

 There is a proverb in the German language which when translated says: God’s mills grind slowly but inexorably. Two years ago in the August 1, 2003 Hot Issues installment I discussed “The Niger Forgery” which had just reached public awareness and I would recommend that the reader consult this document for details because I shall only summarize it here. I regarded these forgeries as a crime and whenever a crime is committed we are informed from TV shows that the detective looks at: motive, means and opportunity. When one puts these three aspects together a logical mind is led to the conclusion that there seems to be only one Intelligence Service in the world that fits the bill. This is the Mossad whose maxim is: “By way of deception thou shalt do war.” Israel was at war with Iraq ever since 1948 and its government had the most to gain by removing Saddam Hussein. In order to live up to its mentioned motto the Mossad does have among its various divisions one that is specifically devoted to: psychological warfare, propaganda and deception operations. Thus, all of the mentioned three requirements coalesce. As documented in the previously mentioned article the statements about the Mossad come from Israeli sources.

 One can’t blame the Israelis because, right or wrong, they see themselves in a life and death struggle with the Arab world and “all is fair in love and war.” I do wonder, however, why our media and politicians so obediently trot the Israeli line which is not in our best interest, as has been pointed out repeatedly in these pages. Israel is not part of the Union; it is a foreign country which deserves the same respect but also the same caution that we exhibit in dealing with other countries with which we have friendly relations. Let me ask, therefore, again: Who is being protected by the blacked out portions of the Commission’s report? I don’t expect to hear an answer or even public mention of this question in the near future; but the question needs to be raised. More than two years have passed since Senator Jay Rockefeller had officially asked for the FBI investigation but if it is going on at all then it’s at a snail’s pace and the media don’t seem to be interested.  

Although the Committee stated that the CIA obtained the forgeries only in October of 2002 somebody is likely to have been aware of them earlier because Mr. Wilson would not have been sent by the CIA to Africa in February of that year. This suggests the following scenario which is, however, strictly my personal opinion without support of publicly available reliable information. There seems to be hardly any doubt that the Vice President was heavily invested in gaining access to Iraq’s oil reserves which, when in our hands, would significantly reduce our energy problem. When his office heard about the possible uranium sale from Niger to Iraq it was obvious that this could be the looked for casus belli if it panned out. This is why the Vice President’s office was ultimately the reason for Mr. Wilson’s trip to Africa. The problem was that he didn’t find what the Vice President had hoped for. This is why the trip was disregarded and the Vice President now states that he had never heard of Mr. Wilson or his wife. Although this may well be technically correct it is not likely that mere underlings had acted on their own account to initiate the contact with the CIA that had set the whole affair in motion. But the Vice President as well as Karl Rove are the main driving forces of the current administration, with Condi Rice only an affable policy administrator rather than an independent voice. As such they have to be protected at all costs. Regardless how diligent the Special Prosecutor and his Grand Jury are the full truth is not likely to come out in the foreseeable future because it would bring this entire White House down. To take the country to war under false pretenses is obviously an impeachable offense.

There are some Internet sites that try to re-enact a Nixon scenario and advocate impeachment of the President. There are, of course, some similarities to 1974. We are engaged in a fruitless war that is becoming increasingly unpopular and what brought Nixon down was not the Watergate burglary but the cover-up of White House involvement. It was Nixon’s loyalty to his subordinates, who had acted on some general directives, which led him to deny White House complicity and got him branded as a liar in the media. That there is currently a cover-up going on in the Bush administration, only the most ardent Bush supporters are likely to deny. Furthermore, it is well known that the President not only demands loyalty from his subordinates but also extends this courtesy to them,

But 2005 is not quite 1974 and here are the reasons why I believe that serious efforts to remove Mr. Bush from office will either not be undertaken at all or fail. Nixon had a Democratic Congress while Bush has a Republican majority in both houses, although this may change in November of 2006. Furthermore we have to keep in mind that an impeachment of the President would elevate Mr. Cheney to the Presidency, which is every Democrat’s worst nightmare. In Nixon’s case the Vice President, Spiro Agnew, who was loathed by the media, had to resign on bribery charges in October of 1973 and Nixon had appointed the good natured Gerald Ford, a person Democrats could readily live with. Thus, Dick Cheney would have to be indicted for malfeasance first which, considering his record, might actually not be too difficult to do. But under these circumstances there is no way of knowing whom George W might appoint as Vice President and the Democrats might be even worse off than they are today. Since all of this has nothing to do with justice but everything with politics I believe that the Democrats will abstain from an impeachment effort.   

What can we reasonably expect now from the White House and the Special Prosecutor? Last week the President made a surprise announcement nominating Judge John Roberts for the Supreme Court vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. This was a shrewd move because it keeps the media busy. In addition the Senate, before adjourning for August vacation, passed an energy bill on July 28, the merits of which can also be expected to be debated endlessly. How the senators could have read and digested all of the more than 1700 pages of this bill within a couple of days is a mystery. But this is how the country is being governed and we the tax payers will now be saddled with billions of subsidies for the oil and gas industry without seeing any return on our investment in regard to energy prices. But this wasn’t the purpose anyway, the media have to be kept occupied and their energies deflected from Iraq and the White House’s problems.

The Special Prosecutor’s conclusions are also not likely to yield any fundamental surprises. We know that it was syndicated columnist Robert Novak who was the first to mention Valerie Plame’s name. We also know that he is a faithful defender of the current administration’s policies and has apparently struck some kind of a deal with the Special Prosecutor that keeps him out of jail. The New York Times reporter Judith Miller was not so lucky. She stuck to journalistic ethics, did not divulge the name of the source for her article and now sits in jail on a contempt of court charge. These two morsels of information tell us where this investigation is likely to go. First of all, if this were a serious effort to get at the truth of the matter and if the President had indeed fully cooperated, as he had promised he would do, it wouldn’t have needed two years and a Grand Jury. Any CEO in private business, worth his salary, would have called the key players together and told them: “’Fess up, or you’re out of here.” Eisenhower had promised an administration “clean as a hound’s tooth” and when the press found out that his Chief of Staff and personal friend, Sherman Adams, had accepted a Vicuna coat as a gift he asked him to resign. Mr. Bush apparently chose not to go this route but may have followed that of Nixon and, as mentioned above, will probably get away it. The outcome of the investigation is, therefore, likely to follow the Abu Ghraib model. Some expendable pawns may be sacrificed but people who set the policy will remain unscathed.

Where does this leave us with our most pressing problem Iraq - that swallows numerous lives on a daily and billions of dollars on a monthly basis? Since there is no solution in sight every effort will be made to “show progress” although everybody knows that sooner or later we will be forced to leave because the effort is unsustainable. We should take our example from the British who knew what to do when the Empire had become a drain rather than a benefit. First they ditched Churchill immediately after he had won the war for them because a war time leader is not necessarily the best one to deal with post-war problems. Then they relinquished their Palestine mandate to the UN in 1947. It had become amply apparent that the conflict between Arabs and Jews was irreconcilable; the Balfour declaration had become “inoperative” and they were now caught in the middle of a fight without being able to effect any positive changes. Thereafter they dismantled the empire bit by bit because it had simply become unaffordable and concentrated on making their islands as prosperous as possible. They showed us that this worked although Tony Blair’s unstinting support of the Bush policies, against the wishes of his people, has now contributed to the recent London tragedies. Nevertheless the Brits demonstrated again how to deal with disasters. The stiff upper lip prevailed and so did efficient police and secret service work. If our administration had done this after 9-11-2001 the country and the world would have been infinitely better off. The British cousins have only a couple of islands and they prospered by giving up their major oversea assets. We have a continent and think that we still need military bases all around the world and especially in that most volatile region of all the Middle East. This type of policy is not based on reason. Pride, ignorance and greed rule at this time. Until these fundamental human flaws are corrected in our government and the media we will not see peace.







September 1, 2005

PRESIDENT BUSH’S DILEMMA

Our President and his policies have fallen on hard times because he is now confronted with the unintended consequences of his past actions as well as inactions. He cannot undo the past and neither can he simply “stay the course” for any length of time because the country will not let him do so. When he thought that he could get away from his problems and have a quiet vacation at his Crawford ranch this hope was dashed by a determined Ms. Cindy Sheehan who had lost her son in Iraq. She parked herself practically on his doorstep and vowed not to leave until the President explained to her in person why her son had to die in this war. If Mr. Bush did not want to do this she would endure the Texas heat till August 31 when it’s time for the President to go back to Washington. She was soon joined by other war protesters as well as a group of pro-war activists and the idea of a leisurely August on the ranch was no longer feasible.

It was time for the President to go on the road and explain himself to the people at large rather than Ms. Sheehan in person. But he is very cautious in his choice of places to visit and the audiences he speaks to. So the White House picked Salt Lake for him to address the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention. What could possibly go wrong in the most Republican state of the Union that had re-elected him by 70 per cent? Well, there was this pesky mayor of Salt Lake, Rocky Anderson, who put his convictions before politics and sent an e-mail to a variety of people to encourage them to attend an already planned protest meeting at which he would also be present. Undaunted, the President literally stayed the course reciting the successes in Iraq; that it is better to fight 9/11 type terrorism over there than here at home; all is going well and we just need to be patient. The veterans cheered while the outsiders jeered. A repeat performance was staged in our neighboring Idaho where he likewise preached to the choir and where the dissenting voices were kept at a distance.

We were told that the President intends to continue giving speeches of this type for the next week or so but it is highly doubtful that the steadily rising number of people who disagree with his Iraq policy will decrease significantly if he persists in the same vein. This ought to send up warning flags in the White House that business as usual might no longer be practical. More of the same is not going to work and I have a feeling that the majority of Americans would love to hear him read a speech that addresses their concerns directly. The events of the past week, namely the proposed Constitution for Iraq and the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Katrina, would provide him with a perfect opportunity. Since he doesn’t personally write his speeches anyway I have taken the liberty to write one for him:

 

My Fellow Americans:

 

During the past week we witnessed two events, one in Iraq and the other here at home, which suggest that a reappraisal of our foreign and domestic policy is appropriate. It is my purpose tonight to acquaint you with my current thoughts and feelings.

 Last year I was asked by a reporter what the biggest mistake was that I had made after 9/11 and what lessons I had drawn from it. I was taken aback by the question because I had not been prepared for it and under the glare of the camera lights could not think immediately of a good answer. I, therefore, said, “I can’t think of one right now,” which was true at that moment. Since that time I have given a great deal of thought to this question because it is a vital one and deserves an honest answer.

As events over the past two years have shown I was misled into believing that by invading Iraq and toppling the Saddam Hussein regime we would bring stability to the Middle East and our chronic energy problem would thereby also be significantly reduced. I ignored the advice of those whom I should have trusted like Tony Blair of Great Britain and the leaders from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia as well as Turkey, who had felt that an invasion of Iraq was neither in the best interests of the United States nor those of their own countries. Instead I relied on the views of a small group of people in the Pentagon and Iraqi exiles who assured me that Saddam Hussein presented an imminent danger to our country, that our troops would be greeted as liberators and a stable democratic government friendly to the United States could be established in the immediate aftermath of the invasion. We now know that this was a mistaken assumption. I allowed myself to be misled and in so doing I misled you, albeit in good faith.

A second mistake was that upon taking office I had not sufficiently appreciated the threat Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization, al Qaeda, posed to our country, although the warning signs had been there. Whether or not timely intervention on my part could have prevented the full force of the 9/11 tragedy I do not know for certain. I do know, however, that regardless of how we got into the current difficult situation ruminating over the past will not make it go away. The lessons to be drawn from these mistakes need to be addressed instead.

As you well know I have up to now advocated a policy of “staying the course” in Iraq until that country has a stable democratic government that is beneficial to all its citizens, rather than only certain subgroups, and does not pose a threat to its neighbors. Recent events have proven, however, that this goal will not be achievable within the next few months and we do not know how many years will have to pass before the dream of a peaceful unified Iraq that is a beacon for democracy in the region can come to fruition. These are facts you and I must face and from which we have to draw the consequences.

We now have several alternatives for our future Iraq policy. Immediate and complete withdrawal of our brave troops who have fought and bled so honorably for us as well as for Iraqis is not a viable option. It would plunge that country into further greater chaos and vitiate all the good we have tried to accomplish.

To completely quell the insurrection that is currently going on would require methods that are also abhorrent to the American people. We would have to follow the examples set by well known dictators and fully saturate Iraq with our troops. They would have to not only seal all of the country’s borders, which is a tremendous task by itself, but also fully occupy all the major cities, establish martial law, and govern by military decrees. In order to do so we would have to re-institute the draft because our volunteer army and National Guard do not have the manpower to accomplish these goals.

But a rule through force and fear both here and abroad is alien to the spirit of the founders of our country and is, therefore, likewise no durable solution. We set out to win the hearts and minds of the people of Iraq and the broader Middle East. This was and is a noble goal but cannot be achieved with the methods outlined above. It has also become clear that our past efforts have not been sufficiently successful to justify hope that keeping on the same track will bring better results in the future. A more precise strategy needs to be adopted.

Changing hearts and minds will have to begin at home because only a united country can hope to emerge successfully and with honor from the present difficulties. I have promised you at the beginning of my Presidency that I shall conduct myself as a uniter rather than divider but have so far not been able to live up to this promise. Our country is increasingly splintering and changes in the administration’s policy have to be made. I shall outline now the immediate and most important ones:

1) I have accepted Mr. Donald Rumsfeld’s request to step down as Secretary of Defense. He has served the administration faithfully but has now become identified with the current Iraq problems and a fresh start is needed. I shall consult with the chief military leadership as well as the members of the responsible branches of Congress as to who his replacement should be.

The function of the Department of Defense will be reorganized to serve foremost the security of the homeland rather than to plan for future preventive wars abroad. This will include an orderly withdrawal of our troops from Iraq on a timetable that suits American needs and is not dictated by events in foreign countries over which we have no control. In order to accomplish this goal I have requested from the Defense Department and the Armed Services Committees in the House and Senate a detailed plan how this can be implemented during the next three years. I envision that we bring the members of the National Guard home first. They and their families have suffered great hardships and have earned the right to be the first ones to be greeted here and to resume their civilian occupations. The federal government will not only honor their service but also help financially wherever help is needed. Next in line for coming home will be those members of the military reserve who have already spent time in Iraq on previous tours of duty. They have also earned our gratitude and they should be allowed now to return to their families and jobs. Our professional military and first time reservists shall be withdrawn thereafter in an orderly manner.

This policy will not only bring relief to our brave military forces and their families, but will also signal to the Iraqi people that they have to take their fate into their own hands. We have helped them to prepare a Constitution for their country which, although not ideal from our point of view, is, nevertheless, a first step towards democracy. The Iraqi people are now free to accept, modify, or reject it. America neither can nor will dictate their future form of government to them. We do not desire further bloodshed in the region and will help, short of military intervention, in any and all ways. We are engaged in a battle of ideas and since ours are based on personal freedom and justice they will be emulated in time by others without the force of arms. This brings me to the second point.

2) A solution to the vexing problems of our world can no longer be achieved by military means but requires the patient exercise of international diplomacy. This is the primary function of the State Department. As you know I have entrusted the Foreign Policy of our country to Dr. Condoleeza Rice who has my full confidence. Her life is a vivid example of what America is really all about and that the ideas of personal freedom and justice for all are not merely slogans in our country. As an African American woman she has won the respect not only of our people but also that of foreign leaders who appreciate being dealt with in an amiable but decisive and straightforward manner. Her achievements were possible through the guidance and sacrifices of devoted parents as well as unstinted personal efforts. As such Dr. Rice stands for what is best in our country and she will be listened to. 

Since the Iraq situation is no longer solvable by military means I have asked Dr. Rice to convene a conference of the Foreign Ministers of Iraq’s neighbors and those of the five permanent members of the Security Council to develop, jointly with members of the Iraqi government, a political and economic plan that can bring peace and stability to this long suffering country. The purpose of the conference shall be to achieve a Resolution which can then be submitted for approval to the Security Council. Although Security Council Resolutions have been disregarded in the past we shall work for unanimity among the permanent members and subsequently enforce their decision. We do not expect to find instant solutions to a problem as protracted as this one but by showing the world that we are indeed serious in a truly cooperative rather than unilateral approach we take the wind out of the sails from those who intend to harm us.

            The other most troubling area in the Middle East is the long standing Palestinian-Israeli conflict which affects all the other countries of the region and beyond. I have, therefore, asked Dr. Rice to push ahead also with the implementation of the road map for peace which I have outlined two years ago. We congratulate Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for his courageous withdrawal of Israeli settlers and troops from Gaza and parts of the West Bank in the face of significant protests by a vocal minority in his country. But this needs to be followed up with helping the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to establish a viable economy which provides a living wage and allows parents to educate their children towards success in a profession of their choice rather than condemning them to a life of misery and the goal of martyrdom.

The past month has also shown how difficult it will be for Israel to divest itself from its conquests in the 1967 war which is demanded by UN Resolution 242 of November 1967. While about 8,500 settlers could be relocated, albeit with a great deal of heartbreak but without violence, this task will be infinitely more difficult for the more than 400,000 Israelis who live in annexed parts of Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The people of the State of Israel, just as the Iraqi people, are at a crossroad and they have to decide what type of country they want to live in. The UN charter forbids territorial acquisitions by war and if our world is to survive in this new century with its dangers from atomic and chemical warfare we shall now have to abide by it and enforce it. Let me also make clear that those extremists who believe in God given rights to force their will upon others, regardless whether they deduce these rights from an inappropriate interpretation of the Koran or the Bible, will find no support from my administration.

3) The war on terrorism will also be pursued differently. Instead of relying primarily on our military we shall continue to search out terrorist cells both here and abroad by full cooperation with the security forces of other governments around the world. The terrorist threat is universal and requires a universal collaborative coordinated effort. This will bring terrorists to justice without harming innocent civilians.

In order to prevent further terrorist attacks on the homeland we will secure our borders against illegal immigration and the transport of illicit materials. I shall first meet with the governors of our Southern Border States and together we shall plan a program that will stem the influx of migrants which has risen to intolerable proportions. Nevertheless, patrolling the borders will not be enough. As you are aware Congress is about to discuss legislation for a temporary guest worker program, which I have proposed earlier. But a genuine solution to the problem will also require the active assistance of the Mexican government. I shall meet with President Vicente Fox and discuss the best ways to achieve a mutually beneficial result. The illegal coyote traffic which exploits poor people who seek a better life and who are then left stranded in our deserts or forced to work under inhuman conditions will no longer be tolerated.

Our northern border has different problems and these will be dealt separately with the governors of that region. But we have a country that is bordered by two oceans as well as the Gulf of Mexico and complete security will not be achievable because it takes only one boat to land on any of our beaches to deliver a weapon of mass destruction. While I cannot promise you, therefore, absolute security I shall, however, do everything in my power to prevent such an event from occurring. In order to limit the destructive potential, if such a disaster were to occur, we shall make adequate preparations while at the same time ensuring that our constitutional rights are not violated.

4) This week we have witnessed the terrible destruction Hurricane Katrina has wreaked on the Gulf coast. Cities and townships have been devastated and beautiful New Orleans is under water. Tens of thousands of our citizens are without the necessities for life and lawlessness has made its appearance. We shall meet the current problems with the combined forces of the federal and state governments as well as your generous help to the victims of this unprecedented disaster. Reconstruction will begin immediately as circumstances permit but it will be a long process and your patience will be required.

Dreadful as this calamity is it may not be the last because even this year’s hurricane season is not yet over. We are all aware that our climate has gotten warmer. We can debate the causes, but the progressive melting of glaciers is there for everyone to see and warmer oceans can produce stronger winds. As you are aware my administration has rejected the Kyoto Climate Accord and there were good reasons for doing so. But the time has come to reappraise our policy towards the natural environment we live in. All of us are passengers on spaceship earth and it behooves us to take care of our planet the best we know how. This will require a global effort and America will be a full time partner in it. What is preventable we shall prevent and what is not we shall deal with when it comes.

Apart from the steps outlined above there is one additional aspect you need to know. I am aware that I have been criticized for taking too many vacations and being away from Washington too often. While I do regard a healthy life style as important, none of you can take five weeks of vacation and neither should your President, especially in times of war. I shall, therefore, devote myself henceforth full time to your concerns. This means also that I shall not engage in fund raising efforts around the country for my party but I shall remain at my desk in the Oval Office to serve the needs of all the people of our nation in this crucial and difficult time. As you well know the needs are many and I have mentioned only some of the most urgent ones. The doors to the Oval Office shall remain open to all members of Congress, regardless of political affiliation so that we can jointly arrive at durable solutions for the numerous problems that beset us.

I cannot guarantee you success of the plans as outlined above but only my best effort. While I genuinely regret past mistakes, I would now like to ask for your forgiveness of these human weaknesses and your help and prayers for the future.

Thank you for your attention.

 

A speech of this type would solve the President’s current dilemma and instantly boost his popularity rating. But will he do so? I doubt it because from what we have seen so far it does not appear to conform to his character. Nevertheless, he should be told how average Americans feel and I shall send this article to the White House as well as some members of Congress and our major news media. Patriotism should not be equated with flag waving and “Fuehrer befiehl wir folgen.” Blind obedience to a leader is not what America is all about. If we want to preserve our democracy the people need to speak up when their vital interests are at stake and when they do so the leadership needs to listen to their concerns and address them in a responsible manner. Calling war protesters “nutcakes,” as our senior Senator Orrin Hatch did during the President’s visit to Salt Lake, will not do. A remark of this type only shows his current mindset and how much he has yet to learn even about his own constituents. But that would require reading and answering his mail which he is not in the habit of doing as mentioned in the previous essay on The Plame Affair.







October 1, 2005

THE DARK SIDE

            In the early part of last month Martha and I went to see Star Wars III which is supposed to wrap up the series and to explain how a noble Jedi warrior became the evil Darth Vader. The attraction was actually not only curiosity but also money. We couldn’t resist the lure of paying only $3 for the both of us when it would have cost us more than three times that had we gone earlier to the neighborhood Megaplex. These are the market forces in action. The Megaplex gets the initial run of the movies and is usually, after the first 3 weeks or so, three quarters empty. A smaller chain then picks up the same movie and sells the tickets for a flat rate of $1.50 regardless of age. People learn to wait and the cinema was packed.

            Apart from the hundreds of flying objects shooting at each other for no ostensible reason Mr. Lukas did manage to get a lesson across which may, however, not have been picked up by most people in the audience. For those who have not seen the film let me summarize the essence. Under the wise and diligent leadership of middle aged Obi-Wan Kenobi, young Anakin Skywalker grows into an extraordinarily morally good and physically superb Jedi who will do anything to defend the Republic from the forces of looming authoritarianism. But after hearing that the woman he dearly loves will die when she gives birth to his son, Luke Skywalker, he becomes desperate. The evil Chancellor of the Republic who aspires to Caesarism seduces Anakin by promising him that if he were to use not only the Force of light but also that of darkness he could overcome death and his beloved would live. Although the good and kind Anakin struggles valiantly against this idea, his love for the woman overcomes his scruples and in the ensuing inner battle the handsome Jedi loses and turns into the gruesome Darth Vader.

            The phrase that “only by combining the forces of darkness and light can you achieve complete power” might not have struck me had I not composed a few weeks earlier a little poem about a water Lilly while spending a weekend morning at our ponds.  It was in German and I shall not reproduce it here but simply give its content. We admire the beauty of the white flower among its green leaves but don’t realize that this beauty depends on the roots which are grounded in the muck. Dry out the mud and the flower dies. Thus, the forces which literally require darkness for their work to come to fruition are not to be shunned but are vital.  On the other hand if there were no sunshine the mud would freeze and there would likewise be no flower. Thus it is true that only the combination of light and dark are essential for life as we know it and the “dark side” is not to be shunned but patiently and cautiously explored.

            As mentioned in War & Mayhem it was Schopenhauer who pointed out our natural inclination to: “dislike thinking of things that are injurious to our interest, pride, or wishes. How difficult is the decision to subject them to exact and serious investigation.” Nietzsche then picked up the thought and wrote: “A genuine Physio-Psychologist has to fight with unconscious resistances in the heart of the investigator; it goes against the grain.  . . . Wherever one not only sees, but wants to see hunger, sexual desire and vanity as the original driving forces of human actions there the lover of insight should listen to very carefully.” Freud made it his life work but he and his followers remained stuck in the mud - the libido - and neglected to consider in their therapeutic efforts the spiritual dimension of the human being.

            This failure was remedied by Viktor Frankl whose 100th birthday is celebrated this year and whose work I have already mentioned previously (September 1, 2003: “For the Goyim They Sing”). His method of Logotherapy recognizes the power of instinctual forces and works towards directing them to a higher meaning in a difficult life situation. Once the purpose and meaning of that situation has become clear, life can proceed in a healthy and integrated manner. What made his life and teaching authentic is that he had survived nearly three years of Nazi concentration camps without hate or rancor. He was a physician who had devoted himself to treat the psychiatrically and neurologically ill before deportation and he returned to these tasks thereafter. Although initially physically shattered by the effects of his ordeal - which had also cost him his wife, parents and brother - he overcame all these difficulties and reemerged a stronger and better person. This might not have come about had he not met, a year after his return, a young nurse at the Allgemeine Poliklinik who gave him the unselfish love he was in desperate need of at the time. They married had children as well as grandchildren and as Frankl himself put it she had turned him from a homo patiens - a suffering person - into a homo amans – a loving person. He died in 1997 at the ripe old age of 92 years. Although physically frail his spirit had remained undaunted.

            Frankl‘s work has found world-wide acclaim but in the United States it is still eclipsed by Freudian disciples of various sects. I use the term advisedly because Freudian type of psychoanalysis is a secular religion which you have to subscribe to lest you will be cast out. The reason why the names: Sigmund Freud, Simon Wiesenthal and Eli Wiesel are known to everyone in the U.S. but that of Viktor Frankl to only relatively few tells us something about our culture which we also ought to face up to. Wiesenthal’s death and funeral in Vienna last month gave rise to articles of praise even in The Salt Lake Tribune but Frankl‘s 100th birthday in March of this year has gone unnoticed by our media.

            But let us return to Star wars III because there is another lesson about the nature of the dark side. What did the “evil ones” want? The answer is simple: power! Why do people want power? Because they are afraid of losing something, whatever that something might be. It might be fear of loss of property, life of a loved one or ones own, illness, prestige, one’s “good name” and so on. This fear creates greed and these two evils combined appear to be the driving forces of our current culture.

            “Know Thyself,” said the old Greeks and it’s still the best advice one can get. But, as mentioned, we don’t want to face our inner demons and when something goes wrong there is always “the other” who can be blamed.  The events of the past month are no exception. Hurricane Katrina revealed the dark side of America for all the world to see. We knew of its existence but didn’t want to face the consequences. The fact that the vast majority of Katrina’s victims were of African descent makes the “dark side” even literally true. This led to the inevitable charge of racism, which is, however, again only an attempt to deflect blame. There was no ill will, just inertia and incompetence at all levels of government, in addition to the inability to anticipate as well as well as to cope subsequently with the disaster. Within less than a week the myth of the “Homeland Security Department” was dispelled and it had become obvious that the creation of that office was actually a hindrance rather than help for victims of natural or man-made disasters. FEMA, the Federal Emergency Administration, had worked infinitely better before the creation of Mr. Chertoff’s office and the billions of dollars which have been spent on this useless bureaucracy have been wasted. In the tradition of government, regardless which party happens to be in control, it is inevitable that more money will be thrown after bad. Creating programs with layers over layers of newly created departments is after all the only way governments know how to deal with self-created problems.

            While racism was not an issue in this disaster this does not mean that negative attitudes between Blacks – as they referred to themselves in the 1960’s and 1970’s – and Whites don’t exist. It subsequently dawned on the Black leadership that the word is actually only the English translation of the Spanish word Negro and they advocated a name change to African-American which is now the officially sanctioned term. But changing a name does not change an underlying substantive issue. It is a fact that poverty and concomitant crime are widespread in this segment of our society and that the Whites’ fear of the Blacks and vice versa is deeply rooted in the history of this country.

            Know thyself demands that we also face up to this topic and I am aware that I was no exception to this wide-spread fear. Martha and I used to live from 1958 - 1990 in Lilly white Grosse Pointe but worked in downtown Detroit. We, therefore, had a front row view of the progressive decay of this city. It had started with a massive influx of poor blacks from the South into the inner city. White business owners became nervous and relocated to the suburbs. Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” program exacerbated the problem. When racial integration of the public school system became the law of the land parents drew the line. The white population of Detroit refused to have their children transported by bus from their local neighborhoods into the inner city and voted with their feet. They moved as far away as possible into suburbia. The city lost its tax base and the riots of 1967 accelerated the slide into further decay. This is another example of how a well meant idea which ignores human nature leads to the opposite of the intended result.

            First the businesses on Kercheval, which was my snow emergency route when Jefferson, the main east west artery, was clogged, began to be boarded up. The houses were vacant and yards overgrown with weeds. One morning a few minutes before eight when I drove by Martin Luther King High School on Lafayette Street I noted that the pupils on the way to school, all black, didn’t have backpacks or books. It surely surprised me. “Don’t they have any homework?” I wondered. Decades later our current President asked in his usually mangled syntax: “Is our children learning?” Unfortunately the only answer we can give him is a resounding: No! You can throw all the money you want on buildings, computers and other gadgets but unless children are motivated and forced by parents and teachers to learn the basics rather than be allowed to engage in frills there will be no positive results.

            There are two other Detroit vignettes that bear mention. We used to go with the children downtown to the movies. “Willard” was the last one we saw there and that dates it to 1971. We had been slightly late and the theater was already dark when we sat down. After the lights had come back on and we were beginning to leave we noted with surprise that we were the only white faces in a sea of black ones. Nobody bothered us but we did feel uneasy and a sense of not belonging here. I experienced this sensation in spite of the fact that my nursing staff, for instance, was predominantly black and we enjoyed excellent working relations. This provided a lesson: we don’t mind individual relationships with people of different color or backgrounds but we fear the aggregate – the masses.

The other event occurred two years later. I had to attend Circuit Court sessions and when I parked the car at a nearby lot I didn’t believe my eyes. In the shack where a white fellow handed me my ticket there leaned against one wall a rifle, against another a shotgun and in the open desk drawer there was a revolver. In amazement I asked him: “Is this for real?” “Where d‘you think, you are man? You’re in downtown Detroit!” was the answer. Well, here it is; crude fear and willingness to kill.

            In the meantime Detroit, under a succession of black mayors, has deteriorated further. It is now at least 80% black and on my last visit two years ago I noted with dismay that even on Jefferson, in what used to be nice neighborhoods, many stores are boarded up, others have been torn down and nature reasserts itself with weeds. Our daughter in law told me that, when a visitor had come across the river from Windsor, Canada, and saw these conditions she asked in amazement: “Has there been a war?” No, not yet; but with this disparity in living conditions between the city and the suburbs, and with a populace that is armed to the teeth it is likely to be only a matter of time before there is a major explosion. This may not be limited to Detroit but affect many inner cities of our country which have been turned into what used to be called slums. This is the dark side of America which we usually don’t show our visitors or on TV.

            But let us not blame the looting we saw in Detroit and Los Angeles during the riots, in New York during the blackout, and now New Orleans, on the black population of those cities. Iraqis looted Baghdad and even my dear Viennese looted numerous stores, including that of my mother, during the few days after the Nazis had left and the Russians had not yet taken over. Once they were here they also had their share of it but that was expected. Thus looting and other crimes are bound to take place in any country anywhere in the world and should be expected to occur whenever there is no civilian or military police that enforces order. The Nazis knew how to prevent looting in the aftermath of bombing raids. Looters were shot on sight and that was a highly effective deterrent. This was easy to do under a regime whose slogan was: “der Einzelne ist nichts, das Volk ist alles.” The individual meant nothing the nation everything.

            In America we tend to adhere to the opposite extreme. Individual lives must either be saved, or prolonged as the case may be, sometimes even under circumstances that will never permit the person to become a functional member of society. These are philosophical differences the merits of which can and will be endlessly argued. As in all other situations the extreme positions ought to be shunned and the golden mean of well thought out reason ought to rule. Unfortunately this is not yet the American way. Nevertheless one ought to work towards it and instead of attempts at global solutions by Congress; local ones should be pursued with experimental demonstration programs before they are mandated for the country.

            While these comments addressed the dark side of our nation they are still only shades of grey because the real darkness remains for the most part under lock and key in the deepest recesses of our own individual minds. This is where our ultimate fears, which are of a very personal nature, reside. For everyday life they can safely remain there in the otherwise mentally healthy individual. There are good reasons why we shy away from our innermost fears and when we need to deal with them it should be done, as mentioned above, carefully. The inner demons, who reside in all of us, should not be trifled with because once released they can overwhelm the mind and lead to psychosis. This is also the reason why Freudian type psychoanalysis can be dangerous for the patient as well as, in some instances, the psychiatrist. 

            Who and what are these demons? There are two ways to approach this question.  One is through classic literature and in the West especially Greek mythology. Here we find all the superhuman and subhuman creatures the human mind was capable of conceiving. The other is through biology. Let us deal with mythology first because it provides the forms and combines the supernatural with the natural.

The ancients knew of the dual nature of the sacred: its goodness and its horror. The Greek word daimon from which our demon is derived had several meanings which we regard today as opposites. Among them were: divine being, guardian spirit, evil spirit, devil, specter, demon, fate, evil, death. Thus, when Socrates talked about the demon that drove him on he referred to the inner divinity whose voice he had to obey even at risk of death. This dual aspect of the holy was preserved in the Latin language in the word sacer.  All my professional life was devoted to understanding the mystery of morbus sacer, the holy illness, which we currently call epilepsy. Sacer does stand for: sacred, holy, and consecrated; but also for: accursed, devoted to destruction. These apparent paradoxes resulted from a view of the world where people lived in nature and who saw it in its creative as well as destructive aspect. For them all of nature was not only alive but had inherent spirits which were given different names. In order to tame the unfavorable aspects and to express gratitude for the favorable ones various rituals evolved but there was never any doubt about their divinity because mankind was aware of its relative weakness over the forces surrounding it.

We deride the naiveté of the Greeks for anthropomorphizing their gods and attributing to them all the human emotions we experience and where the only difference was that gods could do everything we do and more, in addition to having gained immortality. When we realize, however, that Greek mythology also insisted that gods and men were derived from the same substance, except that the former came first, then there is no longer need for derision. When Agamemnon started his prayer on the plain before Troy with: “Father Zeus who rulest in Ida” this was not some abstract mental conception like our current “Our Father who art in heaven.”  No, he regarded himself literally as the great-great- etc. son of Zeus and so did all the other Greeks. With the triumph of the Jewish religion where fatherhood is attributed to Abraham we have lost this inherent knowledge. This in turn paved the way towards a purely materialistic view of the world from which demons are to be banished by executive fiat. That this did not work is obvious to anyone who wanders around our world with open eyes.

In regard to biology the principle that phylogeny repeats ontology is taught in all our schools but the possible consequences are not considered. It is true that in embryonic life the human being like all other mammals goes through the phases of ameba, fish, reptile, monkey and it is tacitly assumed that there is no mentation that accompanies these various aspects. The fact that we don’t remember it does not necessarily mean that it did not exist. When I say mentation I obviously don’t mean “thought” in either visual or verbal form but rather some crude awareness of comfort, discomfort and later on at birth: pain and fear. Freud spoke of the “birth trauma” and he may well have been correct. Vaginal birth is no pleasure for either mother or baby and memories are being laid down. Subsequent early childhood experiences shape the personality and when unfavorable can have lasting detrimental effects. This occurs through the establishment of neuronal circuitry and their conditioning which are unconcious processes. Although positive experiences usually outweigh the negative ones the latter don’t vanish they just get filtered out. But filters are not necessarily tight they can be porous and when the early animal nature of the human being comes to the fore either as a result of illness, drugs, dreams, or through voluntary dabbling there can literally be hell to pay. What was inchoate before will now have shapes and forms that are no pleasure to behold. They need not be the gargoyles on our churches or the fantastic creatures of Hieronymus Bosch, threatening appearances in human form suffice. It is the accompanying emotion which counts which is usually fear and in its extreme stark horror.

This is the realm of our minds where the “sacred” lives and from where it will reemerge in our final hours as I have briefly mentioned in the August 26, 2004 issue: “Perception of Reality.” The Tibetan Book of the Dead or its more accurate subtitle The After-Death Experiences on the Bardo Plane, according to Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup’s English Rendering is of great interest in this context. It is of value not only to the student of esotericism but also to the neuroscientist. Since I belong professionally to the latter group I shall try to summarize the contents briefly from a modern Western standpoint. According to Buddhist belief the deceased, unless he was a highly accomplished Lama, will go through various stages for a period of 49 days after which rebirth occurs. The purpose of the book was to explain to the person who had just died all the visions and accompanying emotions he is going to experience on the Bardo plane which is the state between death and rebirth.

The person is told that immediately after the last breath has been exhaled he will initially experience the “Primary Clear Light” of radiant consciousness unencumbered by any form and accompanied by the sensation of pure bliss. The person is urged to use all his powers of concentration to remain in this state because this is the ultimate final liberation. Although this boon is potentially available to all of us we lack this power to concentrate laser-like, one-pointedly and begin our way through the Bardo. During the first seven days “peaceful deities” are encountered but with each image the deceased is admonished to disregard them and instead concentrate on the light. The person is told over and over again that these images have no reality by themselves but are merely emanations of ones personal consciousness.

If the person is unable to do so, because of lack of concentration on the task, the next seven days will be filled with the appearance of the “wrathful deities.”  While the “peaceful deities” are accompanied by a subjective feeling of comfort and pleasure, the wrathful ones provoke fear and terror. But again, and this is the key element for our discussion, the deceased is earnestly entreated by his guru: “Oh nobly- born fear not, flee not, be not awed, know it to be the embodiment of thine own intellect.” If the person is able to do so liberation will be achieved. With each passing day the visions and accompanying physically painful as well as mentally terrifying subjective sensations will increase but if the person is able to recognize them merely as products of his own mind he can still attain liberation.

Inasmuch as this recognition requires intense mental training while the person was alive most individuals are unable to do so and continue to wander on for the rest of the 49 days towards rebirth. Nevertheless even at this late stage liberation is still possible through intense concentration on the words of the guru. If that fails a rebirth which allows the individual to grow towards the goal that has been missed during the previous life is to be looked for. Human life is regarded as a great privilege (therefore the guru’s address: “Oh nobly-born”) because it is the only way for the intellect and spirit to grow and that is what our purpose on this planet should be.

This is neither the time nor the place to engage in the scientific pros and cons of the events as outlined above. Suffice it to say that from the neurologic point of view the insistence, that these phenomena are the workings of one’s own mind rather than due to outside occurrences, is eminently sound. When we furthermore condense the 49 days into 49 or so seconds we might even arrive at a scientific basis. During my days in training at Vienna’s Neuro-Psychiatric University Hospital I had come across a book which mentioned a rather macabre experiment that had been carried out during the French revolution when the guillotine was working overtime. Someone had measured how long the severed head’s eyes would roll to the side from which its name was called. As I recall it was about 38 seconds which seems reasonable from all we know about cerebral functions. What went on in this person’s mind during those seconds is, of course, anybody’s guess but it reinforces the Hindu-Buddhist idea that there is nothing more important in our life than our last conscious thought.

This brings us back to the question that was posed earlier. How did the noble Anakin Skywalker become the evil Darth Vader? He wanted to harness the powers of the dark side to do good; but he wanted power over the fate of others rather than his own. That is not given to the human being and as religion tells us even Satan can’t give life on his own, he needs our free will to cooperate and subsequently merely uses us as tools for his pleasure. Thus the question is: what do we want the power we are seeking for? If it is to bend others to our will then the best advice is to abstain from the attempt because the outcome is not in our hands. On the other hand if power, even from “the dark side,” is sought to understand our place in this universe we can do so, but carefully! We will be confronted by terror, especially in our dreams. Under these circumstances we need another human being whom we can trust implicitly and with whom we can discuss what is happening. In everyday life it would be best if this were our marital partner who has no other vested interest than our well-being. Under these circumstances the need to exercise power over others will disappear and both partners will grow intellectually as well as spiritually.







November 1, 2005

TUTANKHAMEN’S CT SCANS

In July of this year I mentioned that I would discuss Tutankhamen’s CT scans in the next Hot Issues article but I had to admit in August that Tom Friedman’s theory of the “Flat earth,” i.e. unlimited instant access to information, applies only to some privileged people rather than to most of the rest of us. Since I was unable to fulfill my promise in August I wrote instead “The Plame Affair,” which has now become grist for the mills of the mainstream media and TV pundits. I also mentioned in August that I shall discuss the CT scans either when more definitive information has become available or “it has become obvious that further waiting is fruitless.” This is now the case. Although the drama which is currently unfolding in Washington would deserve discussion this can wait until December.

In “The Saga of Tutankhamen’s Skull X-Rays” (October 17, 2002) I presented in considerable detail the difficulties we had encountered in obtaining a copy of the X-rays that had been taken in 1968 by a team from the University of Liverpool under the leadership of the late Professor Harrison. The reason why I had persevered over a long period of time was because the X-rays were purported to have shown a skull fracture and/or subdural hematoma (blood clot on the brain). This in turn had given rise to a widely reported theory that the pharaoh had been murdered by a blow to the head.

After having had an opportunity to study the actual X-rays, rather than photographs, upon which a book which endorsed the murder theory had been written, my colleagues and I concluded that the X-rays were normal, apart from post-mortem artifacts introduced by the ancient embalmers as well as by the Carter-Derry autopsy in 1925. These conclusions were published in The American Journal of Neuroradiology in the June/July 2003 issue and this was the first time that an assessment of these radiographs had been presented to the medical community. Previous publications by Dr. Harrison had addressed themselves to the general public or archeologists.

Although skull X-rays can demonstrate bony changes they cannot determine possible soft tissue damage which might be apparent on a CT scan. When I learned that Professor Griggs of Brigham Young University in nearby Provo had a license from the Egyptian authorities not only to perform archeological excavations but also DNA analyses on mummies with his colleague Professor Scott Woodward, I visited with them. I was told that they had not only obtained samples from a large grave site at El - Faiyum but they had also been able to obtain some from royal mummies in the Cairo museum in order to establish possible lineages within members of the XVIIIth dynasty and they planned to examine Tutankhamen. I suggested immediately that when the sarcophagus is opened for that purpose we ought to also obtain a CT scan to settle the head injury question once and for all. This suggestion was well received and I was asked to write a proposal to that effect because funding and permissions would have to be obtained. I prepared a document that outlined the need for the investigation as well as potential funding sources and submitted it to Dr. Griggs on 0ctober 3, 1996. There was no reply but since the archeological season in Egypt is limited to the winter months he may have already been in Egypt on other excavations. Nevertheless, the hope remained that we might get something done for the next season. But although I kept calling Dr. Griggs over the next few years on a regular basis nothing came of the attempt because there were either other priorities or some hurdles from the Egyptian authorities. Nevertheless, I was assured that the project was not dead it would just take a little longer than what had been hoped for. After a while phone calls were no longer returned and I issued a mental death certificate for it.

Then in the fall of 2001 the events which are documented in the “Saga” took place and as mentioned the scientific paper was published in 2003. At that point I thought I was done with Tut because I felt that the political conditions in Egypt simply were not conducive to good scientific work, especially since a scan would have to be obtained at the tomb in the Valley of the Kings because a transport to Cairo seemed unrealistic. But January of this year brought to my great surprise the news that a CT scan had been performed on the pharaoh’s mutilated remains under the auspices of the Secretary General of Egypt’s Supreme Council for Antiquities Dr. Zahi Hawass.

The early reports indicated that the project had been funded by the National Geographic Society and Siemens of Germany had made the scanner available, but as Dr. Hawass kept re-iterating the actual work of data gathering and initial interpretation was all done by Egyptians and only Egyptians. On March 8, 2005 there appeared the official Press Release where the world was told that the scientific team, headed by Dr. Zahi Hawass, had reviewed over 17,000 images and that it had included radiologists, pathologists and anatomists under the oversight of Dr. Madiha Khattab, Dean of Medicine at Cairo University. Important aspects of the report were that the team found no evidence to support a murder theory; the king was about 19 years old at time of death; of slender stature about five and a half feet tall; well nourished and in good general health. The slight curvature of the spine that had been noted in Harrison’s X-ray was within normal limits and had probably resulted from positioning at the time of embalming. The missing sternum (breastbone) was probably the result of Carter-Derry’s removal of the famous mask which had be firmly glued to the body, rather than having resulted from a crushing injury to the chest as had been posited by Dennis Forbes in 1992. The only disagreement among the scientists was the nature of a fracture of the lower end of the left femur (thighbone). Some regarded it as a wound that had occurred during life and might have been a cause of death because open fractures would lead to infection and blood poisoning which was untreatable in those days. Others felt that the fracture was another post-mortem event and the question was not resolved.

So far so good but as usual the devil is in the details and these already appear on the first page of the report.

“Lead radiologist Dr. Marvat Shafik and the rest of the team requested that three international experts, two from Italy and one from Switzerland, be permitted to review the images. ‘We need our opinion to be international, since people all over the world are waiting for the results of this important scan,’ said Dr. Shafik,”

But Dr. Hawass did not seem to be enthused about international cooperation because the report goes on to state:

“Dr. Hawass also said: ‘The Egyptian team worked on the images for two months. The foreign team came for several days at the end to review the work of the Egyptian team. The foreign consultants confirmed the results of the Egyptian team, and joined us to make the announcement internationally. All of us are proud to announce these findings, the first CT examination of a securely identified royal mummy from ancient Egypt.

I believe these results will close the case of Tutankhamun, and the king will not need to be examined again. We should now leave him at rest. I am proud that this work was done, and done well, by a completely Egyptian team.”

When we strip away exalted language one gains the impression that the Europeans were not regarded by Dr. Hawass as full partners in the assessment of the data but they may have been expected to merely rubber stamp the findings of their Egyptian colleagues.

Inasmuch as Dr. Boyer and I had a long standing interest in actually examining the CT scans rather than merely taking somebody else’s word as to what they do or do not show a new chapter in the Saga began. My main problem was that the report had not addressed itself to two aspects of Derry’s findings. One was the nature of the “rounded depression, which has slightly raised edges, the skin filling it, resembling a scab” on the left check and the other the “pronounced bulging of the left side of the occiput [back of the head].” In addition there was, of course, the unresolved question of the possible left femur fracture.

The press release did provide the names but not the addresses of the members of the Egyptian as well as European team. There were 3 radiologists on the Egyptian team and 1 on the European. The latter was Dr. Paul Gostner from Bolzano Italy. But every Austrian knows that Bolzano used to be called Bozen, was the capital city of South Tyrol and our esteemed President Wilson had handed the entire province to the Italians after WWI. Self- determination of nations, as proclaimed in his 14 points, had its limits when it came to the vanquished ones. The Austrians of South Tyrol were abandoned to the Italians and those of the Sudetenland to the Czechs. Wilson’s motive was to get his League of Nations approved by the Brits, French and Italians regardless of the cost to actual people who suddenly lost their homeland. This tit for tat was also part of the cause for WWII. There were obviously bad feelings for some time between Austrians and Italians on that score but these were overcome in subsequent decades and amiable relationships exist now between the two countries.

At any rate, I felt a sudden sense of kinship and the potential to get more information about the scans. I did not have Dr. Gostner’s e-mail address but most of us have scientific articles to our names and PubMed is one of the best examples of our tax dollars at work. It is available to the general public and comes up immediately on search engines. Thereafter one needs only the last name and the initial of the author and all the papers arrive within milliseconds. The first paper on the list was authored by Dr W. Murphy from Houston Texas with the title: “The Iceman: Discovery and Imaging” and was published in Radiology in 2003. The abstract also had Dr. Murphy’s e-mail address and he was kind enough to immediately supply me with that of Dr. Gostner which led to a very fruitful correspondence. He told me that he had read our report in the AJNR before going to Egypt and it was fully vindicated by the CT results. A scientific publication of their findings was planned but it needed the cooperation of the Egyptians which was slow in forthcoming, and that he would be happy to collaborate with us in any further data evaluation.

This took place at the end of June and since Europeans have the good sense to get out of their hot cities during the summer we postponed further discussions until the fall. In the meantime I thought that since National Geographic had put up the money, and as a long time member I had partially paid for that scan too, they should be able to put me in touch with the Egyptians so that one might be able to expedite the situation somewhat. I sent off an e-mail to the Magazine requesting the address of A.R. Williams who had written “The New Face of King Tut His Life and Death” for the June issue. Back came four pages of “Thank you for contacting the National Geographic society …” and this was followed by links to frequently asked questions which obviously were not related to my problem. But the message also mentioned that questions which do not appear on the form would be answered within two weeks. Lo and behold a week later the assistant to Ms Williams wrote back stating that “The Society and Siemens have an explicit agreement with the Supreme Council of Antiquities that the CT data is theirs to use as they see fit. Thus all we can suggest is that you take your case directly to Dr. Hawass and the SCA.” She then provided the contact information and an e-mail address. This was on July 21 and the following day I wrote to Dr. Hawass explaining why we would like to see the scans and offered any help in publication of the data, that he might desire. The message did not come back as undeliverable but there was no reply.

As a sailor I took another tack and tried to establish contact with one of the Egyptian radiologists who had worked on the scans. Dr. Essam Ismail, an Egyptian radiologist who currently works in Kuwait, was very helpful in establishing contact with Dr. Ashraf Selim, Professor of Radiology at Cairo University, who was a member of the examining team. Dr. Selim wrote a very pleasant letter back stating that he had also read our paper agreed with its conclusions and “I'd love to communicate and share our knowledge.” 

When I replied I mentioned not only the reasons why we would be interested in seeing the scans but also that it might have been useful to obtain DNA samples at the time of the scanning.  Dr. Selim agreed that:

 “DNA tests would have been definitely useful for answering many questions but unfortunately we work under the supreme council of antiquities who rejected this idea. . . . .  Regarding the issue of sending some of the CT pictures to you I personally agree but I have to take the approval of Dr. Hawass first according to the protocol of confidentiality that we signed with him before taking any further steps.”

Since this still looked promising I replied that “May be I could write to Dr. Hawass personally, if you think it were to be useful.”  The answer came back immediately:

“Dear Dr. Rodin:     

I really don’t think it's necessary now, let me contact him first and then we decide what to do, regards.”

            Well, it doesn’t take much imagination to ascertain what happened here. The abrupt change in tone clearly suggests that word came down from the top: “don’t get involved with foreigners.”  This impression was confirmed in the subsequent correspondence with Dr. Gostner. Earlier last month he told me that he and his two other colleagues had repeatedly tried to continue the collaboration with the Egyptian scientists in order to proceed with a publication but their efforts were thwarted. He also told me that Dr. Frank Ruehli of Switzerland (Anatomist and Paleopathologist, Zurich University, and member of the evaluation team) had suggested a presentation at the Anthropology Congress in March 2006 and had sent a preliminary abstract for approval to Egypt. After some delay he received this response from Dr. Hawass: “as a matter of fact we can not make a kind of lecture in conference now. I am waiting to read the first report of the two parties.” As Dr. Gostner mentioned to me it is quite unclear what Dr. Hawass meant by this statement but it is apparent that a publication or presentation is not in the immediate offing. All of us who have submitted abstracts to national and international meetings know that there are deadlines for when abstracts have to be received by the organizing committee and these are usually at least six if not nine months prior to the meeting. Thus any delay jeopardizes acceptance.

We have, therefore a situation that is not readily understandable on scientific grounds. The European and the Egyptian scientists are eager to collaborate further but apparently a political decision has been reached to prevent this from coming to pass in the near future. Dr. Hawass has currently the exclusive rights to the scans and for reasons only known to him he apparently refuses to allow further studies. I believe this attitude to be ill advised and would like him to reconsider his stance.

            Dr Hawass has said in a recent speech that Tutankhamen “belongs to the world,” which is true. Although everyone agrees that the artifacts found in the tomb as well as the mummy belong to Egypt this should not be extended to scientific data derived from them. The scientific community is international and true scientists have only one goal, which is to extract the maximum information from a given set of data. This is why we have international societies for our various specialties and international meetings where we can discuss in public as well as in private the data we are most interested in.

            Since I am writing for the general public let me now explain why this international collaboration is so vital. Let us be honest with each other; even if Dr. Hawass were to give the Egyptian members of the team authority to publish a paper on their own it would run into resistance from peer reviewers, if it were to be submitted to a reputable international journal. They would immediately ask why the European members of the team were not included and to what extent they agreed with the conclusions that were expressed.

There is a further point. When one has 17,000 pictures to review it is difficult if not impossible to do justice to the data within a few days and that is all the time the members of the European team had at their disposal. Furthermore, even in everyday clinical practice we require a referral slip for a given examination. This may be for a CT scan, an MRI or as in my case EEG/MEG which tells us what area we should pay closest attention to. Digital technology has the tremendous advantage that the data are stored as megabytes or gigabytes and these can be examined at leisure from various points of view. Whenever I am not writing for general publication I do just that with electrical and/or magnetic brain activity which was in part collected several years ago. New observations are made with improved data analysis programs and published. They can then point the way for better data assessment in the future. But this takes time which overburdened clinicians usually don’t have. On the other hand those of us who have reached retirement age do have the time, know how and interest and are happy to pursue these investigations for everybody’s benefit.

            This brings me back to Dr. Gostner and the iceman because it is an excellent example why international collaboration is so vital. Oetzi, as he is affectionately called because he was found in the Oetztaler Alps, was discovered in 1991 and has been extensively investigated first by an Austrian and subsequently an Italian team. Since there are no border guards on a glacier it was initially assumed that the body was still on the Austrian side and it was taken to Innsbruck, but when it was finally determined that that part of the glacier was already on the Italian side of the border he was removed to Bolzano where he now resides in a special museum. Although the Austrians did perform a CT scan no definitive cause of death could be established. Since some of the ribs were “distorted” as if they might have been fractured it was hypothesized that the man might have been attacked, for some reason or another, escaped to higher altitudes and then froze to death. A replica of his face, similar to that of Tutankhamen, was made and the matter rested.

            But Dr. Peter Vanezis a forensic pathologist of Bolzano did not. He was not happy with what had been called the “disaster theory” and found that the body had not always lain in the position it was found. The ice had apparently melted to some extent at some time and the body moved to a slightly different location. When the water froze again the chest was partially crushed which accounted for the deformed ribs. Thus, the disaster theory had to be revisited and the cause of death was again undetermined. With this question hanging in the air Dr. Eduard Ergarter Vigl, the curator of the mummy in Bolzano, decided in June of 2001 it was time for another X-ray. This was done and the films were given to Dr. Gostner, head of Radiology at Bolzano General Hospital, for evaluation. As soon as Dr. Gostner saw the chest X-ray he noted a foreign body near the left shoulder. On close examination it was determined to have been an arrow head and, therefore, a likely cause of death.

            For the Austrians this was major embarrassment. They had previously had the body for several years, had performed a CT scan and had missed detecting that metal fragment. Professor Horst Seidler from the University of Vienna stated in a BBC interview: “that has been the shock of my life.” Why had they overlooked the arrowhead in the CT scan? Well, sometimes you can have too much information and the proverbial needle in the haystack doesn’t jump out. When Dr. Wolfgang Recheis loaded up the scans again on his work station in Innsbruck now knowing where to look the object not only showed up clear as daylight but with further study and newer data analysis tools the arrowhead could be completely reconstructed. This is a perfect example for international cooperation how to get at the bottom of a scientific problem. Oetzi had been shot in the left shoulder, escaped from his pursuers to higher ground, pulled out the arrow, which was found in the general vicinity, died of his wounds and the body froze.

            Let us now return to our Pharaoh and what should be done. The most obvious immediate action should be to make the CT scans available to the European team so that a preliminary scientific report on the data can be presented. There are so much data on hand that the scans should subsequently be made available to qualified specialists around the world upon their request. Different scientists have different areas of interest and a series of papers, including a monograph, could be published. This can readily be done and requires only the “go ahead” from Dr. Hawass. 

            But a CT scan can also give only a partial picture and more information might have been obtained had a DNA sample been taken which opens another chapter of this Saga. In response to Ms William’s report Ann Marie Ackermann of Boenningheim, Germany wrote a Letter to the Editor of National Geographic: “Although your article on King Tut was fascinating, it contained an omission. Were any DNA samples taken and, if not, why not?” The answer from the magazine was: “It is the policy of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities not to do DNA testing on mummies. Some experts believe such tests are not yet accurate enough for ancient remains and would only open the door for speculation.

Although this is true it is not the whole answer. Drs. Griggs and Woodward had, as mentioned above, obtained samples even from pharaohs during the 1990s but for reasons beyond their control never did get the go ahead to obtain samples from Tutankhamen. Furthermore, when I reviewed Internet data for this article I found to my surprise that Carolyn Hawley had reported from Cairo for BBC News on November 11, 2000: “Tutankhamun to undergo DNA tests.” The article stated in part

“A Japanese team, working with local experts, will conduct DNA tests on Tutankhamun’s mummy, which has lain undisturbed in its tomb in Luxor [sic] since it was last X-rayed in 1969 [sic].

The results will be compared with tests on the mummy of the man thought to be his grandfather, Amenhotep III, now in the Egyptian museum.

But mummy expert, Nasry Iskander, cautions that DNA analysis on ancient remains is still a hit-and-miss affair and that Tutankhamun’s mummy may be in too poor a shape to yield conclusive answers.”

CNN.com reported on December 5, 2000 that a team of Japanese experts was expected to arrive in Egypt “this week” to obtain DNA samples. We don’t know at this time what happened but apparently Dr. Iskander was overruled and the Japanese never got their samples.

            This is a very unfortunate situation. It is true that lineage may be difficult to ascertain and that there are considerable technical problems. The difficulties in regard to lineage are compounded in the case of royal mummies because, apart from Tutankhamen, all have been removed from their tombs in antiquity and one is working on bodies whose precise identity may be in doubt. This also applies to the mummy of Amenhotep III. But lineage, important as it may be, is not the only reason why an adequate DNA sample should have been obtained as mentioned in my correspondence with Dr. Selim. The cause of the pharaoh’s death is unknown and the skeletonized dismembered remains may not yield full answers in regard to the cause of death but the viscera might provide additional information. They were found by Carter in canopic jars in the tomb and transported to Cairo at that time. They ought to reside somewhere in the Cairo museum. I am saying “ought” and “somewhere” because a physician, Dr. Bucaille, who wrote a book for the general public in which he severely criticized Carter’s handling of the mummy, stated that he could not find the canopic jars in the museum. Thus even if someone were to look into the various nooks and crannies of this vast building and were to find canopic jar contents labeled “Tutankhamun” one would never know for sure whether these labels were indeed correct. If we had DNA from the mummy, the contents of the jars might be properly identified and one might be one step further in unraveling the mystery that surrounds the young king’s unexpected death. Dr Hawass has been quoted in an interview on March 8, 2005 (MSNBC.com) as having told the Associated Press: “I have two theories – that he may have died from natural causes or that he was poisoned. We are going to look at the viscera to see if his organs show any signs, but it is virtually impossible to prove how he died.”  I agree with the last part of the last sentence but how is Dr. Hawass going to establish for certain, without DNA confirmation, that the viscera really belonged to Tutankhamen?                                             

            Thus the Saga continues. The last word has not been spoken with the Press Release and it behooves us to find a way that allows proper scientific research of at least the CT scans to proceed. But it is not only the fate of the CT scan that is at stake. If Dr. Hawass were to insist that he has the right to control all scientific publications resulting from excavations in Egypt the entire field of Egyptology is in peril. This is why I wrote this article and why I shall give it wide circulation. Inasmuch as I could not get a private reply from Dr. Hawass I am now writing to him in public.

           

            Dear Dr. Hawass

 

            During the past months I have made several attempts to contact you through private channels but my efforts were unsuccessful. Since the topic is vital for the current state of Egyptology I feel obliged to write to you in this forum. It seems that the scientists who have evaluated the CT scans of Tutankhamen are currently prevented from publishing their findings in the scientific literature. I do not know the reason, but I do know that they are seriously interested in doing so because Press Releases cannot do justice to the many questions that are still unanswered.

As a first step I would like to request that you make the entire set of scans available to all members of the scientific team. This should be done electronically so that the scientists from the different disciplines can independently investigate these scans at their leisure rather than in a hurried manner. They can then discuss their agreements and disagreements among themselves, arrive at sustainable conclusions and publish the data. Thereafter a Symposium could be arranged at an appropriate International Congress where the scientific community at large is given an opportunity to see the data and review the conclusions derived from them. You might want to give the keynote address at that Symposium. This is how science proceeds in all other areas and the CT scan data should not be an exception. At present the scans are of no benefit to anyone including you because they require specialized expertise for further evaluation.

            You have recently received from the American University in Cairo an Honorary Degree of “Doctor of Humane Letters” and I appeal to you to regard this not only as an honor but also as an obligation. You cannot shut out the international scientific community because you depend on it for your future work. By not releasing the scans you are not only hurting the scientific community at large but also and especially your Egyptian co-workers who have spent a great deal of time on evaluating the scans and have a right to see their results published. Furthermore, without the help from the U.S. and Germany the scans would never have materialized in the first place. While pride in the achievements of one’s country is thoroughly understandable it should not turn into chauvinism because this has always led to disaster.      

You have mentioned repeatedly that you have enemies and that the forces of Seth are arraigned against you. This may well be so but please feel assured that the scientific community is not your enemy but is only interested in a search for the truth, regardless where it ultimately may lead to. I would, therefore, like to urge you not to provide those with whom you have differences with more food for animosity; which secrecy surely breeds.

Those of us who love and respect the magnificent culture your ancestors have given to the world would be severely disappointed if this tradition of sharing, which has characterized them in the ancient world were to be abandoned now. I, therefore, urgently request that you reconsider your decision and follow the suggestions made above. In American parlance this is a “win-win” situation where nobody loses and everybody gains.

Sincerely yours,

Ernst Rodin MD







December 1, 2005

ALBERT WOHLSTETTER’S DISCIPLES

            The purpose of these essays is to elucidate the behind the scenes maneuverings which shape current political events; or in other words, to present information that anticipates what are likely to become the headlines of the future. The title of the current one was prompted by a cryptic remark in a “Dear Judy” letter that was sent by I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby to the New York Times reporter Judith Miller who sat in jail for refusing to divulge the name of her source in the Valerie Plame “outing.” The letter expressed surprise that she had not taken him up on his earlier offer to waive his right to confidentiality and ended with,

 

“You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover – Iraqi elections and suicide bombings, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters because their roots connect them [italics added]. Come back to work – and life. Until then, you will remain in my thoughts and prayers.

With admiration, Scooter Libby.”

 

            Judy Miller took the advice and named Scooter as her source. He was indicted by Patrick Fitzgerald’s grand jury and she thought that she would be welcomed with open arms by her newspaper for having defended the freedom of the press. This hope didn’t last long because it had become apparent that she had simply used the New York Times as a mouthpiece for the administration in its justification for the Iraq invasion. The Editor-in- Chief did not take kindly to this abuse of her credentials and she was suspended from her job. The Times had been confronted with other shills in the recent past and wanted to regain its image of respectability. Thus “Scooter’s” enigmatic words were indeed prophetic and the connected roots are gradually being recognized.

            This is why the American public has to get to know Professor Wohlstetter and his little band of devout followers. His biography reveals an illustrious career. Wikipedia (free on line encyclopedia) states that he was:

 

“One of the world's leading nuclear and national security strategists. His studies led to the "second-strike" and "Fail-Safe" concepts for deterring nuclear war. These and other methods reduced the probability of accidental war. Wohlstetter was affiliated with institutions such as the European-American Institute, the Hoover Institution, and PAN Heuristics Services. He received the Medal of Freedom for his contributions toward national security. He earned degrees from Columbia University and later taught at UCLA and UC Berkeley and then for many years at the University of Chicago’s Political Science Department. It was in this capacity that he became the inspiration for a number of students who subsequently rose to prominence in the Reagan and the current Bush administration [italics added].”

 

In an obituary on January 16, 1997 his friend Jude Wanniski wrote:

 

“Albert never had a serious challenger at the top of the intellectual pyramid, right up until the end of the Cold War. He remained unknown, except to the inner circles of power in our country, because he saw no need to become a public man when his function was to design the grand strategy that would bring military victory over the Soviet Union without a nuclear shot having to be fired. . . . For all practical purposes every editorial on America’s geopolitical strategy that appeared in The Wall Street Journal during the last 25 years was the result of Albert’s genius. If Henry Kissinger was the leading leader of the ‘dove team’ in foreign policy over much of this period, stressing diplomatic stratagems, Wohlstetter was the undisputed  leader of the ‘hawk team,’ which stressed military moves of breathtaking creativity and imagination. . . . . President Reagan’s ‘end game’ with Moscow in the Cold War, replete with ‘Star Wars’ initiatives and the idea of targeting Soviet missile silos with inexpensive ‘smart bombs’ that were chemical, not nuclear, were all advanced as part of the bag of tricks Albert and Roberta [his surviving wife, historian, and co-recipient of the Medal of Freedom] brought to the table.”

 

Wanniski listed as some of the people who were most influenced by Wohlstetter not only Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Senators Henry “Scoop” Jackson and Robert Dole but also Margaret Thatcher. Well, that was eight years ago. Today the senators and Maggie are in retirement but among others of Wohlstetter’s admirers the unlikely name of Ahmad Chalabi would have to be included.

I now intend to piece together, from a large group of diverse Internet articles as well as the book Pretext for War by James Bamford, how a coalition of devoted Jewish Zionists and a secular Arab Shiite managed to recruit not only our government, but also the media for their purposes. This “cabal,” as they “mockingly” called themselves, according to The New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh (May12, 2003) has led us into Iraq and now intends to reshape the rest of the Middle East in their image with “Wohlstetterian” methods.

When the Cold War ended and the rest of the world breathed a sigh of relief the neocons found themselves not only out of power but also bereft of a target to which they could apply their belief system. But since the membership of that unofficial group is composed of people who have strong emotional ties to the state of Israel it was natural to attempt to direct American public opinion to the threat Arab terrorists posed for that country. This was done not only with the help of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), which lobbied Congress for favorable legislation (“Scoop” Jackson was their foremost benefactor), but also either by becoming the dominant force in existing “think tanks” or forming new ones. Numerous groups with a variety of names and acronyms began to sprout and it would take several articles to discuss all of them. I shall, therefore, limit myself only to some of the most influential. Among these are: The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). It should not come as a surprise that many of the people involved in these two organizations are members of both because the goals are currently the same. To put them succinctly: American and Israeli interests are identical in regard to the Middle East and the current regimes have to be replaced by democratic ones. This will not only provide security for the state of Israel but also unlimited access to the Middle East’s oil supply for the U.S.    

The driving force behind AEI was Richard Perle and his role in the creation of the position paper for incoming President Netanyahu in 1996 has already been discussed in The Neocons Leviathan (April 1, 2003). The idea to completely reshape the Middle East was first put forth as a strategy for incoming President Netanyahu in 1996 under the title “A Clean Break: A new Strategy for Securing the Realm.” The document advocated as Israel’s foreign policy: regime change in Iraq, Iran and Syria; a missile defense system, and to lobby for the move of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. “Prime Minister Netanyahu can formulate the policies and stress themes he favors in language familiar to the Americans by tapping into the themes of American administrations during the Cold War which apply well to Israel.”

Among the participants in this Study Group on "A New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000we find listed not only “Richard Perle, American Enterprise Institute, Study Group Leader,” but also “Douglas Feith, Feith and Zell Associates; David Wurmser, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies; Meyrav Wurmser, Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Perle has become somewhat embattled over the years because of financial improprieties but he remains the power behind the throne, Douglas Feith quit his law practice with Mr. Zell and became deputy to Paul Wolfowitz in the Pentagon, while David Wurmser, whose wife Meyrav is an Israeli citizen, ended up as principal Middle East advisor in Vice President Cheney’s office.

Let us remember that this strategy paper was written by American citizens to the Prime Minister of a foreign country. For Perle and like-minded friends this was, however, only a trial run and to implement their goals they had to ensure that these ideas not only became Israel’s policy but also of America’s. For this purpose another think tank was created in the spring of 1997 which called itself “The Project for the New American Century.” It is listed as “a non-profit educational organization whose goal it is to promote American global leadership.” The Chairman is William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and son of Irving Kristol, the original Neoconservative. The goals were simple: America is the only remaining superpower; it must increase rather than decrease its military strength in order to ensure that this status will be preserved for decades to come. Any perceived threat should be met in a “preemptive” manner by overpowering military force, with allies when available without them when not, and democracy needs to be spread throughout the world. This “hawkish” view was not popular in the Clinton administration of 1997 but became the “Bush doctrine’ in 2001.

Another influential group is the “Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs” (JINSA). It was actually established in the wake of the Yom Kippur war in 1973 when Kissinger fell from grace with some members of the Jewish community because he brokered the armistice deal between Israel and Egypt which prevented Sharon from marching to Cairo and forced him to withdraw to the Israeli side of the Suez Canal. The organization lists itself as “non-profit nonpartisan” and the goals are:

 

“1) To educate the American public about the importance of an effective U.S. defense capability so that our vital interests as Americans can be safeguarded; and

2) To inform the American defense and foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.”

 

It is noteworthy that JINSA’s first executive director was Michael Ledeen, of whom more will be said later. Some of the other former advisory board members were: Dick Cheney, John Bolton (currently America’s ambassador to the UN), Richard Perle and Douglas Feith.  JINSA together with AEI became the leading force for the Iraq invasion.  On September 13, 2001 JINSA published a position paper under the title, “This Goes Beyond Bin Laden.” The key sentences are:

 

            “A long investigation to prove Osama Bin Laden’s guilt with prosecutorial certainty is entirely unnecessary. He is guilty in word and deed. His history is the source of his culpability. The same holds true for Saddam Hussein. Our actions in the past certainly were not forceful enough and now we must seize the opportunity to alter this pattern of passivity.

In response to the attack on September 11, 2001 JINSA calls on the United States to:

Halt all purchases of Iraqi oil under the UN Oil for Food Program and to provide all necessary support to the Iraqi National Congress, including direct American military support [emphasis in the original], to effect a regime change in Iraq . . .“

 

Phase one of the Neocons program to reshape the Middle East, by first eliminating Saddam Hussein, was now within grasp. Saddam had been a long standing irritant and the 1991 Gulf War was regarded as a botched enterprise because it had left him in power. The goal now was to remove Saddam by military intervention and establish a proxy regime that is not only friendly to the U.S. but also to Israel. This is where Perle’s and Wolfowitz’s long standing friend Ahmad Chalabi came in who had been introduced to them by Albert Wohlstetter.

Dr. Chalabi has a long and rather checkered career. He was born into a wealthy Iraqi Shiite family that had held prominent posts in the government until the socialist Baath party took over. From then on he has lived abroad mainly in London, where he obtained UK citizenship, and the U.S. He studied mathematics at the University of Chicago and MIT, received a PhD in that field and became a professor of mathematics at the American University of Beirut. He then moved to Jordan where he established the Petra Bank in 1977. The bank collapsed in 1990, Chalabi fled the country under mysterious circumstances and was sentenced in absentia to 22 year in prison by a Jordanian court for embezzling vast sums of money. Chalabi has always maintained that he was falsely accused and the plot to discredit him was organized by Saddam. It is not known when his first contact with the CIA was established but it may even have been when he was a student at MIT or Chicago. I am mentioning this as a possibility because during the Cold War the CIA was in the habit of contacting foreign students for information about their home country and I had some chats with one of their agents during my post-graduate training at the Mayo Clinic. I was never spy material but I can’t blame them for trying to recruit me.

Chalabi, however, had an ax to grind and while in exile in London he founded in 1992 the Iraqi National Congress (INC) which would allow him to topple Saddam. The money obviously came from the CIA and the goal was to repeat the mujahideen scenario that had so effectively driven the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Chalabi returned in the middle 90’s to the Kurdish northern part of Iraq where he allied himself with one of the two Kurdish separatist parties, with the hope that members of the Iraqi army would defect and rally to his cause. Not only did this fantasy not pan out, but the other Kurdish faction, who did not like Chalabi and his supporters, invited Saddam’s tanks to come in. They made short shrift of this enterprise and Chalabi had to flee the country a second time. This ought to have told our policy planners something about Chalabi’s effectiveness when actions rather than words are required.  He again maintained that it was the CIA’s fault for not having supported his efforts sufficiently. But the Clinton administration was hardly interested in starting a war in the Middle East, which would have been the inevitable outcome.

The CIA not only lost its confidence in Chalabi because of his lack of military talents, but there was again the problem that he couldn’t properly account for all the money they fed into the INC. Nevertheless, whatever one may want to say against the man he is not only a survivor, but also a highly determined individual who doesn’t take no for an answer. When the CIA cut him loose, his friends at AEI did not desert him and he became their poster boy for lobbying efforts in Congress. The crowning success came with the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998 which Clinton reluctantly signed because, as a result of the Lewinsky affair, he was in no position to pick a fight with Congress. One hundred million dollars were allocated to the INC and, although only some was actually distributed, it was never quite clear to the State Department where the money actually went and what good it did. It seems that Dr. Chalabi not only lacks military prowess but also fiscal responsibility. The idea of a swift overthrow of Saddam by INC forces, although vigorously supported by the AEI as well as AJNS, was thoroughly discredited in a January/February 1999 article written by Daniel Byman, Kenneth Pollack and Gideon Rose for the authoritative magazine Foreign Affairs under the title: “The Rollback Fantasy.”

But when the Bush administration took over in January of 2001 and members of the “cabal” had moved into the seats of power Chalabi’s INC was again in the pink. The money now flowed freely for an intelligence gathering program through his friends in the Pentagon to the tune of a monthly stipend of $335,000. It is common knowledge today that most of this “intelligence information” was bogus but it served the purposes of the AEI as well as AJNS, and Chalabi defended it after the invasion with the simple statement that: Americans are in Baghdad now.

A key point in gaining the support of Congress and the public for the Iraq invasion was Saddam’s purported possession of WMDs and his work on reconstituting a nuclear program. This information, as we now know came from a small group of people in the Pentagon which Douglas Feith had created under the name of “Office of Special Plans.” Its task was to sift from existing CIA, State Department and the Defense department’s intelligence gathering agencies, those data that fit their purposes and discard qualifiers which the official agencies had inserted in their reports. In addition Chalabi’s INC presented data from defectors much of it was unsubstantiated and had been discredited by the official spy agencies. But that was not all.  It has also been reported that Prime Minister Sharon had set up a similar group under his own auspices in Israel which could bypass the Mossad, work directly with the Feith group, and become a straight “pipeline” via Wurmser and Libby to the Vice President.

As mentioned the September 11, 2001 tragedy was literally a gift from heaven for the people who had a longstanding interest in reshaping the Middle East and they wasted no time to use this human tragedy for their purposes. The American people had to be scared with visions of a mushroom cloud over American cities that would be created by Saddam unless he was immediately removed from power. This is where “The Niger Forgery” (August 1, 2003, on this site) played such a crucial role and why the Patrick Fitzgerald grand jury investigation is so important. Defenders of the administration belittle the prosecutor’s efforts because after nearly two years he could indict only Libby and not even for the crime of leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent but “only” for perjury and obstruction of justice.  As Mortimer Zuckerman Editor-in-Chief of U.S. News and World Report wrote under the headline: Foul-ups – Not Felonies: “To impugn the integrity of our leading officials and poison the atmosphere in which this country is fighting a war is irresponsible politics, and it ought to be stopped.”

This is not so, unless the American people are told the full truth by its leadership, there can be no trust and without trust the President cannot effectively represent us at home or abroad. The names of the persons in the White House who leaked secret information are actually not as important as how these forgeries were perpetrated and then became the casus belli. For that answer we have to go to Dr. Michael Ledeen (currently Karl Rove’s foreign policy advisor and first CEO of JINSA) which surprisingly leads us back to the Regan administration’s ill fated Iran-Contra affair.

The Jewish Virtual Library informs us that:

 

Israel’s involvement was stimulated by separate overtures in 1985 from Iranian arms merchant Manucher Ghorbanifar and National Security Council (NSC) consultant Michael Ledeen, the latter working for National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane. When Ledeen asked Prime Minister Shimon Peres for assistance, the Israel leader agreed to sell weapons to Iran at America’s behest, providing the sale had high-level U.S. approval.”

 

Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad officer, provided a more detailed view of that affair in his book By Way of Deception. Radical Muslims were kidnapping Westerners in Beirut, including the American CIA station Chief, William Buckley, and the Reagan administration wanted them freed. Initially the Mossad was contacted and although Prime Minister Peres promised full cooperation, Nahum Admony, the Mossad director, was not particularly eager to do so. Peres then decided to use his personal counter-terrorist advisor, Amiram Nir, as go between. Nir contacted Oliver North, brought him together with Manucher Ghorbanifar and the deal was on. We sold missiles to Iran, some hostages were released and money was diverted to fund the anti-Sandinista Contras. Israel also turned a profit by “secretly selling about $500 million worth of arms to Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.” Further details are in the mentioned “Niger Forgery” article.

This happened in 1986 and the sequel took place in 2001. The Bush administration had already decided to use the 9-11 tragedy to enact the program of the AEI and JINSA to reshape the Middle East and a viable excuse was needed. Michael Ledeen, who holds a doctorate in History and Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin, was the perfect person to lend a helping hand. He was the Rome correspondent for the New Republic from 1975-1977, had developed excellent contacts there, knew all the people in the Italian intelligence community, and had stayed in touch with them. This is the point where the forged Niger documents come in. During the New Year’s holiday of 2001 a break-in had occurred at the Niger embassy in Rome. The office was messed up but nothing was stolen except some letterheads and official seals. The Italians investigated but no conclusions were reached. In December of that year, Ledeen organized a meeting in Rome which was attended by him, Larry Franklin (then working under Douglas Feith in the Pentagon and currently indicted for spying for Israel), Harold Rhode (works for Feith’s Office of Special Plans and as liaison to Chalabi), Manucher Ghorbanifar (the Iranian arms dealer), as well as from the Italian side Nicolo Pollari (head of the Italian CIA equivalent SISMI) and Antonio Martino (Italy’s Minister of Defense, but apparently unrelated to Rocco Martino who will figure later). What these people discussed is not known at this time but that Iraq, as well as possibly Iran, was on the agenda does not require a leap of faith.

But Ledeen had other contacts in Italy as well, and two of these were Francesco Pazienza, an Italian felon and forger who had been kicked out of SISMI, and Rocco Martino who had contacts with French intelligence sources and was engaged in peddling the forgery to the highest bidder. The Italians are still investigating this whole affair as well as other CIA operations that were illegal under Italian law. The current official explanation by the FBI is that Rocco Martino had acted independently, solely for financial gain and no further investigation is needed. Who did the actual forging is still unknown, and Martino’s bogus information peddling is not likely to be the whole truth.

While our media intermittently report on the new Patrick Fitzgerald grand jury, there is a parallel investigation going on of which the American public is hardly informed. For the past several years United States Attorney Paul McNulty has conducted a grand jury investigation into the unauthorized release of secret documents from the Pentagon to Israel. On August 4, 2005 Larry Franklin (member of the Ledeen Rome meeting) was indicted for that offense and in November two key members of AIPAC, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, were added. In other words: Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans for which Franklin worked is now potentially exposed as a spy ring for the State of Israel. Although the Fitzgerald and McNulty investigations proceed separately they do involve the same “cluster of aspens,” to use Libby’s words and this ought to be headline news. The fact that it is not tells us something about how our media still toe the government line. As of now we don’t know how far the two prosecutors will be allowed to proceed. They do report, after all, to the Justice Department and Alberto Gonzales, their boss, is hardly a disinterested bystander. He worked for the Bush White House and is responsible for providing the legal cover that allowed the torture of captives (Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo) in the War on Terrorism.

An honest investigation into the past is, however, not an academic exercise but essential because the same people who pushed this country into the Iraq war are now fomenting another one with Iran and Syria. In the first flush of “Mission Accomplished” JINSA published an address by Michael Ledeen on May 6, 2003 entitled: “Time to Focus on Iran – the Mother of Modern Terrorism.” His concluding remark was: “the time for diplomacy is at the end [sic]; it is time for a free Iran, free Syria and free Lebanon.”

Ledeen is serious about this and in order to understand the man one needs to read his book: The War against the Terror Masters. Why it happened. Where we are now. How we’ll win. The book was originally published in 2002, prior to the Iraq invasion and the paperback edition was updated in 2003. According to Ledeen the way to success has been mapped out by Machiavelli 500 years ago and his methods need to be adopted by the U.S. He emphasizes 5 points of the Machiavelli doctrine: “1) Man is more inclined to do evil than good. 2) The only important thing is winning. 3) If we have to do unpleasant things, it is best to do them all at once. 4) It is better to be feared than loved. 5) Luck can wreck the finest plans.” These ideas were appropriate to suggest to the Borgias of Florence as well as folks like Stalin, Hitler, Mao Ze Dong and most recently Saddam; but is this what the American people want from their government? Let me emphasize that these are only some of the views held by the person who advises Karl Rove. For the full flavor one needs to read the book and it is obvious that whatever he wrote there was followed to the letter via Rove by the President.

Since Americans are currently not inclined to invade Syria and/or Iran unrest has to be fomented in theses countries so that the people will overthrow their rulers by themselves with the CIA’s help. Saudi Arabia is also on Ledeen’s list because it finances Madrassas which recruit terrorists. For the “cabal” the key to success in Iraq resides still in Chalabi and the State Department as well as General Garner (our first Iraqi administrator) are criticized even by the Vice President for not having installed him as America’s Vice-Roy as soon as our troops entered Baghdad. That Chalabi’s “Free Iraqi Forces” happily participated in the looting that went on in those days, we are not told. In 2004 his fortunes waned again. He was accused of spying for the Iranians, his generous stipend was cut off and an FBI investigation against him is under way. This did not deter him from becoming a Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq earlier this year and to visit the U.S. in November. His AEI and JINSA sponsors are still working full steam and he was enthusiastically received at a speech before the AEI as its invited guest at the most appropriate venue: the Wohlstetter Conference Center. The transcript of that speech is available on the Internet and it is obvious why he is the darling of the neocons and the Vice President. He says all the right things including privatization of Iraq’s oil industry. This is of course music to Mr. Cheney’s and his friends’ ears because it is obvious that it won’t be the Europeans or Russians who will get the contracts. The same applies, of course, to the rest of rebuilding Iraq’s battered infrastructure. Carpetbaggers, similar to what went on here after the South had lost its war of independence, are already flooding the country

Chalabi’s trip to the U.S. was obviously a fund-raiser for his campaign to become Prime Minister of Iraq, which is in direct conflict with his repeated assertions that he regards his job as finished when Saddam is overthrown. The fly in the ointment is Machiavelli’s point 5. Luck has a tendency to run out. Although Chalabi is a superb snake oil salesman he will not be able to govern a truly democratic Iraq even if he were to be elected later in the month. His past record speaks against him. There are three likely scenarios: assassination, flight if it were to become imminent, or ruling the country á la Saddam. Democracy does not seem to be in the cards for the long suffering Iraqis in the near future.

It is obvious that in spite of the official party line which proclaims as our only goal the liberation of the oppressed from tyranny, there are more mundane motives. The goal apparently is twofold 1) to create client states in the Persian Gulf area, 2) to export our brand of unbridled capitalism. While Pizza Huts, Starbucks and Radio Shacks are innocuous, the sales of arms and exploitation of local resources for our benefit is not. Americans don’t see themselves in this light but the rest of the world does. The idea, as currently practiced in the U.S., that the value of human beings is to be determined by the rise and fall of stock market shares, rather than the quality of work they produce, should not be the world-wide future of humanity. Even in our country we ought to find a median between the excesses of capitalism, which operate exclusively on greed, and those of socialism which force human beings into an undifferentiated mass that stifles freedom of thought and ingenuity.

The American people are finally beginning to realize that they have been misled in the justification for the Iraq war, but they do not yet know the full extent of the conspiracy of this small group of Wohlstetter’s disciples that has been running the foreign policy of our country as an extension of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. There are, however, some hopeful signs. The State Department under Condi Rice is re-assuming the role that was wrested from it by the Pentagon in previous years. She is to be congratulated for the breakthrough in regard to the opening of the Gaza border which is a first step in the right direction. Since Israel will have elections next March it is unlikely that anything else can happen in regard to the West Bank in the meantime. At home even Congress seems now to be willing to re-assert its role as a separate branch of government. In view of the Fitzgerald and McNulty grand jury deliberations it should start its own truly bipartisan investigation of the “Office of Special Projects” and the associated spy scandal. With next year’s mid-term elections in the offing, Republicans would be well advised to fully cooperate with their Democrat colleagues in this endeavor before they also completely lose the trust of the voters. In the meantime our main hope will have to be that Fitzpatrick and McNulty will be allowed to bring into the open this den of deceit that has been allowed to take over our government.

The Wohlstetter disciples present a classic example of how behavior patterns that were once adaptive become maladaptive when circumstances change. The Soviet Union is gone and a military threat from a major world power, for which a military response might be required, is currently not present. To fight the so-called War on Terror with Wohlstetter‘s ideas is totally inappropriate. Circumstances change, and unless we adapt our responses so that they conform to the new realities we are inviting disaster.

In last year’s December installment I mentioned that the President’s re-election joy is likely to be short lived because there are too many failed policies and too many scandals which cannot be hushed up forever. In September of this year I suggested a speech for him on how to bolster his tattered reputation by announcing, among other aspects, a gradual phased troop withdrawal from Iraq after the mid-December election. He did not do so but it will now be forced upon him by Congress where mid-term elections will dictate his agenda. Unfortunately our President’s character has so far not allowed him to see the world realistically and although he now admits that “mistakes haven been made,” he still claims that “I will settle for nothing less than complete victory.” But he has not yet defined what he regards as “complete victory” and the methods to achieve it. Unless and until he does so he will preach to the choir and continue to lose the trust of the rest of the country.







January 1, 2006

WHEN PRESIDENTS LIE

            Among the plethora of books which Christmas tends to bring, there were two which attracted immediate attention. The one by Eric Alterman carried the title of this essay and its subtitle is “A History of official deceptions and its consequences.” In view of the Bush administration’s mendacious conduct I read it immediately. Another one of equal interest “Soviet Policy in Austria 1945-1955 Documents from Russian Archives” was published by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. This was a joint effort of Austrian and Russian historians and carries the original documents in the Russian language on the even pages and the German translation on the odd ones. Although I have not yet had the time to study the more than a thousand pages of this tome a quick perusal of key items made it clear that some of the contents as to the origin of the Cold War support Mr. Alterman’s views as expressed in his book.

            Alterman limits his investigations to four Presidencies: Roosevelt-Truman and the Yalta conference; Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis; Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin Incidents; Reagan and the Iran-contra Scandal. “George W. Bush and the Post-Truth Presidency” receives only 20 pages because it is still on-going and simply forms the Conclusion of the book. The essential thesis is that when Presidents do not tell the truth to the country they do so for very personal motives which basically boil down to a fear of losing political support and an attempt to appear better than the facts warrant.

            It is now generally agreed that the Yalta conference in February of 1945 was a disaster for Europe because Roosevelt had handed over major portions of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the Balkans apart from Greece, to the tender mercies of Uncle Joe. While we in Europe, who knew the facts on the ground, were appalled at that cave in by the Western powers the American Press had vigorously applauded FDR for his diplomatic skills. He enjoyed a brief spurt of Wilsonian type glory for having brought peace and democracy to the world but it was cut short by his death a few months thereafter. The lie, as Alterman saw it, was that he did not tell Congress and the American people all the concessions he had to make to Stalin to achieve this piece of paper and the creation of the United Nations. FDR realized these shortcomings but as he is reported to have said, “it was the best I could do.” This was true in a way because the major concessions had already been made at the Teheran conference in 1943 and Roosevelt could not go back on his word to Stalin. Although he was in better health at the end of 1943 than at Yalta, when he was obviously ill, he had been motivated by the fear that Stalin would make once again a deal with Hitler. If Stalin had dropped out of the war the U.S and Britain could not have invaded Europe and a compromise peace would have to have been achieved. This was also the reason for the demand of “unconditional surrender” which prolonged the war and caused so much misery. But it was the Realpolitik of the time and the idea was that “we’ll fix it later.”

            Truman had been in the exact opposite situation from Dick Cheney. While the latter is apparently the de facto President who makes policy which George W ratifies, Truman was kept entirely out of the loop. When the enormity of the consequences in form of population dislocations where millions of people lost their homes dawned on him in Potsdam there was nothing he could do about it. As Alterman maintains it was not Stalin who went back on his word, he didn’t need to, but the U.S. when it became obvious what was happening in Europe after Potsdam. We knew at the time that Hitler and Stalin were soul mates and driving out the devil with Beelzebub doesn’t solve any problems, but the American media never understood either one of them. This fundamental lack of knowledge coupled with America’s conviction of its moral mission in the world and the consequent belief in the invincibility of its rectitude led in a direct line from WWII to the Cold War, the missile crisis, Vietnam, Iran-Contra and now Iraq.

            For the American people communism was monolithic, authoritarian, bent on world revolution and therefore a direct threat that had to be crushed. What Americans, by and large, were not told was that there were actually two competing ideas in the Soviet Union about how to achieve the triumph of socialism over capitalism. This was the basis for the struggle between Trotsky and Stalin, which was in a way pre-ordained by their different backgrounds. Lev Davidovich Bronstein who was born in 1879, came from a middle class Jewish family, was arrested for revolutionary activity, sent to Siberia, escaped and fled to England with a forged passport under the name of Trotsky. The name is meaningful in the German language (just as stein is) and translates into “defiance.” Joseph Vissarionovich Dzugashvili was also born in 1879 as the son of a poor shoemaker. His devoted mother wanted him to become a priest and he received his education at a seminary in Tbilisi from which he was expelled later for his revolutionary activities. He fell under the spell of the nine year older Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, which led him to adopt the name Stalin – steel. One may wonder about my penchant for bringing up the birth names of these politicians but I am firmly convinced of the truth of the German dictum: Man musz das Kind beim richtigen Namen nennen; which means that the child should be called by its proper name. This is not an academic exercise because the etymology of names, as well as words in general, can provide insights into meanings that might otherwise remain obscure. 

            The fight between Stalin and Trotsky was inevitable not only because each one wanted power but Jews tend to have a global world outlook while Russian orthodox seminarians tend to be more parochial. Thus, after Lenin’s death, when the struggle for succession became paramount, Trotsky was convinced that the triumph of socialism could only be achieved by world revolution while the pragmatic Stalin insisted on “socialism in our country first.” It was internationalism against nationalism. This fundamental difference led to Stalin’s campaign against “rootless internationalists” which was the cover word for “Jews,” and which was interpreted in the U.S. as anti-Semitism. Jews in the U.S. and Europe held an international world view and when it came to a choice between socialist systems they sided with Trotsky. His brand of communism became the only one that was espoused until the Hitler invasion forced them to come to terms with Stalin for the sake of the endangered party. This analysis makes the Hitler-Stalin pact perfectly understandable because both were nationalists as well as socialists at heart and thereby found common ground against international capitalism. FDR may or may not have been aware of this commonality but his fear of Stalin jumping ship, who was not very happy that his Russians were bleeding while the Americans dallied with opening a second front in France where it counted, was very real.

            After this digression, we can return to 1945 and the start of the Cold War. Americans did not understand Stalin’s nationalism and saw his brutal dictatorship in the countries conquered by the Red Army as a betrayal of democratic principles which he had ostensibly espoused. That the word had a different meaning for Stalin than for Americans escaped them. Stalin saw himself, just as Hitler did, as the embodiment of the will of his people and Russia had to be restored to its Czarist greatness. He was, therefore, engaged in building a cordon sanitaire around his country and in essence tried to restore the Russian sphere of influence, as much as possible, to the August 1914 borders in Europe and in Asia regaining the territories which had been lost to the Japanese in the 1904-1905 war. He had no other interests in Europe or Asia and certainly, just as Hitler, none in America. But Americans did not see Stalin’s goals, they saw Trotsky’s and this fundamental misunderstanding, which created fear, made a meaningful dialogue impossible. While Stalin was not averse to providing other communist parties around the world with financial assistance he had his hands full with rebuilding the Soviet Union which had been thoroughly devastated by the war. America on the other hand had emerged not only virtually unscathed but triumphant and this spirit of “the greatest generation” which had liberated the world from evil and will continue to do so into the distant future has become enshrined as official history and policy.

            As Alterman points out FDRs unwillingness to admit to the country that it was really the Russians who had borne the major burden to assure the victory over Hitler, created an unwarranted sense of superiority here. Furthermore, abominable as the Soviet political system was it did not directly affect the well being of Americans unless we made it so. The mistaken equation of communism with world revolution was the cause of the Cold War and its hot offspring the Vietnam War. Alterman points out that if Kennedy had admitted that the missile crisis was not solved, as our media proudly proclaimed, because “Khrushchev blinked,” but that it was in fact a “tit for tat” much evil, including possibly the Vietnam War, could have been avoided. Kennedy had not stared Khrushchev down but a deal was reached where we agreed to pull our missiles out of Italy and Turkey in exchange for the Soviets taking theirs out of Cuba in addition to our guarantee that we would not invade the island. This fear had been the purpose of sending the missiles in the first place. Moscow believed that Castro was on shaky grounds and although the Bay of Pigs landing had misfired, another invasion appeared imminent. On the other hand this was not just a Kremlin fantasy, but a plan under active consideration by members of the Kennedy administration.    

This attitude of having stood up successfully to the mighty Soviet Union was part of the reason why Lyndon Johnson allowed himself to be sucked into the Vietnam quagmire. As Alterman explains, Johnson, having suddenly had Kennedy’s mantle thrust upon him, was surrounded by Kennedy’s “brain trust” whom he tried to please by continuing the Kennedy policy in Southeast Asia. He remembered the outcry that had followed when China fell to Mao, the McCarthy hearings, the constant drumbeat of having to be tough on communism because “that’s the only language they understand” and the hubris about having gotten Khrushchev to knuckle under. Consequently he was not about to give his enemies on the Republican side of the isle, and even those in his own party, any ammunition. He would have his Great Society and a small enough war in Asia that could easily be managed. He would not lose Southeast Asia to the communists, as China was lost, because America wins wars and doesn’t lose any.

Just as Truman did not know that Stalin was a nationalist at heart, Johnson didn’t know that Ho Chi Minh was a Vietnamese first and a communist second. Washington had it backwards and this led to tragedy. There was no South Vietnam in the national conscience, just as there were no East or West Germans and there still is basically only one Korea. These divisions are lines drawn at a table by politicians. They assign people to different political overlords who are protected by Moscow, Beijing or Washington but that does not erase the people’s sense of past common history and of belonging together.

 The Saigon government never enjoyed popular support and since John Foster Dulles knew that in a free election Ho Chi Minh would have gotten the votes, the election as agreed to in Geneva in 1954, was not allowed to take place. This made the second Indochina war as it is officially called (the first one had ended with the victory over the French) inevitable. By 1964 it had become apparent that the generals who had usurped power in the South could not effectively govern and they had to be propped up with increasingly more military and financial aid. This much is widely known but the role the CIA played in the Gulf of Tonkin incident is not. Yet it is this incident that launched the Joint Resolution by Congress to give President Johnson essentially carte blanche to pursue a full scale war. When one realizes that President Bush’s Iraq authorization followed the Johnson model of the Tonkin resolution, which was passed in the Senate with only two nays, it needs to be re-examined. It is full of righteous indignation and because of its relevance for today it is reprinted below for a new generation of Americans from The Pentagon Papers, Gravel Edition, Volume 3, pp. 722

           

 Text of Joint Resolution, August 7, Department of State Bulletin, 24 August 1964, p. 268:

"To promote the maintenance of international peace and security in Southeast Asia.

"Whereas naval units of the communist regime in Vietnam, in violation of the principles of the Charter of the United Nations and of international law, have deliberately and repeatedly attacked United States naval vessels lawfully present in international waters, and have thereby created a serious threat to international peace; and

"Whereas these attacks are part of a deliberate and systematic campaign of aggression that the communist regime in North Vietnam has been waging against its neighbors and the nations joined with them in the collective defense of their freedom; and

"Whereas the United States is assisting the peoples of Southeast Asia to protect their freedom and has no territorial, military or political ambitions in that area, but desires only that these peoples should be left in peace to work out their own destinies in their own way: Now, therefore, be it

"Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.

"Sec. 2. The United States regards as vital to its national interest and to world peace the maintenance of international peace and security in Southeast Asia. Consonant with the Constitution of the United States and the Charter of the United Nations and in accordance with its obligations under the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, the United States is, therefore, prepared, as the President determines, to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom.

"Sec. 3. This resolution shall expire when the President shall determine that the peace and security of the area is reasonably assured by international conditions created by action of the United Nations or otherwise, except that it may be terminated earlier by concurrent resolution of the Congress."

* * *

            This is an amazing document. To promote the peace you have to make war and as the common saying went in those days: to save the village you have to burn it. The first justification in the “Whereas” was based on false information. There had indeed been a confrontation in the Gulf of Tonkin during the morning of August 2, 1964 between the U.S. destroyer Maddox and 3 Vietnamese PT boats, but who fired first has never been established. The USS. Maddox was not just on a peaceful cruise in the Gulf but was on a spy mission to survey the North Vietnamese coast. It zig-zagged throughout the night of August 1- August 2  under orders to stay at least 8 miles from shore and 4 miles from the offshore islands. When the PT boats appeared from behind the island of Hon Me, which was under North Vietnamese sovereignty (seven miles offshore), the Maddox turned to the open sea. When the PT boats kept up the pursuit, Captain Herrick radioed the Ticonderoga which sent up four jets. They sank one of the PT boats and disabled the other two which limped home. Only one round of machine gun fire had hit the Maddox and nobody was injured.  The entire affair was over in twenty minutes. The so called second attack never did take place and resulted from a nervous sailor who mistook engine noises for incoming torpedoes. That was the evidence on which the joint resolution was based. Now ask yourself: What would the U.S. Coast Guard have done if a Russian destroyer began zig-zagging 8 miles off the New Jersey coast in 1964? 

It gets worse. Neither Congress nor the media were told that two days prior to the first incident South Vietnamese commandoes under American direction had landed on that island in an attempt to destroy its radar installation. They were repulsed and it is hardly surprising that the North Vietnamese were on their guard thereafter to prevent a recurrence. Thus the first “whereas” was clearly false. For the second there was likewise no appreciable evidence because the major infiltration from the North into the South began only after the American bombing campaign which was the answer to the Maddox incident. The third “whereas” which stated that we only desire to have the people in the area work out their destinies in their own way, ignores the fact that we prevented free elections ten years earlier. The statement that we have no “political ambitions in that area” was equally untrue because we were busy propping up a regime that would do our bidding rather than that of Moscow or Beijing. Thus the Vietnam War was based on a fraud and it set a precedent. The President could get the potential power of going to war from Congress without an official declaration of War, and in absence of consultation with the United Nations, whose Charter forbids unilateral war making by nations. There is a principle at stake here: as long as we are a member state of the UN we have to abide by its rules. If we don’t like the rules then we can leave the UN, just as Hitler left the League of Nations, but under those circumstances any hope for future peace in the world is lost.

It has been argued that Lyndon Johnson who rushed this resolution through Congress within a few days did actually not want to widen the war but merely intimidate Ho and his comrades by demonstrating American might and will. It backfired because Asians have infinitely more patience than Americans. They were willing to fight on their own soil against Americans as long as it took just as they had been willing to fight the French a few years earlier. That was the real reason why we lost this war and why we will not be able to win militarily in Iraq.

The way the Vietnam disaster was created and how it played out should have been a lesson for our politicians but they seem to be incapable of learning because George W Bush used the same technique to stampede Congress into the Iraq Resolution 38 years later. In 1964 Congress acquiesced because its members believed that we had indeed been attacked and in 2002 they voted to give the President latitude so that his voice might be more authoritative when he addressed the United Nations and demand action from that forum. It is not clear whether they really wanted a ground war in the desert, just as their predecessors didn’t want a ground war in the jungle. What they may have wanted in both instances was “war on the cheap.” Namely bombing the Vietnamese or the Iraqis, as “Bush 41” once so eloquently put it, “back into the stone age.” That this is not the way to spread democracy and win the hearts and minds of the oppressed has not yet fully registered.

Congress and the American people have again been deceived. The Iraq invasion has not panned out the way it had been sold to Congress and the public and the major unresolved question remains: what do we do now? Last month’s election is played up as the latest indication that the situation is now finally getting under control. But there is also a precedent in a New York Times article of September 4, 1967

 

United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of the turnout in South Vietnam’s presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from Saigon, 83 percent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong. A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson’s policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam.”

 

One is tempted to paraphrase our current President’s mangled syntax: Is our politicians learning? Obviously not. In 1964 Lyndon Johnson was worried about the November election where he had to appear as a decisive but peace-loving leader against the belligerent Barry Goldwater. In 2002 George W. Bush was worried about midterm elections and how to consolidate Republican gains in Congress. This year elections are coming around again and they are likely to hinge on Iraq. These domestic events drive policies regardless of what the facts are and what the public is being told. Although the President keeps assuring us, in repeated speeches during the past couple of months, that there is no time table for troop withdrawals from Iraq, it is obvious that it is highly unlikely that there will still be more than 150,000 of our troops in Iraq on Election Day in November, regardless of what happens in Baghdad and the rest of that unfortunate country.

We have read already in the local paper a headline “Signs point to major pullout. In Iraq, Rumsfeld talks up hand-over of military mission.” The idea of “war on the cheap” namely getting most of our boots out and returning to the air war to bomb the insurgents into submission, is again being floated (Up in the Air by Seymour Hersh. The New Yorker, December 5, 2005).  This disregards the fact that all the bombing in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, which exceeded the tonnage dropped during WWII, could not prevent the victory of the communists

The Bush administration finds itself in the situation of Churchill in 1921 when he took over as Colonial Secretary. Rebellions had broken out in Mesopotamia, Kurdistan, Palestine and Transjordan. Arabs wanted “Arabia for the Arabs,” then and they want it now. The British occupation of the Middle Eastern countries after WWI was bankrupting the Empire and cost cutting was the top priority. The way to achieve this, as Churchill saw it, was to govern Mesopotamia from the air and with some armored cars. Fromkin in “A Peace to End all Peace” quoted from Gilbert (Churchill: The Stricken World): “A few well protected air bases (he wrote at the time) would enable the Royal Air Force ‘to operate in every part of the protectorate and to enforce control, now here, now there, without the need of maintaining long lines of communications eating up troops and money.’” Churchill succeeded in cutting costs by 75 percent per annum but he didn’t bring peace and prosperity to the region. When he saw that success was elusive he wanted to unburden the problem onto the Americans but they were smart enough in those days to resist the lure. In 1922 Churchill lost his seat in the Cabinet and in the Commons. His career seemed finished until Hitler helped him to a renaissance and ultimate glory.

Churchill couldn’t solve the Middle East problem in 1922 and there is little likelihood that George W, and whoever his successor is going to be, will fare better. To create a nation in Iraq out of tribes which hate not only each other but especially foreigners will take considerably longer than a few years and Americans are simply not cut out for a task like that. In addition the idea that there can be peace in the Middle East by regime changes in Damascus, Teheran and other places, while Israel continues not only the Palestinian occupation but also expands its illegal settlements by expropriating Arab lands is so fantastic that one wonders why it is entertained at all.

The hypocrisy and mendaciousness of our politicians is perhaps best exemplified by our relations with Israel. Ostensibly we invaded Iraq because Saddam not only had WMDs but because he had defied numerous UN Resolutions. There were no WMDs in Iraq as we now know, but there are numerous ones in Israel and that country has also continuously defied, with American help, UN Security Council Resolutions. If Israel does not like the UN it could withdraw from that body and if Israel were to be seriously concerned about creating peace in the Middle East it could offer to dismantle its nuclear arsenal in exchange for an iron-clad guarantee that the Muslim countries would do likewise. Under those circumstances we would “give peace a chance,” but that is a forlorn hope and the lying will continue.

The question now is how long will the American people condone the lies we are subjected to on a daily basis and where does this leave us for the upcoming year? At each New Year one is supposed to be optimistic, but 2006 is bound to be a year of more turmoil. It’ll be time to shorten sails and batten down the hatches for all of us. The pigeons may be coming home to roost in the White House when the numerous scandals that have been mentioned in the December installment will become grist for the mill of the major news media. But there is an additional one that has so far been swept under the rug. Throughout his Presidency George W Bush has acted as if he had been inaugurated on September 12, 2001 instead of January 20. His current insistence on his right to use any and all means to protect us from terrorists rings hollow. Where was he in August of 2001 when the catastrophe was brewing? We know the answer; he was vacationing in Crawford and had ignored the Security Brief of August 6. Not only has he never admitted to his potential co-responsibility for the 9/11 catastrophe but he has used it, and continues to use it, for political gain. It now appears that even this landmark of history requires re-examination.

I am not a fancier of conspiracy theories but I know enough about human nature to realize when I am being lied to. The Internet is full of sites on 9/11, many of them scurrilous, but there are also serious ones that need to be taken into account. While it is agreed that the North and the South Tower were hit by two separate planes their steel construction should have withstood the damage. It is argued that the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission is wrong because for steel to melt higher temperatures are required than burning jet fuel can provide. While the Towers were damaged, they should not have collapsed at the time and in the manner they did. In addition Building 7, which was not hit by a plane, also imploded into dust and ashes. It is well known that President Bush opposed the creation of the 9/11 Commission for more than a year but eventually the victim’s families forced the issue. The supposedly bipartisan and non-political Commission was, however, seriously flawed. Its Executive Director Philip D. Zelikow was a friend of administration officials and had co-authored with Condi Rice a book in 1997 on the Reunification of Germany. He was a member of the President’s transition team, and in 2005 he became a member of the State Department as Senior Advisor to Condoleeza Rice. These facts have raised doubts about his impartiality towards the administration.

I am not a physicist, nor an architect who can verify the claims about the conditions required to melt steel; but the video, which can be accessed below, is sufficiently convincing to warrant the conclusion that the events of  September 11, 2001 need to be re-investigated. If this were done, by international experts, in a truly scientific and unbiased manner the country and the world may well be in for a considerable surprise. The whole world was affected by our response to 9/11 and, therefore, the whole world has a stake in the clarification of what really happened on that fateful day.









February 1, 2006

OUR PRESIDENT’S WORLD

            All of us live in two worlds but not all of us are aware of it. The outer world sees our façade and judges us by our demeanor and actions, the inner world which shapes the outer is hidden and, apart from dreams, most of the time even from ourselves. This is why we really never fully know another person and why unpleasant surprises can occur even in longstanding relationships.  This is especially true when we have never met an individual who has a profound impact on our lives by virtue of his station in life as is the case for our President. Commentators have frequently mentioned that he lives “in a bubble” or an “echo chamber” where only those opinions penetrate that are in conformity with his preconceived ideas regardless of the reality as seen by the rest of the world. His supporters see this as a definite plus because all great Presidents have been visionaries who see beyond the limited horizon of ordinary people and it is their duty to steadfastly lead their flock in the desired direction. Other individuals with greater life experience know that visionaries are not necessarily right and the harm they can inflict on their way to their goal can be immeasurable.

It behooves us, therefore, to attempt a look behind the smiling, and occasionally smirking, façade Mr. Bush presents us with. I have often noted this inappropriate smile, bordering on a smirk, during his public speeches and again yesterday in his State of the Union Address to Congress. Inasmuch as we have no direct access to our President we can only judge by his body language on TV, especially in unguarded moments, and how well his words match his deeds.  These are limitations that even the authors of most books have to contend with and their opinions are also molded by their own inner worlds. I am referring especially to one by Justin Frank M.D who presented us in: Bush on the Couch a psychoanalytic interpretation of the President’s conduct.

Although I am neither a disciple of Freud nor of Melanie Klein, who served as Dr. Frank’s mentor, there are some aspects in that book about our President which are not widely known. Barbara Bush, the President’s mother, appears to have been a dominant and emotionally distant mother who ruled by fear, instead of the benign grandmotherly image that came across our TV screens. Since father Bush was frequently away for long periods this relationship was also troubled and Dr. Frank wrote an entire chapter on “Oedipus Wrecks.” Dr. Frank believes that this family constellation, which was further complicated by the loss of a sister at an early impressionable age, prevented the development of a mature personality structure. The young George, who was expected to grow up in his father’s image, developed various coping mechanisms. These included: becoming the jokester in the family, excessive use of alcohol, as well as a sadistic streak. The latter is documented by some examples which need not be repeated here because they are based on hearsay.  Dr. Frank believes that this latent sadism is directly linked to Bush’s penchant for war. While this may or may not be the case, one incident as reported by Mr. Bush himself struck me because his action was precisely the opposite of mine when confronted with a teenage party in our house that had gotten out of hand. Frank quotes from Bush’s autobiography: “‘I may have been a candidate for Governor, but I didn’t have much status at my house. I will never forget one night in 1994. After a long day on the campaign trail, I went to pick the girls up at a party at eleven PM, well past my bedtime. They had ordered me, ‘Do not come in,’ so I sat outside waiting and waiting as other parents walk in and out to retrieve their children, until mine finally came to the car thirty minutes later.’” Frank points out that the girls were 13 years old at the time and that 11 PM was beyond the father’s bedtime rather than theirs. This episode is telling because it deals with character. For me this shows not only that did he not fulfill the role most other parents would have played but that he seemed to actually have been somehow proud of it. The most recent coping mechanism of his life, after he had renounced alcohol, is religious righteousness.

            While the Frank book has some polemical overtones, the book by Peter Singer: “The President of Good & Evil. The Ethics of George Bush,” is written in a style one is used to from academia. Dr. Singer is a professor of bioethics at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values, and has published extensively on various contemporary ethical issues including stem cell research. One sentence in the Introduction appeared to hit the nail on the head: “When I have told friends and colleagues that I am working on a book about ‘Bush’s ethics,’ some of them quip that the phrase is an oxymoron, or that it must be a very short book.” Actually the book is 270 pages long and might have benefited if it had been kept shorter. Singer’s conclusion is that the President’s words and deeds diverge to such an extent that we simply cannot trust what he says.

            Since I did vote in good conscience for Mr. Bush’s façade in November of 2000 and was sorely disappointed by his conduct in office thereafter I became curious why I had misjudged this man so profoundly. The reason was simple. President Clinton had disgraced the office; he had looked me in the eye through the TV camera lens, wagged his finger at me and said emphatically: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” This was a blatant lie which he repeated under oath. He then tried to excuse his conduct by redefining what the word “is” means and that sexual conduct does not include fellatio. In addition it had become known that Miss Lewinsky had performed her services for him in the Oval Office during business hours. The clean cut Mr. Bush and his rhetoric of bringing dignity back to the White House seemed to be the antidote. The fact that he had surrounded himself with people who had honorably served in previous Republican administrations and brought the experience the newly appointed President lacked, was also relevant. I use the word “appointed” advisedly because the election was decided by one vote of the Supreme Court rather than through the usual voting process. We now know that the country was thoroughly misled about Mr. Bush the first time and although some of us saw behind the façade by 2004 it was too late. I was not alone in my deep disappointment because even Pat Buchanan admitted last night in the post State of the Union discussions among TV pundits that he had voted only once for Bush. That this couldn’t have been in 2004 is obvious.

What I, and others, had thought of as a seasoned team with Vice-President Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell in charge turned into the opposite of what we had anticipated. Cheney and Rumsfeld were steeped in Cold War mentality and the executors of the ideas of a then unknown group of ex-Trotskyists who had restyled themselves as “Neoconservatives.” General Powell, who was supposed to lead the Foreign office, submitted to the Pentagon’s usurpation of foreign policy and became odd man out. Condoleeza Rice, the National Security advisor, whose role would have been to present the various differing opinions on critical subjects to the President, was out of her depth when confronted by a united Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz team. The Neocons, as they have become known carried the day from behind the scenes and the name is most appropriate because they did succeed to “con” not only the administration but the entire country. The Iraq war, with shades of Vietnam, can be squarely laid on their shoulders.

But where was the President in all of this?  As it appears now he didn’t know what to do with this Presidency that had been bestowed upon him, through the efforts of Karl Rove who had engineered all his political campaigns, and was content to let Uncle Dick tell him what to do. Since they had similar backgrounds, from the oil industry, there was mutual trust and the good ship USA embarked on its journey into the new century in the spirit of Cold War triumphalism: We have licked the communists; we are the only superpower, and now we can enforce our will on the rest of the world. When Osama bin Laden sent a rude reminder that other people have different ideas the Bush administration reacted in the way Osama had hoped it would and we are now in the midst of a war the end of which is not in sight. This statement is not just Monday morning quarterbacking but it was obvious by October 2001 when I wrote in these pages in response to the 9/11 tragedy: “The disenfranchised young people in the Muslim countries are sufficiently restless to yearn for change and Islamic revolutions on the model of Iran are to be brought about. Therefore, major military action by the United States is a requirement to bring this plan to fruition and continued provocation through a variety of terror attacks is the only way to accomplish this objective [emphasis in the original].” If this was obvious to me, who am not clairvoyant, it was obvious to others in our country who could have acted more prudently.

This brings me back to our president because the ultimate responsibility is, of course, his and this is where character comes in. From what has been written about his character in the meantime and what we have been able to glimpse from his personal appearances on TV it has become apparent that he lacks some essential ingredients to make him into the person he pretends to be. The foremost aspect is that he came of age in the rebellious climate of the 1960’s. He imbued that lifestyle including the idea of knowing better than his elders. He wasted his years at Yale and failed to get a solid education in the humanities, social sciences, and business. This lack of education could not be made up later because the motivation wasn’t there. Subsequently all his business ventures failed and he had to be bailed out by family connections. Whenever one doesn’t know what to do with oneself one can always go into politics especially when one has name recognition as the son of a Vice President. Karl Rove discovered a malleable, friendly, good looking young man and put him first into the governorship of Texas and then the White House.

Although he had obviously yearned for greatness he had no good idea how to accomplish that and he essentially wasted the first half year of his term. The only topic on which he addressed the nation was stem cells and then he went on vacation. This is the reason why the Michael Moore film Fahrenheit 911 hurt so much and why Moore had to be bedeviled beyond need.  Let us now look closer at what the President said he would do with the high office that had been bestowed upon him and the results.

            In his Inaugural Address on January 20, 2001 the newly elected President not only gave the “all purpose” political speech that any candidate will make but there were also some specifics that deserve to be remembered. One dealt with the scars the Clinton Presidency had left on the public conscience, and the fight which had followed the Florida election debacle which had embittered the partisans of both candidates:

 

            “And sometimes our differences run so deep, it seems we share a continent, but not a country. We do not accept this, and we will not allow it … And this is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity.”

 

            Sad to say but in February of 2006 our country is even more divided and polarized than at any time during the past century as James Q Wilson has documented in a recent article (“How divided are we?” Commentary February 2006). Wilson lists a number of causes, some of which are beyond anybody’s control. But since Wilson also still believes in the righteousness of the Iraq war and our ability to control the events in that country by military means he urges the country to pull together at least in that regard. This is, however, also wishful thinking and the country will not be able to come together until we have weathered the aftermath of that ill considered invasion of somebody else’s country.

            The President went on to say on that occasion:

 

“Today we affirm a new commitment to live out our nation’s promise through civility, courage, compassion and character … And I can pledge our nation to a goal: When we see that wounded traveler on the road to Jericho we will not pass to the other side … America, at its best, is a place where personal responsibility is valued and expected … Encouraging responsibility is not a search for scapegoats; it is a call to conscience …  I will live and lead by these principles: to advance my convictions with civility, to pursue the public interest with courage, to speak for greater justice and compassion, to call for responsibility and try to live it as well … What you do is as important as anything government does …  I ask you to be citizens; citizens not spectators; citizens not subjects; responsible citizens building communities of service and a nation of character.”

 

            These were words the country longed to hear in January of 2001 but what came of them? Let me take Luke’s parable of “The Good Samaritan” first because it shows that the President was either ignorant of the message Jesus tried to convey or used it simply as a catch phrase. Since this parable contains the essence of Christianity vis a vis Judaism we should take it more seriously. Although the parable itself is, of course, a by word in our culture the context is usually ignored even by the President. Let us remember the situation as related in Luke 10:25-37. A lawyer tried to “test” Jesus by asking what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus then asked the lawyer: “What is written in the law?” whereupon the lawyer recited: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” In so doing he had quoted first Deuteronomy 6:5 and then added a modified version of Leviticus 19:18. The translation of that passage reads in the Hebrew Torah: “Thou shalt not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people [emphasis added], but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the Lord.”  Jesus congratulated the lawyer to his reply but lawyers are hardly ever content with plain words and continued with the question: “And who is my neighbor?” This was indeed the critical one under existing circumstances in Palestine of those days, and still is currently.

            These were the circumstances that led up to the parable. It is actually found only in Luke, who was a Greek convert, and the parable reflects the Greek sentiment of universality against the Jewish one which limited charity and benevolence to members of the Jewish people. By choosing this parable Jesus forced the lawyer to admit that only the despised Samaritan had shown mercy and had thereby acted like a neighbor. The discourse ended with Jesus telling the lawyer: “Go and do likewise.” At the present time the Jews living in the state of Israel are again confronted with neighbors in their midst whom they’d rather not have, but as Jews they are under no obligation to act according to Jesus’ teachings. But we, who call ourselves Christians, and especially those members of our Church who regard themselves as “born again,” are commanded to do so. This is the crucial fact our President has either ignored, or willfully disregarded.

            I believe that it is this remarkable ignorance of classic literature, even the Bible which he stated he reads regularly, combined with a profound lack of interest in opinions other than his own have turned his good intentions into the disasters his Presidency has spawned. By closing his eyes in 2001 to the plight of today’s Samaritans in Palestine, i.e. the non-Jewish population, he has not only violated the fundamental principle of the Christian religion but by calling Sharon “a man of peace” he has opened the door to further repressive policies against the Palestinians. Today they can’t even travel that short distance from Jerusalem to Jericho without passing through checkpoints with accompanying humiliations by the soldiers manning them. We should not blame the Israeli government; they are Jews and live by a different code which places the perceived needs of the nation above those of the individual, especially when the individual is one of the goyim. The rest of the world sees these scenes on their TV sets but our media are complicit by not showing them to us. This is the proverbial beam in our own eye that needs to be removed before casting stones on others but this is not an example our President sets.

            The President also encouraged  us to be “citizens,” not “subjects,” but anyone who tried to warn the leadership of mistakes about to be made or make suggestions how to remedy some of those that had already been committed ran not only into a stone wall but could expect to be vilified. We are at war, we are now told; in war the rules have to be bent and incursions on civil liberties are necessary. This includes violation of international law as for instance holding foreign nationals without trial at Guantanamo for several years without any attempt to set a time limit on their detention. Not only are the opinions of common people disregarded but the President has not even treated some members of his inner circle as equals whose views should have been valued. They were also treated as “subjects” who were expected to yield to superior wisdom.

            September 11 was in a perverse way a dream come true for Osama bin Laden as well as George Bush. The successful attack on the symbols of American power provided the basis for potential greatness to both of them. The President, who had floundered, now found his goal: A group of vicious, evil people encouraged and supported by “rogue states” had declared war on America and he would retaliate not only in kind but seven fold; he would be remembered by history as the President who rescued America from its darkest hour; he would punish the forces of evil to an extent that they would never ever dream of harming us and he would bring freedom and happiness to the oppressed; the means don’t matter the goal counts. This was the messianic vision he initially pursued by eradicating the Taliban’s haven for terrorists in Afghanistan and subsequently by liberating the Iraqis from their dictator. Freedom, which he equals with democracy, which in turn is in his mind only characterized by relatively free elections, will rule the day and free people don’t make war. This was his Credo and as of yesterday’s speech still is.       

            While watching last night’s State of the Union speech I made notes of key passages and printed out the speech for accuracy this morning. In the following excerpts I shall limit myself to foreign policy pronouncements:

 

“We seek the end of tyranny in our world … Dictatorships shelter terrorists, feed resentment and radicalism, and seek weapons of mass destruction. Democracies replace resentment with hope, respect the rights of their citizens and their neighbors, and join the fight against terror. Every step toward freedom in the world makes our country safer, and so we will act boldly in freedom’s cause  … We are on the offensive in Iraq, with a clear plan for victory … Fellow citizens, we are in this fight to win, and we are winning … Ultimately, the only way to defeat the terrorists is to defeat  their dark vision of hatred and fear by offering the political alternative of political freedom and peaceful change … liberty is the future of every nation in the Middle East, because liberty is the right and hope of all humanity.”

 

These are the messianic goals the President believes in but he doesn’t seem to know the realities on the ground and how to achieve his vision. There will be no “victory” in Iraq or the war on Terror in the conventional sense where our soldiers come home to ticker tape parades on Fifth Avenue. The best outcome that is likely to be achievable in Iraq is through sitting down individually with the various insurgent groups, discussing mutually agreeable goals and then abiding by them. This idea is not pie in the sky but according to this week’s Newsweek edition is being put into action by some of our military commanders at this time.

To succeed in the battle against terrorism the President will also need to adopt a different strategy. Immediately after the Inaugural Address “autopsy” by the pundits, PBS showed its “Frontline” program where the topic was international terrorism and especially how it affects Europe. One learned to one’s surprise that not only is the U.S. not helping the European efforts but by going its own way is actually hindering the prosecution of suspects. We are holding people, who could serve as witnesses in European criminal prosecution cases, incommunicado in Guantanamo or shiping them off to other countries where confessions are obtained under torture, which are invalid in European courts. We can ask ourselves now: does our President know this? What is his plan for achieving the victory he is talking about? Does he know that Al Qaeda’ s basic ideology has become a virus that can readily replicate itself even if Osama and other top leaders were killed or captured now? The proverbial cat is out of the bag and there is a potential reservoir not only of thousands but hundreds of thousands disenchanted young Muslims who can now get training in Iraq, just as Osama and his early followers got theirs in Afghanistan. It is another irony of history that we, who were delighted by the success of the mujahideen over the Soviets in Afghanistan, are now on the receiving end of that same ideology in Iraq.

Our President also promised us last night that his administration will see to it that our children get a better education in math and science. This is a laudable goal but in addition they need a better education in the humanities, geography and history to compete in the world they are growing into. But since our President is personally uninformed in these subjects one might hope that he might be willing to at least partially remedy these deficiencies on weekends and when he is on vacation. He might also benefit, as had been suggested last September, by staying at his desk in the White House rather than traveling around the country and making campaign speeches.

Unfortunately this is not in his character; he seems to have restless legs and apparently does not like staying in Washington. He enjoys the trappings and the perks of his office but not the onerous day to day grind and chores. Thus, we seem to have in the President a person who has been elevated to a position beyond his capabilities. He seems to be aware to some extent of his shortcomings because he appears obviously ill at ease whenever he has to talk in an unscripted manner. To overcome these problems he has now created a defense system around his “vision,” which cannot be breached by rational argument. The question does the President lie and to what extent seems to be irrelevant because from all appearances he is honestly deluded. He believes what he says is true and that makes it true regardless of facts. That this is potentially a highly dangerous state of mind in a person who has his finger on the proverbial button is obvious.

While the public has come to see, to some extent at least, that the country is on the wrong course we can’t expect much help from the Democrats. They have shown their ineptness again last night. In the response to the President’s speech the Governor of Virginia did not address the points the President had made but read a speech of his own, or written for him, which was irrelevant. Our hope will have to rest with disaffected Republicans who see that their party has been hijacked by the Neocons’ philosophy and who have the courage to lead a revolt in Congress.

Elections are coming up again in November and Karl Rove’s strategy for victory is to stoke the fear of terrorism and to hammer away that “the President has created a safer world during the past four years.” It has worked in the past and he hopes that a gullible electorate will let him get away with it again. He might, unless the wheels of justice that are grinding interminably slow will eventually catch up with his Machiavellian policies and all the scandals the administration hides, under the mantle of national security, come to light.

Thus, my wish for the President is that he begins to devote himself to the message of the New Testament rather than that of the Old. The Father of Jesus and the God of Moses are different concepts and a choice has to be made by whoever speaks in religious terms. He doesn’t have to take my word for it, which is available in The Moses Legacy, but he could read the more popular Harold Bloom’s: Jesus and Yahweh. The Names Divine.  Christians have been told to pray in secret and to conduct our affairs in the open because: “Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops [Luke 12:3].” Unfortunately the President has turned Jesus’ message into its opposite: he prays openly and conducts business in secret. Somebody ought to point this out to him and penetrate the wall of self-delusion he has created for himself, so that reason and good will can find a home again in our country.







February 15, 2006

UNDERSTANDING THE HOLOCAUST

PART I

 

PRIVATE GRIEF BECOMES PUBLIC OUTCRY

 

This essay has been the most difficult to write and took the longest time. The topic is so laden with emotion that a person searching for the truth steps into a minefield that has to be navigated very carefully. To arrive at objective truth, which is the purpose of this website, one needs to look at the motives and actions of both sides to a controversy in a dispassionate manner and one must not be swayed by either. “Without fear or favor,” should be the motto for an exploration of this type. Furthermore, since the subject must not be trivialized it requires more than one installment because otherwise it would become too lengthy. This is also the reason why I had to break with precedent and not stay with the self imposed “first of the month installment routine.”

Inasmuch as the Nazis’ “Final Solution” of the Jewish problem has occurred more than 60 years ago one may wonder why the subject should be raised now. The reason is that there is a strange phenomenon occurring in our society; the more time elapses since the event, the more is published about it, although no new facts have emerged. If one types “Holocaust” into Google one is rewarded within 0.09 seconds with about 63,200.000 entries. This is surely a prodigious number and no one can be expected to absorb this ocean of data. Choices have to be made and in the search for my own understanding of this phenomenon I broke the subject down into three aspects: What prompted the Nazis to attempt their “Final Solution of the Jewish Problem [Endlősung],” how did they proceed in actuality, and how is the outcome reported. Since I have already discussed the subject to some extent in War&Mayhem, as well as in The Moses Legacy, I shall proceed here not from the past to the present but from the present to the past. 

But this does not quite answer why this topic should be discussed in February of 2006 when there are so many others that could be addressed. The reason is that we may be standing on the brink of another war, this time with Iran over its determination to acquire nuclear weapons. Since it has also been reported that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has recently stated that the Holocaust is a lie and the State of Israel, which arose from its ashes, has no right to exist, we have been confronted again with what is now called “Holocaust denial.” These are serious matters which deserve serious answers and the usual excuse of mental illness, or pure evil that seems to afflict everyone whose opinions differ radically from what is generally accepted, will not suffice.

In addition there was the flap in regard to when a book should be called a “novel” and belongs thereby into the “fiction” category or an “autobiography” which would place it into the “nonfiction” bracket. This was precipitated by James Frey’s: “A Million Little Pieces,” which purported to be a true account of Mr. Frey’s life of crime and drug addiction. The book had been selected by America’s talk show queen, Oprah Winfrey who can make and break literary careers, for her book club and sales soared into a multi million dollar figure. Although our press is somewhat less than vigilant we do have the Internet and the site www.smokinggun.com published an article in January entitled “A Million Little Lies.” It pointed out that far from being an exact account of his trials and tribulations, Frey had been not been truthful and that Oprah had been duped. Ms Winfrey, who had at first defended Frey, subsequently became furious and called him on the carpet in one of her later shows.

The matter might have rested there had Oprah not immediately thereafter endorsed the new translation of Elie Wiesel’s Night as her next book club selection. This reopened the question posed above: when is an account a memoir and as such regarded as fact or a novel inspired by autobiographic events? Since Night deals with Mr. Wiesel’s experiences, first in Auschwitz and subsequently Buchenwald, this book has assumed an importance which far outweighs any of the other book club selections. When we consider further that Mr. Wiesel was the person who popularized the word “Holocaust” in the context of the “Final Solution” and  has dedicated his life to keeping the memory of this tragedy alive, it is obvious that our quest for the truth will have to start with him.

 Elie, short for Eliezer, Wiesel had a very distinguished career and inasmuch as he was the chief spokesman for Holocaust survivors President Jimmy Carter appointed him in 1978 Chairman of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust. Its final report called for, among other aspects, the creation of a National Holocaust Memorial/Museum in Washington DC, an Educational Foundation that disseminates Holocaust information throughout American High Schools and Universities, a Committee on Conscience, and Holocaust Memorial Days. In 1985 he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Freedom and in 1986 the Nobel Prize for Peace. He has been Andrew Mellon Professor of Humanities at Boston University, was inducted into the Academy of Achievement in 1996; and was invited to give a speech in the East Room of the White House on April 12, 1999 as part of the Millennium Lecture Series hosted by President Clinton and his wife Hillary. It is, therefore, obvious that Mr. Wiesel commands unparalleled moral stature in America and is a person not only the public but Presidents listen to.

Although I had read Night decades ago and was appalled by the humiliations, brutalization and outright murders that had occurred at Auschwitz I also felt that some details might have been embellished. The book was not written in the style of Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning but in a tone one is accustomed to from historical novels. This didn’t bother me because survivors of concentration camps had every right to present their experiences in any form they wished. But when the Oprah story hit the news and brought with it not only a resurgence of “Night” but also a reclassification from novel to memoir by Barnes&Noble as well as amazon.com my interest in this piece of literature was rekindled.

The Internet informed me that Night, which was published first in French as La Nuit (1958), was based on an account of nearly 900 pages written in Yiddish and published in Argentina under the title “Un die Velt hot geshvigen.” Although I do not speak Yiddish the language is sufficiently similar to German, having been derived from it, that I thought it would be interesting to compare the four versions: the original one which had been significantly shortened to 256 pages prior to its publication in Argentina with the French one of 178 pages, the first English translation from 1960 and the new one from 2006. Since the French and Yiddish editions are not commercially available here I thought I might get them through my niece in Vienna who works in the book trade. When she asked me if I can read Hebrew I was taken aback and lectured her that there is a difference between Yiddish and Hebrew and my ignorance of Hebrew is irrelevant for this purpose. Well, as it turned out she was right and I was wrong. Since no help was forthcoming from Vienna I did what I should have done in the first place; contacted the Marriott Library of our University and lo and behold both La Nuit and Un die Velt hot geshvigen were available on the stacks. But to my great surprise the universally referred to “Yiddish” book is actually in Hebrew, reads from back to front and only the title as well as the publishing firm (Buenos Ayres, Tsentral-Farband fun Poylishe Yidn in Argentine, 716, 1956, in the series Dos Poylishe Yidentum) are in Yiddish.

Well, I had struck out on that one but there was La Nuit and the Preface by François Mauriac, which I could compare with the two English translations. To get those Martha and I went to the neighborhood Barnes&Noble which was busy selling numerous copies. When I asked the clerk for the original edition, which I no longer had, he told me that I might as well buy the whole trilogy because it’s the same price. Although I didn’t want to I couldn’t resist the bargain and now I had Night, Dawn and The Accident.  In retrospect I am, of course, grateful to that clerk because the three books really belong together but I shall deal with the other two later. There are some differences between the two English editions of Night in addition to the Preface by Elie Wiesel for the current one as well as Wiesel’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. The 2006 translation by Wiesel’s wife is somewhat more concise and in colloquial American. While Stella Rodway tried to stay as close as possible to the more poetic language of the French original, the new translation is at times less so by cutting out parts of sentences which had been used originally for further emphasis.

It is now necessary to point to the importance of Maitre Mauriac, as he was referred to by everyone in France at that time, for the life and subsequent fame of Elie Wiesel. There are two versions of what went on when Wiesel interviewed Mauriac in 1955 for the Tel Aviv newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. One is by Mauriac in the Preface to La Nuit and the other in an interview by Wiesel for the Academy of Achievement. I shall deal with Mauriac’s first. He had received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1952 and was rather tired of interviews but as he wrote, “the young Israeli (Israëlien) inspired from the outset a sympathy in me against which I couldn’t defend myself for any length of time [my translation].” The conversation soon became personal. When Mauriac mentioned an event his wife had witnessed at the Austerlitz train station of wagons filled with Jewish children (wagons remplis d’enfants juifs), which had disturbed him profoundly, Wiesel said: “I am one of them.” The shocked Mauriac continued, “he had seen his mother, a little sister whom he had adored and his entire family [tous les siens], apart from his father, disappear into an oven fed with living creatures.” The new edition has changed Mauriac’s words to “except his father and two other sisters.” Although Wiesel commented on another occasion that his two older sisters had survived he seems not to have mentioned that to Mauriac. The Preface then continues with portions from La Nuit and especially the now famous and often repeated passage,

 

“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those flames that consumed forever my faith. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the will to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul, and turned my dreams into ashes. Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God himself. Never [2006 translation].”

 

These were powerful words and the deeply religious Catholic Mauriac, whose novels dealt mainly with the evil in man especially towards children, was profoundly moved. He went on quoting more passages from La Nuit which described Wiesel’s loss of faith in God and regretted that he could not find words of consolation at the time. He mentioned that he should have said that the Jewish nation has risen from the ashes of the dead, that we don’t know the worth of a single drop of blood, of a single soul and that all is grace. “But I couldn’t do anything except embrace him weeping.”

Such was the beginning of Elie Wiesel’s career because it was Mauriac, who had encouraged him after this interview to put his thoughts to paper which led to the mentioned publication in Argentina one year later, and La Nuit in 1958. To what extent Mauriac was responsible for the final form of the French publication, which reduced the Yiddish-Hebrew version from 256 pages to 178 and rendered it into poetic French we may never know. Wiesel only mentioned that Mauriac had become his lifelong friend thereafter who did everything in his power to get the French manuscript published even to the extent of visiting personally numerous reluctant publishers.

But everyone experiences the same event somewhat differently and here is Wiesel’s account from an interview after his induction into the Academy of Achievement. As mentioned he was a journalist for the Israeli paper and had intended to interview the then Prime Minister of France, Mendès-France, who was also Jewish. He was unsuccessful in this endeavor but he had heard that Mauriac was “his guru” and hoped that he might help him to see the Prime Minister. This is how the interview came about as Wiesel tells it,

 

“We met and we had a painful discussion. The problem was that he was in love with Jesus. He was the most decent person I ever met in that field - - as a writer, as a Catholic writer. Honest, sense of integrity, and he was in love with Jesus.

Whatever I would ask – Jesus. Finally, I said ‘what about Mendès-France?’ he said that Mendès-France, like Jesus was suffering. That’s not what I wanted to hear. I wanted, at one point to speak about Mendès-France and I would say to Mauriac, can you introduce me?

When he said Jesus again I couldn’t take it, and for the only time in my life I was discourteous, which I regret to this day. I said, ‘Mr. Mauriac,’ we called him Maitre,’ ten years or so ago, I have seen children, hundreds of Jewish children, who suffered more than Jesus did on his cross and we do not speak about it.’ I felt all of a sudden so embarrassed that I closed my notebook and went to the elevator. He ran after me. He pulled me back; he sat down in his chair and I in mine, and he began weeping. I have rarely seen an old man [Mauriac was 70 in 1955] weep like that, and I felt like such an idiot. I felt like a criminal. This man didn’t deserve that. He was really a pure man, a member of the Resistance. I didn’t know what to do. We stayed like that, he weeping and I closed in my remorse. And then, at the end, without saying anything, he simply said, ‘You know, maybe you should talk about it’ [italics in the original].

He took me to the elevator and embraced me. And that year, the tenth year, I began writing my narrative. After it was translated from Yiddish [sic] into French, I sent it to him. We were very, very close friends until his death. That made me not publish, but write.”

 

            Those are all the facts we can ascertain at this time about the genesis of La Nuit. In the same interview Wiesel explained how he had come to use the word Holocaust to describe the Jewish concentration camp tragedy.

 

            “Take the word ‘Holocaust.’ I am among the first, if not the first to use it in that context. I was working on an essay, a biblical commentary, and I wrote about the sacrifice, the binding of Isaac, by his father Abraham. In the Bible, there is a Hebrew word ola, which means burned offering. I thought the word ‘holocaust ‘was good: fire and so on. In the Bible, it was the son who almost died, but in our case it was the father who died, not the son. The word had so many implications that I felt it was good. Then it became accepted, and everybody used it and then I stopped using it because it was abused. Everything was a holocaust all of a sudden. I once heard a sportscaster on television speaking of the defeat of a sports team and he said, ‘Was that a holocaust!’ My God! Everything became a holocaust.”

           

            Yes indeed and the victims, as well as the descriptions of the atrocities, keep growing in the genre of La Nuit. Although the emphasis now is on the extermination of human beings and especially Jews by gassing, rather than burning, Wiesel does not mention having witnessed that atrocity in the book. Instead there is another powerful passage that describes his experience in Auschwitz after the selection by Dr. Mengele, who by the way was supposed to have worn a monocle which is unlikely for an SS officer. While being marched in the direction of a ditch he was told by another inmate that they were to be killed,

 

            “Not far from us flames, huge flames, were rising from a ditch. Something was being burned there. A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes . . . those children in the flames. (Is it any wonder that ever since then, sleep tends to elude me?)”

 

As the procession of men moved forward toward a larger ditch for adults, people prayed,

           

“’Yisgadal, veyiskadash shmey raba . . . May His Name be celebrated and sanctified . . .’ whispered my father.

            For the first time, I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?

            We continued our march. We were coming closer and closer to the pit, from which an infernal heat was rising. Twenty more steps. If I was going to kill myself, this was the time. Our column had only some fifteen steps to go. I bit my lips so that my father would not hear my teeth chattering. Ten more steps. Eight. Seven. We were walking slowly, as one follows a hearse, our own funeral procession. Only four more steps. Three. There it was now, very close to us, the pit and its flames. . . . [2006 translation]”

 

Two steps before reaching the ditch they were ordered to turn to the left and made to go into barracks. The narration continued with the previously cited “Never shall I forget” passages.

I have mentioned these details because an account of this type does not show up in other Holocaust literature. After selection, those that had been destined for labor were led directly to disinfection, where they were also robbed of all their remaining belongings, and then sent to their barracks; the others simply disappeared. The dramatic countdown of steps towards the ditch also occurs in the subsequent publication Dawn in another context. The report of babies being thrown into a fiery pit, which Wiesel emphatically claims to have seen with his own eyes, has not been corroborated by credible witnesses. This part of the story immediately brought to my mind the behavior of Egyptian overseers who tore little children from the arms of their mothers handing them to the fathers to use as bricks for building pharaoh’s “store cities.” I have described that legend in The Moses Legacy because it forms part of the Talmud, which Wiesel said he has been studying diligently.

It seems, therefore, very likely that poetic license had been taken which would have been perfectly understandable especially when one considers the circumstances under which this book first appeared in print. But on January 16, 2006 The New York Times reported in an interview with Wiesel, “’But it is not a novel at all,’ he said. ‘I know the difference,’ he added, noting that ‘Night’ is the first of his 47 books, several of which are novels. ‘I make a distinction between what I lived through and what I imagine others to have lived through.’ As it is a memoir, he said, ‘my experiences in the book - A to Z -must be true.’ He continued: ‘All the people I describe were with me there. I object angrily if someone mentions it as a novel.’”  

Well, there may be a difference between “what must be true” subjectively and what can be objectively verified; a topic which I have discussed in “What is Truth?” (September 2001) and “Perceptions of Reality” (August 2004). We need to remember at this point that Wiesel was 15 years old when he was transported to Auschwitz and 16 when he was liberated from Buchenwald. Adolescents, even when they have been brutalized, tend to go on with their lives and while they will not forget their experiences they usually don’t dwell on them to the extent Wiesel did. The possible reasons for doing so will be discussed after we have looked at the other two semi-autobiographic books.

For now it seems that the contents of Night had undergone several changes before they appeared in the form we now know. A document that may have originally been an attempt at soul cleansing was turned into one that is gripping, but which may not be correct in all aspects. This assumption finds some validation in Dawn and The Accident (L’Aube and Le Jour in the original French), which followed shortly after Night.

Dawn, is also written in the first person singular and deals with young Elisha, who had been liberated from Buchenwald and sent to Paris. There he was recruited by a member of the Irgun, the illegal terrorist organization for the struggle to liberate Palestine from the British, so that the Jews could build their own state. The novel, apart from flashbacks, takes place within one house during one night and centers on Elisha’s conflict with his conscience when he is ordered to execute a British captain in retaliation for one of their terrorist brotherhood who was to be executed by the British on the same morning. The word terrorist is, of course, applied to different people today but it was freely used and morally justified in Dawn. Elisha had no scruples participating in raids against the British where people got killed, that was part of war, but murdering your “enemy” face to face, whom you didn’t even hate is quite different. Wiesel used two devices to dramatize the situation further. There is a countdown from ten seconds to one before he fires the fatal shot, which is quite reminiscent of the twenty paces to two in Night and there is also the presence of the ghosts of his parents, friends, and acquaintances who have all perished in the camps, as well as himself as the young boy he had been previously. This assembly appears to be saddened by what he is about to do because it will turn him into a murderer for the rest of his life. This in turn would make murderers out of them because they had made him into what he had become.

Biographies of Wiesel state that he was associated with the Irgun but as a reporter for their newspaper. Since Wiesel does not talk about this aspect of his life we don’t know what he did or did not do at that time but the actions of the “Stern gang” and subsequently the Irgun under Shamir are well documented in Terror out of Zion. The Fight for Israeli Independence by J. Bowyer Bell.

Wiesel’s third book The Accident [Le Jour] grapples with Hamlet’s existential question: “to be or not to be.” The narrator, whom we know mainly as “I,” (he uses the name Eliezer only once in connection with his mother’s name Sarah) was nearly killed by a taxicab, while crossing Times Square with his girl friend. It may, however, not have been a pure accident but an unsuccessful suicide attempt by not moving away from the oncoming cab. He was initially in critical condition but recovered after several months of hospitalization. The long months in the hospital, while flat on his back gave him time to reminisce and come to terms with his inner demons. The accident itself and the hospitalization are true but what thoughts he had formed can only be conjectured.

Although it is acknowledged that Night would never have been written and published without the help of Mauriac, the influence of Albert Camus on Wiesel’s literary work has received less comment. Yet, for anyone who has read some of Camus’ plays, essays, and novels it is apparent that Camus had a powerful influence not only on Wiesel’s writings but mental outlook. Perhaps the most important one was La Peste (The Plague). The theme of La Peste is: the sense of total abandonment, in a city the gates of which had been closed because of a raging epidemic; the coping mechanisms of its citizens which include indifference and apathy towards those who were dying around them; the accusation of God for permitting such disasters and especially the killing of innocent children. But while Camus stressed the universality of human suffering, its reasons and how to overcome it, Wiesel honed in on the specific Jewish aspects as seen through the lens of Hasidic legends, Torah and Talmud.

While traces of La Peste can be found in all of Wiesel’s writings and speeches, Dawn bears a close resemblance to Les Justes (The Just Assassins). It likewise contains one woman and four male terrorists in a single apartment who plot the assassination of a representative of an oppressive regime for the greater good. The difference is that Camus placed his terrorists into imperial Russia. The victim is the Grand Duke and the terrorists, the word appears as such in both books, are revolutionary socialists rather than patriotic Jews. The similarity between the character of Ivan (Yenka) Kaliayev, who kills the Grand Duke with a bomb and Elisha who executes Captain Dawson is quite striking. So is the similarity between Dr. Paul Russell in The Accident with Dr. Bernard Rieux in The Plague. The existential problem whether it is better to live rather than commit suicide was also extensively discussed by Camus; first in the 1942 essay “The Myth of Sisyphus,” and subsequently in “The Rebel” (1951).

These observations allow us a glimpse into Elie Wiesel’s personal torment and how he tried to exorcise the ghosts of his past. The key word became “memory,” which had to be kept not only alive but aflame. The flames of the crematories, or the ditches, of Night became the focus of his life, giving rise to the much abused word Holocaust that now divides our world. But as mentioned one might wonder whether Wiesel had in fact personally seen everything he reported or whether he had heard about some aspects from other Auschwitz inmates. This is not a trivial question because it is to be expected that rumors were rife in the concentration camp environment and human beings are known to embellish misfortunes. It is also known that in criminal trials eyewitness testimony is not always entirely reliable and needs to be corroborated by objective evidence. I shall return to this aspect later in the context of what is now called “Holocaust Denial.” Although the Holocaust and the Final Solution are dependent upon each other their totality may be best viewed as two sides of a coin and as such are not identical. Objective truth about the Final Solution might be found in official documents while Holocaust truth seems to be based mainly on the subjective experience of the victims.

Let me now give my personal view on how the Holocaust concept came into being. There can be no doubt that the adolescent Eliezer, was thoroughly traumatized by the events he had to endure from spring 1944 to May 1945. He told us that he had been interested in studying the Cabbala but his father had discouraged the idea because he was too young for that. One studies mysticism as an adult after one has mastered all the practical subjects that get one through life, he was told. Yet, his very name Eliezer, was also that of the founder of Hasidism, Israel b Eliezer better known Baal Shem Tov (master of the divine name) or Besht for short, so how could he be expected not to be drawn to that subject? Very little is known about Wiesel’s inner life and the emphasis has always been placed on atrocities committed by the Nazis, which undoubtedly occurred. About his activities in Palestine, which he refers to in Dawn we know nothing. But even if we exclude Dawn and concentrate only on Night there are likely to exist undercurrents of personal guilt feelings in Wiesel’s mind if what he wrote had indeed happened.

It is well known that relationships between father and son, especially in adolescence, can be quite complex and do not require Freud’s Oedipus complex for explanation. But we have been told little about the feelings between father Wiesel and son prior to deportation. In Night Wiesel only stated that the father was, “a cultured person, rather unsentimental (un homme cultivé, peu sentimentale). No display of affection, not even within the family (Aucune effusion, même en famille).” The terseness of the sentences is telling and is followed by the statement that the father was more interested in the affairs of others than the family. Thus, the relationship is likely to have been distant and one of duty rather than cordiality.

 He gives two examples in Night of untoward behavior of sons towards their fathers during his concentration camp days but he may not to have come to grips with his own feelings. We are told that he had urged his father to take the family to Palestine when there still might have been an opportunity, but the father had refused. Is it so far fetched to assume that there could have been some lingering resentment towards the father, who in a way had become responsible for the son’s subsequent suffering? In addition we are told that the father-son roles were to some extent reversed in the camp and the son became responsible for the father; a burden he may not have always relished. We are also told that they could have stayed at the Auschwitz infirmary to await the liberating Russians but on the boy’s urging they did not. In this way he had indirectly contributed to his father’s death in Buchenwald. It would be surprising if this had not led to profound guilt feelings thereafter.

There is additional potential evidence that Wiesel is still haunted by the father’s death. In the Preface for the new edition of Night he mentions some passages from the Yiddish [sic] version that deal directly with this topic,

 

“I remember that night, the most horrendous of my life: ‘Eliezer, my son, come here . . .  I want to tell you something . . . Only to you . . . Come don’t leave me alone . . . Eliezer . . .’

I heard his voice, grasped the meaning of his words and the tragic dimension of the moment, yet I did not move.

It had been his last wish to have me next to him in his agony, at the moment when his soul was tearing itself from his lacerated body – yet I did not let him have his wish.

I was afraid.

Afraid of the blows.

That’s why I remained deaf to his cries.”

 

This has the ring of truth and if it were to be the truth it would explain a great many aspects of his subsequent life. A Catholic boy could have gone to confession poured out his soul to the priest and would have received absolution, because that was what was called for. To the Jewish boy this avenue was denied because only God can forgive sins and his faith in God had been profoundly shattered. Father and God became synonymous; in his mind he may have believed that he had killed both.

This may be the tragedy of Wiesel’s life for which he has tried to atone. His personal guilt and hatred for his perceived cowardice, at a crucial moment, could only be directed towards the perpetrators of the situation he had innocently been placed in. Their crimes must never be forgotten and even their graves must not be visited because the Jewish people who had been brutally murdered did not have graves they could be remembered by; their bodies went up in smoke. Some of us still remember Wiesel’s violent opposition to President Reagan visiting the cemetery at Bitburg, upon invitation of Chancellor Kohl, because among the hundreds of soldiers who had died in previous wars there were also some members of the Waffen SS. As a Catholic I couldn’t understand at that time what I perceived as hate beyond the grave but when one looks at it in this context it does make some sense. This becomes even clearer when one is aware that cremation is unacceptable in the Jewish religion.

This psychological drama may well afflict other Jewish concentration camp survivors. What they had to do in order to stay alive cannot be described but can remain a life long burden on their conscience. By focusing on the atrocities inflicted upon them and devoting one’s life towards their future prevention it was hoped that a degree of mental equilibrium might become achievable for the survivors. In Wiesel’s case this seems not to have worked very well. When one looks at his most recent photograph in TIME, January 30, 2006 one is reminded of what Mauriac has described in the Preface to La Nuit, “the gaze of a Lazarus risen from the dead yet still [pourtant toujours] held captive in the somber regions into which he had strayed, stumbling over desecrated corpses [2006 translation]. 

This is Elie Wiesel’s personal tragedy, which still haunts him and cannot be overcome by honors, fame, or money. From these feelings the word Holocaust, in its current connotation, was born. The fact that an originally religious term has been secularized and is as such not acceptable for this purpose to some observant Jews is disregarded. The Greek word appeared first in the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Torah where it refers to “whole-burned offering” or simply “burnt offering.” This produced a quandary for truly religious Jews because under those circumstances the murders committed by the Nazis would have been a sacrifice to God, which was hardly the intent. Some observant Jews prefer, therefore, the term shoah for the “Final Solution,” which simply denotes “devastation” or “catastrophe.” But that word also has its problems because it is regarded as too general and does not emphasize the uniqueness of the event, vociferous proponents of the Holocaust insist on. It may also remind people of Al-Naqba (the catastrophe), which is the term Palestinians use for the expulsion from their homes during the establishment of the State of Israel. This was clearly an event in Jewish history not too many Jews, both here and in Israel, want to be reminded of but it is now inextricably entwined with the Holocaust. Arabs cherish their memories too.

To sum up: the transition from the “Final Solution” to the “Holocaust” was based on a semi-autobiographic account by a young Elie Wiesel that accused the world of silence in face of a catastrophe that had befallen the Jewish people. To the best of my knowledge Un di Velt hot geshvigen has never been translated into English but since it is the forerunner of La Nuit and Night, which has become required reading for our children and grandchildren, this should be done. Under those circumstances we would get to know the genuine Eliezer Wiesel rather than the one who is presented to the world via Mauriac. This comparison is essential if we want to get at the truth of Wiesel’s thinking because the consequences, which will be discussed in next week’s installment, affect all of us.







February 21, 2006

UNDERSTANDING THE HOLOCAUST

PART II

 

DOGMA AND SKEPTICISM

 

 

In the previous installment I discussed how an ancient religious term was given new meaning by Elie Wiesel and his reasons for doing so. We now have to confront the question how the “Final Solution” of the Nazis Jewish problem, which had originally been treated within the context of other German war crimes committed during WWII, achieved such a unique stature that Norman Finkelstein has felt himself compelled to write a book which he called, The Holocaust Industry.  This installment will explore the possible reasons for the more than two decades delay before the Holocaust came to be regarded as a unique event in human history, its subsequent promotion as such, and the resistance it has encountered.

In May of 1945 some of the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps, like Victor Frankl, went back to their home towns and attempted to restart their lives which had been so brutally interrupted and in part destroyed by the loss of their family members. But since most of them did not come from central or Western Europe and the Soviet Union was now in charge of their homelands an exchange of one tyranny from which they had miraculously just escaped to another one was not a desirable option. They therefore became “DPs” (displaced persons) who continued to be housed in camps until countries of permanent residence could be found. Peter Novick, whose scholarly treatise The Holocaust in American Life, which ought to be read by everyone who wants to be educated on this topic, explains this aspect,

 

“In the immediate aftermath of V-E Day there were more than ten million displaced persons in Germany and Austria, of whom only a tiny fraction were Jewish camp survivors. Before the end of 1945 the great majority had been repatriated, but there remained nearly two million DPs. They included former POWs and forced laborers who preferred not to return to their homes in the East, Volksdeutsch [sic; e missing], who had been expelled from Eastern Europe, Baltic and Ukrainian German auxiliaries and their families, and various others who, for whatever reason, preferred a precarious life in the DP camps of Germany to whatever awaited them at home.

While the number of Gentile DPs decreased rapidly after the end of the war, the number of Jewish DPS increased over the next year and a half, though they remained a fraction of the overall total. In the first few months after liberation, almost all Jewish camp survivors from Western Europe, as well as many from the East, returned to their countries of origin. There were perhaps no more than 50,000 Jewish DPs in Germany in late 1945. But over the next year their ranks swelled as Jews returning to Poland confronted not just the total devastation of their communities but murderous Polish pogroms. The largest single addition to the ranks of Jewish DPs were those Polish Jews who had found refuge in the Soviet Union during the war, and who, after a brief stopover in the Jewish graveyard that was postwar Poland, usually continued their journey westward. . . . By the end of 1946 the number of Jewish DPs (mostly in Germany, smaller numbers in Austria and Italy) was estimated at about 250,000 [footnote 14 provides a reference]. Perhaps a fifth of these were survivors of the camps, but all were in one or another sense survivors of the Holocaust.”

 

These aspects must be taken into account when we consider the totality of the massive tragedy that had befallen Europe as a result of WWII. Lives had to be rebuilt from scratch, which also included those of the people of Germany and Austria. Refugees had to be absorbed, cities rebuilt brick by brick, currencies were devalued and reparations had to be paid. Having personally lived through the aftermath of the war I know that life was tough. But the emphasis was directed towards the future rather than ruminating over the past. This was a luxury one could indulge in when conditions had achieved a degree of normality again

The Holocaust phenomenon, as we now know it, started in America and initially there were widely differing opinions within the Jewish community as to how the memories of the survivors should be treated. Up to the 1960s America had other priorities, and Jewish problems were not high on the list. American Jews did not press the issue because they still felt insecure and were concerned about a possible anti-Semitic backlash if they became too vociferous. Israeli Jews were engaged in wars with their neighbors and in addition fostered a self-concept that differed considerably from that of their American relatives. While the key word for Americans was “victimhood,” “heroic resistance” was promoted in Israel. The memory of the Final Solution was, therefore, treated differently in the two countries. This is also exemplified by the full title of Israel’s Yad Vashem. As Novick points out it is called “Yad Vashem Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority, and the full name of Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom Hashoa, is “Day of the Holocaust and Heroism.” Thus, the Holocaust and Israel are inextricably entwined, as had been mentioned in the previous installment and in essence deal with the fundamental question of Jewish self-identification.

When attempts were made to publish Holocaust data during the late 1940s and up to the 1960s authors had difficulties doing so. Even Raul Hilberg, whose The Destruction of the European Jews has become the standard for scholarly research, had to go begging for sponsors to subsidize the publication of what really was his PhD thesis. In his latest book, The Politics of Memory, he pointed out that he had thought that the costs could be split between the Columbia University Press and Yad Vashem but the Israeli authorities refused to do so. This might strike one as strange but had its roots in the previously mentioned Jewish identity problem. Hilberg, the scholar, had failed to take this overarching phenomenon into account. I shall discuss this in more detail in Part III, which will deal with the antecedents and execution of the attempted Final Solution from the German point of view. It will suffice for now to point out the difference in Jewish interests between Zionists and those who favored assimilation. The former needed Jewish immigration into Palestine, which would be hastened, the assumption was, if anti-Jewish sentiments became more virulent in Diaspora countries, while the latter wanted to live in as much peace as possible wherever they resided. Stirring up trouble unnecessarily, by bringing up old grievances including the Final Solution was not their idea of peace and prosperity.

Hilberg, who had no political ax to grind and was only interested in establishing the full truth of how the destruction of European Jewry had come about, was caught between these two competing and actually mutually exclusive ideologies. He committed furthermore a cardinal sin in the eyes of some of the leading functionaries in the Jewish community. The dictum is that: Jews should write about Jews in a manner that is good for Jews. As such an open unbiased approach, which shows that Jews had actually not only, by and large, not resisted the onslaught which befell them but had indirectly contributed to its success by following the advice they had received from their community leaders - Judenräte - could neither be condoned in Israel where heroism was called for, nor in America where it might sully the picture of the pure victim.

By 1961 Hilberg had finally found a publisher as well as the needed money and his dissertation appeared as a three volume document. The timing was fortuitous because Adolf Eichmann, who had been portrayed as a vicious sadistic monster responsible for the death of 6 million Jews, had just been abducted from Argentina and brought to trial in Jerusalem. As Novick points out it is interesting to note that the reaction among American Jews to this event was also far from unanimous because some law abiding Jewish citizens felt that to abduct somebody from foreign soil and then try him by the enemy was not exactly fair play. It was, furthermore, argued that since he had not committed any crimes within or against the State of Israel he should be tried in Europe where they had actually taken place. With other words the legitimacy of Jerusalem, to act not only in a high-handed manner but also to speak for all Jews of the world was questioned.

The Eichmann trial can be regarded as the first watershed in the American attitude towards the Final Solution. It received wide attention and was extensively written up in a series of articles in The New Yorker by Hannah Ahrendt, who subsequently published the book, Eichmann in Jerusalem. The Banality of Evil.” Her reports and the book created a furor in high placed Jewish circles and she was denounced as a “Self-hating Jewess.” The reason was that she did not portray the captured Eichmann as an arrogant, vicious, sadistic, anti-Semitic murderer but as a pathetic bureaucrat who under ordinary circumstances might never have come to anyone’s attention. There was an additional fact. Her reports made clear that the Nazis had been far less efficient than they had been portrayed, and that their successes depended on the cooperation of the conquered countries. This news was not particularly welcome although it had been Hilberg’s thesis all along. On the other hand, who reads a three volume thesis which has the facts but lacks the hate? Ahrendt later admitted that she had freely used Hilberg’s data for her own book, although the latter disagreed with her characterization of Eichmann.

Leaving these disputes aside one aspect struck me in her book and that was the fate of the Jews of France versus those of Romania and other nations under German occupation. When Europe was “combed” from West to East in search of Jews, the French had no problem with giving their refugee Jews, who had come to France prior to 1940 and were as such stateless, back to Hitler, via Eichmann. But when Eichmann in his Pflichtgefűhl (sense of duty) subsequently also wanted French citizens of the Jewish religion they drew the line and simply refused to go along. According to Ahrendt’s book more than 300,000 Jews resided in France at the outbreak of the war. This number was subsequently augmented somewhat by Jewish refugees from Holland and Belgium. In the spring of 1940, there were about 100.000 stateless Jews who could theoretically have been deported. But even this did not work because the Germans made a mistake after the deportation of 27,000 of these unfortunate people. For the sake of efficiency, because it was race that counted rather than citizenship, they began to lump stateless Jews with French citizens in the transports. The French didn’t see it that way and refused further cooperation altogether. In this way about 250,000 Jews survived the war in France.

These numbers, just as most others dealing with the Final Solution are in dispute. Gerald Reitlinger’s book, The Final Solution. The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, which was first published in the UK in 1953, listed a total of 500,000 Jews in conquered France of whom 57,000 were deported to Auschwitz. But these differences are not important. What matters is that, as far as France and some other European countries were concerned, even the attempt towards the Final Solution was far from final. The example also showed that when the Nazis saw that they were frustrated in their endeavors in one country they turned to others where there was less resistance to their efforts of gaining free labor and wealth. As Hitler said in one of his Tischgespraeche, “We’ll deal with the [remaining] Jews after the war.”

What the Eichmann trial did accomplish was that it brought more eye witness testimony of the atrocities that had occurred in the camps, back into memory. Yet the time still was not right for the Holocaust to achieve the prominence it has in today’s America. It needed two more wars in Israel and the beginning of the “counter-culture” here. The successful 1967 war which led to the conquest of all of Palestine including the Sinai and East Jerusalem, temporarily erased the mental victim status Jews had fostered in the Diaspora. The Israeli victory raised the self-confidence of American Jews because they could now point to the accomplishments of their relatives. That this 1967 victory was a Pyrrhic one is not yet fully acknowledged. It presented the Israelis with Hitler’s problem. Now they had too many Arabs but even an attempt at a “Final Solution of the Arab Problem” is no longer possible. The current “unilateral disengagement” plan is in my opinion probably too little and too late.

While the 1967 war had an indirect positive effect on the self-identification of American Jews the influence of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights struggle and change in America’s culture during the late 1960s and early 1970s should also not be underestimated. Individual Jews, as well as Jewish organizations had supported the Civil Rights Movement, and especially the baby boom generation was no longer content to just sit back as their elders did. It is no secret that the intellectual leadership of the campus unrest during the Vietnam War and of the “counter-culture” rested to a fair extent in the hands of young Jews who rebelled against everything the establishment stood for. While these events paved the way for greater outward Jewish assertiveness, the Holocaust was still not an issue that would grip Gentile America.

The 1973 Yom Kippur war again brought a change in Jewish self-perception. The initial setback took Israelis by surprise. Although they soon recovered more territory than they had lost, the initial shock had left a distinct mark not only on the Israeli psyche. The aura of invulnerability that had been cherished after 1967 was now damaged and old fears of total annihilation were rekindled. Novick wrote,

 

“In the wake of the Yom Kippur War, American Jewish leaders were confronted with an agonizing problem, which was summed up by Leonard Fein, editor of the Jewish magazine Moment [September 1975]:

‘A complex fear has taken hold of us since October 1973. Its roots lie in our renewed awareness of Jewish vulnerability, now widely perceived as permanent, perhaps even ultimate. . . . The terrible isolation of Israel, the dramatic ascendance of the Arabs . . . Israel’s near total dependence on the United States – all these are aspects of our present gloom.’”

 

            The answer to this “gloom” was found, as Novick writes, by two top leaders of the Anti-Defamation League Arnold Forster and Benjamin Epstein and he quotes from their book,

 

“’For a long while after World War II, sympathy for the six million Jewish victims of Nazi genocide . . .  helped to open doors long closed to Jews here and abroad. Certainly the State of Israel was one direct beneficiary of world empathy with the Jewish victims of Nazism.

In the postwar world . . . the time during which the non-Jewish world continued to view Jews as oppressed was incredibly short. Within twenty-five years after the photographs of the bestiality in the concentration camps shocked the world  . . . Jews had ceased being victims.’”

 

Forster and Epstein were not the only ones who had recognized the desirability of victimhood and the best avenue to achieve this status would be to resurrect the shameful atrocities of the Nazis attempted Final Solution. From these political considerations a new dogma was born. It might be formulated as:

 

Out of pure hate the Nazis’ efficient killing machine had brutally murdered six million Jews, in order to extinguish the Jewish people forever. Because of all pervasive anti-Semitism, Gentiles did little or nothing to prevent the crime in the first place and did not interfere with its execution subsequently. The Jewish people are again in mortal danger which can only be averted by keeping the guilt for the moral turpitude of the non-Jewish world constantly before their eyes and be ever vigilant against any stirring of anti-Semitic notions. 

 

A concentrated effort to this effect was launched with President Carter’s “Commission on the Holocaust,” which was discussed in Part I, as the first step. Not only did Holocaust Museums rise up in American cities but an avalanche of books, and to some extent movies, was loosened which fostered this interpretation and became the “Holocaust Industry.” As Finkelstein has documented this was highly profitable financially for authors, lawyers and Jewish organizations but hardly anything trickled down to the few real victims who were still alive.

But we live in a skeptical age and not everybody was willing to accept this dogma on its merits, especially when it was promoted with religious zeal and was turned from belief into fact which everybody had to subscribe to. The laws of physics, under which all of us live, state that every action leads to a reaction, and a revival of the Holocaust memory, decades after the events when most perpetrators and victims had already died, could not be an exception. Initially the number of 6 million who had perished was questioned. This was not totally unreasonable because it is not entirely clear how this number was arrived at. Most likely it comes from the Nuremberg trials which will be discussed in the next installment. But that initial exaggerations had occurred, especially in regard to how many people were killed in Auschwitz, was documented by Reitlinger in his previously mentioned book. In the chapter entitled, “The End of Auschwitz” Reitlinger wrote,

 

“The Red Army did not arrive till January 26th. They found 2,819 invalids in the three camps [Auschwitz proper, Birkenau and Monowitz] whom they spared no pains to nurse back to health. In due course the Soviet State Commission arrived and on May 12th the world was presented with its findings [footnote 29 refers to the Nuremberg document IMT VII, 127].

‘However, using rectified coefficients for the part-time employment of the crematorium ovens and for the periods they stood empty, the technical expert commission had ascertained that during the time that the Auschwitz camp existed, the German butchers exterminated in this camp not less than four million citizens of the U.S.S.R., Poland, France, Jugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Hungary, Holland, Belgium, and other countries.’

The world has grown mistrustful of ‘rectified coefficients’ and the figure of four millions has become ridiculous. Unfortunately Russian arithmetic has blurred the stark and inescapable fat that little less than a million human beings perished in Auschwitz, its gas chambers and its camps.”

 

Reitlinger, who cannot possibly be labeled as an anti-Semite, subsequently did his own calculations from available deportation transport documents and came up with 840,800. Nevertheless, the number 4 million was initially engraved in stone at Auschwitz. In 1995, after the fall of the communist regime in Poland, it was revised to the now “official” number of 1.5 million people of all countries and religions. That this is also not the final figure is apparent from various websites. But it is fruitless to enter into this controversy. It is not the numbers that count but the fact that people were brutally sacrificed in pursuit of a chimerical greater good of a nation.

While initially only the numbers of victims were questioned some people, for various reasons of their own, then began to challenge the means that were employed. They asserted that the gas chambers, in what has become known as the extermination camps, were used only to disinfect clothing rather than murder people. This became the basis for what is currently called “Holocaust denial.” It is now the most serious charge that can be leveled against anyone because it leads not only to loss of reputation and professional career, but also to criminal prosecutions in Germany and Austria. Germany has passed a specific law to that effect and in Austria the British author David Irving, is currently jailed in Vienna on the charge of spreading neo-Nazi ideology. Under § 3 of the Austrian Verbotsgesetz, which was passed on May 8, 1945 and reconfirmed in 1992, he received yesterday a 3 year prison sentence.

As mentioned in “Today’s Democracy in America” (January 2004) I have met David Irving on two occasions and although he holds some views that are clearly unconventional and irksome his current fate seems beyond necessity. His dilemma is, however, in part self-inflicted. He started out with writing biographies of important WWII figures, especially German Nazis, and came to the conclusion that the history of that period does not take the views of the vanquished into full account. As such he became an idol of some groups that harbor resentment for Germany’s defeat. He did nothing to dissuade them from some of the more outlandish opinions but endorsed some of them in a flippant, offhand manner. This included the statement that the Nazis had not carried out human gassing in the camps. He thereby engendered the wrath of Deborah Lipstadt who labeled him in her book, “Denying the Holocaust. The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory,” as an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. He became persona non grata in respectable society, his books began to vanish from bookstores and his income started to dry up. He then decided to fight back and sued Lipstadt as well as Penguin books for libel. While he might have won that law suit in a British Court he made a fundamental mistake by appearing as his own attorney. Lipstadt had several highly paid ones, who poured over every sentence the man had ever written, or reportedly said, to prove their point. Irving did not help himself by his offhand and arrogant behavior in court and especially by stating that there was no proof for homicidal gas chambers in Auschwitz. At that point the Judge had heard enough and branded him officially as an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. This led to complete financial ruin and he had to support himself by giving talks to small groups and selling his books from his van. Several countries, among them Austria, banned him from entry but he went anyway and was arrested in Styria on his way to Vienna in November of last year. The Austrian government really had no choice in the matter because had they let this “Holocaust denier” proceed the Jewish community would have been outraged and since the Austrians have already enough problems of this type they didn’t need another one. Why did Irving risk arrest? I believe that he knew full well what was going to happen to him but he sees himself as a spokesperson against the established views and was eager not only to rehabilitate himself but also for the glare of the spotlight that a trial would bring.

Dr. Lipstadt, to her credit, was not in favor of his being sentenced but stated that Irving should be allowed to go back home because there is no sense making a martyr out of him. I agree but there are some problems with her book, which is now part of the Holocaust legacy. Although she is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University her book is not written in the detached style of academia but in a more passionate and somewhat polemical one. She is not in favor of being questioned about details in regard to how the Final Solution was carried out and seems somewhat too ready to relegate all these questioners to the ranks of anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers. While there is no doubt that some of them fit this label others do not and painting everybody with the same brush is not helpful to her cause. She is also highly critical of those whom she regards as adversaries to her views but has a considerably less critical attitude towards what is currently regarded as the official history, written by the victors of WWII.

I do not intend to enter into Dr. Lipstadt’s belief system because that is personal, what I do want to discuss is the subtitle of her book with the key words, “Truth” and “Memory.” I shall stay with memory because it is the basis on which personal truth rests. Again I am indebted to Dr. Novick’s book that discussed this aspect and the work by Maurice Halbwachs on “Collective Memory” of which I had been unaware. I did not doubt Novick’s statements about Halbwachs’ fundamental ideas but since they are so important I wanted to be one hundred per cent sure which necessitated another trip to the Marriott Library for this book, and am happy to report that what Novick wrote is accurate. What makes Halbwachs especially relevant in the present context is that although his insights were published originally in the 1920s they are completely vindicated now. Halbwachs’ fundamental thesis, as explained in the Introduction by Lewis A. Coser to his translation of Halbwachs’ book On Collective Memory, states that “the past is a social construction mainly, if not wholly, shaped by the concerns of the present [emphasis added].”

As everybody knows individual memory is subjective and only partially reliable. In addition it gets steadily worse the greater the distance is from the original event which laid down the trace in our brain. In regard to the Holocaust there are very few people with personal memories left and we are now dealing with Halbwachs’ collective memory, which gets constantly reshaped for the needs of the moment. I believe that this is indeed the clue to understanding the Holocaust as it is presented today. Individual memories of extremely traumatic personal events, as well as hearsay have become conflated and now constitute “The Holocaust,” which is no longer open to question. But every concentration camp survivor saw only a small piece of the total event, just as soldiers remember only a minute fraction of what they experienced during a given war.  All the rest is subsequently collated from other sources and becomes the final memory which in turn undergoes constant change because the proteins that made up the engram and the neuronal connections that lead to its recovery are no longer the same.

As far as America is concerned the Holocaust has mainly become collective memory, because nearly all of the camp survivors are dead. A typical example for collective memory, that fits the current context, comes from the Halbwachs monograph and deals with Masada. For about two thousand years the siege of that fortress and the collective suicide of the defenders, instead of surrender to the Romans, was a non-event in Jewish history. It does not show up in the Talmud or other Jewish scripture. But in 1927 a young Lithuanian immigrant to Palestine, Yitzakh Lamdan, created a poem praising the heroic resistance and resilience of the Jewish people with Masada as the shining example. A visit to Masada is now a must for every tourist to Israel, just as a visit to Yad Vashem is. But what happened at Masada in 73 AD is reported only by Josephus, who did not have kind words about the morals of the Sicarii defenders, and he based his story exclusively on the reports of two women who had hid with five children in order to escape the massacre. Josephus is not always a reliable historian and we don’t even know whether or not he interviewed these women in person, had simply heard, or made up the story. This is not important; what matters is the usage that has been made of it for the purpose of creating an image that should befit the twentieth rather than the first century. The image has become fact!

As far as personal memory is concerned I was also so intrigued by Novick’s footnote in regard to the memory of survivors that I got the original article “Memory as History” (Richard Ketchum, American Heritage; Nov 91, Vol.42 Issue 7), from which he quoted. It deals with the personal memories of participants in the 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill which ushered in the American Revolution. When the cornerstone for the Monument to commemorate the event in 1825 was laid, 40 ex-soldiers of the Revolutionary Army who claimed to have taken part in the battle were in attendance. Their recollections were collected in 3 volumes but when these were critically examined by a commission in 1842 it became evident that the contents were,

 

“’most extraordinary, many of the testimonies extravagant, boastful, inconsistent, and utterly untrue; mixtures of old men’s broken memories and fond imaginings with the love of the marvelous. Some of those who gave in affidavits about the battle could not have been in it, nor even in its neighborhood. They had gotten so used to telling the story for the wonderment of village listeners as grandfathers’ tales, and as petted representatives of ‘the spirit of ‘76,’ that they did not distinguish between what they had seen and done and what they had read, heard, or dreamed. The decision of the committee was that much of the contents of the volumes was wholly worthless for history, and some of it discreditable, as misleading and false.’”

 

Well, so much for Bunker Hill but how about the Holocaust. Novick relates that,

 

“A few years ago the director of Yad Vashem’s archive told a reporter that most of the twenty thousand testimonies it had collected were unreliable: ‘Many were never in the places where they claim to have witnessed atrocities, while others relied on secondhand information given them by friends or passing strangers [footnote refers to a statement by Shmuel Krakowski quoted in Barbara Amouyal’s article. ‘Doubts over Evidence of Camp Survivors” in the Jerusalem Post of August 17, 1986]. Primo Levi one of the most renowned survivor-witnesses has described this phenomenon:

‘The greater part of the witnesses . . . have ever more blurred and stylized memories, often, unbeknownst to them, influenced by information gained from later readings or the stories of others . . . A memory evoked too often, and expressed in the form of a story, tends to become fixed in a stereotype . . . crystallized, perfected, adorned, installing itself in the place of the raw memory and growing at its expense’ [footnote refers to Primo Levi’s book The Drowned and the Saved, published originally in Italy in 1986 and its English translation which was published in 1988; ellipsis are in the original].”

 

In summary it appears that the Holocaust, as currently portrayed, is no longer based entirely on history but has entered the field of collective memory and is deliberately used for specific purposes. As such, there should be room for skepticism, when expressed in a scholarly manner, and if further investigations are called for, they ought to be allowed to proceed by internationally recognized experts in their respective fields. Next week’s installment will conclude this series with reflections from the German side, some personal experiences with the Nazi power structure, and lessons to be learned.







March 1, 2006

UNDERSTANDING THE HOLOCAUST

PART III

 

THE FINAL SOLUTION IN CONTEXT

 

            “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” So starts the gospel of St. John and this is also the most apt introduction to our topic. The Holocaust was the outcome of a gigantic struggle between two opposing views that was initiated by words and cartoons. It is the latter, which makes it so relevant for the 21st century because 20th century terminology and ideation dominate again.

Let me paraphrase St. John, “In the beginning was the word and the word became god . . . and became [burning] flesh.” There were two gods in the first half of the past century, both were jealous gods and did not tolerate other gods besides them. That was the tragedy. Hitler’s strident, vituperative language in Mein Kampf especially, but not exclusively, against Jews became the hallmark of his campaign for absolute power in Germany. It thoroughly frightened the world wide Jewish community and it responded in kind. The war of words and pictures which preceded WWII is largely forgotten today but the atrocities of WWII could never have happened had the soil not been plowed and the seeds diligently sown. This installment will bring these memories back which only few of us have.

Historians have debated as to when the Holocaust began to take shape. Some date it to the Kristallnacht, while others bring it in relation to the invasion of the Soviet Union. Still others put the date at January 30, 1933 when Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. I believe they are correct because on that day an internal German event became the concern of the Jewish community throughout the world.

In order to understand the second quarter of the 20th century, the consequences of which will continue to haunt us for decades to come, we have to look at Mein Kampf because this was the book that initiated the disasters which followed. The final version as distributed first to the faithful, and then the German people at large consisted of two parts. The first one was written by Hitler during the summer and fall of 1924, while he was imprisoned at Landsberg am Lech for the failed November 1923 Putsch and had the subtitle, “Eine Abrechnung,  while the second part bears the date of 1927 and has the subtitle, “Die Nationalsozialistische Bewegung.” While the first part was mainly a historical review how he in person and Germany in general got into the situation they found themselves in, the second part was a programmatic statement what the NS movement stood for and what it intended to accomplish in its domestic and foreign policy. The two parts differ somewhat in their tone. The first one is filled with venomous rage, while the second part is slightly less so. Hitler’s inflammatory rhetoric does not lend itself to proper English translation but some of it is necessary for comparison with the language used by his American Jewish adversaries who did write in English.

Why did Hitler express himself the way he did in 1924? It was the rage of a person who would be called in German a “verkrachte Existenz.” Imagine a 35 year old male who had intended to become a great painter, would have settled for an architect but couldn’t achieve that because out of personal willfulness had neglected his studies and failed to finish High School; hated the country he was born in because of its “multiculturalism;” admired Germanic greatness but was penniless as well as profoundly enraged when Germany not only lost the war but was saddled with exclusive guilt for its start. Add to this situation that everything the common people had stood and fought for was now vilified by the new ruling class; hyperinflation ruined ordinary citizens while others profiteered; the French who had not been satisfied with regaining Alsace-Lorraine and massive reparation demands which could not be met occupied the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial heart, in 1923. The uprising in Munich in which Hitler was supposed to have been supported by the Bavarian government and which was meant to be the beginning of a march on Berlin (similar to Mussolini’s a year earlier) in order to “throw the rascals out,” had in fact been thwarted by the very people who had pledged support; units of the Reichswehr and the police shot and killed 16 of his compatriots who only wanted to restore German freedom and German honor. Now he was sentenced to five years in prison; the party he had built was forbidden and dissolved; he was a nobody who had failed miserably!

Those were the circumstances under which Hitler wrote Part I. Somebody must have been at fault and since he completely lacked insight the fault lay with others and especially those who had contributed internally to the German collapse of 1918 and who now ruled Germany: Marxists-Bolsheviks and Capitalists. These in turn were controlled, in his opinion, by Jews whose only aim was the destruction of the Aryan race so that they could rule the world according to Old Testament promise. This was Hitler’s Weltanschauung, his personal fervent belief, which he poured out in the book. He was what one may call the “Great Simplifier” because everything could be brought on a common denominator: purity of the race will ensure strength, and strength is needed to combat your enemies because it is a law of nature that the strong eat the weak. Everything he did flowed from there. He even abstained from talking about the Jews, in the plural, because one might make differences among them; no it had to be “The Jew” in the singular, and to encompass not only German Jews but those of the rest of the world there was “das internationale Judentum,” international Jewry, who really controlled the lives of all the nations. This power needed to be broken and he would spare no effort to do so.

One other aspect needs to be remembered in regard to Mein Kampf. The first part was written to define himself for himself and for his party’s faithful. It was not expected that ordinary Germans, let alone the rest of the world, would pay much attention to it. This is why he constantly used words which don’t lend themselves very well to English translation. For instance Schmarotzer is only inadequately represented by “sponger,” because it does not carry the same definitive derogatory message as the German word. For this reason I won’t translate all the flowery terms Hitler used to insult his enemies, especially “the Jew,” and only a few samples will suffice: “vermin that needs to be exterminated (ausgerottet), tyrannical bloodsuckers, the great hater who demands total destruction of the German people, noxious bacillus, needs the lie just as people living in northern climes need warm clothing.” Nobody in his right mind took this sort of prattle seriously except the Jews whom he had insulted in this manner.

I believe that the Jewish leadership in Germany and elsewhere committed a mistake in the early 1920’s which had its terrible revenge in the 1940’s. Instead of letting him bark and concentrate on getting the economy into decent shape so that people could have jobs and income again they responded in the same manner thereby giving Hitler more attention than he and his meager following of convinced fanatics really deserved. Another mistake was made by the Bavarian government when they released Hitler after only eight months instead of letting him serve the five years he had been sentenced to. This allowed him to reorganize the party, and the continued attacks in the Press in word and picture helped to attract the attention he required.

In a previous installment I have mentioned that I have a book “Hitler in der Karrikatur der Welt” in my library. It was published by the NSDAP in 1938 and carries Hitler’s nihil obstat, approved by the Führer, on the cover. The book contains cartoons about Hitler and the Nazi party from April 1, 1924 to June 1933 and allows one to gauge how he was presented in the Press during the years before he became Germany’s dictator. The first one, on April fool’s day, shows him riding a white horse with the Brandenburg gate of Berlin in back, a cupid holding a victor’s wreath over his head, a Valkyrian banner carrying knight on his left, a Roman soldier type with blade in the right hand holding with his left a pinstriped suit wearing man who had been thrown to the ground and was about to be beheaded, while another grim looking pinstriped capitalist is chained to the horse’s bridle. Well, when it was published in the Munich of 1924 with Hitler sitting in jail it was a joke, or was it?

After this cartoon came a four year’s gap and the pictures continued in January of 1928. The first cartoon predicted that the Nazi party would split itself so often that only Hitler remained and than he would ax his own head in the middle from top to chin. Subsequently between 1928 and December 1932 they show variants of Hitler as: a buffoon; a tool of bankers and aristocrats; afraid of governing; mongering for war and sitting on the tombstone of the German people. With one exception from The Daily Advertiser of Tiffin Ohio U.S.A., which shows Hitler in WWI uniform, a sword on his side imitating Napoleon and Mussolini, they are exclusively from German sources especially, “Der Wahre Jacob” of Berlin. This was the political climate in Germany before Hitler became chancellor and judging from the cartoons, they spread both fear of him as well as the hope of his being incompetent and, therefore, inconsequential.

The situation changed in February of 1933. Now the vast majority came from abroad especially: France, England, the U.S., and the Soviet Union, there are also some other countries represented such as: the Netherlands, Denmark, Turkey, Egypt, Spain, as well as a rather mild one from Austria. While a few still stressed incompetence, the rest predicted disasters brought on by war for which Hitler would be the cause. The last date of the cartoons was June 19, 1933 and came from the London Daily Express, It showed a captive Germany bowed down by a huge swastika tied to her back and the caption reads ”Whither?”

One may now say that the cartoons which predicted war and death were prophetic but one should also consider another possibility. Could the disaster have been averted had fear of it not constantly been drummed into people before Hitler had even come to power? This is an unpopular thought but the vigorous Jewish reaction in the West to Hitler becoming chancellor, before he had even issued his first decree, was not helpful to the potential cause of peace. The role the American Press and especially The New York Times played in the creation of a climate of fear tends to be underreported and hardly anyone knows that the infamous April 1, 1933 German boycott of Jewish stores and offices was precipitated by a call from Jewish circles in New York for boycotting German goods. The New York Times of March 21, 1933 carried on its front page the news that the German Reichstag will meet “to give Hitler full control as dictator” and somewhat further down on that page is a long article headlined, “Jews demand Washington action.” Inside the same issue is another article with the headline, “Boycott Advocated to Curb Hitlerism. W.W. Cohen says any Jew who buys goods made in Germany is a traitor.” The article quoted Mr. Cohen as saying,

 

“’Any Jew buying one penny’s worth of merchandise made in Germany is a traitor to his people. . . . I doubt that the American Government can officially take any notice of what the German Government is doing to its own citizens. Our only line of resistance is to touch the German pocketbooks.’

Referring to the difference of opinion between Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and Joseph M. Proskauer at the overflow indignation meeting at the Astor Sunday night, the speaker said both were right. He agreed with Dr. Wise that, ‘we must make ourselves heard all over the world’ and with Mr. Proskauer’s argument that mass demonstrations would add to the difficulty of German Jews. The added burden must be borne temporarily, he concluded, while the mechanism for the final curbing of the oppression was made to function.”

 

The article continued with an announcement for a parade on Thursday and the adoption of several resolutions. For Hitler this was obviously the “Weltjudentum” which he had been talking about all along and something had to be done. On March 26 he called a meeting at the Berghof where the plans for the Saturday April 1, boycott of Jewish stores and offices were worked out. It was to be limited to one day, then there was to be a pause until Wednesday and resumed thereafter unless the Jews abroad got the message that he had a fair amount of hostages at his hands and wouldn’t mind dealing with them in any way he saw fit. Orders were given to the party that their functionaries who enforced the boycott were not to manhandle German Jews and especially foreigners.

There is no doubt that in the immediate aftermath of Hitler’s January 30 triumph some members of the SA went on a rampage and brutalized Jews as well as others with whom they had a score to settle. But these were personal acts of violence and not state ordered pogroms. After a revolution, which Hitler’s ascension to power certainly was, “stuff happens,” as our Secretary of Defense has so eloquently put it in another context.

For what really went on in the German Jewish community in those days we have to turn to the diary of Victor Klemperer, which he kept from 1933-1945 and subsequently continued under the East German communist regime. He was Professor of Romance languages at the Technische Hochschule in Dresden and since his wife, Eva, was Aryan he could survive the war in Germany including the air raids on Dresden by the Allies. What is apparent is the profound fear for what the future was expected to bring rather than brutalization of himself or his Jewish friends. The friends who were in exposed positions, especially journalism and the film industry or the legal profession immediately lost their jobs. In essence the Nazis embarked on what one may call a “de-Judaization” of what they regarded as important positions in the State and as such were fore-runners of de-Nazification and de-Baathification. They set the precedent which has been followed ever since.

Klemperer could carry on with his teaching assignments and saw his audience dwindle. But in spite of meager finances they were able to continue with building their little house in nearby Dőlzschen. They also retained the use of their car. Friends who wanted to emigrate did, including to Palestine, but Klemperer thought himself as too old for that. On July 9, 1933 he wrote, “Whoever goes there [Palestine] exchanges Nationalism and Confinement [Enge] for Nationalism and Confinement. In addition it is an immigration land for capitalists. It is supposed to be of the size of the Province of East Prussia. Residents: 200.000 Jews and 800.000 Arabs.” On November 2, 1933 he commented, “I can’t help myself, I sympathize with the Arabs whose land is being ‘purchased’”

With this as the background on the German Jewish reality of 1933 we can now look at how it was portrayed in America. On August 7, 1933 The New York Times reported on the return of Mr. Samuel Untermeyer from a trip to Europe. While there he had “presided over the International Jewish boycott conference, held in Amsterdam last month, and was elected president of the World Jewish Economic Federation, formed to combat the Hitlerite oppression of Jews.” The paper not only gave excerpts of Mr. Untermeyer’s speech in that article but the full text, which covered three columns of nearly the entire page, was also printed. Here are some salient excerpts,

 

“The nightmares of horrors through which I have passed in those two weeks in Europe, listening to the heartbreaking tales of refugee victims, beggar description.

I deeply appreciate your enthusiastic greeting on my arrival today, which I quite understand is addressed not to me personally but to the holy war in the cause of humanity in which we are embarked. Jews and non-Jews alike, for we are equally concerned that the work of centuries shall not be undone and that civilization shall not be allowed to die. . . .

Now or never must all the nations of the earth make common cause against the monstrous claim that the slaughter, starvation and annihilation, by a country that has reverted to barbarism, of its own innocent and defenseless citizens without rhyme, reason or excuse is an internal affair against which the rest of the world must stand idly by and not lift a hand in defense. . . .

 But why dwell longer upon this revolting picture of the ravages brought by those ingrates and beasts of prey, animated by the loathsome motives of race hatred, bigotry and envy. For the Jews are the aristocrats of the world. From time immemorial they have been persecuted and have seen their persecutors come and go. They alone have survived and so will history repeat itself. . . . “

 

I believe this is sufficient to give the flavor. Jews and Nazis were at war long before the first shots were fired on September 1, 1939. On September 6, 1939 The Times of London published a letter by Dr. Weitzman to Mr. Chamberlain under the headline, “Jews to Fight for Democracy.” It was written on August 29, before Hitler’s invasion of Poland, and in it Dr. Weitzman, as president of The Jewish Agency for Palestine promised that “the Jews stand by Great Britain and will fight on the side of the democracies.” This was occasioned by the bitter division over the immigration quota to Palestine the British had imposed and these differences were now to be laid aside until the anticipated war was over.

Although Dr. Weitzman had no jurisdiction over German Jews the Nazis immediately regarded them now as potential members of a “fifth column” against which measures had to be taken. Obviously it didn’t need Weitzman’s letter because anybody who did not share the Nazis' philosophy fervently hoped for a rapid Allied victory. This is not the point, but the Nazis could, thereby again refer to the Weltjudentum which desired Germany’s defeat and made their “defensive” struggle absolutely essential. Anyone who did not see it this way was a traitor who had to be either sent to a KZ or otherwise disposed of.

Up to March of 1938 German Jews, although subjected to the Nuremberg laws, were not incarcerated for being Jewish but only if they engaged in what was regarded as anti-state activities, which included membership in the Communist party or if they were Socialist activist. This changed with the invasion of Austria because as mentioned on other occasions Austrians, and especially the Viennese, had considerably greater anti-Jewish feelings than Germans. I have discussed the reasons in War&Mayhem and it needs only to be mentioned here that the proportionally greater representation of Jews in the media, the arts and major professions had aroused envy. An additional area of resentment was the attempt to introduce to a Catholic conservative people what is now called “modernity,” which included the change in sexual mores.

March 15, 1938 was a watershed for Jews in what was now the Greater German Reich. Immediately after the Nazi took over trains went from Vienna to Dachau which held not only functionaries of the previous regime but also so called “Prominente,” namely those Jews who had been in the cultural limelight. To the best of my knowledge, the inscription “for Aryans only” on park benches, and other chicaneries, appeared first in Austria rather than Germany and Austrian Jews who traveled to the “Altreich,” were surprised at the relatively more lenient situation German Jews lived in as compared to what they experienced at home. The situation changed, of course, first after the Kristallnacht (which was precipitated by a young Jew assassinating a member of the German legation in Paris) and especially during the war for the reasons stated above. But for the sake of historical accuracy I would like to emphasize that hate for hate’s sake was not the motivating force in the general public. In essence it was a get rich quick mentality because now a previously wealthy upper class had overnight become a lower class and could be exploited. As such it was more of a universal human phenomenon rather than a specific characterologic defect of Austrians and Germans.

Another misconception is that once you were in a concentration camp you were kept for life. The reason for it is that the picture the word concentration camp evokes is that of 1941-1945. Prior to that time Jews who had committed no other offenses against the state could be discharged especially if they intended to emigrate. Before the war the official anti-Jewish policy was emigration, rather than extermination. This needs to be emphasized because Hitler’s Mein Kampf ranting of “ausrotten,” which tends to be used to indicate that this had always been the goal, did not become government policy until the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Let us now try to do the impossible again and consider what Hitler’s thoughts might have been in the spring and summer of 1941. He was saddled with a war against England that he had never wanted but could not end because Churchill wouldn’t let him. This attitude, according to his Table talks, was incomprehensible to him because it would result in the demise of the British Empire for which he had strong positive feelings. The Brits were Aryans and knew how to keep the inferior races in their place. That the British would act against their best interests, as he saw them, could only be the work of Jews who with the help of their American relatives would drag that country into the war against him also.

What to do? He had tried to come to an arrangement with Molotov in the fall of 1940 by getting the Soviet Union on his side with the promise that they could have free hand in Asia, especially India and Persia if they just let him do what he wanted in Europe. Molotov didn’t bite and it was known in Germany that conversations between the British and the USSR were under way to have Stalin join their side. Under those circumstances Hitler’s war would be lost. He felt that he had to attack first, before Stalin attacked him and once the wobbly Soviet Union was finished he would have his fortress Europe that would have been unassailable by the Brits and would have given Roosevelt second thoughts about entering the war on their side.

It is my personal opinion that the absolute hate and ferocity the campaign against the Soviet Union engendered was the ultimate watershed for the Jewish people towards the Final Solution. In Hitler’s mind “the Jew” had frustrated him again in all his efforts and now was the time to keep the promise he had made in his speech of January 30, 1939. After he had discussed and dismissed the international “Hetze [vehement agitation]” against Nazi Germany he had said as a warning, “If international finance Jewry within Europe and abroad were to succeed to throw nations once more into a world war, the result will not be a Bolshevization of the world and thereby the triumph of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”

It is obvious that he had wanted his war with Poland and the Soviet Union in January of 1939 but he had hoped to limit it to the East rather than be confronted with all the rest of the world. At some time in 1941 when he had millions of Jews under his control, who couldn’t all be machine gunned, he may well have remembered another one of his ideas from Part II of Mein Kampf. At that time he had written, in connection with the inner decay of Germany’s will to win during the first world war, “If one had at the beginning of the war or during it, held twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebraic corrupters of nations [Vőlkerverderber] under poison gas, as hundreds of thousands of our very best workers of all segments of society and professions had to suffer in the field, the sacrifices of the millions on the front would not have been in vain.” Thus, it became obvious that gassing would indeed be the fastest, most economic, and least emotionally traumatic way, for the perpetrators to deal with the huge numbers that were now involved. Moral considerations no longer came into play and the distinction between soldiers and civilians had been obliterated by the systematic destruction of cities where women and children also perished in fire storms. After December 1941 Hitler must have known in his heart that the war was lost because the Japanese pursued their private war in the Pacific, rather than helping him against the Soviet Union as he had hoped when he declared war on America. Since he could no longer enter history as “the Greatest German” he might as well be remembered as “the Greatest Criminal.” If he were to win, against all odds as the “Grosse Fritz [Frederick II, his model]” did, nobody would ask the victor any questions and if he lost there would be the bullet in the brain of which he spoke repeatedly.

That millions of people perished in the Final Solution cannot be doubted, neither can be that murder by gassing had been carried out. The dispute over the Holocaust, by reasonable people, is only about numbers, methods, motives, and uniqueness in human history. The Nuremberg trials produced the most salient documents but unfortunately they were flawed on two accounts. One was inherent in the problem when the victor judges the vanquished and especially when the prosecutor for crimes against humanity was a citizen of the Soviet Union, which did not have a reputation for strict adherence to the truth. In addition the trial was carried out in haste and its purpose was to punish the guilty.

Article 18 stated that “The Tribunal shall confine the Trial strictly to an expeditious hearing of the cases raised by the charges.” Article 19 reads, “The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence. It shall adopt and apply to the greatest possible extent expeditious and nontechnical procedure, and shall admit any evidence which it deems to be of probative value.”

Thus, some documents may have been given a different interpretation than might have been warranted had they been studied with less haste. I am saying this because I came across on Wikipedia the so called “Hőfle telegram,” which was sent “from SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle on January 11, 1943 to SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann,” and “gave death tolls” for the Aktion Reinhard camps through December 31, 1942. The camps in question were: Lublin-Majdanek, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, the total number was given as 1,274,166. Impressive as this number is there is some doubt as to the translation. A facsimile of the original telegram is available and “Zugang [entry]” was used instead of “Abgang” or some similar word that might have been used if one wanted to camouflage the word death. Further details in the telegram which give the previous 14 day Zugang for the individual camps simply don’t make sense if the word was used to indicate how many murders had been accomplished during that time. Thus, the telegram stated, in all probabilty, how many prisoners were admitted to these camps in the specified periods rather than killed. Let me emphasize that I do not doubt for a moment that people were deliberately killed but some of the evidence for the numbers of murders can be legitimately questioned.

While this may be of interest to Holocaust specialists it is not a very important aspect in the current context. Considerably more important for our time are the questions why the German people tolerated this crime and to what extent hate existed as the motive, in the minds of the average citizens. These go to the heart of the collective guilt aspect that is supposed to exist. Let me now pose this question to the average non-Jewish American citizen: Assume that in the post 9/11 environment further decrees are issued against a group of people who are regarded as holding an inveterate hate against us and want to destroy our way of life. Assume furthermore that if one is discovered of “aiding and abetting” any member of that group not only the person who does so will be sent right away to Guantanamo, or a similar facitlty, but so will be members of the immediate family (Sippenhaftung). How many parents would willingly risk their lives and those of their children for that group of people with whom they have had only marginal contact previously?

That was the situation during the war in the Nazi Germany I lived in. What kept us in line was the fear of instant massive retaliation and that is a common denominator for all human beings. Did I see hate against the Jews? Not really; you heard off and on comments that could be interpreted in that way but they were just that rather than an enduring passion. As a Mischling (Jewish grandfather) I was potentially on the “endangered species” list and as mentioned in War&Mayhem I was expelled from my High School in December of 1941 by the Superintendant of Vienna’s schools as “an abscess on the body of the German people [Eiterbeule am deutschen Volkskőrper].” This was Nazidom in action and they must surely have hated me, I thought at the time. But this was rhetoric, as I found out later when I read the note on my report card by the director of our school. I still have the document and it did not accuse me of loathsome, nefarious activities. It simply stated that I was expelled “for educational reasons” and against admission to another school “ist nichts einzuwenden [there are no objections].” After proper repentance for youthful stupidity, that had pushed against the limits of what Nazi Germany would tolerate, I was readmitted within three weeks to another school and could graduate a year later. The “educational” measure surely worked. I had been bone lazy previously but that experience taught me how to study. Higher education was not a given for a Mischling under the Nazis but when I applied for admission to Medical School the application was granted. Had I applied for Law school or Journalism I might well have been turned down.  I am mentioning these personal aspects only because had the average Nazi been indeed as ruthless, at the time the Final solution was in progress as he is portrayed, my fate would have been considerably different. This is not to be taken as an excuse for that system in any form or fashion, and I am very glad that Hitler lost the war, but I do not believe that emphasizing past or current hate will solve any of our problems.

This brings me to the present where fear and hate are again used to motivate people for political purposes. Rhetoric is revved up and the War on Terror is supposed to be against abysmal haters who want to destroy our way of life. Phrases I heard in my youth are commonplace again, except that it is now America that is in imminent danger of being taken over by Muslim extremists who want to destroy Western civilization. Our ally, Israel, is of course, in even greater danger because the Arabs are planning to kill all the Jews in that country. Although the time is not yet quite ripe the identification of “Arab” with “terrorist,” is well on its way. The offensive cartoon about the Prophet Muhammad, in the Jylland-Posten was not just happenstance by some free lancer who wanted to have some fun and make a few bucks. There is more to that story and it brings me to the lesson we should learn from the Holocaust.

The cartoon was initiated by the culture editor, Flemming Rose, of the Jylland-Posten who, as he said, had sent letters to 25 Danish cartoonists to “draw Muhammad as you see him.” This was supposedly an attempt to attract attention to the self-censorship of Danish newspapers in regard to Islam. He received 12 replies and these were published. Some were innocuous but others inflammatory. We can speculate about Mr. Rose’s motives but in the current climate of animosity against Muslims Mr. Rose’s project was certainly ill considered unless it was a deliberate attempt to aggravate an already existing difficult situation. If that had been the case it would have been reprehensible.

Cartoons can be a powerful propaganda weapon, as has been discussed earlier, and in the previously mentioned book there were two that were most striking in the context of the Holocaust. Both were published soon after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor. The one reproduced below appeared on March 17, 1933 in the Leningradskaya Prawda.The Russian caption, when translated from German, reads, “The meatgrinder has become operational.”

One might ignore this as just another example of  typical Soviet propaganda but when one sees the second one published soon thereafter on April 5 in New York, as well as others of a similar nature, it is obvious that one is not dealing with isolated incidents but a deliberate attempt to arouse disgust and hatred against the Nazi regime.

Regardless of how much one may dislike the newly elected leader of a country, this depiction is uncalled for. Again one can say in retrospect that these cartoons were prophetic but in the context of early 1933 they were totally inappropriate and clearly suggested to the Nazi hierachy that this must have been the work of the Weltjudentum. Hitler, when cornered as he was by the end of 1941, may well have said: If that’s who they say I am; ok; I’ll show them! 

Thus, the only lesson, I believe, that can be drawn from the Holocaust should be: avoid inflammatory rhetoric and inflammatory cartoons; they do more harm than good and in the end may backfire! Using the same methods as your adversary will draw you down to his level and from hateful words and pictures to bullets and bombs is just a small step.

I sincerely doubt that keeping the flames of the Holocaust in the forefront of awareness will make the Jewish people in Israel and elsewhere safer. Collective memory, as explained in the previous installment, is just too different between Jews and non-Jews even for my generation. When an attempt is made to force Jewish collective memory on others it may have an initial positive result but when the effort becomes persistent it will be resented and is likely to have the opposite effect. If we really want to avoid the next looming catastrophe we will have to cool passions, and if our adversaries commit atrocities which demand a response we must not stoop to their level. Christians in our government and the media, should remember Jesus’ admonition of not repaying evil with evil; Jews could remember, “Venegeance is Mine, saith the Lord;” while atheists and agnostics should keep Marcus Aurelius’ dictum in mind, “The best revenge is not becoming like your enemy.” Our age is much too dangerous to fan fear and hate. If we want to survive the next decades without a WWIII we will have to work diligently and patiently with moderates on the side of our opponents, deal with their viewpoints as well as grievances, and not be swayed by radicals especially those in our own midst.







April 1, 2006

9/11 AND IRAQ

During the past month we have witnessed a further decay in the nation’s confidence towards its leadership. Instead of following some of the suggestions made in the September1, 2005 essay about how our President could regain the good will of the majority of the American public, the White House has pursued the opposite strategy. Not only is Mr. Rumsfeld still Secretary of Defense, but troop withdrawal in the recommended orderly sequence (1st National Guard, 2nd Reservists, 3rd the professional military with previous tours of duty in Iraq) is also not even discussed. A recent Zogby poll showed that 72 per cent of our troops in Iraq want to come home during the current calendar year. That 89% of the Reserves and 82% of the National Guard want to leave Iraq can be expected, but that 58% of Marines want to do so likewise should give Pentagon planners food for thought.

These numbers are not surprising because every intelligent person must ask him/herself what we are really doing there. The official answer is that if we pull out completely now - which no one has suggested - the country would sink into further chaos. This is probably true but an orderly troop withdrawal needs to be publicly discussed not only on the domestic scene but internationally with the neighboring countries and the members of the Security Council. Nobody wants a full blown Civil War in Iraq and everybody has a stake in a reasonably successful outcome of that ill-advised and ill-considered venture. But this would require more compromises in regard to the future economic reconstruction of that country, by having other nations participate in the contracts, and a complete shift in our posture vis a vis the rest of the world from “forward leaning” to rational discourse among equals, which the current administration seems to be unable to consider.

There were other fascinating numbers in that poll. Eighty five percent “said the U.S. mission is mainly ‘to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks,’ 77% said they also believe the main or a major reason for the war was ‘to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq.’” Although the White House has in the meantime officially denied a Saddam – al Qaeda connection this does not seem to have filtered through to the President.

In one of his rare Press Conferences on March 21 Mr. Bush did something nearly unprecedented by calling on veteran reporter Helen Thomas. He had studiously avoided her for 3 years because she is portrayed by the media as an arch-left-liberal who asks the hard questions. I watched that news conference on TV and it was embarrassing to see how the President conducted himself in this unscripted exchange.

The question by Ms. Thomas in regard to Iraq was, “Why did you really want to go to war?” After having stated that “To assume I wanted war is just – is just flat wrong,” he continued, “I – my attitude about the defense of this country changed on September the 11th. We – when we got attacked, I vowed then and there to use every asset at my disposal to protect the American people. Our foreign policy changed on that day, Helen. You know, we used to think we were secure because of oceans and previous diplomacy. But we realized on September the 11th, 2001, that killers could destroy innocent life. And I’m never going to forget it. And I’m never going to forget the vow I made to the American people that we will do everything in our power to protect our people. Part of that meant to make sure that we didn’t allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy. And that’s why I went into Iraq.”

Ms. Thomas’ follow up statement was obvious, “They didn’t do anything to you, or to our country.” The President then seemed flustered, “Hold on for a second -- let me -- look --excuse me for a second. They did. The Taliban provided safe heaven for Al Qaeda. That’s were Al Qaeda trained, and --“ at that point Ms. Thomas interrupted him and said “I’m talking about Iraq.” The President then backtracked and switched to Afghanistan as the training camps. “That’s where they plotted. That’s where they planned the attacks that killed thousands of innocent Americans.” As far as Iraq is concerned he stated that he had hoped to solve the problem diplomatically, that is why he went to the Security Council and had Resolution 1441 passed, “And the world said, ‘Disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences . . . and when he chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him, and we did. And the world is safer for it.”

These words are revealing because they explain the poll numbers from our troops in Iraq as to why we are there. For the President, a complicity of Saddam in the 9/11 tragedy seems to be a fact. Against this speaks, however, that whatever Al Qaeda camps may have existed in Iraq they were not sanctioned by Saddam. From all we know they were in the Northeast corner of the country in the Kurdish controlled area. Our “no fly zone” was operative there and Saddam had no access to it. If the President had been serious about removing only Al Qaeda training camps a few cruise missiles would have readily done that job for him without all the chaos which the invasion of the country engendered.

His explanation that Saddam did not sufficiently cooperate with the inspectors as demanded by the Security Council resolution is also incomplete. The Security Council in November 2002 did not authorize the invasion for March 2003. It merely demanded that UN inspectors be allowed to return to Iraq and be given full access to whatever facility or documents they wanted to see; absent thereof there were to be “serious consequences.”  The inspectors were to provide a report and the Council, “Decides to remain seized of this matter.” Translated from legalese it says we’ll watch the situation and act whenever further action is needed. The inspectors went in, didn’t find any significant number of WMDs but since the Iraqis continued to drag their feet Dr. Blix wanted more time before “serious consequences” were contemplated. Thus, the invasion was not sanctioned by the UN but precipitated by the Bush administration and the timing depended on military necessities rather than on what Saddam did or did not do. Since this unprovoked war against Iraq has not only cost us thousands of dead and wounded, the Iraqis at least ten if not hundredfold more; destroyed their infrastructure and is bleeding our treasury white we have to hold our administration accountable. Glib rhetoric by our President, as noted above, should not be condoned. Neither should an excuse that he “meant well” or was “not fully informed,” be tolerated forever more. The mistakes and bad faith are now clear for everyone to see and it is urgent that someone educate the President on his misconceptions.

Since this war was a war of choice rather than imminent necessity and had

not been sanctioned by the UN the Nuremberg trials came to mind because German generals were hanged at that time for having committed crimes against peace. The purpose of the Tribunal was to set a precedent that even preparing plans for invading another country – in that case Poland – on orders of the head of state is a criminal offense. “Following orders” was no longer to be tolerated as an excuse. I shall deal with this problem in a subsequent essay, for now it is merely important to find out how our commanding General, Tommy Franks, prepared for and then executed the Iraq war. For that I went to the library and got his book “American Soldier,” co-authored with Malcolm McConnell. The book was published in 2004, after his retirement from the army, and the Epilogue is dated to the summer of that year at which time it had become clear that things were not going as had been anticipated. The book showed that General Franks was not only a good, competent soldier who never asked questions about the legality of this war but also firmly believed in the 9/11 connection. He was in Crete on September 11, 2001 and saw the disaster on TV. As he describes it,

 

 “I had no doubt that we were going to war. And it would be a war like none ever fought. . . . Sitting back in the hard plastic chair on the hotel roof, I reflected on that talk I’d given to the CENTCOM intelligence staff the previous Friday. America was in deep shock, reeling from the images of airliners smashing into buildings and those proud towers collapsing like flaming tinsel. Would my fellow citizens now be persuaded to abandon their hard-won individual freedoms to earn a bit more security in a clearly insecure world?

As I stood up, another thought struck me. Today is like Pearl Harbor. The world was one way before today, and will never be that way again. We stand at a crease of history [italics in the original].”

 

I have quoted this passage for two reasons. One is that it reveals the mindset and the deep trauma that day has caused in the American psyche. It was “like Pearl Harbor,” we were attacked for no reason whatsoever and now we’ll show them that America is not to be trifled with. A false belief in a bubble of “invulnerability” had been punctured and a reality, which had been known to Europeans for ages, that no country is safe at any time in history, was driven home. We who have seen our cities flattened and hundreds of thousands innocent women and children burned in the rubble took a more realistic view of the situation. Al Qaeda was not Japan or Germany, countries that could be defeated with superior military and economic power, but some amorphous group of fanatics whose destruction could not possibly be accomplished by military means. This is not hindsight because I said so on this website in October of 2001.

The second point is that if we allow this war to go on in the manner the administration has in mind we will lose further civil liberties and martial law may be proclaimed on whatever pretext seems handy at the time. This is the profound danger we face because no one will be able to prevent another terror attack, of possibly greater magnitude, on our soil.

Although even the wisdom of the Afghanistan invasion can be questioned it was supported by the international community and although the problem is far from solved it is currently not relevant. We are dealing with Iraq; how that war was planned and executed. I have previously discussed Bob Woodward’s book Plan of Attack, which covers the topic and it was gratifying to see that the essential facts between General Franks’ recollections and those of Woodward are in agreement, although the latter did not hesitate to quote the earthy language the General had used when he was told on November 27, 2001 to prepare plans for an Iraq invasion, while he was still busy with Afghanistan.

The next critical date was December 28 when General Franks had to present preliminary plans for a military campaign in Iraq at the President’s ranch in Crawford. To quote again from Franks’ book “The President seemed pleased with the thoroughness of the briefing. ‘Tommy,’ he said after I’d concluded, ‘heck of a job.’ [this sounds familiar after Katrina] He stacked his briefing charts. ‘Don,’ he told Rumsfeld, ‘keep working on this concept. It’s headed in the right direction.’”

Although no date was set for the beginning of hostilities the preparatory work was well under way. The plan, as presented in Crawford, called for 4 phases. “Phase I – Preparation, Phase II –Shape the Battlespace, Phase III Decisive Operations. Phase IV – Post-Hostility operations.” Condi Rice interjected, “the timelines are all hypothetical, aren’t they?” Franks replied,

 

“I see the phases beginning with N-day, which is indicated as ‘POTUS Decision.’ She was right: The conceptual timeline moved along a continuum starting with N Day, the moment when President Bush would authorize the military build-up in the region, and we would alert troops and prepare their transport from American bases to the region. From there, the continuum ran to C Day, when the flow of forces would begin; to A-Day, the beginning of air operations; from there to G Day when ground operations would be initiated; to the end of major combat operations and the launch of Phase IV-reconstruction.”

 

At the ensuing news conference with the media Iraq was not mentioned because that was, to use German parlance, “Geheime Reichssache.” The General stressed throughout the book the need for secrecy and that no leaks were allowed in this republic of ours. I also failed to find a date for “N Day” in the book although it seems that some preparations began immediately. The next meeting took place on February 7, 2002 in the White House Situation Room where Franks explained the type of resistance our forces might encounter at various times of the year, which included weather conditions. When all factors were taken into account the General felt that “optimum operational timing would be from December to mid-March.”

The next meeting with the President was also in the White House at some time in August, but no date was given. During that briefing Franks presented a chart where “the anticipated duration of the first three phases of the overall operation was revised to a 45-90-90 timeline.” It was assumed that it would take 45 days for deploying forces while launching an air campaign to target Iraq’s suspected WMD sites, Republican Guards formations and command and control facilities. While the troops were arriving initial combat operations would be carried out in a limited manner for 90 days. “And our ‘decisive offensive operations’ would then be conducted for a maximum of three months, to ‘complete regime destruction.’” Phase IV of unknown duration would follow thereafter. Franks also brought up the potential problem of what he called “CATASTROPHIC SUCCESS.”  Namely what he should do if the regime collapsed suddenly as a result of a military coup inside Iraq or early uprisings occurred by Shiites or Kurds. Rumsfeld answered the question with, “We would continue the operation to restore and maintain order until the Iraqis can govern themselves.” Thus it was clear in August that come what may we would occupy the country and this now explains what my informant of our fruitless mission to Senator Bennett in August of 2002 had told me, “It’s a done deal!” [October Surprise? September 1, 2002].

The next meeting with the President was at Camp David on September 7 where a Five Front invasion plan was presented by Franks. The main effort would come from Kuwait and from the NE Kurdish area. In addition there were to be Special Forces operations in the West, South West and East. The attack on the West would come first because Scuds could be launched against Israel from that area. 

An official request to the President for the deployment in the Gulf of 128,000 soldiers, airmen and Marines, prior to N Day was made by the General in November and this buildup was to be completed by February 15. Keeping the concept of a “running start” in mind the force would be augmented as soon as a Presidential decision for N Day had been made at which time the Special Forces would begin their work. The total force would also be increased to 210,000 no later than March 20, 2003.

Although Franks insists that all of the above was merely contingency planning which would have allowed the President to call off the operation at any time, he also left no doubt that he was thoroughly in favor of this war which he regarded as retaliation for 9/11. Although this was the popular opinion at that time we should also remember Chapter 1 of Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack. Woodward wrote that in early January 2001, prior to George W. Bush’s inauguration Dick Cheney told the outgoing Defense Secretary Cohen, “’We really need to get the president-elect briefed up on some things, Cheney said, adding that he wanted a serious ‘discussion about Iraq and different options.’” As far as the Vice President was concerned Iraq should be “topic A” for the incoming administration, which Cheney regarded as “unfinished business.” It is a reasonable assumption on my part that his subsequent secret meetings on energy policy in February of 2001 had Iraq’s oil high on the list, with the proposed pipeline through Afghanistan possibly a close second. Thus, there seem to be very good reasons why these meetings have to remain carefully guarded secrets. It is, furthermore, apparent that 9/11 was an excellent pretext to set the Iraq plans in motion.

The Iraq war D-Day (opening of major hostilities) was ready to start on schedule with a final Video Teleconference on March 19, 2003. As Franks reports he received the order from the President as “’All,right. For the sake of peace in the world and security for our country and the rest of the free world . . .’ he paused; his advisers listened intently. ‘And for the freedom of the Iraqi people, as of this moment I will give Secretary Rumsfeld the order necessary to execute operation Iraqi Freedom.’” He ended with “’May God bless the troops.’”

I had always wondered what the 48 hour ultimatum for Saddam and his sons to leave the country had been all about because it was a foregone conclusion that he would not abdicate and we would invade regardless. The reason had been a request by Franks to have 48 hours of warning in order to get the Special Forces into Western Iraq and “close the Scud baskets.” G Day when ground forces entered the country went off without a hitch, our tanks arrived on schedule in Baghdad and Saddam’s statue came down on April 9

The invasion had been successfully completed and victory had been won. Unfortunately it was a Pyrrhic one. Phase IV which should have started immediately after the fall of Baghdad had been built on false premises. There were no greetings with flowers; the decent people barricaded themselves in their homes while in the absence of a power structure mobs roamed the streets, looted everything in sight and settled private scores by killing their enemies. Our Pentagon planners, although they had ample warnings from the State Department, had banked on Chalabi who had no credibility among the locals. This lack of foresight brought on the tragedy we are still confronted with 3 years later and from which we have a great deal of difficulty extricating ourselves.

The rest of Franks’ book is not relevant for the present purpose but interspersed were comments on how to conduct War and he referred to Clausewitz as well as Sun Tzu. I had bought Clausewitz’s On War several years earlier but had forgotten everything he said except for the famous dictum that “War is a mere continuation of policy by other means.” This is why I pulled it from my bookshelf and re-read the relevant portions (Penguin Classics 1968. Carl von Clausewitz On War). I was surprised to note that I had originally ignored the Introduction by the Editor Anatol Rapoport. This should have stuck in my mind because Rapoport was one member of the triumvirate with Ralph Gerard and Jim Miller under whom I worked in the Mental Health Research Institute at the University of Michigan from 1955-1958. The Introduction, written in 1967 when the Vietnam War was beginning to penetrate the American consciousness, is of utmost importance for today. Rapoport emphasized that the Clausewitz doctrines, while valid for conventional wars between states, lose their relevance when it comes to “asymmetric warfare,” where all the power is concentrated in the hands of one force and the opposing side is weak. This is, of course, the case in our “unipolar” world where different strategies are called for. I shall not go into the details of Clausewitz‘s and Rapport’s presentations except to say that if our Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces had read the book he could have spared the world a great deal of grief. It should be required reading for every incoming President, Vice President and Secretary of Defense.

So should be The Art of War by Sun Tzu (Shambala Classics Boston&London 2002). This Chinese General who lived approximately 2,300 years ago has advice which is followed today by the insurgents in Iraq and is bound to be followed whenever we will engage in a protracted military engagement with China. The fundamental aphorism in regard to the enemy is,

 

“The military is a Tao of deception . . .

When he seeks advantage lure him. ~

When he is in chaos, take him . . .

When he is strong, avoid him.

When he is wrathful, harass him.

Attack when he is unprepared.

Emerge where he does not expect it.”

 

Some other of Sun Tzu’s aphorisms are:

 

“If victory takes long, it blunts the military and grinds down its sharpness.

If soldiers are long in the field, the state’s resources are insufficient . . .

One who does not thoroughly know the harm from employing the military cannot thoroughly know the advantage from employing the military . . .

One hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the most skillful. Subduing the other’s military without battle is the most skillful . . .

Invincibility is defense. Attack and one is insufficient . . .

When I am few and the enemy is many, I can use the few to strike the many because those with whom I do battle are restricted! . . .

In the military more is not better . . .

Knowing the other and knowing oneself, in one hundred battles no danger. Not knowing the other and knowing oneself, One victory for one loss. Not knowing the other and not knowing oneself, in every battle certain defeat.

 

This is precisely the advice Osama bin Laden gave to the true believers in Iraq prior to our invasion of that country. “Build trenches, melt into the background, fight where the enemy is weak and all his ‘smart weapons’ will be useless. The Americans are impatient; you have time on your side.”

When one considers this information, which is readily available, it becomes painfully obvious how incompetent and dangerously frivolous the Bush administration conducted itself. We can absolve General Franks “he just followed orders” and as a military man he did his job well. His civilian superiors failed him, the country and the world.

This brings us back to the perception of the troops that we had to remove Saddam because he was involved in the 9/11 tragedy. The sad fact is that we still don’t know exactly what happened on that fateful day. The administration’s explanation that: 19 fanatic Muslims had hijacked four airliners, smashed two into the twin towers of the WTC, which collapsed as a result and killed thousands of innocents, another plane crashed into the Pentagon and a fourth one went down in Pennsylvania while some passengers struggled with the hijackers for control of the plane, is no longer credible. There are serious problems with this scenario which are detailed on various Internet sites and let me emphasize that not all the people who gathered this information are “conspiracy freaks.”

Let me mention just a few glaring discrepancies. As far as the twin towers are concerned it is true that each one was hit in short succession by two separate aircrafts which exploded in fireballs. But at the time of their collapse the fires were largely under control and it is reported that there is not a single steel constructed building that has collapsed because of fires although they had burned for considerably longer time than what was the case in the twin towers. It is stated on the Internet that Jet fuel creates a maximum temperature of 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, while steel requires about 2500 degrees to melt. Furthermore, the videos from official news organizations show that the towers collapsed at the speed of “free fall” and anyone who has bothered to look at these videos realizes that these pictures are typical of a controlled demolition by previously placed explosives, just as happened with WTC 7 which had not been hit by a plane. While the planes were responsible for damage to the twin towers and some loss of life, it seems likely that the major catastrophe, their collapse with the loss of more than two thousand, was a deliberate act carried out by Americans rather than Muslim fanatics.

This is a terrible thought to contemplate and one does not want to accept its validity but there are other strange events in relation to the two other hijacked planes. As far as the Pentagon attack is concerned the hole made by the plane appears to be too small to accommodate a 757. The plane supposedly disintegrated completely because no major debris was found and the so called engine that was photographed does not resemble one that is used by 757s. Although numerous security cameras existed and took pictures of what happened, these videos were reportedly immediately confiscated by the FBI and have not been shown to the public. As far as the plane that supposedly went down in Pennsylvania is concerned it had likewise disintegrated completely with no remaining parts and it is reported that the coroner, who had been called to the “crash site,” gave up after twenty minutes because there were no bodies. Events like these are unprecedented in airline disasters.

I have previously mentioned (January 1, 2006. When Presidents Lie) that these reports cry out for an impartial, international investigation of what really happened. It needs to be international because unfortunately we cannot trust the objectivity of our government at this time. This is urgent because another terror attack may occur at any time and under those circumstances martial law is likely to be imposed and our republic would be turned into a dictatorship. Just as the Reichstagsbrand allowed Hitler to push his enabling act through the Reichstag, 9/11 has spawned the Patriot Act which may merely be a herald of things to come if we don’t rise up in protest.

The danger does not come from terrorists; whatever attack were to occur, the country could weather it. As with 9/11 the danger comes from an unscrupulous exploitation by the government for political purposes. As American citizens it is, therefore, our duty to expose, to the best of our ability, the deceptions the Bush administration practices. We who do so do not “hate Bush,” as is alleged, we are simply concerned about how our country is governed and we are also mindful of Mark Twain’s words:

 

“A Patriot supports his country always and his government when it deserves it.”

 

Our current government does not and a peaceful “regime change” is necessary.







May 1, 2006

WHAT ARE THEY SMOKING?

            During the past month some of the information which had hitherto been relegated to the Internet has finally come to the attention of the mainstream media. Seymour Hersh published an extensive article in the New Yorker entitled “The Iran Plans,” in which he detailed the various options the White House is considering to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear capabilities. The title of this essay comes from that article. Our President in his usual blunt manner has told the Iranians that we will not condone even their intent to pursue research in the nuclear area and vigorously rattled the saber of America’s might. What he didn’t do was to lay out a plan how to prevent the Iranians from achieving their goal.

            Seymour Hersh did it for him and provided us with the thinking that goes on in the Defense Department on that topic. In essence it ranged from “a sustained bombing campaign” which will “humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government,” “sabotage and other clandestine activities, such as ‘industrial accidents,’” to fostering insurrections by the Kurds and outright covert on the ground activities not only by the CIA but also the regular military which is now being trained for just such tactics. The goal is not simply to remove a potential nuclear threat but, just as in Iraq, “regime change.” Hersh also mentioned that his sources informed him that these were not just some fantasies by zealots, who include the use of tactical nuclear weapons in pursuit of their goal, but these are “operational plans” and planning proceeds at a “hectic” pace. “Some operations, apparently aimed in part at intimidating Iran are already under way. American Naval tactical aircraft, operating from carriers in the Arabian Sea, have been flying simulated nuclear-weapons delivery missions - rapid ascending maneuvers known as ‘over the shoulder bombings’ – since last summer . . . within range of Iranian coastal radars.”

            One might be inclined to dismiss Hersh’s reporting as “over the top” but his past performance by uncovering the My Lai massacre, publishing The Samson Option (Random House 1991) which details the development of Israel’s nuclear arsenal and more recently the bringing to light of the Abu Ghraib scandal give him solid credentials. His is not only a voice of reason but also of warning that if the Bush administration is allowed to proceed on its course a major war with Muslim nations will be the inevitable outcome. It is my belief that this war will not be won “on the cheap” as the administration seems to believe but has indeed the potential to ignite WWIII. The fact that the administration vigorously denounced Hersh’s article merely proves the saying: no rumor is true until it is officially denied.

            As mentioned, the title of this installment is a direct quote from one of Hersh’s informants. It is most á propos not only in relation to the Iran plans but also in regard to Iraq and even to events of 64 years ago as will become apparent later. As far as Iraq is concerned the Salt Lake Tribune published an article recently, “Baghdad embassy: The whole 104 acres.” While Iraq teeters on the brink of civil war we are currently building “the largest US embassy of its kind in the world, the size of Vatican City with the population of a small town.” It will have its own defense force as well as self contained power and water supply. It is obvious, therefore, that neither Iran nor Iraq can be seen in isolation but these two countries (apart from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) form the center of the Middle East oil supply and as is apparent the U.S. is determined to control the region for the indefinite future from Baghdad. This is also borne out by an article in last week’s Newsweek, which pointed out that not only are we building the monster embassy but we are also expanding the Balad airbase, which with its “27,500 landings and takeoffs a month . . . is second only to London’s Heathrow airport in traffic worldwide.” Thus, an exit strategy from Iraq is not even discussed but the current idea is that we shall remain there for decades to come. There will be a pliable government and we will control the country from a few hardened bases with airpower which delivers its ordinance by remote control from Las Vegas. Although the latter statement might strike one as science fiction Newsweek assures us that this is the way it’s done already and only takeoff and landings of the drones which carry their lethal equipment is handled at Balad.

            The unrealistic ideas of a quick and dirty war with Iran have been clearly delineated by Hersh but what is the current situation in Iraq that justifies these building projects and especially that of the embassy? As of last week Iraq has a Prime Minister but even 4 months after the elections there is not yet a government that can control the city of Baghdad let alone the rest of the country. There is wrangling over cabinet posts, which hopefully will be resolved by the end of this month. But even after this has been accomplished from where will this government take the power to unify the country under a democratic leadership? This has never happened in the past because chaos, as it reigns in Baghdad today, has always been supplanted by a dictatorship. The administration’s hope is, obviously, that we will either get a Weimar type of republic or a dictator who will do our bidding, but this far from assured.

The summer is upon us and in Baghdad it will be accompanied by unbearable heat. Under normal times, and that includes by now Saddam’s regime, the people could escape from the heat in the evenings where they could do their shopping and visit with friends and neighbors. This will not be in the offing as long as an 8 p.m. curfew is in place which forces people to remain indoors during stifling heat with no air conditioning and only intermittent availability of electricity. The streets are patrolled by marauding rival militias which settle private scores, rob and murder people they disapprove of for the sake of power as well as just for the fun of it. When in addition bombs go off at unpredictable intervals, water supply is intermittent and sewage piles up with its resulting health hazards, popular unrest is bound to increase. Any reasonable person would say that under these circumstances it makes absolutely no sense to build this super-embassy at this time but we ought to wait until the dust literally settles there and then we could build whatever is appropriate for the circumstances.

As far as patrolling and pacifying the country from the air is concerned this is precisely what the Brits had tried in the 1920s and that attempt failed. Furthermore, as long as we keep military bases in the country any Iraqi government will be seen as illegitimate by fanatic Muslims and with shouts of “Allah Akhbar,” they will blow up refineries, pipelines and other aspects of the country’s infrastructure. Even the smartest Predators won’t be able to prevent that sort of chaos. Although the Kurds are still paying lip service to a unified country the smart ones, who are looking to the future, see no use for Baghdad and are quietly building up their part of the country towards eventual independence. Oil is the key and as the Christian Science Monitor reported they are offering attractive terms to companies that want to take the risk. The Norwegians and Canadians are already interested and announced that they will begin pumping oil by early 2007. If you were a Kurd who had experienced nothing but grief from Baghdad wouldn’t you want to wash your hands of that city which has nothing to offer and go your own way?

Truly “what are they smoking?” in the Bush administration to indulge in the fantasies outlined above while at the same time the Salt Lake Tribune has already downsized the word “victory.” A recent headline announced: “Safe return from Iraq a victory for the 115th [Utah National Guard Company].” When one has been blessed with a long and eventful life official Washington’s current thinking brings up an eerie parallel with the summer of 1942. In August of that year Hitler was at the peak of his power. He controlled continental Europe and in Africa Rommel, who had beaten the British back to El Alamein, was in striking distance of Alexandria as well as Cairo. In Russia Army group B was advancing towards Stalingrad with the aim of destroying its armament production and closing the Volga; while Army group A (which by the way included my brother) proceeded to the Caucasus to gain the oil centers at Baku. Victory seemed to be in Hitler’s grasp and it is instructive to read his thoughts during the Russian campaign. They are available in two versions, but unfortunately both of them are somewhat incomplete. The English version which is more extensive is called, “Hitler’s Secret Conversations 1941-1944 (Octagon books 1981) while the German one has the more descriptive title, “Hitlers Tischgespräche im Fűhrerhauptquartier” (Hitler’s table talks in the Fűhrer’s Headquarter by Henry Picker. Bibliothek der Zeitgeschichte 1993). During lunch and dinner Hitler was in the habit of giving long monologues to his military and other co-workers during which he expanded on whatever came to his mind. He did not allow recording devices to take down the contents verbatim but this was done in shorthand by Ministerialrat Heinrich Heim for the period from July 21, 1941 to March 11, 1942. When some of the information was leaked to the press this practice was stopped and notes were taken in a more surreptitious manner, with Borman’s (Hitler’s Chief Secretary) approval, for March 21, 1942 to July 31, 1942 by Henry Picker. Thereafter they are somewhat more sporadic and Borman edited the material we have today.

Although we don’t have the pure unadulterated Hitler in these talks and they are chronologically incomplete, they do form valuable insights into the type of thinking he indulged in before the fortunes of war turned permanently against him. Contrary to popular belief the fate of the Jews did not concern him all that much. The most extensive entry is the first paragraph from the talk on the evening of July 25, 1941 where he stated:

 

“From the rostrum of the Reichstag I prophesied to Jewry that in the event of war’s proving inevitable, the Jew would disappear from Europe. That race of criminals has on its conscience the two million dead of the first World War, and now already hundreds of thousands more. Let nobody tell me that all the same we can’t park them in the marshy parts of Russia! Who’s worrying about our troops? It’s not a bad idea, by the way, that public rumor attributes to us a plan to exterminate the Jews. Terror is a salutary thing. The attempt to create a Jewish state will be a failure.”

 

The entry from this date is missing in Picker’s book but there exists a German version of this paragraph on the Internet and instead of “parking them in the marshy parts of Russia” it simply says “send them to the morass” (in den Morast schicken). There is also no mention of “public rumor,” only, “it is good if we are preceded by the dread that we exterminate Jewry (wenn uns der Schrecken vorangeht, dasz wir das Judentum ausrotten). The sentence “terror is a salutary thing” is missing. Regardless of these differences what he meant is obvious: he would deal with the Jewish problem in any way he saw fit and the less said, the better. The interesting aspect and why I quoted the entire paragraph is the last sentence, because it bears a direct relationship to our Middle East policy including its dilemma. It has become quite apparent that without continued American material and financial support the State of Israel would probably have succumbed by now.

 Instead of worrying about the Jews Hitler devoted considerably more time to what he would do after the war with the Church. The entire evening talk of December 13, 1941 was devoted to that topic and it is only one of many where he dealt with it:

 

“The war will be over one day. I shall then consider that my life’s final task will be to solve the religious problem. Only then will life of the German native be guaranteed once and for all. . . .  I don’t interfere in matters of belief. Therefore I can’t allow churchmen to interfere in temporal affairs. The organized lie must be smashed.”

 

For accuracies sake it should be pointed out, that Hitler was not an atheist. He did recognize a higher power or Vorsehung (providence) which guides human beings. His problem was with organized religions of any kind because they are based on unverifiable premises and interfered with his plans. His stance was that the state is responsible for the well being of the living Germans and the role of the Church should be limited to concerns for the souls of the dead ones.

But more important for our present topic are Hitler’s ideas in the summer of 1942 about how he would deal with the conquered land in the East. He intended to build an Ostwall from Archangelsk to the Caspian in analogy to the Roman’s limes. German towns would be created within that vast area all connected by Autobahnen. He even specified the width as 11 meters with three lanes: slow moving trucks on the right, normal traffic in the center and a fast lane on the left. The thousand kilometer stretch from the Reich to the Crimea would easily be covered within two days at 80 km /hour. Partisanen (guerilla fighters) would be no problem because it’s good for the German soldier to always have direct combat experience rather than merely training exercises. He also had great plans for the South Tyroleans, whom he had abandoned to Mussolini in exchange for the latter’s acquiescence to the annexation of Austria. They would be shipped via the Danube to the Crimea where they would live happily in a wonderful climate. Germany’s dependence on foreign raw material and food would be solved and all that would be needed from abroad would be coffee. England would see the error of its policies, the Churchill government would be replaced, the British Empire would flourish with German military help and there would be peace. Those were his ideas in the summer of 1942 while the Soviet Union and the Brits were still undefeated and America was gearing up for battle. The fact that he didn’t have the required number of boots on the ground to not only sustain the two pronged attack that was under way in Russia and subsequently to hold the conquered territory didn’t seem to bother him. Providence was guiding him! Again we must ask: What were they smoking?

This was presented as a reminder how rapidly the fortunes of war can change and how incredible our current foreign policy may look a decade from now. But there is more to the analogy. Our President also believes to be guided in his decisions by a higher power and dislikes to hear opinions that are contrary to his own, the quest is likewise for oil and self-sufficiency and the limits on American boots to fulfill the ambitious Middle East program is also painfully obvious. Furthermore, Hitler’s war against Poland, which started the entire catastrophe of WW II, was also clearly a war of choice and as such it was condemned by the Nuremberg Trials. Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal states under a)

 

“CRIMES AGAINST PEACE: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing.”

 

It is somewhat ironic that one of these trials is currently enjoying a revival on cable TV with reruns of the movie “Judgment at Nuremberg.” Spencer Tracy portrayed the American Chief Justice who oversaw the trial of German judges and Marlene Dietrich was the widow of one of the German generals who had been hanged by the Military Tribunal one year earlier. The general in question was probably Alfred Jodl (Chief of Operation staff of the Wehrmacht), who had insisted that he had simply stuck to his oath as an officer who was under the command of Hitler as his superior. This is of relevance in regard to the so called “Generals’ Revolt” which we witnessed last month. Four retired generals spoke out against Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s conduct of the Iraq war and publicly demanded his resignation. Two facts are of interest: 1) they did not criticize the invasion per se, which was illegal under international law, but they merely objected to the inadequate planning for the war’s aftermath. 2) Newsweek in its reporting of the affair stated, “Actually, it was not the job of a uniformed officer, even a high-ranking one like Newbold [Marine Corps Lt.General] to challenge the President’s decision to invade Iraq. That’s a political judgment: it’s up to the president and Congress to decide whom to fight. The military’s job is to win the fight.”  Yes indeed, but that was exactly the defense at Nuremberg and it carried no weight at that time, although Jodl has since been officially exonerated. 

The Judgment at Nuremberg movie is also ironic in regard to its main thesis that the German justice system had collapsed under Nazism and the various judges should not have followed orders which were incompatible with international norms. Yet the Bush administration has ever since 9/11 continued to violate international as well as American law. Our chief law enforcement officer, the Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, saw no problem with illegal domestic wiretaps on suspected terrorists and on torturing prisoners who are regarded as terrorists although no proof was required that the persons involved had indeed committed criminal acts. Our president seems to regard himself as above the law and he “decides what is best,” according to his own statement. His prime demand is loyalty which also brings to mind the motto of the SS “Loyalty is My Honor!” Loyalty is praiseworthy but when it conflicts with common standards of morality the latter need to take precedence.

Nevertheless, this principle is currently in jeopardy in our country. Abuses by the government have to be hushed up by government employees and the public must not be allowed to know what is being done in our name. Even people who have retired from government service are afraid of speaking out publicly and that is why reporters have to withhold the names of their sources. The CIA presented us with an example of what happens if one has a conscience and is appalled by government abuses. Mary McCarthy was a senior CIA officer who supposedly informed the Washington Post that the CIA was “outsourcing” some of its terrorist suspects to certain countries in Eastern Europe who have no strong scruples about using interrogation techniques that are shunned in the Western world. She denied the allegation but supposedly flunked one question on a lie detector test and was summarily dismissed. Further actions against her may be pending at this time.

Regardless, whether it was Ms. McCarthy or someone else, who “blew the whistle” on this travesty of the justice system the interesting aspect is how the media treated the affair. Supporters of the government vigorously argued that CIA officers sign an affidavit of secrecy and the agency would not be able function if anyone of its employees were allowed to go the press whenever they felt that some improprieties had taken place. The correct course of action would be to go through channels, if necessary all the way to the top namely CIA director Porter Goss, and/or the Intelligence Oversight committees of Congress. Again on can say: what are they smoking? Anyone who does so can kiss his/her career good bye and even if the person were to be willing to retire from the service and then testify he/she would still be hounded and vilified as the example of former ambassador Joseph Wilson in the infamous uranium from Niger affair involving his wife Valerie Plame, who was “outed” by the administration, shows.

Unfortunately we can not rely on Congress to set things right because its members are already more concerned with the November elections than pushing for government reforms. We, therefore, have only the media to broadcast the scandals which keep accumulating. By coincidence Mark Felt who, as the “Deep Throat” source for Bob Woodward, brought down the Nixon administration is currently publishing his memoirs and gets praised for his clandestine activities. Whatever Nixon did with the “plumbers” to secure White House leaks and the Watergate burglary did not rise to the level of what the current administration is doing. Nixon wanted to get us out of a war that he had inherited, with keeping American honor reasonably intact, while the current White House occupant has gotten us into two wars and seems to be actively planning a third one. Our international image and good will have been shredded by a “forward leaning unilateralism,” which is simply another word for: I do what I want and if you don’t like it tough luck.

Nevertheless there seems to be some change in the air. Even the President appears to have realized that when only about a third of the country’s people approve of the way he is running the country something needs to be done or the nightmare of a Democratic victory in November might come true. This election will be vital because if the Democrats were to win they would be in charge of committees with subpoena power, which they lack at this time. All the sordid scandals that have been documented here and elsewhere might then see the light of day. The White House is aware of the danger signals and now tries to reform its image by rearranging the furniture. The White House Chief of Staff, Andy Carr, has been replaced by another insider Joshua Bolten who is regarded as a more aggressive team player and will weed out slackers. The unhappy Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, who had valiantly tried to defend the indefensible was let go and in his place the telegenic Tony Snow from Fox News will now conduct the briefings. Although a supporter of the administration he is regarded as an honest person and we will have to see how often he will be forced to bite his tongue vis á vis his colleagues. Karl Rove has supposedly had his feathers clipped by having had to give up his job as overall policy manager but I believe that far from this being a demotion it is the recognition of the potential November disaster which will require all his well known skills in that arena to avert it.

But whatever the President tries to do on the domestic scene Iraq is the millstone around his neck and by now even the firing or resignation of Rumsfeld would be too late for influencing Iraq’s future. Therefore, the biggest question today is: does the President believe that a war with Iran would solve his problems and elevate his stature to that of other successful wartime presidents?  If so not only will the oil prices, which have soared in recent weeks, continue to climb but what we are experiencing in Iraq will pale against what the future will bring. When respected journalists such as Seymour Hersh and now even Thomas Friedman warn of the dangers the President’s policies are bound to produce it would be time for the White House to listen.

Friedman who can’t be labeled as a left wing radical or an enemy of Israel has recently published an article which breathes realism. “Take your pick: Nuclear Iran or Iraq II” was the title and in the article he made it clear that although a nuclear armed Iran is not a desirable event the alternative is clearly worse. This brings us to the crux of the matter and the ultimate evil: nuclear war.  Once the first bomb was built and dropped on Hiroshima, with the second one on Nagasaki, proliferation of nuclear technology was inevitable. To believe that we can control who is and is not allowed to possess nuclear weapons belongs into fantasy land. Our invasion of Iraq, which did not have nuclear weapons and having refrained from doing anything drastic about North Korea, which does, has sent a powerful message to weaker countries, especially if they have oil. It consists of: You better buy yourself some nuclear insurance as fast as you can because otherwise the Americans may take over your country. This is especially cogent for the Iranians who see themselves surrounded by American forces on practically all of their frontiers because even the Persian Gulf is regarded as private property of the American fleet. If you were an Iranian wouldn’t you be concerned, regardless of what political or religious party you belong to? Would you not also remember the 1953 CIA engineered overthrow of the Mossadegh government? This was the first time America practiced “regime change” and the details of that operation can be found under http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html.

            The Iranians have long memories but they are not stupid and even the mullahs have more intelligence than to send nuclear tipped rockets to Israel, which would be the only reasonable target to attack. Although our press reports that Iranian rockets can also reach Europe, this is clearly a scare tactic to make sure that the Europeans follow the American lead in the Security Council and condemn Iran for pursuing a nuclear option. The hypocrisy vis a vis Israel is, of course, apparent to everyone who has no particular bias. We have no qualms about Israel’s proven WMDs including what has been called “the ultimate capitalist weapon,” the neutron bomb which simply kills living beings but keeps the property intact. This is surely an inviting tool for get rich quick thinkers. You get rid of Arabs or Persians, as the case may be, but keep their refineries above ground and the oil below intact. I am not suggesting that such plans are being actively pursued currently but since the thought is obvious it would also have occurred to some of our war planners.

            It is clear, therefore, that the spread of nuclear weapons will be unavoidable but we can attempt avoid their use by a nation state. The UN should outlaw the use of nuclear and biologic weapons just as the use of poison gas has been prohibited. Further development of nuclear weapons, which include “bunker busters” and other ordinance that uses “depleted uranium” should also be prohibited because we have more than enough of such weapons to annihilate any country that might threaten us. This will not avoid the possibility of terrorist groups detonating such a device in our country but this is a problem we will have to live with and preventive measures can be taken. As pointed out previously one or even a few suitcase type nuclear bombs cannot destroy America, only we can do that by reacting inappropriately and excessively to inflicted damage. The danger to our country does not come from the outside but from our own politicians who will use scare tactics to abolish our freedoms and establish a dictatorship. This is the future of this country if we let it happen.

            Intimidation already exists on an unprecedented scale as shown above and only a free press could prevent further excesses by our government. Unfortunately our press is no longer free to publish “without fear or favor,” because the single most important subject, namely the coordination of American Middle East policy with the desires of the State of Israel, is taboo. In late March of this year a professor of political sciences from the University of Chicago and one from international affairs of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard wrote jointly a position paper, “The Israel Lobby.” Although they are Americans the paper could not be published here but had to appear in the London Review of Books (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html). Those of us who are Internet fans knew about the stir this created in certain circles although the professors had only stated common knowledge. Minor errors were castigated and an attempt was made to ruin the authors’ reputations. There was only Molly Ivins, a Texas syndicated columnist of solid left wing credentials, who was not cowed and her article: “Professors have the audacity to examine Israel’s lobbying in U.S,” appeared last week in the Salt Lake Tribune. She wrote, “One of the consistent deformities in American policy debate has been challenged by a couple of professors, and the reaction proves their point so neatly it’s almost funny.” In her final paragraph she stated, “To the extent that our interests do differ from those of Israel, the matter needs to be discussed calmly and fairly. This is not about conspiracies or plots or fantasies or anti-Semitism - it’s about rational discussion of American interests.” Yes indeed, and the sooner the better. The “Lobby” led us into the Iraq war and is now leading the charge against Iran.

            Elections are coming up again and the influence of the “Lobby” on American foreign policy needs to be discussed openly now. Only under those circumstances will candidates for political office cease to have to be afraid of certain defeat unless they toe the Israeli line. If this does not occur we will only get more of the same and under those circumstances our democracy will be a sham.







June 1, 2006

QUEST FOR PERPETUAL WAR

When I began to think about the content of this month’s essay the most appropriate title that came to mind was “Empire in Denial,” since this was the logical sequel to last month’s “What are they smoking?” The United States as the “only superpower” is in fact an empire with world wide military bases and global influence but our government as well as the nation at large do not admit to it openly.

But before committing myself to the title I thought it wise to check on the Internet whether or not someone else had used it before lest I might be accused of plagiarizing the title. In so doing I found myself in good company because the well known British historian Niall Ferguson had indeed published, “An Empire in Denial. The Limits of US Imperialism,” in the fall of 2003 which was reprinted by the Harvard International Review. I had not been aware of this article but it has been my experience during my scientific career that at given times thoughts seem, so to say, hang in the air and different people who think alike will come to identical conclusions.

Since Ferguson has already said most of what was on my mind I can simply summarize the salient features and then continue with what had remained unsaid. In his six page article Ferguson spelled out the reasons why the U.S. is indeed today the world’s empire par excellence but it denies this fact officially and hides it under high sounding principles such as bringing liberty and rule of law to the downtrodden, which had, of course, been the slogan for the British, and all other colonial powers, in the past. He also emphasized the dangers which result when facts which everybody else agrees on are officially denied. He quoted a famous joke from Queen Victoria’s heyday “that the British had ‘conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind’,” and commented that, “in acquiring their empire, the United States had followed this example.”

Subsequently he went on to explain why this posture is dangerous.

 

“The problem with an empire that is in denial about its own imperial nature is that it tends to make two mistakes when it chooses to intervene in the affairs of lesser states. The first is to attempt economic and political transformation in an unrealistically short timeframe. The second is to allocate insufficient resources to the project. As I write, both of these mistakes are being made in Iraq and Afghanistan. . . . To put it bluntly, the United States is acting like a colossus with an attention deficit disorder engaged in cut-price colonization. . . .  It underestimates the need to act in partnership with allied great powers. And its efforts at nation-building are both short-term and under-funded.

 

Gary Dorrien had published a similar article on March 8, 2003 during the run-up to the Iraq war, “Axis of One: The ‘Unipolarist’ Agenda” which has the additional advantage of naming the major people who are behind this drive towards America’s perpetual dominion over the rest of the world. The interesting aspect is that the same handful of names keeps coming up over and over again in this context. I shall return to them and their methods later. Their basic idea is that America defeated the Soviet Union in the Cold War which presents a unique historic opportunity.  The power that has thus been acquired must not only be used to solidify the gains but expanded to the extent that no nation on earth will ever be able to rival it for the rest of this century. In this spirit of empire and unilateralism it has already been dubbed, “The American Century.” 

Only from this point of view namely, “We are the boss and you do what we tell you to do,” can one understand the pronouncements of our leadership. For instance Mr. Rumsfeld chided the Chinese on a recent visit for pushing their arms program when “there is no enemy who threatens China,” and Mr. Cheney, scolded the Russians for backsliding on democracy. While he was in Latvia (a country which used to belong to Czarist Russia and later on to the Soviet Union) he also chastised Moscow “for its use of oil and natural gas as ‘tools for intimidation and blackmail.’” To emphasize his point that we are in charge of what goes in the “New World Order” he went to Kazakhstan, another member of the defunct USSR, on the following day in order “to promote export routes that bypass Russia and directly supply the West [The Salt Lake Tribune. May 6, 2006].” 

What angered our vice President was that they ship their oil, via pipelines, west to a Russian port on the Black Sea and east to China. That sort of thing is, of course, anathema to our supposedly non-existent empire.

To keep and expand an empire one obviously needs a state of the art military. The difference between the Clinton and the Bush administration could not be starker in this respect. At the end of the Clinton years I was concerned in War and Mayhem that our army was being ruined by social experimentation and suggested the Roman motto: si vis pacem para bellum. Little did I know then that the forces, which not only wanted to prepare for a possible future war but were positively eager to start one, were already waiting in the wings. What could not be known then either was that they would become the tutors of our incoming President who urgently needed an education in history, geography and international relations. This is described in a new book by James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet.

Since we live in a high-tech age the military forces of the US are being remodeled to fit new demands. As part of this plan ground forces are de-emphasized and technology which consists of rather expensive “smart weapons” carries the day. In addition, the sky is no longer the limit, when it comes to military spending, but outer space is also fair game for our Air Force. The US Air Force Transformation Plan of November 2003 which can be found on the Internet http://www.af.mil/library/posture/AF_TRANS_FLIGHT_PLAN2003.pdf - states:

 

“The mission of space control is to ensure the freedom of action in space for the United States and its allies and, when directed, to deny such freedom of action to adversaries. . . . The Air Force is the primary Service charged with achieving this objective. Achieving space superiority is the essential component of this objective.”

 

Assume now that you do not have the good fortune to be a citizen of the US but one of China or Russia how would you feel when big brother is not only watching you from the sky but is in the process of deploying laser and other weapons that can incinerate not only your satellites but your house? Melissa Rossi wrote in “What Every American Should Know about Who’s Really Running the World”:

“Other countries are livid: After four decades of agreements not to weaponize space, they don’t want the United States to turn our last frontier into a battleground.

Pressure is on the U.S. government to sign a treaty for the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS), which essentially every country in the world except the United States and Israel supports, but the Americans don’t want to touch it. It’s a huge issue, causing countries around the world to once again call the United States a hegemon, but as usual, the Bush administration doesn’t much care.”

 

Another aspect that hasn’t fully sunk into the American psyche is where our tax dollars really go to. According to Rossi’s book the proposed 2006 budget allocated $ 443.5 billion to Defense including Homeland Security. The US dominates the field in the percentage of global military spending with 47%, Japan is a distant second with 5% while China spends an estimated 2% and so does Iran. National defense is important but I doubt that we need nearly half a trillion dollars to deal with assorted Taliban, bin Ladens, or al- Sadrs in our “War on Terror.” Furthermore, all this gadgetry is totally useless when it come to the so called asymmetric “colonial” wars we are really confronted with, as in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The question arises therefore: do we have a paranoid government which genuinely feels itself threatened by everybody or are other factors at play? I believe that there are three elements that have brought about a confluence of interests and account for our present situation. This becomes apparent when one studies the list of names that have been provided in the previously mentioned article on, “Axis of One.” These people labor in so-called thinktanks and show up ever so often on cable TV as pundits and on the print media’s editorial pages. Some of them carry exalted titles such as “Senior Fellow,” “nationally renowned expert” and the like. This leads one to believe that these thinktanks are part of universities where rigorous academic rules of scientific discipline apply. Nothing could be further from the truth as Brian Whitaker shows in his article: “US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,777100,00.html.”

 It appeared in the Guardian on August 19, 2002 while the war drums for the invasion of Iraq were being pounded. The thinktanks which run under impressive names such as “The Heritage Foundation,” “American Enterprise Institute,” “The Middle East Forum,” etc are private institutions and to put it bluntly propaganda machines. They are not bound by the rules which govern academia and some have even their own printing presses where their thoughts can be dispensed to wide audiences.

Viewers of news programs on cable TV, and readers of the major print media frequently encounter the same “experts” and this is also not happenstance. While preparing this essay I rediscovered an article by Max Boot which had appeared in the July/August 2003 issue of the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs, to which I subscribe. I had kept the article because I felt that the hubris it exuded was unjustified. The article was called: “The New American War” and dealt with “Waging Modern War.”  In it Mr. Boot provided numbers as to how the efficiency of the American military had increased between the first and the second Gulf War. Total casualties for U.S. and allied forces were 365 versus 150, the duration 46 days versus 26 and the cost $50 versus $20 billion. In bold print one could also read “The U.S. victory in Iraq makes the German blitzkrieg positively incompetent by comparison.” We were told in addition that “the occupation of the entire country was completed on April 14, when marines rolled into Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit. The hard task of ‘nation-building’ lay ahead, but the bulk of the military campaign was over.” Three years later our troops as well as Iraqis are still getting killed, our death toll nears 2500 and the financial costs stand currently at somewhat more than $284 billion and are climbing steadily. A running total can be found on http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182. Thus, this New American Way of War does not seem to be all it has been cracked up to be but is still advocated and that’s where our money goes. Imagine how much oil we could have bought ourselves for this money and how much good we might have done with it instead of investing in killing and maiming people.

The first question when one reads an article like the one by Boot is obviously: who is this person? Foreign Affairs listed him as “Senior Fellow in National Security Studies on Foreign Relations.” This sparked my interest further and with the help of Wikipedia one learns that Max Boot was born in Moscow in 1971 and came with his family to Los Angeles in 1976. His academic credits are a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of California, Berkeley (1991) and a master’s degree from Yale in diplomatic history (1992). After graduation he wrote for the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, and in “2004 was named by the World’s Affairs Council of America one of the ‘500 most influential people in the United States in the field of foreign policy.’” This is truly a meteoric career and one wonders what this World’s Affairs Council that bestows such honors consists of. WACA, its official acronym, lists itself on the Internet as the largest International Affairs non-profit organization in the United States, it asks you to become a member and to make a donation. As such it is another private organization which has no credentials other than money and pushes those people whose viewpoint they want to be heard into the forefront of the national consciousness.

When one pursues the career of Mr. Boot further one finds that he is being featured as speaker by Benador Associates, a public relations firm with offices in New York City, Washington, Paris and London. On the website www.benadorassociates.com  one is greeted by the picture of a good looking young woman, Eleana Benador, the CEO of the firm, which was established in 2001. This lady likewise had an astounding career for one so young. The website states that she was born in Lima Peru, is Swiss-American, and spent most of her life in Europe where she studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, in Vienna, as well as Geneva. She is fluent in French, English, German and Spanish, understands and speaks Portuguese, Italian and Dutch, reads Hebrew and some Russian. In essence she runs a speaker’s bureau, organizes meetings, and publishes books dealing mainly with the Middle East. Since she was able to build her membership within the short space of two years one may wonder where the start-up captial came from.

The political outlook is not only mainly hawkish but also leans towards the policies of the state of Israel. Although Ms. Benador does not list her religious affiliation she seems to adhere to the orthodox or ultra-orthodox persuasion of Judaism because she refers to the deity as G-d in the announcement regarding the birth of her son Gabriel. As such Palestinians can take little comfort from the workings of her group although she does have some Arabs and one dissident Iranian, Amir Taheri, as members.

Mr. Taheri, a journalist by profession, was executive editor-in-chief of Kahyan, Iran's main daily newspaper, from 1972-1979 but lost his job with the fall of the Shah and has since lived in the West where he contributes to major newspapers in France, Germany, the UK and the US. He is also a frequent commentator on CNN and works extremely hard. The Benador website lists for the month of May 2006 twenty articles in various newspapers as well in the publication by Benador Associates. As an expatriate, by force rather than choice, he has every right to want his country’s government to be democratic in the Western  meaning of the word but one may also be allowed to take some of  his views with a grain of salt. Political refugees may have an ax to grind and can do more harm than good with their efforts. The siren song of  Ahmed Chalabi which lured us into Iraq and then failed to pan out is just the most recent example. The Iraq disaster has, however, not in the least discomfited Ms. Benador and some of her members because it’s now full steam ahead towards preparing the American public for war with Iran.

But thinktanks are only one tool to push the American people in the desired direction because there is an even more influential semi-governmental agency which advises the Defense Department. According to the official website its full designation is: Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee (DPBAC) but it is more commonly referred to as Defense Advisory Board. The members are selected by the Under Secretary of Defense and consist primarily of private sector individuals with distinguished backgrounds in national security affairs. There are approximately thirty members but no more than four are allowed to be government officials. The functions of the Board are to “serve the public interest by providing the Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary and Under Secretary for Policy with independent, informed advice and opinion concerning major matters of defense policy. It will focus on long-term, enduring issues central to strategic planning by the Department of Defense and will be responsible for research and analysis of topics, long or short range, addressed to it by the Secretary of Defense.”

            This sounds innocuous enough and the DPBAC had played a relatively minor role in the formulation of foreign policy during previous administrations but the Vulcans changed that too, as the Wikipedia article on DPBAC explains under the headline “Controversies.” Richard Perle, whose desire for regime change in Baghdad had antedated the Bush administration, was made Chairman and like-minded others were also appointed. The Board not only has members who are linked in spirit to Israel’s ruling circles but also some who have “strong ties to private business, especially defense contractors. Members disclose their business interests with the Pentagon, but they are not made available to the public, leaving only the Pentagon [i.e. Mr. Rumsfeld] as the ethical arbitar [sic] of the Board.” After Seymour Hersh exposed some of Mr. Perle’s potential conflicts of interest in the March 17, 2003 issue of The New Yorker the latter resigned his position as Chairman but remained on the Board.

When it became apparent that the Iraq war was not going as planned its chief architect Paul Wolfowitz, who had been Deputy Secretary of Defense, was rewarded with the Presidency of the World Bank and as mentioned earlier became the Jerusalem Post’s Man of the Year (Hot issues November 1, 2003). Wolfowitz’s right hand man, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith, who was the direct pipeline via the indicted Lewis Libby to the vice President’s office and who also had strong ties to Israel’s leadership, was likewise replaced. Wolfowitz’s job went to Gordon England and Feith’s to Eric Edelman. Mr. England had a distinguished career in the U.S. Navy and in the private sector defense industry.

            Mr. Edelman, on the other hand, comes with some baggage. He had served under “Scooter” Libby in the vice President’s office and Senate approval of his nomination had initially been held up by Senator Levin of Michigan for the White House’s failure to release pertinent documents. Our President was not concerned about such trifles and made a “recess appointment.” He is legally entitled to use this device for emergency purposes but it has become a habit how to get around the Senate. Our ambassador to the UN is another example and most recently the appointment of Peter Flory as Assistant Secretary of Defense.

Mr. Flory likewise had not escaped the watchful eye of Sen. Levin and on April 7, 2006 the Senator’s office released a memo which expressed his displeasure about how the President treats Congress. As he wrote, “At the core this is an issue of the executive branch refusing to provide the Senate with documents that are relevant to the confirmation proceeding.” The problem was the disconnect between the official intelligence community i.e. CIA, NSA and State Department which did not find a substantial link between Saddam and al-Qaeda versus the version peddled by Douglas Feith et al. that was acted upon. At stake is the role played by Mr. Flory at that time. Levin wrote that after much prodding Secretary England released a considerable number of documents but “that there were 58 additional documents the Department would not release.” Carl Levin is not just another senator but he has been in his job since 1978 and is the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. If Congress is to play a role in our republic the executive branch would have to start treating it as the co-equal partner the Constitution intended it to be. Our president has apparently no intention of doing so and when forced will employ the Richard Nixon tactic of invoking “executive privilege.”

In the international arena there seems to be a dispute within the administration about what to do with Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The hawks want some type of military intervention, of whatever kind, while more reasonable people point to the Iraq problem as an example where unilateral action can lead to. This precipitated a letter from the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to our President. The “18-page letter” was immediately dismissed by the White House and our Foreign Secretary informed us that the letter covered “history, philosophy and religion.” She stated furthermore, "There's nothing in here that would suggest that we're on any different course than we were before we got the letter." The President chimed in with "It looks like it did not answer the main question that the world is asking, and that is, 'When will you get rid of your nuclear program?' "

The letter itself had not been published by the major print media at the time and the impression was given that it merely consisted of an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic rant as the cartoon published in The Salt Lake Tribune, and pasted below, shows.

 

 

Anyone who was not satisfied with this offhand government dismissal could find the letter, in its English translation, immediately on the Internet. The first surprise was that the usually quoted 18-19 pages shrunk to 9 and that the tone of the letter was respectful, addressing our President at one point as “Your Excellency.” It consisted mainly of a series of questions to Mr. Bush that relate to how one “can be a follower of Jesus Christ (Peace Be Upon Him)” and pursue a foreign policy that brings war and misery to people?

The letter was written from the point of view of a devout Muslim who believes that all of us, including Presidents, who profess adherence to one of the three monotheistic religions, will face a judgment not only by people on earth but by God. This judgment is to be feared rather than the fears that are spread by the US. Whatever other purpose Ahmadinejad had in mind the letter was intended to address our President’s conscience and to show him the disconnect between his words and his actions as it is perceived in the rest of the world. He concluded that “Liberalism and Western-style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. . . . Whether we like it or not, the world is gravitating towards faith in the Almighty and justice and the will of God will prevail over all things.”

Indeed there was nothing “new” in the letter it simply summarized the complaints the rest of the world has against our government and its hypocrisy. This is not what our ruling circles like to hear and that is why the letter had to be ridiculed. I don’t know if the Iranian President was aware that he had actually followed a precedent set by President Roosevelt on April 14, 1939 when he wrote to,

 

 “His Excellency Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of the German Reich, Berlin, Germany

 

You realize, I am sure, that throughout the world hundreds of millions of human beings are living today in constant fear of a new war or even a series of wars.

The existence of this fear – and the possibility of such a conflict – are definite concerns to the people of the United States for whom I speak, they must also be to the peoples of the other nations of the entire Western Hemisphere. All of them know that any major war even if it were to be confined to other continents, must bear heavily on them during its continuance and also for generations to come. . . .

On a previous occasion I have addressed you in behalf of the settlement of political, economic, and social problems by peaceful methods and without resort to arms.

But the tide of events seems to have reverted to the threat of arms. If such threats continue, it seems inevitable that much of the world must become involved in common ruin.”   

 

Since FDR also listed 31 countries, including “Iraq, the Arabias, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Iran,” Hitler was supposed to promise not to attack; his answer was the Reichstag speech of April 28 which was greeted with hilarious laughter as recounted in War and Mayhem.

The outcome of that rejection is known and one of the results of the ensuing war was the creation of the state of Israel which has become a major destabilizing factor for the entire world. WWII did not lead to the ruin of America as FDR had feared in his letter. On the contrary it led to the greatest prosperity and power the country had ever enjoyed but it is now in dire danger that a belated judgment for the violations of international law our government is committing and supporting, will befall us.

There is still time to give Ahmadinejad’s letter a chance for consideration and the article in the May 29, 2006 issue of The New Yorker by Hendrick Hertzberg entitled “The Letter,” is neither dismissive nor vituperative. There is room for talking rather than shooting and killing.

We may now ask the final question: What drives this quest for perpetual war by America? As mentioned earlier, there seem to be three converging streams. These are: the financial interests of defense contractors, those of the oil industry and the promoters of Israeli government policies. All three overlap in the same individuals while others have only one or two of the mentioned concerns on their minds. On the whole their number is, however, relatively small yet they were able to neutralize the State Department under General Powell. To what extent our new Foreign Secretary will be able to take a broader view on what is good for our country remains to be seen. Her reaction to the Iranian President’s letter to Mr. Bush was not particularly encouraging but there’s still hope although time is running out.

Ahmadinejad was right when he said that liberal democracy has failed so far but radical Islam is not the answer either. A synthesis needs to be struck under a system where individual rights are respected and unbridled greed, which currently rules our country, is curbed. Let us remember also that WWI, which is the cause of all our troubles, did not start on June 28, 1914 with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. It started from an unprecedented arms build-up during the first decade of the 20th century to insure “security.” In the Introduction of the English translation of Clausewitz’s On War, Col. F. N. Maude wrote, “Europe is an armed camp, and peace is maintained by the equilibrium of forces, and will continue just as long as this equilibrium exists, and no longer.” This was written in 1908. In 2006 America is initiating another arms race even into outer space and sad to say it’s not for security, as officially pronounced, but for money. Our major exports appear to be related to military equipment because everything else can be produced cheaper abroad. How else can we explain that the Czech Republic and Poland are supposed to become anti-missile sites by 2011 to “ward off possible attacks by Iran [The Salt Lake Tribune; May 22, 2006].   

This is the dilemma America faces: fear is spread around the world to create and sell weapons systems which are useless in addressing the real adversary, namely some benighted fanatics who try to goad us into just such actions. Today’s terrorists are not a monolithic group but different people with different motives. To lump all of them under a War on Terror is not only disingenuous but harmful and cannot lead to peace for the world. These groups need to be addressed individually, their potential grievances taken into account, and dealt with appropriately. But if we continue on the current path and invest in military spending, rather than redirecting our major heavy industries towards peaceful purposes, the inevitable outcome will be a repeat of 1914 and 1939 from which this country will not escape as unscathed as before.







July 1, 2006

SOLZHENITSYN, JEWS AND CO-RESPONSIBILITY

            The topic of this month’s essay was prompted by four books I have read during the past couple of months. The first one, Wolfgang Freisleben’s: Das Tor zur Hoelle (The Gate to Hell), had been sent to me by one of my High School friends, and deals with the harassments the Palestinian population are subjected to on a daily basis by the Israeli military occupation. This was news to the German speaking public because any negative, or even realistic, depiction of the conduct of Israelis is not condoned by the media in Austria and Germany and he wanted to hear my views on the topic. The American public is also largely ignorant of the “facts on the ground” because our public media are likewise rather silent in this regard. The only newspaper which does report honestly about the situation in occupied Palestine, without engaging in polemics, is The Christian Science Monitor which has a very limited circulation.

 

            As a member of “Utahns for a Just Peace in Palestine” I was familiar with most of what Freisleben had presented but the references he provided were helpful especially for the book by Baruch Kimmerling, Politicide. The Real Legacy of Ariel Sharon, which in turn acquainted me with Amos Oz’s, The Land of Israel. At the same time I became also aware of the most recent book by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Two Hundred Years Together, which deals with the fate of Jews first under the Czars and subsequently in the Soviet Union. Americans, unless they are devoted Internet surfers and interested in Jewish affairs, will not know about the existence of this book because it has not been translated into English. At present it is available only in its original Russian as well as French and German. The book comes in two parts, a fact of which I had been unaware when I ordered it from amazon.de. Although the price was substantial I received only Part II, The Jews in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, it is a very hefty tome of 538 pages which fully justifies the price. The book does not read easily because it is akin to a PhD thesis with extensive documentation.

 

            When I read the Introduction I immediately found myself in familiar territory because many of the thoughts I had expressed in The Moses Legacy, appeared here as independent verification from Russia. As Solzhenitsyn pointed out two man traits of Jewish conduct became evident after the February and October Revolution of 1917. They consisted of an overbearing attitude towards Gentile Russians and what can be called “cronyism.”  The revolutions opened the doors for Russian Jews not only to complete equality but also to positions of power. The Bolsheviks had eliminated, and in part “liquidated,” the previous ruling class which created a void in the bureaucracy that was needed to run the country. The only ones they could really trust to take their place were the previously oppressed Jews who were only too willing to step into the breach. They subsequently arranged for appointments from their own circles as co-workers which produced a marked ethnic imbalance in the political and cultural sphere. There was also a massive migration of Jews from the country into the major cities which led to the demise of the traditional shtetls. This move was aided, furthermore, by the initial prohibition on all private enterprise, including small stores which had provided for the livelihood of the shtetl dwellers. While there had been intermittent pogroms under the Czars the Shtetl communities (a la Fiddler on the Roof) could nevertheless continue in the traditional manner but this era was now at an end.

 

In the early stages there were two parallel movements in the Jewish community. One consisted of secularists who shed all vestiges of their religion and adopted Russian-sounding names while the other group emphasized their ethnicity and demanded the right to be regarded as a separate nation within the USSR. In contrast to Central and Western Europe where the Jewish population denied that they represented a nation and insisted only on the same rights as were  accorded to other religious groups, Russian Jews had always regarded themselves as a nation sui generis; albeit in exile until the arrival of the Messiah.

 

This split in desires led to two consequences after the fall of the Czar. Those Jews who had left the fold and had become members of the government including the dreaded Cheka were now hated because they had become agents of a terrorist oppressive regime, while at the same time the ethnically conscious population thought it best to separate itself from the goyim and establish its own state. Since Jews had always asserted that they were driven into the positions of merchants, and sometimes usurers, because ownership of land was prohibited to them the state now tried to create a Jewish agricultural community in the Crimea and in Eastern Russia. These enterprises were heavily subsidized by American Jewish philanthropists but ended in failure. Jews simply did not regard themselves as farmers and moved back into the cities. Gentile America was also of inestimable help in the consolidation of Soviet power. Although the government did not recognize the USSR there was a brisk trade which helped the industrialization of the country. Lenin’s quote when he was confronted with this double standard towards the hated capitalists has since become proverbial: “We’ll buy the rope with which we’ll hang them.” Solzhenitsyn pointed out that without the help of Jews the Soviet Union would have collapsed in infancy because of lack of government officials and finances.

 

            The attitude of American Jews towards the new Soviet Union was largely one of enthusiasm. A new leaf had been turned, the old order had been swept away; dawn had come to oppressed Jewry first in Russia and then the world. Lenin’s and subsequently Stalin’s terror, which was indiscriminate in regard to its victims, was ignored, because its main thrust was not against Jews but first the propertied classes and then “enemies of the State.”  As reported by S. P. Melgunow and quoted by Solzhenitsyn during the Red Terror: 

 

           

“’By means of a single verbal order of one man [Dsershinskijs] many thousands of          people were sentenced to immediate death.’ In case that there was a trial it was openly decreed (M.Lazis in the Bulletin “The Red Terror” of November 1, 1918 and in Pravda of December 25, 1918) ‘In the inquest don’t look for documents and proof that the accused has acted in word or deed against the Soviet power. The first question you have to ask is which class he belongs to, who is he descended from, what education has he received and what is his profession. These are the questions which have to decide the fate of the accused.’ . . .  In an article by the editor Lew Krajnij we can read: ‘The old principles of humanity and morality, which the bourgeoisie had invented, don’t exist for us any more and can’t exist.’ Immediately a certain Schwartz echoes: ‘The proclaimed Red Terror has to be realized in a proletarian manner. . . . Should it become necessary to exterminate [ausrotten] all the servants of Czarism and the Capital, in order to cement the proletarian dictatorship in the whole world, we shall not shrink from the task.’”

 

 

 

            This was Karl Marx’s specter of Communism that haunted Europe of which he had written in 1848 and had come to fruition in 1917. Revolutions were attempted in Berlin under Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, in Bavaria under Kurt Eisner but both failed. The one under Bela Kuhn in Hungary was temporarily more successful and the memory of that regime lent a considerable impetus to anti-Jewish sentiments. These came to the fore during WWII and facilitated the Auschwitz transports from that country. Since there was never any doubt in the rest of Europe, that Jews were not only overrepresented but also in leading positions in the communist hierarchies the image of Jewish-Bolshevism was born. In order to understand all the subsequent developments including Hitler’s rise and revenge we need to bear the above quotes in mind. But let me hasten to add that these are only a minuscule portion and Solzhenitsyn’s book is full of names and quotes that demonstrate what really went on. This information is currently withheld from the English speaking public.

 

            After Lenin’s death there was a power struggle for succession from which Stalin emerged victorious. Initially this brought no appreciable changes in Jewish fortunes but as time went on and he had consolidated his position, Jewish influence waned gradually. But Stalin was smarter than Hitler. He never attacked Jews as Jews but camouflaged his measures with more innocuous sounding terms such as: Theater Critics, Cosmopolitans and finally the doctors’ plot.  When in subsequent years Jews began to lose some of their privileged positions shouts of anti-Semitism began to be raised. Initially they found little resonance but the Israeli victory in the 1967 war produced a marked upswing of Jewish pride in all quarters of the world and not least in the Soviet Union. Demands for emigration to Israel were raised but since nobody was supposed to leave that country anyway, ordinary Russians felt discriminated. To paraphrase the sentiment: “Why should the Jids be allowed to leave and nobody else?” The reason why the Jews succeeded in their demands was the heightened self-awareness of American Jews after the1967 war who now began to identify with Israel in a way they had not previously. The Jackson-Vanik amendment was passed in Congress in 1974 and signed into law by President Ford in 1975. It denied normal trade relations to certain countries that restricted emigration rights but was enforced only in regard to the Soviet Union. Waivers were granted in the late 1970s to China and subsequently Vietnam (Wikipedia).

 

            1967 was a hinge of history for the Jewish people especially the younger generation. In Russia they agitated for emigration while in the U.S. they were in the forefront of the revolutionary movement of the late sixties. Israel’s victory had emboldened them and we can date many of the less desirable changes that have taken place in our country since then to this Pyrrhic victory of the Israelis. I call it Pyrrhic because although they clearly won a decisive battle they had failed to use the opportunity to subsequently make a genuine peace with the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world. This is where the history of the early Soviet Union found its repetition. Just as Jewish functionaries had lorded over the downtrodden Russian population, they now gloried in victory over the Arabs and the ill advised settlement movement began in the occupied territories. Ostensibly the settlement process was designed to provide military security and house new immigrants from Muslim countries and the Soviet Union. We can now leave Solzhenitsyn, temporarily, and turn our attention to Kimmerling’s Politicide.

 

            This important book which details Ariel Sharon’s role in the settlement process and the conditions the Palestinians have to live under was first published in 2003 and updated in 2006. It is available only in paperback and has not received much publicity. Without Freisleben’s book I would not have known about it. Readers’ comments are enlightening: Tragically out of date; Propaganda, anti-Semitic myth making – not history; Confused Identity; Nonsense; are the titles of some while others congratulate Professor Kimmerling for his efforts. As such these comments give an insight into the divergence of opinions on the topic. Kimmerling’s thesis, briefly stated, is:

 

 

                        “Israel under Ariel Sharon became an agent of destruction, not only for its surrounding environment, but for itself as well, because its domestic and foreign policy is largely oriented toward one major goal: the Politicide of the Palestinian people, By Politicide I mean a process that has, as its ultimate goal, the dissolution – or at the very least, a great weakening – of the Palestinian people’s existence as a legitimate social, political and economic entity. From this perspective, the result will be a double Politicide – that of the Palestinian entity and, in the long run, that of the Jewish entity as well because the two are so interdependent that destruction of one will necessary [sic] involve the destruction of the other.”

 

 

In other words the goal, not only of Sharon but also like-minded others, is to grind down the Palestinians by increasingly onerous restrictions on their lives to the point where they will capitulate to Jewish power and accept whatever conditions the Israelis impose upon them with supposed fatalistic Islamic submission. Whenever some Palestinians rebel, collective military punishment will be meted out and any emerging political leadership will be liquidated, to use the well known term, by “targeted assassinations.” “Peace” talks can continue, ostensibly promising an independent State of Palestine. But the fact that these so-called “negotiations” are in effect a dictate of the Versailles variety to which the Palestinians will grudgingly have to sign on to, is hidden especially from the American public which pays the bills. The plain fact is that the Palestinians have nothing to negotiate with because the Israelis, with our backing, hold all the cards. But Israel is not of one mind and Kimmerling expressed the same opinions I published in Whither Zionism?

 

 

“This [Israel’s] collective identity includes two basic orientations which both complement and conflict with one another, in fact, almost mutually exclusive: the one is a primordial or tribal identity, a mixture of religious and nationalistic orientations; the other is a civil identity based on concepts of universal human and civil rights. . . .

Participation in the primordial polity depends on ethnic and religious identity. The boundary of legitimate society encompasses all Jews (including those in the Diaspora), but excludes all non-Jews as equal members of the state. . . . The world is perceived as a binary order of “us” (the Jews) versus “them” (the rest of the world), the latter being a homogenous and hostile entity. An eternal and inevitable struggle for survival is a basic characteristic of the cosmic order. There are no substantial differences between all the historical enemies of the Jewish people, such as the Assyrians, Romans, Christians, Nazis and Arabs. All are inscribed in the Jewish collective memory as having genocidal intentions. While war should be postponed, it is nevertheless inevitable. In this view, Jewish survival is also threatened by an inherent urge toward self-destruction that leads Jews to abandon Jewish culture and embrace hedonistic gentile cultures like Hellenism, Christianity, the Enlightenment, and modernism, thus threatening the Jewish people with moral decay and cultural erosion.”

 

 

This is the side of the Jewish settler soul Americans are not supposed to see because it is obviously the same as the Nazi creed. Instead we are treated exclusively to the humanistic universal side of Judaism which in essence is an idealized America where everybody lives equally under the same laws pays the taxes and shares both benefits as well as burdens under a democratic government. But this is not the rule in the occupied territories which, as mentioned on other occasions, have already been given their biblical names of Judea and Samaria to further indicate that these are in fact legitimate provinces of Eretz Israel where Palestinians have to be tolerated for the time being but are not welcome. Instead of continuing with second-hand information by Kimmerling I shall now copy and paste some passages directly from the Internet.

“What's really happening in the West Bank? March 2006

  • Using the roads of the West Bank is an ever-worsening nightmare. Total separation has now been achieved between roads that Jews are allowed to use, and those for Palestinians, roads mostly unpaved, where driving is difficult, sometimes dangerous.
  • "Them" - the people who live under a cruel occupation, who are assassinated without trial, whose lands are seized under court sponsorship, whose houses are demolished and livelihood injured, and whose basic human rights we disdain - are now finding out that the little freedom of movement they still had, is rapidly disappearing. The Bantustans are already in place - and what hasn't yet happened awaits us in the very near future.
  • Contrary to the publications about fewer checkpoints, deep in the West Bank, far from the Green Line, the checkpoints are multiplying. There are now hundreds of permanent checkpoints, temporary checkpoints, and barriers blocking access to villages, not to block Palestinians from entering Israel, but to prevent them from going from one village to another in the West Bank, and from the villages to the large towns.
  • Every large town in the West Bank is completely surrounded by checkpoints. Only a few Palestinians still try to take the bypass roads to get from one town to another, but there's is no certainty that they'll reach their destination. Only a few lucky people receive transit permits and no one in fact knows why are granted this extra right.

The checkpoints prevent Palestinian residents of the West Bank from obtaining medical care and education, having a normal family and social life. They have destroyed the economy and any option for conducting a proper democratic political system. Some 'diet'….”

 

          This information does not come from an Arab or anti-Semitic website but from the little known “Machsom Watch” which I learned about only through Freisleben’s and Kimmerling’s books. Machsom (which stands for Checkpoint) Watch consists of a small group of middle-aged and elderly Israeli women who have taken on themselves the onerous task to uphold what they had been taught were Jewish values. They were ashamed of what they knew the military was doing in the occupied territories and decided to watch, in regular shifts, the soldiers’ behavior at some major checkpoints. They intervene, when possible, to lighten the difficulties of the Palestinians trying to cross and regularly publish their reports on www.machsomwatch.org.  These courageous ladies receive no gratitude from their fellow citizenry and are on the contrary in part reviled as being unpatriotic or even traitors. Yet they persevere; standing in the heat of the day with Palestinians who simply want to go to school, their job, a hospital, or visit with relatives. They do this out of a sense of human decency although their job gets increasingly more difficult as checkpoints begat, in true biblical fashion, new ones. The map of checkpoints from Machsom Watch is pasted below.

          There are two terms in the Machsom article that may require an explanation. Bantustan is derived from the apartheid policies of South Africa and refers to splitting Palestinian neighborhoods into isolated enclaves with the goal of preventing the establishment of a genuinely contiguous and viable independent Palestinian state. “Diet” was used by Israeli politicians to express their displeasure over the results of the Palestinian election which brought Hamas to power. The idea was that by stopping all financial transactions and for practical purposes starving the Palestinians they would topple Hamas and at long last act according to Israel’s wishes.

          Anyone who has a modest understanding of human behavior knows that this is a fantasy which has no chance of coming to pass. It will only make Palestinians, especially the younger generation, angrier and the Intifada is likely to grow. Peace and security are not likely to be achievable in this manner. Let us be honest with each other: is it conceivable that if Jews anywhere in the world were subjected to the conditions they currently impose on the Palestinians, that there would not be a huge world-wide outcry of anti-Semitism? Obviously not; immediate drastic sanctions against the offending country would be passed by the Security Council. In the present case the world is silent and America condones this type of behavior as inevitable in the “War on Terror” which has become an excuse by our government for a variety of human rights abuses.

In addition we have come to adopt Israeli methods of prisoner interrogations. I cannot recall that in any previous war prisoners had a sack put over their heads at the moment of capture, but this was the practice in the Middle East as part of the Arab-Israeli war. Likewise torture of prisoners was a routine in those parts of the world but does that mean that we have to do so likewise? Especially when it is known that information obtained by torture is unreliable. We, Americans as well as Israelis, are being judged not by our words but by our conduct. When the latter fails to meet expected international norms those of us who see the damage that is done thereby to our respective countries have to voice their dissent. This is the principle America was founded upon and we are duty bound to uphold.

While Freisleben and Kimmerling concentrated on the occupation and expropriation of Palestinians, Amos Oz provided us with an in-depth look at overall Israeli society and some feelings towards Diaspora Jews. Although the book was written in 1983 and updated in 1993 it is still essential reading not only for the general public, especially Jews and Zionist Christians, but also for our politicians who operate on false premises. The book consists of conversations the author had with a cross section of Israelis and Palestinians during the fall of 1983. Here are some small vignettes.

The first conversation was with a teacher at one of the ultra orthodox yeshivas in Jerusalem (the corollary of Islamic madrassas) where young Jews are educated in biblical studies but not in the natural sciences. “We don’t have that. Our sages have written, ‘Don’t bite off more than you can chew.’” “Do they teach general history?” “God forbid. Let the goyim study goyishkeit.” “Do they celebrate Israel Independence Day here?” “And what’s to celebrate? Nu, has the Messiah come?” In these schools young Israelis are, therefore, being educated as religious Jews rather than citizens of the state of Israel and they regard themselves as the “remnant” that will welcome the Messiah. But one doesn’t have to go to Jerusalem to see them, a visit to Brooklyn’s Lubavitcher community would be sufficient.

          The next interview took place at Bet Shemesh, one of the settlements in the West Bank. The speakers were Sephardic Jews who had been brought into the country by the previous Labor governments. They were initially treated strictly as a needed source for manual labor and as second class citizens. They subsequently rebelled and formed the block that put Begin in charge. Here are some opinions of how they felt about the Labor government.  “They gave us the dirty work; they gave us education, and they took away our self-respect. What did they bring my parents to Israel for? … You [Oz is regarded as a representative of Labor] didn’t have Arabs then, so you needed our parents to do your cleaning and be your servants and laborers. And policemen too. You brought our parents to be your Arabs.”

          The next chapter represents the views of Ashkenazi settlers at Tekoa, south of Bethlehem. It is mainly a “bedroom community” with the breadwinners working in Jerusalem which is a half hour commute. Menachem whose family had come from Aden and his wife from America saw the solution of Israel’s problems in massive immigration. “How is this supposed to come about?” “Something like the Six-Day War, another victory will inspire the Jews and bring people together. That will give them pride. Because of the Six-Day War . . . I (the wife is speaking) immigrated.” “You hope for another war?” “It doesn’t have to be a war. It could be some great catastrophe for the Jews in the Diaspora. So that the affluence would end. Or persecutions. Then they’ll come here. But victory would be much better.”  . . .  “And what should we do, Harriet, if the Arabs offer us a compromise and a peace treaty now?” “We should tell them flat out: Sorry too late! [This last was in English.] We should even start a war so they don’t persuade the sissies among us” Menachem was more conciliatory, having lived among Arabs he didn’t fear them to the extent his wife did and could see both parties living together.   

          A discussion with two young Arabs in West Bank Ramallah followed. Oz is told “Write that the situation is bad. Best of all write for peace . . . peace that will be fair. But I think that maybe there’s going to be another war. . . . Another hundred wars. . . . In the end maybe they’ll get tired. Maybe they’ll get some sense.” Hassan then made a distinction between Jews and Israelis. “Our elders would say, What is a Jew? Somebody pitiful, put upon, praying and crying, but with a lot of sense. More than the Russian has. More than the Englishman. Wise, he’s got a heart in his heart. Wouldn’t kill a fly. The Jews were much smarter than the Arabs. But the Israelis – when they got power they lost their sense.” Oz then asked what would happen if Arafat were to get half of Palestine wouldn’t he want more after that? “If he makes demands, the war will start again. They’ll die for nothing. And he also knows that America holds Israel like her baby. That’s the situation between Jews and Arabs here. . . .  Don’t write ‘the Arabs.’ Write ‘the Palestinians;’ that’s more correct. And don’t write: ‘They are all murderers. Write from your common sense. Write from the heart Tell the Israelis power won’t help them Power is like money – today it’s mine, tomorrow it’s yours, the day after it’s his. They have to end the war with sense, not with power. Justly. Write for the peace!”

I shall now give an older Arab man who had also been sitting at the table, but didn’t talk until the end the last word for the Palestinian side: 

 

“In good Hebrew and a voice tinged with sadness, he says ‘You took everything from us. How can you sleep at night? Don’t you fear God? You took everything! But we were wrong too. Guilty. You know, it used to be that our people would kill Jews for nothing. For no reason! Now we’ve got our punishment. You’ve been punished by God too. Write in the Israeli newspaper: What was is over. Finished. Everyone wants to live on the land. All the Jews and Arabs want to live. Write that the land doesn’t belong to the Jews or to the Arabs. The land is God’s. Whoever finds favor in His eyes will receive His land. God alone decides. And whoever evil will pay the price: God will pass over him and forget him. And write in the Israeli newspaper that Abu-Azmi sends his regards to Mr. Cohen – that’s a good man.”

 

          Amos Oz did, and he did so without “fear or favor.” There is, of course, much more in the book which should be read in it entirety. American Jews could profit also from learning how they are viewed by certain segments of Israeli society. Oz presents the voices of passion and reason but, as events are showing, passion and lust for power are again winning over reason.

This brings me back to Solzhenitsyn and his point that the Jews did not make the Russian revolutions but they eagerly participated and supported it in word and deed. As such they became co-responsible with the Russians for the crimes of that regime. Although some individual Jews have acknowledged this responsibility, the overwhelming majority has not and prefers to write about the crimes of the Nazis rather than also of those that were committed by members of their people during the years of the Red Terror. But terror is upon us again and we now must admit that not only Israelis and Arabs are co-responsible for the current unfolding tragedy in the Middle East but also American Jews by their unstinting support for the bellicose stance of the Israeli government. In addition so are we, the rest of the citizens of this country of ours, for supporting the slaughter, by an imposed code of silence.

The old Arab, Amos Oz had met, asked, “Have you no fear of God?” The answer he receives from those in power will either be “What God?” or “He doesn’t exist anyway!” Whoever or whatever God is, the concept had a major civilizing effect because it teaches shame, guilt, and mercy instead of pride and lust for power. Has it been abused? No doubt, but that does not invalidate it. As I write these lines events are out of control again in Gaza. Another war may be on the horizon, and the yearning for peace is not yet strong enough on either side. The liberation of one Jewish soldier who was kidnapped in order to start negotiations for the release of imprisoned Palestinians was the excuse to escalate Kimmerling’s Politicide. It may even lead to a wider war with Syria. That bombing the Palestinian infrastructure in Gaza will not bring the Israelis peace or security should be obvious to anyone. There are more than a million people crowded into this small strip of land. Apart from women and children there is also a huge reservoir of adolescents and young adult males who are largely unemployed. They will be enraged and become “freedom fighters” in their words or “terrorists” in ours. This is not the road to peace but to hell!

The Bush administration now needs to show that it can bring some modicum of order into this evolving chaos and if it fails to do so shame on them and shame on us who let it happen.







August 1, 2006

SOWING THE WIND

            The still unfolding tragedy in the Middle East was utterly predictable ever since the start of the Bush II administration, as has been repeatedly noted in these pages. In the beginning of 2001 there was still a chance for America to become an honest broker to mediate the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. This hope prompted me to write: Whither Zionism? and send it to the Bush cabinet as well as all the relevant members of the House and Senate. This effort was, of course, useless because the President, the Vice-President and the powers behind the throne did not have the slightest interest in urging Israel to make meaningful concessions towards the Palestinians legitimate grievances. On the contrary, Arafat and his people continued to be painted as terrorists with whom one does not negotiate but who have to be brought to heel by military force.

            This seeming lack of understanding that the key to peace in the Middle East is the equitable solution of the Arab - Israeli conflict, which is so obvious to most everybody else, is certainly puzzling. Our military commanders surely knew it. General Tommy Franks reported that when he took over CENTCOM his predecessor, General Zinni, told him that there would not be any peace in the area of his command until this vexing problem was solved. But the Bush administration had a different view which came fully to the fore after 9/11. Just as the current crisis was not caused by the abduction of an Israeli soldier in the Gaza area by Hamas militants and the subsequent kidnapping of two others by Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border, 9/11 was not the cause for America’s aggressive stance in the Middle East but only the precipitant.

            For the causes of Bush’s foreign policy we have to go all the way back to the Nixon era which first brought together the players who are now ruling our lives. This part of history has recently been discussed in considerable detail by James Mann in his book: The Rise of the Vulcans. The History of Bush’s War Cabinet. “Vulcans” was the nickname a group of six people applied to themselves whose task it was to teach the presidential candidate, George W, the rudiments of foreign affairs, which had never been an area of interest to him. These were in alphabetic order: Richard Armitage, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. Condi Rice, who served as foreign policy coordinator for the Bush campaign, had been raised in Birmingham Alabama where, as Mann wrote, “a mammoth fifty-six foot statue of Vulcan on a hill overlooking downtown paid homage to the city’s steel industry. This image of the Roman god of fire and metallurgy appropriately expressed the ideas of the group which aimed at making America supreme over the rest of the world and to create a military machine of such power that would render any arms race by other nations futile.”

            Their ideas came from Leo Strauss one of many German Jewish refugees who had found shelter in America’s academia. Together with the previously discussed Albert Wohlstetter (Albert Wohlstetter’s Disciples, December 1, 2005) he became the mentor, among others, of Paul Wolfowitz who dominated the intellectual scene of that little group of Vulcans. Strauss’s idea, which resulted from Hitler’s persecution of Jews, was quite simple: There is the biblical good and evil without any middle ground. Let me now quote some key sentences from Mann’s book which explain how current American foreign policy came into being

 

           

            “Strauss spoke of the need for an elite group of advisers, as in Plato’s Republic, who could impress upon a political leader and upon the masses the need for virtue and for strong moral judgments about good and evil.

            For America’s relation with the world, Strauss’s ideals carried a number of implications. First, his ideas stressed the importance of a leader who was especially strong in his actions, firm in his beliefs and willing to go against the grain to combat ‘tyranny’ (Strauss frequently used the word tyranny rather than the more modern word dictatorship).  Strauss and his followers revered Winston Churchill; during the Reagan administration and for years afterward, Straussians in Washington convened on Churchill’s birthday to sip brandy and smoke cigars [reference provided]. What attracted them to Churchill was his willingness to stand up to Hitler. In a eulogy of Churchill, Strauss wrote, ‘The tyrant stood at the pinnacle of his power. The contrast between the indomitable and magnanimous statesman and the insane tyrant – this spectacle in its clear simplicity was one of the greatest lessons which man can learn, at any time [reference provided].’”

 

            That the situation was far more complex than Strauss’ and his followers’ simplicity would have it was already discussed in these pages on July 1, 2003 (Churchill and Hitler). But the above quoted paragraph also explains America’s philosophical moralist in residence, Bill Bennett, whose book “Moral Clarity” I have also discussed previously in relation to the justification for the “War on Terrorism (July 1, 2002). Later in life Strauss turned his animosity towards the Soviet Union and thus became the father of Reagan’s much quoted “Evil Empire.”

As mentioned above, some of the people who now command the news got their first government jobs during the Nixon presidency. It was he who appointed Donald Rumsfeld as Head of the Office of Economic Opportunity. But before Rumsfeld took the position, which he regarded as rather unimportant, he had insisted that he be officially named “as an assistant to the president with cabinet-level status and an office in the White House.” As Mann explained further, “One of Rumsfeld’s first actions in the Nixon administration was a seemingly minor personnel decision the impact of which reverberated for decades. Rumsfeld was looking for a right-hand man to help run his office. He found and hired a twenty-eight-year-old Capitol Hill staff aide and graduate student named Richard Cheney.” A firm friendship developed and they have functioned as a team ever since with alternating roles between who is boss at a given time.

Another early player was Paul Wolfowitz who also got his first job in government during the Nixon administration as a member of the U.S. Control and Disarmament Agency. Senator “Scoop” Jackson had become disenchanted with Kissinger’s policy of détente and felt that we had given away too much and received too little in return. He demanded of the embattled Nixon, who was already fighting the losing Watergate battle, to replace the Chief of that agency. Fred Iklé, a Wohlstetter disciple, was appointed and he in turn brought in brand new staff members with Wolfowitz, who had been recommended by Wohlstetter, as his most trusted advisor. As such, Wolfowitz wrote key position papers aided by his friend Richard Perle, another one of Wohlstetter’s protégés, who was then a Senate staff member and has since remained a highly influential person. The Iraq invasion can clearly be laid at the doorstep of these two friends. The battle between the Kissinger point of view, which could basically be regarded as a Realpolitik of “live and let live,” and the Strauss-Wohlstetter group of moral superiority and U.S. supremacy, began in those days and has influenced America’s foreign policy ever since.

Another event occurred in 1976 which can be regarded as a “preview of coming attractions.” In those days the question was whether or not the CIA and other intelligence agencies were underestimating the threat the Soviet Union posed to America. At stake was the defense budget and as such money! George Bush senior was then in charge of the CIA and in order to counter the criticism that his agency was somehow less than vigilant he appointed an outside commission to study the question. The chairman was Richard Pipes, another Jewish refugee from Hitler’s ire, who was working on the Disarmament Commission. His son, Daniel Pipes, is a well known Neoconservative author who specializes in Middle East affairs. Wolfowitz earned his spurs by contributing heavily to the final Commission report. It should come as no surprise that this team B, as it was called, concluded that the Soviet Union was a dire threat. Because of its implications for today’s conflict let me quote Mann again.

 

            “The team concluded that it was possible to interpret the available intelligence data as showing that the Soviet Union was striving for military superiority over the United States and that it viewed détente as a means of achieving this goal. All the evidence points to an undeviating Soviet commitment to what is euphemistically called the ’worldwide triumph of socialism’ but in fact connotes global Soviet hegemony, the report said. It criticized the CIA for relying too much on satellites and other technology and for failing to give enough weight to what Soviet leaders were saying.”

 

Team B and its report was the forerunner of the private intelligence channel which Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith were running at the Pentagon to provide the rationale for the Iraq invasion. This information was fed via “Scooter” Libby to Cheney and from there to Rice and the president. That even the British were concerned about how U.S. intelligence reports were manipulated to fit policy is documented by memoranda to Prime Minister Tony Blair. Some of them were recently published by Mark Danner in: The Secret Way to War. The scenario of Iran’s imminent threat to our well-being also follows this pattern.

Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, who had never personally seen war, represented the Straussian good and evil point of view, while Armitage and Powell had laid their lives on the line in Vietnam. They knew the realities and brutalities of military action and were deeply hurt by America’s defeat. Of the two, who had also become close friends over the years, Armitage showed, to my mind, more interesting personality characteristics. While Powell had chosen to remain in the military because it offered bright, young, poor African-Americans the opportunity for advancement in a society that was just beginning its march to equal civil rights for all, Armitage was a soldier’s soldier and sailor.

While serving on a Navy destroyer off the coast of Vietnam he heard the guns of the Tet offensive in January of 1968 and wondered what he was doing on his ship when there was a war to be fought. He volunteered for duty in what was then called “the brown water navy,” of which we became more aware recently during the Kerry campaign. They patrolled the muddy rivers and backwaters of South Vietnam in their “swift boats” thereby being exposed to danger on a daily basis. But Armitage did more than Kerry; he learned the language of the people and fell in love with the country. While in Vietnam he may also have been associated with the CIA’s Phoenix program which carried out covert operations against the Viet Cong, which is a polite way of describing what amounted to assassination squads. Armitage insisted that he never participated in the actual killings but only served in an advisory capacity. Be that as it may what intrigued me personally, as a sailor, was his conduct after the fall of Saigon. By April of 1975 Armitage was back in civilian life when he received a call from a friend and former superior asking him to go back to Vietnam and help with the evacuation and/or destruction of U.S. military equipment before it fell into the hands of the victorious North Vietnamese. As it turned out the North Vietnamese were faster in their advance than had been anticipated and the rescue of people rather than equipment became the overriding priority. Let me now quote again from Mann for what followed

 

            “Near Con Son, the South Vietnamese navy had assembled about ninety ships. They were occupied by at least twenty thousand South Vietnamese fleeing their country, most of them naval personnel and their families, including Vice Admiral Cang. The ships had little food or water and some of them were barely seaworthy. Armitage was the U.S. Navy’s sole representative to the Vietnamese in the flotilla.

Armitage decided to try to sail the ships and the refugees to the Philippines, a distance of about a thousand miles. Most of the ships weren’t seaworthy enough to make the voyage. At least sixty of the vessels were scuttled, in some cases with the help of gun fire. The 20,000 Vietnamese were packed into thirty-two boats; three boats originally used by the U.S. Coast Guard, each of which usually carried a crew of170, were loaded with 1,500 Vietnamese apiece. Armitage sent urgent cables to the Defense Department, which succeeded in getting food and water brought to the boats. From May 2 to May7 Armitage’s Vietnamese convoy, protected by three American ships, sailed to Subic Bay in the Philippines. Amid the overcrowding, fights and even gunfire broke out on board.”

 

Armitage succeeded to get his people to the Philippines but once there Ferdinand Marcos, the President, and his government tried to prevent the little convoy’s entry into their territorial waters because they were flying the South Vietnamese flag. Armitage solved the situation by having them hoist the Stars and Stripes and at least for this group of people including Armitage the Vietnam War was finally over.

As a result of the Vietnam defeat, which both Armitage and Powell deeply resented, they vowed: never again. First: choose carefully whether or not you want to go to war but when you have you have decided in favor of war go with such force that will ensure an overwhelming victory. Although Armitage and Powell shared the goals of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, namely to make America invulnerable against an enemy attack and, therefore, building up her military strength, they did not share the gung ho messianic good and evil approach. This difference reflected itself decades later when Powell was Secretary of State and Armitage his executive officer, versus the stance taken by Cheney and the Pentagon in the run-up to the Iraq war. The split in the opinions about the wisdom of invading Iraq between these two sets of people stemmed from the difference between soldiers who had participated in action while the others simply decided to send people to death in the illusion of creating a better world.

One may now ask where is the sixth Vulcan, Condi Rice, who held these diverse people together? As an African-American who had been brought up with conservative views she clearly had an affinity not only with Powell but also other members of the previous Bush administration. Because of her expertise in Soviet affairs she became the protégé of Brent Scowcroft, GHW Bush’s National Security Advisor, who provided her in 1989 with her first stint in the White House during the dramatic transition from Gorbachev to Yeltsin. Just as Scowcroft and Bush senior, she was closer to a Realpolitik type outlook than that of the messianic Neoconservatives. As such she was clearly caught in the middle between the Wolfowitz and Powell outlook on what American foreign policy should be. It was, and still is, a battle between the Leo Straus ideas and those of Henry Kissinger who had drawn different lessons from their lives in Germany.

And where is our President in all of this? It is obvious that he had no specific ideas about the world that existed beyond the confines of the State of Texas and, sad to say, could as such be manipulated into the highest office of the land by astute politicians like Karl Rove. Furthermore, his conversion from alcohol to “born again Christian” could be exploited by the Straussian good and evil crowd. We are now seeing the “leader of the free world” as an image that had been created by Strauss. What fascinates me personally about the Strauss picture of the strong resolute leader who is always right and has been adopted by Rove to portray his candidate (The Great Liberator. May 1, 2004), did not stem from Churchill whom the Brits never regarded as such. It came from the pen of Joseph Goebbels who had created the Fuehrer image for which so much blood had to be shed. Unfortunately for our country and the world George Bush jr. appears to have been promoted beyond his level of competence and we can only hope and pray that he will not engage in further “preemptive” adventures of the Iraq type.

We have now come full circle how the past explains the present and are faced with the agonizing question what do we do now? The battle for the mind of our administration is still going on. One would think that the Straussian Neocons would have learned their lesson. Afghanistan is still in shambles and we, together with NATO, are experiencing a resurgence of the Taliban. Iraq is sinking daily further into anarchy and instead of being able to withdraw troops more are required. The goal of bringing democracy to the Middle East on the American model has failed for all who have eyes to see and ears to hear. When free democratic elections were carried out in the Palestinian territories the people voted “the rascals out.” Fatah, under Arafat and later Abbas, had been unable to extract meaningful concessions from Israel and was regarded as corrupt. The people, therefore, voted for “change” and this brought Hamas to power. Although this organization is portrayed simply as a bunch of terrorists, many of the Palestinians didn’t see them as such. They saw an organization which was relatively uncorrupted, and provided welfare services as well as the will to fight for an independent State of Palestine.

This was anathema to the Jerusalem-Washington axis. The freely elected Palestinian government had to be ostracized and the people starved into submission. “Terrorist” is the key word which currently excuses all actions against nations and organizations. But when the terror bombs come from planes instead of the ground they are simply a just retribution against evil. Israel and her supporters have learned nothing from the disasters they have inflicted via the Bush administration. To the contrary they seem to see the current human catastrophe in Lebanon as a further stepping stone to settle scores with Damascus and Tehran and are apparently oblivious to the fact that they are further radicalizing the Muslim world.

All the rest of the world agrees that an immediate cease-fire is required in Lebanon. But our administration, which represents the only country that can make it stick, first procrastinated, and then made impossible demands, i.e. Hezbollah has to be disarmed first. I am saying impossible because there was obviously no one who could make them do so. In addition the administration sent “on an expedited basis” bunker busting bombs to Israel. As such we are guilty of promoting the slaughter of innocents on both sides of the border rather than making every effort to stop it in its tracks. The deal of sending bunker buster bombs to Israel was approved by Congress last year and the unstated assumption was that the Israelis would use them against Iran’s budding nuclear program. This way, our politicians thought, we could wash our hands from the carnage and if things went sour one could always blame the Israelis for not having exercised proper caution. But on July 22 of this year the New York Times reported that “ The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of  precision-guided bombs to Israel which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.” Although this bit of information has not been broadcast widely in the U.S. it did make headlines around the world because it reemphasizes not only America’s tolerance of the slaughter in Lebanon but our active complicity in its execution. One has to read British sources to find out that these bunker busters, officially known as GBU-28, apparently contain “degraded” uranium, and that some Brits were not all that happy about their being shipped via Scotland.

Even the UK’s Tony Blair is privately perturbed about U.S. policy and made a special visit to his friend George but had to leave empty-handed. At their joint press conference the proverbial “stiff upper lip” prevailed and they showed “shoulder to shoulder” solidarity. How long the British public and Parliament will endorse this stance is a good question. Condi Rice made another trip to Israel over the past weekend. But since she was not authorized to negotiate an immediate cease-fire proposal the Lebanese Prime Minister asked her not to come to Beirut when the extent of the Qana tragedy became public knowledge

For Ms. Rice this is now the hour of truth. Does she have an independent opinion about how the situation can be remedied immediately or does she choose to remain simply a mouthpiece of the administration and keep providing cover for Israel? This is not a trivial question because as the Drudge Report informed us last week there is a “Dump Condi” campaign going on in Washington. The Neocons under the leadership of Bill Kristol and Richard Perle feel that our Foreign Secretary does not understand the Middle East, does not rely enough on the (Jewish) Middle East experts but has been talking to the likes of Senators Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel who fully appreciate the seriousness of the situation and want to avoid a wider conflagration. We, thus, see a replay of the Strauss-Kissinger battle with Condi supposedly beginning to lean toward the Realpolitk side which is abhorred by the Straussians who want a wider war with Syria and probably Iran as well. 

This leaves us with the behind the scenes president of the U.S. namely Mr. Cheney and where he will put his not inconsiderable weight. From Mann’s book he comes across not as a fervent ideologue but more as a Mr. Fixer who gets things done. My personal opinion is that he is fully in favor of at least a protracted Lebanese war because he is a business man and there is money to be made. Every missile and artillery shell will have to be replaced and that brings money. When oil becomes scarce, this is all to the good, because profits will be soaring. Exxon Mobile has just reported a second quarter profit of more than $10 billion and the other companies are not far behind. Let’s face it: war is bad for people but good for the folks who are in charge and this is why wars are instigated and allowed to continue.

While Lebanon is being hammered to bits, its infrastructure destroyed, and its people indiscriminately maimed and killed humanitarian aid is being requested from all over the world. The U.S. has pledged $30 million but one may ask: for what? First of all it is a drop in the bucket and secondly as long as we support the continuing war the money may not even reach the needy. If we had a responsible Congress it would demand an immediate cease-fire, enforced by the statement that we shall no longer supply arms and money to the conflict. In addition one could tax the oil companies as well as other defense contractors for windfall profits. These should then be used for the reconstruction of the war ravaged countries. But the unfortunate fact is that our Congress is not up to this task and the American “man in the street” doesn’t care as yet.

We have to realize that all wars and this one in particular, are fought on two fronts. One is on the ground where people’s lives are destroyed and the other is propaganda to keep people motivated. The U.S. media have until recently portrayed a largely one-sided picture, which highlighted the suffering of Israelis who have been attacked again for no reason and who have to fight for their very lives. The rest of the world gets a broader view, which we can glimpse from the Internet where information may not always be reliable. This refers now specifically to the precipitant of the current Lebanese human catastrophe.

We have been, and continue to be, told that Israel had to retaliate with Operation “Just Reward,” which was later renamed to “Operation Change of Direction.” The sum and substance which is drilled steadily into the American psyche is that Hezbollah, a terrorist organization, has invaded Israeli territory and Israel has not only the moral right but also the duty to defend itself. We are not told what the other side says because one does not talk or even listen to terrorists. Let me now say at the outset that I do not know the true sequence of events that occurred during the morning of July 12 because there are conflicting reports. Probably the earliest and, therefore, possibly most authoritative comes from an Agence France Press (AFP) report of July 12.under the headline “Hezbollah affirms to have captured two Israeli soldiers.” The text cites an announcement by Al-Manar (TV station in Beirut with ties to Hezbollah) that “According to the Lebanese police force, the two Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanese territory, in the area of Aïta Al-Chaab [the UNIFIL map spells it Ayita ash Shab], near the border with Israel, where an Israeli unit had penetrated in the middle of the morning.” The Bahrain News Agency of 7-12-06 stated in addition, “Israeli aircraft were active in the air over southern Lebanon, with jets bombing roads leading to the market town of Nabatiyeh, 60 kilometers south of Beirut.”

If true, this suggests that Israel had sent a commando group into Lebanon to force a showdown with Hezbollah. Hezbollah responded as expected and captured two of the Israelis in the hope of achieving an exchange with Lebanese prisoners held by Israel. This was not the case but taken as a pretext to attempt the destruction of the Hezbollah organization. The initial attempt to reach the Litani River and clear out Hezbollah positions to the south of it has so far failed. The indiscriminate bombing of largely civilian targets has led to world-wide protests against Israel and in part against America because we are seen as aiding and abetting that country. As of July 31, Hezbollah has more sympathizers than ever before, a fact which ought to give our war planners pause to think.

What would need to be done? A Security Council Resolution is urgently needed which demands an immediate cease-fire followed by the dispatch of a multinational military unit, which makes sure that Hezbollah’s troops vacate the area up to the Litani river. Israel is likely to oppose the immediate cease-fire demand but it is America’s duty to stop the carnage and an American veto would be catastrophic. To expect any nation to send its troops into an area where there is still active fighting is unrealistic and the statement by Condi Rice that “a lasting settlement can be achieved this week,” sounds more like propaganda than realism. For a lasting settlement of the Lebanese problem Israel would have to give up its hope of rendering the military wing of Hezbollah ineffective and in addition vacate the disputed Sheba Farms area of which we hear nothing in the U.S. It belongs to Lebanon but is still held by Israel even after its withdrawal from the country in 2000. Furthermore, “a sustainable peace,” as President Bush called for again yesterday, would have to include a just settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But this cannot be achieved by an administration which sees only terrorists rather than people with grievances. An additional task for the UN would be the appointment of a fact finding commission to establish the truth about the sequence of events on July 12.

If Condi Rice were to be the person of character, she has been portrayed as, she would have to realize in her heart of hearts that the current Bush policy is not only ineffective but downright dangerous. We are told that she is a close friend of the president. Under those circumstances she needs to warn him that he is leading the country and the world into even greater difficulties. If he were to ignore her advice she should resign and go public with the truth about American foreign policy as she has personally seen it evolve. I have suggested earlier that Colin Powell should have done so in regard to the Iraq war pretenses (Ignorant Arrogance. October 1, 2003), but he was at heart a military man and as such used to taking orders. Ms. Rice is under no such obligation and if she fails in her task, either through lack of character strength or misguided loyalty, she will become responsible for further tragedies that are clearly on the horizon.

            Finally the American people must be told that the “good and evil” propaganda is indeed propaganda and not a realistic foreign policy. It is harmful because it prevents us from talking with our adversaries and unless we talk with them an agreement cannot be reached. Unconditional surrender, as in America’s Civil War or WWII, is not an applicable policy because a guerilla force, motivated by an ideal, cannot be defeated with high-tech weaponry. This has been repeatedly pointed out and is demonstrated daily in the streets of Iraq. Israel now believes that it can achieve a victory with a massive ground offensive. But whatever success it may gain will be temporary and at the cost of further destruction especially in south Lebanon. Hezbollah will simply underground and redeploy some time later. At the moment of writing these lines there is danger of a wider war and President Assad of Syria has asked his army to raise its alert level because Israel’s full intentions are at present unknown. Right now more wind is sown and we should not be surprised if we will reap a hurricane, which will leave no one unscathed.







September 1, 2006

WHY U.S. MIDDLE EAST
POLICY FAILED

            It has by now become apparent, even to the mainstream media, that the Bush administration’s Middle East policy is a resounding failure. This installment will explore the reasons and what might be done about it.

As usual there is not a single cause but a confluence of several events that led to the currently undesirable state of affairs. Nevertheless, there is one underlying principle that has been ignored, and continues to be ignored. This is, as I have pointed out on previous occasions, the wisdom of Buddha’s “Eightfold Noble Path.” The sequence starts with “Right View” and from it everything else flows. The Bush administration has seen fit to divide the states of our world into good and evil ones rather than recognizing that states, and groups within states, act in what they regard as their best interest. For some, these interests conflict with ours and some of them use terror as a means to attract our attention to their problems. Nevertheless, the Bush administration lumped all of them under the name of terrorists. A “Global War on Terrorism” is currently being pursued with inappropriate means and since one cannot defeat the enemy militarily, and does not negotiate with terrorists, because it will embolden them, a dead end has been reached. This policy was based on ignorance of Middle East facts and disregarded the opinions of the majority of the people who live there. It limited itself only to the concerns of the ruling party in the State of Israel and as such did not represent “Right View.” For a more accurate appraisal of what is happening in the Middle East, and why, we have to consider not only the interests of all the countries in the region separately but we should have in addition at least a rudimentary grasp of the religious and social differences between Shi’is and Sunnis. To ignore these is just as dangerous as to regard all Muslims as potential terrorists.

Several decades ago I had bought three books, which, can be of considerable help in understanding the Middle East situation. One is a series of essays edited by Juan R. I. Cole and Nikki R. Keddie published in 1986 under the title: “Shi’ism and Social Protest.” The other two were by Raphael Patai called: “The Arab Mind;” and “The Jewish Mind,” published in 1973 and 1977 respectively. These latter two books highlight some of the differences in thought processes and conduct between these two ethnic groups who claim to have descended from a common father, Abraham, with a common patrimony to the land of their ancestors. But Jews trace their lineage to Isaac as Abraham’s legitimate son from Sarah, and Arabs to Ishmael who, although the first-born, is regarded as illegitimate. Since Sarah had, as the Bible tells us, been barren until ripe old age Abraham and Sarah had agreed that one of Sarah’s handmaidens, the Egyptian born Hagar, would be recruited to provide the needed heir. Otherwise the property would have gone to one of Abraham’s servants as was the law of the times. When Sarah subsequently did become pregnant and produced Isaac the seeds of conflict, which reach to our day, were laid because Sarah claimed all of her husband’s property for her son and the handmaid plus son had to be expelled. With a legend of this type, which is regarded as truth by the descendents of Isaac as well as Ishmael, the conflict between Judaism and Islam was fore-ordained.

            Contrary to some writers’ opinions the Koran does not condemn Jews and Christians as infidels who have to be eradicated but expresses respect for the “People of the Book” provided that the members of these groups adhere to the teachings laid down by Moses and Jesus respectively. Muslims do not fear these religions per se because the Koran makes it abundantly clear that Islam is based on the two previous ones. What they do fear is the relative absence of religious awareness in the daily lives of Jews and Christians. Patai has pointed out that a “separation of Church and State” as practiced in the Western world by Jews as well as Christians is anathema for a devout Muslim because his entire life is supposed to be centered on submission to the “Will of God” as expressed in Holy Scripture. This does not preclude, as our administration does not seem to understand, that the ruling circles of the “Umma” (the Islamic community) can be democratically elected and as such their nations can qualify as democracies. That the Constitutions of these various Islamic countries may differ from what Montesquieu and Jefferson had in mind should come as no surprise because they are based on different historic backgrounds. It should also not be surprising that members of Muslim countries may react adversely when the latter type of democracy is foisted upon them by military means, or when a “regime change” is engineered by foreign powers.

As Patai said in regard to the Arab mind, “The crucial difference is not doctrinal but functional, what Muslims fear from Westernization is not that it will cause their co-religionist to abandon Islam in favor of Christianity, but that it will bring about a reduction of the function of Islam to the modest level on which Christianity plays its role in the Western world.” In other words what they fear is being overwhelmed by secularism. Having a secular state, Israel, in their midst which nevertheless traces its legitimacy to a religious promise is intolerable to some. Others might be willing to make a compromise if the Israelis were to live up to at least the Ten Commandments. When they violate especially the “Thou shalt not covet Thy neighbors house” and willfully expropriate Palestinian property the locals cannot be faulted when they rise up in resistance. The Israeli answer, that “neighbor” referred only to the sons of Jacob and that the spoils of war have always been legitimate, is no longer valid because the United Nations Charter has outlawed territorial acquisitions by means of war. Since the use of terror has always been, apart from Gandhi, the main method to make one’s grievances public it is inappropriate for the Bush administration to lump national struggles for self-determination together with some fringe groups of radicals which, inspired by precedents, pursue their own goals in an independent manner.

There are additional aspects in Patai’s book regarding Arabs that should be taken into account. He pointed out that the Muslim faith was grafted onto an existing Bedouin culture and the characteristics of the latter still provide the bedrock especially for the rural population. These consist of, “kinship, loyalty, bravery, manliness, aversion to physical work, and a great emphasis on honor, ‘face,’ and self respect.” The Muslim faith added the central factor of accountability. Man does not only live for himself and his immediate community but is responsible for his conduct to God Who sees all, judges every action, and Who will mete out reward or punishment at time of death. When one considers these aspects it becomes apparent that the West’s seductive materialistic culture will be met initially with suspicion and when forcibly imposed with outright hostility. 

Patai had greater difficulty analyzing the Jewish mind. It starts with the problem of even defining: who is a Jew? This does not arise in relation to Arabs because they are a relatively homogeneous group whose mother tongue is Arabic. Jews on the other hand have for most of their history lived as minorities in other cultures and have adopted not only their languages but also thought and behavior patterns. Even in Jesus’ time the Jews of Palestine spoke Aramaic rather than Hebrew. The use of the Hebrew language in every day discourse is an early twentieth century phenomenon. There is no need to discuss Patai’s ideas on Jews further at this time because I have already devoted “The Moses Legacy” to this topic and it can be downloaded free of charge. Suffice it to say that the hallmark of Jewish behavior is what may be called “tribal.” It consists of generosity and helpfulness towards those who are regarded as members of the tribe, but wariness of and at times outright hostility towards outsiders. Since the Jewish people have always lived as minorities in other cultures, which applies even now to the relationship of the State of Israel with its neighbors, a defensive mentality has developed. When this is coupled with a penchant for exaggerations, which Jews have in common with their Arab relatives, disagreements can be blown up into major catastrophes. Most of us remember Saddam Hussein’s warning that “the mother of all battles” would take place if Bush senior’s coalition forces attempted to drive him out of Kuwait. It was a boast one could laugh at but it is not laughable when boastful rhetoric is deliberately portrayed as imminent danger.

There are two examples which highlight this point. When Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini came to power he declared that the State of Israel must be wiped off the map. Well, that was more than a quarter of a century ago and Israel still exists. President Ahmadinejad repeats this rhetoric now, giving the deceased Ayatollah full credit for it, but he knows fully well that this project is not feasible at this time. So do the Israelis; but they use it to frighten not only their own people but also the trusting and largely gullible Americans to support their policies as “legitimate defense.” It is true that Israel’s neighbors and its occupied Palestinian population can make life miserable for Israelis but the current threat is not existential and requires different methods to be met.

Another example for exaggerated rhetoric is the supposed existential threat to America posed by militant Islam. One of our Middle East experts, Daniel Pipes son of   Richard Pipes who was mentioned in the August 1, 2006 installment, published in the November 2001 issue of Commentary an article, “The Danger Within: Militant Islam in America.”  Its goal was to warn Americans of what is going on in their midst in the aftermath of 9/11. Pipes took the rhetoric of a few fanatics and generalized:

 

“Cumulatively, however, by whittling away at the existing order, they would change the country’s whole way of life – making Islam a major public presence, ensuring that both the workplace and the educational system accommodate its dictates and strictures, adapting family customs to its code of conduct, winning it a privileged position in American life, and finally imposing its system of law.”

 

 What struck me here is not only the fear-mongering but also the phenomenon of “projection” which Freud has described in his encounters with patients. The patient’s thoughts are projected onto the physician as if those were indeed the latter’s rather than the former’s. When Pipes talked about the privileged position Islamists aspire to he apparently failed to see that this is actually what Jewish activists have already achieved in this country. Christian symbols can be defaced and ridiculed in the name of “art” and “freedom of expression,” but when utterances critical, of even the policies, of the State of Israel are made one may be confronted with the charge of “anti-Semitism.” This has negatively impacted on our foreign policy because members of Congress know that they will have difficulty holding on to their seats if they do not go along with the wishes of Jewish organizations.

There can hardly be any doubt that the Arab-Israeli conflict, with the unresolved Palestinian problem at its heart, was one reason for the excessively militant stance of the Bush administration after 9/11.  Our Middle East “experts” were to some extent Jewish and as such managed to persuade first the Bush administration and then the American public at large that America was after 9/11 in the same boat as Israel and our survival as a nation was at stake. This false idea led us first into Afghanistan, subsequently Iraq, to the support of Israel’s recent Lebanon war, and may now lead to an aggravated conflict with Iran and/or Syria. Our Jewish experts received invaluable help from President Bush’s Christian evangelical and fundamentalist base in whose imagination the State of Israel is seen through a rose colored prism that does not correspond to the existing realities. When they, and others, hold up Israel as a model democracy in the Middle East they are either unaware of or they deliberately ignore that the foundation of a democracy does not merely reside in going to polls and electing political parties but in a Constitution. The State of Israel does not have such a document and is not eager to adopt one because it would provide, at a minimum, full equality to its Arab citizens, which in turn would endanger the privileged status of the Jewish majority.

As a result of these wrong ideas and exaggerated rhetoric we are now in a “Global War on Terror” where “Islamofascists” are the enemy although no one has ever defined what is meant by this term and how they can be defeated. From a historical perspective it is interesting to see how the term “Fascism” has mutated in meaning since Mussolini created the Fascist party in 1919.  Nobody in the West had any problem with the party as such and Mussolini was even credited with having made “the trains run on time.” The problem arose not from fascism per se but from the Duce’s imperial ambitions; first in Ethiopia and then toward other ancient provinces of the Roman Empire. The equation of Nazism with Fascism was made by writers in the Soviet Union who came up with the term Hitler-Fascists. The reason was obvious. The party’s formal name was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei (NSDAP, national socialist German workers party) and from “National” the abbreviation Nazi was derived. This was contrasted with Sozi, the abbreviation for the socialist parties of Germany and Austria. But the Soviet Union as the self-appointed beacon for socialism and representative of the workers of the world could not stomach National Socialism and since there was an alliance (shaky at best) between Italy and Germany the term fascist was generalized not only to include Germany but also subsequently Franco’s Spain. It now seems to cover all populist national liberation movements which are organized around a central leadership and are disapproved of by some ruling circles in the West. Since the term Fascism is automatically equated in the popular mind with Nazis, Holocaust, and gas chambers it is a very useful tool for propagandists.

Just as “the Jews” were held responsible by the Nazis for all the ills of the world in the 1930’s and early 40’s we now have “Islamofascists” as if such a group really existed. This is where the book with the essays on Shi’ism can be of great help in our understanding of the Muslim world. Just as in Christianity the Muslim religion is not monolithic. Among the different sects Shi’is and Sunnis are the most prominent and their conflict has now erupted into open warfare on the streets of Iraq. Although the religious differences may seem subtle to outsiders they are, nevertheless, fought for with the same intensity as Catholics fought Protestants and vice versa during the years of Reformation and Counterreformation in England as well as on the Continent. Since Shi’is worship at tombs and shrines, asking for intercession of saintly ancestors with God, they are not regarded by some Sunnis even as Muslims. This is especially true for the strictest group, Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabis. This explains also why we now have the spectacle of Muslims murdering other Muslims which is forbidden in the Koran.

Religion, as usual, is, however, only a cloak for a power struggle and the Shi’is traditionally held the short end of the stick. They formed a minority in all Muslim countries, except for Iran, and were as such profoundly discriminated against. This led to social protest movements which the ruling circles either suppressed or patched over. These aspects are important for our understanding of the current Middle East situation. Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iranian revolution changed the situation and Shi’is in other countries began to become more assertive, especially in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and after the first Gulf War, in Iraq. Since Khomeini was surrounded by Sunnis he downplayed the differences and appealed to all Muslims in a jihad against Western imperialism which, of course, included Israel.

But this was not happenstance. Iran had been the pawn in what was called the Great Game in the 19th and early 20th century between Russia and Great Britain. When the Brits lost their empire after WWII, the U. S. stepped in their place and the Great Game continued. The democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh (also spelled Mussadiqh), was overthrown by the CIA with British help in 1953, because he had nationalized the oil industry and was suspected as having harbored a fondness for the Soviet Union. In the climate of the Cold War this could not be tolerated. The Shah had left the country because of incipient civil war but since he was regarded as a more pliable tool for the West a successful military coup brought him back from Italy. Mossadegh was arrested, tried for treason and spent the next three years in jail.

But the Shah made the fundamental mistake of holding all the power in his own hands and thus had to use coercive methods to keep other forces, including the religious ones, in line. When President Jimmy Carter made adherence to human rights the center of his foreign policy the Shah’s position was correspondingly weakened. The Security police, SAVAK, was no longer feared to the extent it once was, masses could pour into the streets forcing the Shah to abdicate, and Khomeini could return in triumph from his exile in Paris. Richard Cottam, in the chapter on the Iranian Revolution, pointed out that Khomeini successfully manipulated symbols and populism to achieve his goal on the domestic scene, rather than proclaiming a fixed ideology. His foreign policy intended to “rid the Third World of oppressor power domination including and especially the local agents of that domination.” In spite of all the rhetoric about reestablishing the Muslim empire to its heyday where it held even Spain in its grip, the goals were more modest and limited to Muslim countries, especially in the Middle East. Nevertheless, since this is the major oil producing area of the world it has profound implications if and when the various states refuse to play along with the Western powers and assert their national rights.

The Iran-Iraq war was not merely due to greed on part of Saddam but Iran was actively exporting its revolution to Iraq and his regime was in danger. But this war should have taught today’s American politicians a lesson. Iraqi Shi’is did not desert Saddam’s army but fought and bled just like the Sunnis. Nationalism prevailed over religious differences. This point is important because it invalidates the assumption of the Bush administration that we are dealing with a united front of “Islamofascists.”

The second country which was profoundly affected by the Iranian revolution was Saudi Arabia, where the next drama may well be played out. Not too many of us realize that the major Saudi oil fields are in the eastern part of the country and that region is populated by Shi’is rather than Sunnis. There had been serious clashes between the two groups in the past and by 1980 Shi’is were ready to start an open revolt. They were encouraged by radio broadcasts from Tehran which declared that a monarchy is incompatible with Islam and asked “where are the Molotov cocktails?” to overthrow this corrupt regime. The Saudis proved more adept than the Shah to rectify legitimate Shi grievances and the oil continues to flow for the time being. I am mentioning this part of the story because it demonstrates how precarious the Saudi monarchy really is and why it has bred an Osama bin Laden although he is Sunni rather than Shi. Currently we hear very little in our media about this potentially disastrous situation but in the War on Terror we are already achieving the opposite of what we had intended and the next domino to fall may well be the Saudi monarchy.

The third country, Lebanon is in the headlines at present. It has a major Shia population and as such enjoys the good graces of Iran. Again, just as in other Middle East countries, Shi’is were an underclass; initially in the rural parts of the country and during the Civil War, which lasted from 1975-1990, also in the slums of Beirut. Power had been held early on by the Druze and subsequently the Maronite Christians. The country’s Sunni Muslims achieved a degree of power in the late 1970’s and the Shi’is remained largely in limbo. Although Lebanon has democratic elections, the distribution of seats in Parliament was, and still is, biased. Seats are allocated on basis of religion and up to the Civil War the 99 seats were divided into 54 for Christians and 45 for Muslims. This did not reflect demographic realities and was a cause of the Civil War. The war was ended by the Taif agreement which retained the religious basis for seat allocation but expanded the number to 128. They were then divided equally between Muslims and Christians on a basis of 64 seats each. Muslims comprise currently about 70% of the population and this makes this seat allocation unrealistic for a genuine democracy. Furthermore, the Shi’is percentage of the Muslim population is estimated to be between 35-40 per cent and is as such a significant factor which cannot be ignored. Although our government paints Hizbollah (this is the currently used international spelling) as a stooge of Iran their members regard themselves as patriotic Lebanese Muslims and have no interest in the country falling again into civil war or being dominated by outsiders. A partition of the country along religious and ethnic lines, as may occur eventually in Iraq, appears improbable in Lebanon because Shi’is reside in three major centers: the Beeka valley, Beirut, and the area south of the Litani River.

As a result of the 1947 Israeli-Palestinian war and the 1967 war, Lebanon was flooded with Palestinian refugees and members of the PLO continued to harass Northern Israel from Lebanese positions. During the Civil War Israel supported the Maronite Christian faction, although it was neither popular nor the dominant one, and hoped to establish a client state on its northern border. Israel’s 1982 invasion was successful largely because the local Shi’is in the south had their fill of arrogant PLO members who acted as if they owned the country and they greeted the Israelis as liberators. When the liberators overstayed their welcome for nearly twenty years the locals began to support Hizbollah whose members were seen as freedom fighters. They were expected to do what the Beirut government was incapable of doing namely to push the Israelis back into their own country. Success came in 2000 when Israel, under Ehud Barak, evacuated the occupation zone and withdrew to a UN agreed Blue Line. But the UN was unaware of a local problem when they drew the line. There is a small rural enclave in the east called Sheba (also spelled Shebaa or Shaaba) Farms which officially belongs to Syria but is claimed by Lebanon. The border goes back to the French mandate period and why should one care about a tiny patch of grassland. Well, shepherds do and their sheep don’t recognize international borders either. The Israelis regard this pasture as part of the Golan Heights which they captured from Syria and in their minds they have completely withdrawn from Lebanon. But since these are Lebanese shepherds who live there they and their sheep intermittently cross this line. They do this, however, at their own peril because they are greeted with rifle fire from the Israeli army. Hizbollah regarded its task, of expelling the Israelis from every inch of Lebanese soil, as unfinished and continued sending rockets and other assorted ordinance, including stones, across the Israeli built border fence.

Thus, the border area remained volatile and the 2000 member UNIFIL detachment, which has the thankless task to oversee the truce, was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Its commander regularly sent reports about the situation every six months, which carefully detailed the armistice violations as carried out by both sides. These also included constant over flights by the Israeli air force which apparently felt that it owned the sky over Lebanon. UNIFIL regarded these as provocative and there can be no doubt that Hizbollah shared that sentiment.

In the previous installment I mentioned a discrepancy between the Agence France Press report and most other news media as to how the war between Hizbollah and Israel started. The UNIFIL documents clarified the question. Their report states that on July 12, “At 9 a.m. local time Hizbollah fighters crossed the Blue Line into Israel and attacked an IDF patrol. Hizbollah captured two IDF soldiers, killed three others and wounded two. The captured soldiers were taken into Lebanon.” It is, therefore, clear that Hizbollah did start this round of the war but this is not the full story. Hizbollah’s aim was to initiate an exchange of prisoners rather than an invasion of Israel. As Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Hizbollah forces stated recently that if he had known Israel would launch such a furious, massively destructive reprisal he would not have ordered the attack.

This brings up the questions: why did Ehud Olmert, Israel’s Prime Minister, authorize this war and why did Condi Rice drag her feet when the rest of the world had demanded an immediate cease-fire? This aspect of the war is not discussed to any appreciable extent by our major media but is crucial for our understanding of these events and their implications for the future. In the middle of July an e-mail came from a Canadian colleague with a thread to http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=AND20060719&articleId=2753. The article by Dean Andromidas entitled, “Cheney Unleashes the Dogs of War” asserted that, “This latest war was planned at a secret meeting between Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu, during a conference organized by the American Enterprise Institute in June at Beaver Creek, Colorado. . . .

Netanyahu came back from his meeting on the weekend of June 17-18 with Cheney at Beaver Creek, and announced that Israel must reject any form of negotiations with the Palestinians, and instead reassert its military ‘deterrence.’"

I did not put this information into last month’s issue because I could not verify some aspects of the source but the confirmation came from Seymour Hersh, one month later, in the August 21 issue of The New Yorker. Although Hersh did not mention the Beaver Creek meeting, and the statement by Andromidas that the abduction of the Israeli soldiers had occurred on Lebanese soil was shown to have been wrong, the essence of Andromidas’ contention, namely that this was another war of choice agreed upon by Cheney and the Israelis, was correct.

As Hersh reported, Israel had wanted to totally destroy Hizbollah for a long time and the Israelis, as well as the Bush administration, also wanted to nip in the bud Iran’s nuclear ambitions. As is well known air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities were in the planning stage but Israel as well as the U.S. was concerned that if such were carried out Iran would retaliate by using Hizbollah to create havoc in Israel’s Northern provinces. Therefore: first things first. The idea was to use any kind of pretext to get rid of Hizbollah and then move against Iran. The Israeli’s thought that they could use the “Kosovo model” to achieve their goal. In their minds the NATO Kosovo war was decided by 70 days of air bombardment and the threat of a land invasion. They would do likewise but intended to be even swifter and thought they would need only 35 days.  Our administration signed on to that plan. Although Israel would have preferred to start this war in September or October because the army was not quite ready, a fact known to Hizbollah, Cheney pushed for the earliest opportunity because the current administration has only two more years in office and the sooner the Iran operation is getting done and over with, the better.

Hersh’s information is reliable and shows the deep complicity of our administration in the carnage which took place in Lebanon and amounted under international law to a war crime. It also shows the continued complete misunderstanding of the limitations of air power and the wrong conclusion which was drawn from Kosovo. That particular war did not end because of bombs or threat of invasion but by intervention of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, who told Yugoslavia’s Milosevic that he could no longer support him. Diplomatic pressure ended the war rather than bombs and threats. Inasmuch as Israel had promised to get the job done in 35 days, and the White House had agreed with the plan, Condi Rice was hamstrung and had to drag out the UN negotiations over a cease fire. The war ended after 34 days, rather than the 35. It resulted in massive loss of life and destruction of property, especially on the Lebanese side but left Hizbollah intact to fight another day. Israel had miscalculated because in contrast to 1982 southern Lebanon was no longer defended by Palestinian foreigners who were disliked by the locals, but by well trained and armed Lebanese Hizbollah fighters who were thoroughly entrenched on their home turf. At this time Hizbollah also still holds the IDF prisoners from the July 12 incursion and Israel, nolens volens, will have to negotiate for their return.

There is currently soul searching going on Israel as to what went wrong and Hizbollah is also re-assessing its priorities but our administration acts as if we had been innocent bystanders. As Hersh’s as well as the Canadian information prove this was far from the case. The rest of the world knows it and American prestige has suffered another black eye.

To sum up: our Middle East policy is a dismal failure because 1) we have identified Israel’s political interests with our own. This is inappropriate and harmful because it limits our options to deal with Muslim countries in general and Arab ones in particular. 2) We have deliberately misrepresented members and leaders of national liberation movements as “Terrorists” with whom one does not negotiate. 3) We have not recognized that any interference into the internal affairs of a country, whose leadership we disapprove of, and especially the avowed goal of regime change, will be regarded as Western imperialism. In this way the Bush administration has turned Teddy Roosevelt’s admonition of “talk softly and carry a big stick” into its opposite with the resultant failures in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Lebanon. 

What should be done? The mass media should inform the American public of what is going on behind the scenes and bring the genuine data, which exist mainly on the Internet, to public awareness. An honest debate of our foreign policy in regard to Israel, which does not consist of name calling, is urgently needed. Israeli security concerns differ from ours and require different, especially non-military responses. We also need to let go of false pride and negotiate not only with our friends but especially with our adversaries in face to face talks. They are human beings and at least some will show themselves amenable to reason when they are treated as equals, when they see a willingness to understand their concerns, and when their national honor is preserved. Prisoner exchanges are a time honored tradition and there is no reason why this cannot be continued. The only alternative to talking is killing, and as the past months and years have shown this is the least desirable option.

The American public has lost and continues to lose faith in its government. When the mayor of the largest city of the most conservative state in the UnionUtah – feels obligated to actively participate in a protest meeting on the day the President of the country arrives, to address the American Legion Convention in Salt Lake City, there is really something rotten in America. Part of the problem is also that this is the first time in the life span of our Republic when we seem to have two Presidents: A de facto President, Dick Cheney, who makes policy and a de jure President, George Bush, who rubber stamps it. This is not what the framers of the Constitution had in mind and it is high time for the voters to realize this situation and rectify it.







October 1, 2006

THE 9/11 COVER-UP

            The fifth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy brought in its wake a spate of memorial events and speeches, a “docudrama” on TV, an Oliver Stone movie but alas no clarity as to what really happened on that fateful day. We are still led to believe that 19 fanatic young Muslims succeeded in hijacking four of our commercial planes, and with only rudimentary pilot training ram two of them into the twin towers and a third one into the Pentagon. Only the fourth plane did not reach its Washington destination because heroic passengers overpowered the hijackers and it crashed in Pennsylvania. Al Qaeda, a privately financed terrorist organization, was so superbly organized that the most elaborate air defenses of any nation, in the most heavily guarded areas of the country i.e. New York City and Washington DC, were powerless to meet this danger. The only competent people on that day were the hijackers and a few passengers on a doomed plane. Everyone else in America, including the people we elected and who took an oath to defend our country from “all enemies, foreign and domestic” was either inept or otherwise preoccupied with more urgent matters.

To this must be added that two high-rise steel structures, the North Tower (WTC1) and the South Tower (WTC2) succumbed to the fire, which had resulted from the aircrafts’ impact and neatly crumpled into dust and ashes within seconds into what is called “their own footprint,” thereby limiting the damage to the World Trade Center complex. So did Building 7 (WTC7) which had not been hit by a plane. This official version of the events, regardless of several serious questions that can be raised about its plausibility, has been enshrined in the findings of the 9/11 Commission. It is the basis for the “Patriot Act,” the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the War on Terror and the invasions of Afghanistan as well as Iraq. We are continuously told by our President, Vice President and other members of the administration that “9/11changed the world,” with the implicit assumption that the destruction of the WTC, damage to the Pentagon, the loss of four airplanes and nearly three thousand innocent civilian lives necessitated the response as outlined above. Those of us who have maintained from the very beginning, in the fall of 2001, that the 9/11 events were the result of a crime, perpetrated by Al Qaeda, and that it should be responded to by finding the guilty and putting them to trial were shouted down because revenge had to be exacted. We have had our revenge and the result is best expressed in the title of the book by Thomas Ricks “Fiasco.” Although this particular book deals only with the Iraq war the title is appropriate for all the other actions our government has taken since 9/11 in the foreign and domestic arenas which use 9/11 as the excuse.

The American people are still kept in the dark about what our government did and did not do on that September day and whoever dares to question the official story is relegated to “conspiracy theorists” or the “lunatic fringe.” While this has worked for some time it cannot do so forever because there is by now sufficient information available to anyone who is willing to avail him/herself of it. Unfortunately one has to be diligent in unearthing it because the major news outlets still stay with the official version. One is relegated to the Internet to find additional information and one also needs for the most part the Internet in order to discover the books which have been published on this topic because most of them are not being reviewed by the official media. Let me summarize, therefore, why I believe that the Bush administration has covered-up essential 9/11 information and continues to do so to the detriment of our country. In contrast to the administration, which asks you to take their pronouncements on blind faith I would like to ask you to please spend some time reading the books that will be discussed here. This will allow you to form your own opinion on the data.

For starters please obtain “The 9/11 Commission Report. Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States,” and its companion volume which appeared this year, “Without Precedent.” These two books belong together because the first one represents the official version of the events, while the second one, which was written by the two Chairmen of the Commission, Thomas Kean (Republican) and Lee Hamilton (Democrat), tells us how the Commission got started in the first place, the obstacles it had to overcome in its work and what the final report really represents.

The book’s title, “Without Precedent” is actually prophetic when one sees the total context and the headline of the first chapter, “Set Up To Fail,” is even more a propos. Although the authors want to convince us that the Commission, in spite of all the difficulties it encountered, succeeded in its task a careful reading of these two books will reveal that the Commission actually failed to answer the most vital questions: “What happened on 9/11 and Why.”

Let me emphasize at the outset that both Kean and Hamilton did their best under difficult circumstances and that they indeed tried to get at the truth but they were thwarted in this attempt by all levels of the administration from the President on down. If the President had been as careful a steward of our well-being, as he professes, he would have immediately appointed a truly independent commission to investigate what really happened. Not only did he not do so but he actively resisted its creation until he was forced by the families who had lost loved ones in the collapse of the twin towers. Altogether more than a year had to pass before Bush signed Public Law 107-306 which established the 9/11 Commission. One can legitimately ask why this delay? The official answer by the President was that national security matters were at stake which must not be leaked to the press and since the House and Senate Intelligence Committees were already investigating the tragedy, further inquiries were not needed and could actually be harmful

But even if Congress had tried to get at the full truth it could not succeed. First of all the scope of the Congressional inquest was limited to the Intelligence failure that allowed the events to happen. In addition since Republicans controlled both Houses of Congress, the Chairmen of the committees, as good Republicans, loathed incriminating members of their own administration. Finally when that particular report did come out it was heavily censored and as such lacked full credibility.

The 9/11 Commission was supposed to overcome these problems. It was to be independent and bipartisan, which would have taken it out of the realm of politics. But this could not be accomplished. The Chairman of the Commission was appointed by the President and the Vice-Chairman by the Democratic minority leader of the Senate. Of the remaining eight Commission members four were Republicans and four Democrats. Since the Republicans were interested in protecting the administration from potential blame they had to be at odds with the Democrats who would want the opposite. Thus, the Commission from its very onset was part of the political process and thereby could not fully achieve its objective, “to investigate facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.” Although the Preface to the final report, of July 22, 2004 stated that, “We have endeavored to provide the most complete account we can of the events of September 11, what happened and why,” it also included the sentences, “Our aim has not been to assign individual blame. Our aim has been to provide the fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11 and to identify lessons learned.” Thus, organizations were held to be at fault but the individuals in control of them were to go blameless. This made a mockery of the whole concept of individual responsibility for one’s acts of commission and omission which are the foundation of a moral government.

The “what happened and why had it happened,” especially in regard to the collapse of the twin towers, was obviously of utmost concern to the families who had pushed for the establishment of the Commission but for the Commissioners those questions were already solved and what mattered most was to come up with recommendations how these terrorist plots could be foiled in the future. To paraphrase the famous 1992 Democratic election slogan: “It’s Al Qaeda, stupid.” Since this was regarded as the only cause for all that had happened, including the total collapse of the towers rather than mere damage to them, the Commission investigated only why Osama bin Laden (OBL) and Al Qaeda had been successful and what new agencies and civil defense programs should be instituted to prevent a recurrence. With this premise the possibility that other factors than merely OBL might have been operative was simply not taken into account. The government premise was: since OBL had declared war on Americans in his 1998 Fatwa, now was the time to make war on him as well as on all those countries that harbor terrorists. With this type of mindset it was impossible to reach objective conclusions because the administration could not only always invoke “executive privilege” for not providing relevant documents but could also stamp everything they did not want to become public as “Secret.” In wartime “national security” trumps everything and dissent is tantamount to “aiding and abetting the enemy.” To change what had really been a massive crime into an act of war, and comparing it immediately to Pearl Harbor, was an exceedingly clever device the fatal consequences of which we are still reaping.

As mentioned the Bush administration had absolutely no interest in creating the Commission and when forced to do so did its level best to sabotage it. I realize that these are harsh words but let us look at the facts as presented in Without Precedent. When the Commission was finally established its term was limited to 18 months and its budget to $3 million. Even this short time frame was already a compromise between Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans had wanted it to be over with in one year; the Democrats held out for two, but since they were in the minority they had to split the difference. It was obvious that both the time frame and the money were inadequate. To put the dollar figure into context one needs to remember that the Bush administration had allocated $50 million for the investigation of the Challenger disaster. Furthermore, the appropriation for the Iraq war which was before Congress at the same time and caused by Saddam’s supposed involvement in 9/11 was for more than $80 billion. Thus one can justly ask: what were the priorities of this administration? Was it to first find the truth and then take appropriate action or to use the tragedy to justify preconceived plans? After a great deal of begging the dollar amount was raised to a total of $14 million and after much wrangling they had also received a two months extension of the original deadline from May 22 to July 22.

The magic number of 18 months for the duration of the Commission’s work was due to the Republicans insistence that the inquiry not run into the election campaign of 2004, which would have been the case with the requested two year timeline. Finding the truth had to be subordinated to the political desire to win an election. Had the investigation continued over the summer and the fall of 2004 unpleasant facts might have appeared in the media. These might have endangered the President’s re-election campaign which was based on his ability to keep our country safe. By having this time limit the White House could simply run out the clock. Every document had to be diligently fought for and executive privilege as well as national security was invoked at every turn. White House counsel Alberto Gonzales (our current Attorney General, who has no particular qualms about allowing torture during interrogations of enemy “unlawful combatants”) initially refused to allow the National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, to testify in public under oath before the Commission and it took months before this could be accomplished. It would never have happened had not Richard Clarke (President Clinton’s counter terrorist “Czar”) gone public on 60 minutes and published a book, “Against All Enemies,” where he took the Bush administration to task for not having paid enough attention to the threat posed by OBL. Not only was Clarke a credible witness but he also took the unusual step of offering  a public and sincere apology for his failings, instead of reading a prepared statement that would have exonerated his conduct, as most of the other witnesses did.

This forced the White House to allow Condi to appear under oath as a rebuttal witness several weeks later but she dutifully toed the party line. As far as she was concerned, there was nothing to apologize for; they had all done their level best and the administration was above reproach. That some of her statements were in fact inaccurate, as well at least one by CIA director Tenet is only hinted at in the Commission report and one needs the Internet for the full story. Kean and Hamilton do point out, however, that the Justice Department under Attorney General Ashcroft did not regard the Commission’s work as sufficiently important to give it priority and cooperation. The same applied to the FAA which was not forthcoming with its documents, as well as the Defense Department and especially NORAD which was responsible for the security of our air space. Neither was the City of New York cooperative and their officials felt put upon to have to explain their actions on that day since everybody was expected to know that they had done their utmost under the heroic leadership of Mayor Giuliani. Governor Pataki as well as the new Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, was also impatient for having to waste their valuable time on such a trivial function as testifying before the American public as to what had happened on their turf on that day. During these hearings members of the families became increasingly incensed that the Commission did not ask of the officials the hard questions they had expected and vented their disgust, but to no avail.

A battle royal also had to be fought over access to the PDBs (Presidential daily briefings) which bore directly on the famous question to President Nixon during the Watergate scandal, “what did he know and when did he know it?” Again a compromise was reached: not all Commissioners would be allowed access but only a select review team for a select number of PDBs. Furthermore, the documents had to be read on the premises of the New Executive Building where they were kept under lock and key, and “you often had to leave your notes – or portions of your notes – in the reading room as well.” This led to the absurd situation where Commission members had to consider subpoenas to get their own notes in order to share them with the full Commission.

One might also have expected that our Chief Executive would have wanted to testify before the Commission and explain what he did before, during and after the attacks. As all of us know this was not the case. When the Commission asked him to do so he first insisted that he would only meet in private with the two Chairmen and not under oath. When the Commissioners rejected this restriction he eventually relented but the meeting had to be in the Oval Office in presence of the Vice President and not under oath. Note taking or the use of recording devices was not allowed. Again one might ask oneself: why this reluctance to tell the country the truth as the President saw it? The Vice President likewise could not be interviewed separately and as Without Precedent states he hardly contributed to the session, although his role during the day of September 11 is far from clear. This reluctance to testify contrasted with that of ex-President Bill Clinton and ex-Vice President Al Gore who were eager to share their knowledge.

Thus the work of the Commission was not only impeded at every step of its way but it was also under intense time pressure to ready its final report before the deadline. One needs to know, furthermore, that for the Commissioners this was not a full time job and Chairman Keane for instance spent about one day a week on it except when hearings were scheduled. These consumed altogether 19 days of the 18 months! The actual work was carried out by hired staff under the direction of Philip Zelikow who, as has been mentioned previously (When Presidents Lie; January 1, 2006), had strong ties to the Bush administration. Although the staff, according to the official report, “reviewed more than 2.5 million pages of documents and interviewed more than 1200 individuals in ten countries,” the final report did not even reflect all of the testimony obtained from the 160 witnesses during the public hearings. The reason was a decision by the Chairmen and/ or Zelikow that the final report should be unanimous and directed to the general public. Its style was to be easily readable, as a sort of novel. Furthermore the contents should not have aspects which the administration might find sufficiently objectionable that would result in black stripes to hide censored information as had been the case in the Congressional report. To make matters worse the report had to be “cleared” prior to publication by White House lawyers. Under those circumstances the intent of the Commission to be “independent, impartial, thorough and nonpartisan” could hardly be achieved. The truth was sacrificed to bipartisan unanimity.  Thus, the final report left many questions unanswered and proved fertile ground for “conspiracy theorists.”

It would have been considerably more preferable if a) the Commission had been given adequate time and financial resources and b) if two reports had been issued. The main report could have contained the complete testimonies of the witnesses and could also have included dissenting opinions from Commissioners. It would have been for scholars to assess the validity of the conclusions reached. The other one could have been prepared as a “Reader’s Digest” version for the general public.

Up to this point I have presented only the official side of the report and for dissenting voices one has to go to the Internet. As one might expect one finds there the full spectrum which ranges from genuine “Bush haters” and flights of fancy to people who simply don’t want to be lied to and who present scholarly objections. Among the numerous books one finds there is David Ray Griffin’s, The 9/11 Commission Report. Omissions and Distortions. Griffin is a Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Theology, Emeritus, at the Claremont School of Theology and clearly does not like being lied to by the current administration. The book is actually based on the one by Paul Thompson, The Terror Timeline. Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute: A Comprehensive Chronicle of the Road to 9/11 – and America’s Response. This is an exceedingly valuable and detailed piece of work because the data are taken from official news media and the sources can readily be checked on the Internet for veracity.

Another book which should be consulted in conjunction with the previous two is Painful Questions. An Analysis of the September 11th Attack, by Eric Hufschmid. Although chapters 8-13 fall into the conspiracy theory bracket, the first seven chapters are exclusively devoted to the destruction of The World Trade Center. The accompanying photographs with analysis of details cast serious doubts on the prevalent theory about the reasons for the collapse of WTC buildings 1, 2 and 7. Hufschmid also regarded the destruction of the towers as a crime rather than an act of war and had the administration done so different results would have flowed from the event. The difference between crime and war had very important immediate practical consequences. Had the WTC area been regarded as a crime scene from the moment the smoke had cleared an immediate investigation of the cause of the collapse of the towers would have begun. The questions would not have focused only on the hijackers, and their motives, but how did two solidly constructed steel towers collapse after having burned for only 56 and 103 minutes respectively? The towers had withstood the initial impact of the planes and especially in WTC2, which crumpled first, there were no major fires at the time of collapse. It has also been pointed out that no steel building had ever collapsed due to fire before, even after having burned much longer.

As Hufschmid as well as Griffin comment, by not treating the tower collapse as a crime valuable evidence was removed without investigation. Griffin wrote, “Virtually all of it [steel] was quickly removed from the scene, before any forensic investigation could be carried out, then sold to scrap dealers and exported to other countries such as China and Korea. This fact is possibly significant because, if explosives had been used to break these steel columns, these columns would have had tell-tale signs of the impact of these explosives.” These questions are not trivial because they go to the heart of the matter. If the buildings were only damaged by the planes and the fire they could have been restored or subsequently subjected to controlled demolition without loss of life as in the case of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City. That building was burned to a shell from fires due to a truck bomb but remained standing until it was deliberately imploded some time later.

The question why WTC 1, 2 and 7 collapsed is, therefore, the most crucial one for the 9/11 tragedy. If explosives had been used to bring the buildings down this would have required pre-planning because placing explosives in a precise manner takes time and this would have to have occurred prior to September 11. The 9/11 Commission completely side-stepped this issue and limited itself to simply stating that the buildings had collapsed. Subsequent reports by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) adhere to the theory mentioned earlier but to the best of my knowledge nobody has explained as yet how steel structures can disintegrate within 10 seconds and how cement can be pulverized into a cloud of dust by fire. This is clearly a question physicists should demand an answer to but when they do so they are in danger of losing their jobs.

This is what happened at Brigham Young University in neighboring Provo. Steven Jones is Professor of Physics, a good Mormon who takes his Christian religion seriously, and doesn’t like to be lied to. He investigated the NIST theory about the collapse of the WTC buildings, found it wholly unbelievable, and presented his opinion in a paper entitled, “Why indeed did the World Trade Center Collapse? [Originally published in February 2006 but the website disappeared; now available in Journal of 9/11 Studies. Vol. 3].”  He concluded that it was indeed due to controlled demolitions and began to give lectures on his findings. He also became co-Chairman of a group which calls itself Scholars for 9/11 Truth [www.st911.org], “a non-partisan association of faculty, students, and scholars, in fields as diverse as history, science, military affairs, psychology, and philosophy, dedicated to exposing falsehoods and to revealing truths behind 9/11.” It would seem that this is an appropriate function for university faculty and students but on September 7, he was placed on paid leave which deprived him of the use of his laboratory. I don’t know if his research had tread on sensitive toes or if he had used university time for work on Scholars for 9/11 Truth. In the latter case a stern warning by the Dean that he needed to use after hours or weekends for these activities would have sufficed and he could have continued with his work on producing evidence for the presence of thermite and sulfur (ingredients which cut through steel), which is urgently needed. I am not a physicist and cannot enter into the pros and cons of a deliberate controlled explosion versus simple collapse of the WTC buildings, but the pictures in Hufschmid’s book do require a better explanation than what the government has produced.

The most recent conclusions by NIST were: “(1) the impact of the planes severed and damaged support columns, dislodged fireproofing insulation coating the steel floor trusses and steel columns, and widely dispersed jet fuel over multiple floors; and (2) the subsequent unusually large, jet-fuel ignited multi-floor fires weakened the now susceptible structural steel [http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm].”  Is this theory, indeed compatible with the videos all of us have watched where the towers appear to suddenly eject material outward in huge mushroom like clouds and then disintegrate within about ten seconds? The pictures reproduced below come from Hufschmid’s Painful Questions pages 53 and 60 respectively and seem to require a better explanation than what has so far been provided by the government. The exploding South Tower is on the left and the North Tower on the right. The red arrows are intended to point to horizontal ejection of dust and other material.

 

 

National elections are only six weeks away and Republicans are again running on the slogan that their party is the one which is best equipped to fight the War on Terror. They point out that there have been no attacks on the homeland since 9/11, 2001 and use this as proof that their policies are working. This is not so. As I pointed out in the October 2001 essay on this site OBL’s goal for the 9/11 attacks was to involve America in a land war with Muslim countries. President Bush has done him the favor and we are now creating more terrorists on a daily basis than we are killing, by our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Five years have passed and not a single one of the real 9/11 masterminds has as yet stood trial in an American court of law, although our President had promised us on that day five years ago that the guilty would be brought to justice. Furthermore, as a result of conflicting testimony we still don’t know what really happened on that day.

With so many questions remaining about the events of 9/11 one would think that the Democrats would be eager to take on this task but there is as yet no sign that they are willing to do so. They need not hurl unfounded allegations but merely insist on what Salt Lake’s Mayor Rocky Anderson had demanded during the rally in Liberty Park on August 30: Give us the Truth [www.sltrib.com]! This is really all we want; “The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth, so help me God,” as used to be the required formula before court testimony. Unless responsible citizens of either party, especially those who want to be elected or reelected, speak out on this most vital issue we cannot hope to emerge from this quicksand into which our country is sinking. 

What needs to be done now? A truly independent commission of experts should investigate the gaps and inconsistencies of the 9/11 Report. This would require separate working groups because the various questions raised need different areas of expertise for answers to the many puzzling questions. The investigators should have subpoena power and the determination of the true cause of the complete destruction of WTC1, 2 and 7 should be a priority. This was the event where most of the innocent lives were lost and all of us, but especially the families of the victims, finally deserve an honest answer.







November 1, 2006

DIEBOLD TO THE RESCUE?

            In another week we will be dutifully trotting to the polls again, although it’s a mid-term rather than Presidential election and by all rights one would think that the time has come for the proverbial “change.” If one believes the newspapers and TV the Democrats are poised to regain at least the House if not, for good measure, the Senate although they have fought a rather lackluster campaign. Apparently they hope that harping on the obvious failings of the Bush administration, especially in Iraq, will be sufficient to carry them over the top. They have again found themselves unable to come up with a good plan to set things right and as such left themselves open to the Republican charge that the election of a Democratic Congress would be the greatest disaster that could befall our country. Once in power they would legalize homosexual marriages, raise taxes, cut and run in Iraq, and the country would be wide open to future terrorist attacks. The Republicans tell us that the country needs the steady hand of proven leaders like George Bush and Dick Cheney who will avert these disasters and keep us on a moral course.

            It is a fact, however, that even some Republicans have finally become disenchanted with the Bush administration and its foreign policy failures. The “loathsome pigmy,” as our President once had referred to his North Korean counterpart, has exploded a nuclear device last month to inform us that this member of the “axis of evil” is still intact and wants to be talked to personally rather than through proxies. This initially produced denial because we hadn’t verified that the test had indeed been nuclear in nature and when that could not be maintained, because radio-active material was found in the atmosphere, its yield was regarded as rather minor. The media did, however, take a more dim view of the affair and Newsweek produced an extensive article on October 23 as to how we got to this undesirable point. The review revealed the attempts previous administrations had made to persuade the North Koreans not to embark on creating a nuclear bomb and that, contrary to current propaganda, there had actually been a good chance that Kim Jong Il might have desisted had he been given appropriate incentives. Colin Powell was eager to continue the openings Madeleine Albright had provided with her visit to Pyongyang and her talks with the “Dear Leader,” but as the article stated, “he had forgotten to check with his boss.” Although the official reason given was that the North Koreans don’t honor their promises and can’t be trusted, the real one was buried in one brief sentence of the article. “There was at that time, a hostile ‘anything but Clinton’ tone in the White house, and Kim Jong Il was also a handy villain to have around to justify the centerpiece of Bush foreign policy, the expensive missile defense program.”  

            To put it mildly this attitude is reprehensible and makes us directly responsible for the potential nuclear arms race that may develop in East Asia. Peace in our world, if and when it may eventually arrive, will not come about by reliance on high tech weaponry and a missile defense program which will never be able to live up to its stated goal of “making America safe.” It can only come about by shedding our prejudices, our air of arrogant superiority, and by sitting down with our adversaries to discuss how we can remove rather increase tensions. When the President says that ensuring America’s security is his prime concern, he fails to consider the security needs of other countries. To say that the North Koreans are paranoid may well be true but they have reason for it. After more than fifty years we still have not signed a peace treaty with that country, the division of which is simply a left over of WWII and the Cold War. American troops are staring North Koreans in the face across the DMZ and except for China’s deterring power we could annihilate the country in an instant. We say “trust us we have only your best interest at heart,” but after the Iraq invasion, and the doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, this is no longer credible by regimes we have put on our enemies list.

            Countries which don’t like us will be forced to buy themselves insurance in form of nuclear capability and instead of limiting nuclear weaponry our policies are producing the opposite effect. This also goes, of course, for Iran which finds itself surrounded by American troops on its borders and the U.S. navy in the Persian Gulf. Although the Iranians state that they are building their reactors only for peaceful purposes they would be negligent if they did not attempt to acquire the technology that could provide a credible deterrent if push were to come to shove.

            But neither Bush nor Cheney seem to comprehend these simple facts of life and see the world only through their narrow blinders. As far as Iraq is concerned the Woodward book, “State of Denial,” seems to have made some impact on our President. He recently admitted for the first time that he wasn’t “satisfied either,” with what has been accomplished in Iraq. He no longer vowed “to stay the course” but said instead that we are changing our tactics to adapt to changing circumstances. The goal, however, remains victory and, “We’re winning and we will win, unless we leave before the job is done.” Instead of talking about an “exit strategy” and “timelines” he emphasized that Washington would set “benchmarks” for the Iraqi government to achieve security and well being for Iraqis. This stance omits the realization that we have no way to ensure that the Iraqi government can meet these “benchmarks.” Events have acquired a momentum of their own and whatever Washington or the Iraqi government in the “Green Zone” does may not be able to prevent the further slide into full-blown civil war, from which some kind of dictator is going to emerge in the end. Jeffersonian democracy is not in the cards for the Iraqis in the foreseeable future.

            With Bush’s foreign policy in disarray the domestic scene does not look all that much better. The Republicans point with pride to a surging economy, lower unemployment figures and a record breaking Dow-Jones stock market index but this does not translate into income gains for ordinary citizens. Job security, which is one of the overriding concerns for working people does not exist any more even for the middle or upper middle class. Downsizing, the euphemism for closing places of employment, is the rule of the day and whoever does not lose one’s job outright will be forced to work longer hours for the same pay to ensure profitability for the company. The profits upon which Wall Street depends may drive the price of market shares and the income of CEOs up but at the cost of reducing the quality of life for their employees.

The promises Bush made after his reelection in 2004 in regard to rescuing the social security system and providing genuine prescription drug benefits have also fizzled. Apart from approving two Supreme Court Justices, the Republican Congress accomplished basically nothing and its approval rating stands at 19 percent. This is surely not a record to be proud of and one would think that Karl Rove, “the architect” of the Republicans winning strategy, might have reason to worry. Especially since a Democrat controlled Congress might finally open investigations into all the secret deals the administration has engaged in. Yet, Karl maintains his supreme confidence in a favorable election outcome and there is reason to believe that he may be justified in this assumption.

            Elections in our country have always had their share of irregularities but, thanks to technology, they may now be reaching a heretofore unknown magnitude. In the December 2004 installment (How Bush Won) I mentioned how the electronic voting machines, which were supposed to make elections more reliable, have produced results which in some instances defied the laws of physics. I also mentioned at that time that the Diebold systems that were used in key precincts were under the control of the Urosevich brothers who are heavy contributors to Republican coffers. It is well worth to re-read this article for its relevance to next Tuesday’s elections when a great many of us will be voting on Diebold machines.

            The Florida “hanging chads” debacle of the 2000 election prompted Congress to pass the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002, which mandated that future national elections will have to be conducted with electronic machines rather than punch card or lever systems. The idea was that this would create greater reliability of the results and it was funded to the tune of $650,000,000. Like most good ideas by politicians it was poorly thought out and in June 2004, a few months prior to the Presidential election Michael Shamos, Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, testified before Congress on the state of affairs. Excerpts are as follows,

 

“The system we have for testing and certifying voting equipment in this country is not only broken but is virtually nonexistent. It must be re-created from scratch or we will never restore public confidence. I believe that the process of designing, implementing, manufacturing, certifying, selling, acquiring, storing, using, testing and even discarding voting machines must be transparent from cradle to grave, and must adhere to strict performance and security guidelines that should be uniform for federal elections throughout the country. . . .

The Federal Voting system Standards (FVSS), formerly know as the FEC Standards, are incomplete and out of date. . . .

For example, one of the principal election security worries is the possibility of a computer virus infecting a voting system. Yet the FVSS place virus responsibility on the voting system vendor and do not provide for any testing by the Independent Testing Authority (ITA). Furthermore, the standards do not even require that a voting system contain any virus detection or virus removal system at all. . . . It is hardly reassuring to have the fox guarantee the safety of the chickens.

Even if there were suitable standards, it is a significant question how to assure the public that a particular machine meets them.”

 

To understand the problems one has to realize that these vaunted voting machines are nothing else than small, portable, general purpose computers, which run on Windows with specialized election software provided by the manufacturer. The software is proprietary and as such cannot be independently evaluated for potential flaws. The machines can easily be hacked into and everybody who has ever used a computer knows the troubles that this invention is heir to. There need not be malicious intent to make a given precinct election unreliable. Ordinary run of the mill sloppiness, poor training of election workers and unfamiliarity of voters, some of whom will be meeting a computer for the first time in the voting booth, are sufficient to invalidate results. Yet these were the systems portions of the country voted on in 2004 and most of us will be using next week.

Let us now look at what actually happened on the local scene as reported by http://utahcountvotes.org/BlackBoxVoting.php. Black Box voting is an independent citizens’ watch group, based in the State of Washington, which keeps track of how well or badly the election process works around the country.  Last year the State of Utah bought us Diebold machines for $27 million and shipped 40 of them on December 27 to Emery County for this year’s elections. Mr. Bruce Funk, who had been running elections there for 23 years, was not enamored because he didn’t think he needed them for his 259 voters and he had concerns about Diebold’s dependability. As mentioned in my essay of two years ago the State of California had sued Diebold for misrepresenting the reliability of their machines. The Company accepted blame settled for $2.6 million, promised to fix the system, but problems remained. This was no secret and Mr. Funk had every reason to be worried. But the mandate had come from the State and there was nothing he could do about it except to make the best of a bad situation.

When he tested the system with help of Diebold technicians several problems arose immediately. Two of these supposedly new machines didn’t work at all and had to be sent back. The others had a variety of defects: the paper feed which prints out the ballots (similar to a grocery store receipt) was crooked and jammed, memory card bay doors didn’t open or close, parts got stuck or broke loose. Funk then noted some other odd features.  Most of the machines had 25 MB of memory, others had only 7 MB and one 4 MB, but it takes about 7.9 MB for the backup election file that is generated by the machine. Since it was unclear why brand new machines should have such memory defects he contacted Black Box voting for help. Inasmuch as the problem was likely not to be limited to a small rural county in Utah, but generic across the country, specialists were dispatched to help analyze the machine. The reason for the low memory could not be definitively ascertained but it appeared that some of the machines were not new and may have been rejects from other states with previously stored data that could not be gotten rid of. In addition there was the possibility that the memory storage device used by Diebold degrades over time and there is the chance that some of these machines may have been at the end of their life cycle. As the article stated this would be “like buying a new car with 100,000 miles on it.” Harri Hursti who investigated one of Funk’s machines in detail also found major security problems and when these findings were published nation-wide the previously mentioned Professor Shamos called it “the most serious ever discovered in an electronic voting system.

One would now think that Bruce Funk deserved a medal for good citizenship having alerted the State as well as the country at large that there are serious problems with the Diebold machines which need urgent attention. Glen Warchol, a reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune who has been keeping an eye on the election process and who kindly supplied me with the articles he had published on this topic, wrote on June 2 that the opposite was the case. Bruce Funk lost his job because he had allowed outsiders, i.e. Black Box computer specialists, to investigate his machines after his appeals to State government had been useless. As Warchol wrote, “During a turbulent meeting that followed his unilateral decision to allow Black Box voting to inspect a machine, Funk told state, Diebold and Emery County commissioners he would resign. But Funk retracted his words within hours, and instead put in writing that he intended to finish his term to ensure the integrity of local elections. County officials countered that they had accepted the oral resignation and changed locks on Funk’s office.” Funk protested, Black Box voting provided him with a lawyer and the case is in litigation.

June of this year was the trial run for the upcoming elections because Primaries were held across the country with the electronic systems in place. Since Mississippi voted earlier a Utah delegation flew to Jackson Miss., to observe a Democratic primary election because they used the same systems as Utahns would a few weeks later. Glenn Warchol wrote of their experiences in the Salt Lake Tribune,

 

“Educationally, it was a worthwhile trip; because a fair number of Mississippi’s electronic voting experiences were bad to the point of absurdity. Despite small turnouts, the state saw problems in its so-called dress rehearsal in nearly every county. Some problems took hours to resolve or never were. Many polling places fell back to paper ballots. . . . In one polling place the workers had plugged in the machine’s memory cards upside down. At another, workers couldn’t find the keys to the voting machines. . . .”

 

All in all the Utah delegation left reassured, because the problems were mainly due to poor training of election workers and they would make sure that this didn’t happen on June 27 in Utah. They were right. The primaries went off without a hitch until it came to the question of recounts. There were no uniform guidelines across the state for how to recount challenged elections and to what extent the “yard long paper backups” needed to be used.  As of October 19 the question was resolved. A directive came from the Lt. Governor’s office that “Utah counties will do a hand recount of 1 percent of their electronic ballots, comparing them to paper backups, to ensure the accuracy of new touch-screen voting machines.” This would surely inspire confidence in the voting public if we didn’t know what happened in Cuyahoga County, Ohio during the May 2006 primary election. To understand the importance of that event we need to recognize that Cuyahoga County encompasses the city of Cleveland which was a hotly contested battle ground in 2004. As such it is much more representative of what happens in a large urban environment than in our sparsely populated Western state.

In order to get the November election right the Cuyahoga County election commissioners hired the service of the Election Science Institute (ESI) and on August, 15 the Project Director, Steven Hertzberg, rendered the verdict which is available on the Internet. The report emphasized that,

 

“Any assessment of the election system must include an evaluation of administrative procedures, pre-election programming and testing of the voting machines, voter and booth worker interaction, and counting and auditing procedures.” . . .  The current election system, in its entirety, exhibits shortcomings with extremely serious consequences, especially in the case of a close election. . .  . Relying on this system in its present state should be viewed as a calculated risk in which the outcome may be an acceptable election, but there is a heightened risk of unacceptable cost.”

 

The Executive Summary of the report noted, “After three months of exhaustive research, empirical evidence supports the key definitive finding: The machines’ four sources of vote total – VVPAT [Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail] individual ballots, VVPAT summary, election archive, and memory cards – did not agree with one another [Emphasis added].” Among the major problems were: booth workers had difficulty setting up the machines and/or closing them out at the end of the day; there were differences between what they had learned during training and what they found in actual practice; they did not have enough hands on training prior to the election and when they tried to call the command center for help only about a third of them “were able to speak to someone on the first try.” The summary stated in addition that, “The current system, if left unchanged, contains significant threats to inventory control of mission, critical election assets, error free vote tabulation, and tabulation transparency.” With other words the results can be fixed in any way one likes without anybody ever being the wiser!

This aspect was more extensively covered in a report issued by a Princeton University computer science group on September 13 which examined specifically the Diebold system.  The full text is available on http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting and I shall limit myself only to the four main findings:

 

“1. Malicious software running on a single machine can steal votes with little if any risk of detection. The malicious software can modify all of the records, audit logs, and counters kept by the voting machine, so that careful forensic examination of these records will find nothing amiss.

2. Anyone who has physical access to a voting machine, or to a memory card that will later be inserted into a machine can install said malicious software using a simple method that takes as little as one minute. In practice, poll workers and others have unsupervised access to the machines.

3. AccuVote-TS machines [these are the ones in current use] are susceptible to voting-machine viruses that can spread malicious software automatically and invisibly from machine to machine during normal pre- and post-election activity. We have constructed a demonstration virus that spreads in this way, installing our demonstration vote-stealing program on every machine it infects.

4. While some of these problems can be eliminated by improving Diebold’s software, others cannot be remedied without replacing the machine’s hardware.”

 

These reports finally caught the attention of some mainstream media. On September 21 Lou Dobbs posted an article on the CNN website, “Voting machines put U.S. democracy at risk.” He mentioned not only the Princeton as well as the ESI study but also experiences in Columbus, Ohio where a machine added nearly 3,900 votes to Bush’s total in 2004 when only 638 people had actually cast a vote. More recently in Montgomery County, Maryland, workers did not receive access cards to operate the Diebold machines for the county’s 238 precincts on time. About 12,000 voters had to use provisional paper ballots which ran out quickly and some were told to come back later and vote. Dobbs concluded that “As of right now, there is little assurance your vote will count” and “that is simply unacceptable. . . . When voters lose confidence in our elected representatives we can vote the bums out. But what is the recourse if American voters lose confidence in our electoral system?”

Eventually The Wall Street Journal also got into the act and reported some of the problems mentioned above under the headline, “New Voting Systems Face Midterm Exams” on October 26. The article also mentioned that Diebold had dismissed the Princeton study because “it was based on an early model with old software” and that it ignored the normal security procedures which would have alerted election workers of the break in. Diebold’s marketing manager was quoted as saying, “These things are tested to the hilt.” Well, it’s a marketing director’s job to praise his product but that simply is not good enough to satisfy the scientific community and the general public. We are supposed to take Diebold’s word on faith without being able to verify it and with Diebold’s track record this should not be acceptable to the people who are responsible for our election system.

Last Sunday, October 29, Lou Dobbs had an hour-long report on the current state of electronic voting. The transcript can be found on http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0610/29/ldt.03.html and is a thorough indictment of the yet to be held elections. In addition to the problems already discussed it was reported that in some instances poll workers, who are volunteers and do not have to pass special muster, were told to take their machine home, store it and then bring it to the station at time of election because the county had no money for a central secure storage facility. Edward Felton then demonstrated how easily malicious software can be installed in a mock election where a volunteer cast three ballots for George Washington and one for Benedict Arnold. The machine registered two votes for Benedict Arnold and one for George Washington. When at the end of the Election Day this card, which contains the virus, is taken out and sent to the central computer it can then infect the entire system.

I have focused mainly on Diebold in this report because it is the most widely used system in our country, the company has known ties to the Republican Party and is, therefore, not necessarily unbiased. But there are three other voting machine vendors whose systems will be used. Two of them are minor but the second largest, Smartmatic, has the potential for what one might call “equal opportunity fraud.” The CNN broadcast revealed that Sequoia Voting Systems, the original producer of the machines, had been bought by Smartmatic. The company is technically located in Boca Raton Florida but its actual headquarters and most employees are in Venezuela. The city of Chicago has 19,000 of these machines and when election officials ran into trouble during the March 21 primary election Venezuelan technicians showed up on the scene. One needs to know, furthermore, that these were also the machines used in Venezuela during the 2004 controversial recall election which transformed a 41 to 59 exit poll loss for Hugo Chavez into a 59 percent victory for him. Thus, we are in the process of not only “outsourcing” our major industries but also our elections.

With this being the state of affairs at least one elected official, who is computer savvy decided that it was time to get back to basics. Brady Wiseman, a software engineer and representative at the state legislature in Montana, succeeded in getting a law passed which required paper ballots for all elections. He explained on CNN that we have basically two sets of ballots and if there is a dispute “you’re going to believe the paper ballots so what you’re doing is buying a $5,000 computer to mark a piece of paper when the proper tool for the job is a pencil.”

When one keeps all of the above in mind we can safely predict that the upcoming mid-term elections will be a shambles. Many people will vote for the first time on touch screen computers. They may find the process confusing which is bound to lead to longer lines, especially in metropolitan areas. Some may just give up and go home instead. Add to this that poll workers will not be fully trained in all instances and bewilderment is likely to reign. In some races in key states the election results will be extremely close, necessitating recounts. The paper trail left by the machines is difficult to read because of small print and it will take many hours if not days or weeks until a final winner will be declared. The loser may then take his problem to the courts. The hope for definitive results by the morning of November 8 is likely to be as spurious as for expecting victory in Iraq within the next year.

The upcoming election is, of course, the dress-rehearsal for 2008 and it may well show that the reliance on electronic voting machines was just another mistake by Congress which spent more than half a billion dollars on a voting system that is fundamentally flawed and cannot be trusted. We may have to go back to the true and tried paper ballot where “x marks the spot” and if we don’t get the result before going to bed on Election Day that’s less of a problem than having armies of lawyers deciding for us whom we elected. A Bill (HR 6200 IH) demanding paper ballots for Presidential elections was actually introduced in the House but has, as of yet, not been acted upon. Since large amounts of money are at stake, not only for voting system vendors but also Congressional appropriations, a simple solution like returning to paper and pencil may not find much favor. But we are not helpless. David Dill has founded VerifiedVoting.org which dedicates itself to “Election Transparency.” The site encourages volunteer participation in the observation and reporting of all levels of the voting process and the results can subsequently be brought to the attention of the major media and elected officials.

The December 1 installment will present an autopsy of the November 7 results and discuss the efforts that can be made to remedy a broken system so that the 2008 vote outcome will be more trustworthy.







December 1, 2006

THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN

 

            The elections of November 7 provided a glimmer of hope that democracy might yet be re-established in our country. Our “King George,” to whom I had devoted a little poem in the December 2002 issue, had received what he personally called a “thumping.” Even the voting machines functioned after a fashion. Although there were some “fender-benders,” major catastrophes did not take place. That does not mean that the machines always worked as they were supposed to as one lady here in Utah reported. She had voted a straight party ticket but was sufficiently conscientious to check what AccuVote had done with her ballot. Well, it wasn’t all that accurate because she noted that for one of the local races her vote had been switched to a candidate of the opposite party. She corrected that mistake but who knows how many other votes were switched and what had happened after that correction. Although the national races were decided within a couple of days some local ones are still hanging in the balance in our State and laborious hand re-counting is going on. We were also told that there will be far too few voting machines in 2008 when a massive turnout is expected and we’ll have to buy ourselves more machines from State taxes. This is, of course, the opposite of what was said two years ago. The shift from punch cards to electronic voting was supposed to have been covered with federal money. At any rate we are stuck with Diebold now and will just have to make the best of it.

Although I’m, generally not fond of re-reading what I have written years ago the mentioned December 2002 article “Wanted: Good Judgment!” was accurate and very a propos. It did not require the gift of prophecy; knowledge of human behavior was sufficient to allow a prediction of what was likely to happen if the President kept to his course. In the article I stated that the reaction to the 9/11 tragedy was a mistake because even if we expel Osama from Afghanistan there are plenty of other “rogue states” and drug lords with “deep-pockets” who can support world-wide terrorism. Furthermore, although Phase I had worked in Afghanistan and Karzai was President he did not have the support of the country at large and needed American body guards. Funds and troops that should have gone to the reconstruction of the country we, and the Soviets before us, had smashed were already diverted to the upcoming war with Iraq. I also wrote, “We are thus paving the way not only for another Afghanistan quagmire, but a similar one in Iraq when Saddam has been successfully deposed.”

We now have that quagmire, not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan where the Karzai government is on increasingly shaky ground and NATO peacekeepers are getting killed. It is common nowadays to hear talk, especially by Republicans, about the 20/20 vision of hindsight, and there is insistence to look for solutions in Iraq rather than mulling over how we got there in the first place. But what these people fail to recognize is that unless the thinking behind a given decision is re-examined the same mistakes will be made again. They also do not take into account that whether or not a given thought is put into action depends upon the character of the person in charge. In December 2002 I had to leave the question of our President’s character somewhat open. There was still hope that he might be persuaded from abstaining to invade Iraq although I had my doubts, as the beginning of the little poem “a bush thou art, alas no tree,” testifies to. The doubts were justified but hope springs eternal.

After his re-election in 2004 our President boasted of his mandate and the “political capital,” he would spend. Spend he did. He is now the emperor without clothes and it no longer takes a little child to see that. Immediately after his “thumping” he did what he should have done years ago, dismiss Rumsfeld and he also made some pro forma gestures of good will towards the incoming Democratic leadership. But it does not appear that a genuine change of heart has taken place. He still dislikes the day to day work behind his desk in the Oval Office and instead travels around the world attending conferences and meetings with foreign officials, as if he had any standing among them. They will listen politely but then go on with whatever they decide because, at present, America is hamstrung. These trips are not just useless but counterproductive. Foreign policy should be not conducted initially at the highest level, but by the Secretary of State. Condi Rice should be the person to go abroad, cajole reluctant friends and adversaries and when the first attempt fails she can go back and try again. But when the President fails options, which might have existed, become foreclosed.

The incoming Democrats will have a tough row to hoe and we’ll see if all the talk about good will and bipartisanship can be translated into action. Whatever domestic programs they may be able to enact will inevitably be overshadowed by Iraq for which no one has a solution. The fact that electioneering for the 2008 Presidency has already begun makes the situation even worse. Whatever position is taken by either Democrats or Republicans is guided not by the facts as they exist today but by, “how will this affect my candidacy two years hence.” Under those circumstances it is truly a no win situation. If the Democrats push hard for troop withdrawal, and the chaos in the country worsens, the Republicans will gleefully state: we told you so! If the McCain group succeeds in placing more troops into that lost cause more of them will die and be maimed. Inasmuch as the goal of “a stable Iraq, which is no threat to its neighbors and can defend its borders,” is not likely to be reached before our next election, an increased military effort will likewise be denounced by the opposition.

Congressman Charles Rangel’s call for re-instating the draft will hopefully fall on deaf ears. Sending draftees into Iraq and Afghanistan would surely bring back the Vietnam scenario with massive street demonstrations. It would also raise another interesting question no one has addressed so far. What will our feminists do? They have successfully argued for women to be fully integrated into the Armed Forces; will they also say yes when it comes to the draft of females? It is difficult to maintain that equal participation in fighting is needed for a volunteer army but not for one that has to resort to conscription. Mothers may give up their sons for their country, because that’s the way it has always been, but they would surely draw the line at their daughters.

Not quite 2500 years ago Aristophanes was also fed up with a war his fellow Athenians had eagerly voted for and then couldn’t end. He, therefore, wrote the play Lysistrata in which the Grecian women got together and decided that they would not submit to their spousal duties until their men had quit the useless fighting. The play has a decidedly modern context. In 431 BC, when the war started, Athens was at the height of her glory. It was the age of Pericles, Socrates and Plato which ushered in what we now call Western civilization. Athens controlled the Mediterranean and thought it could enforce its will upon the Spartans. Theoretically the Peloponnesian war was between democracy as represented by Athens and the military dictatorship of Sparta. But in practice hegemony over the Greek speaking world was the goal. The war went on for decades and after the Athenian’s defeat in Sicily (413 BC) a peace movement grew in Athens which led to the mentioned play by Aristophanes in 411. His suggested strategy never came to pass. The Athenians fought on for another 7 years until they had to accept Sparta’s victory and that was the end of Athens as the dominant power.

Where is the parallel? It is in what the Greeks called Hubris which can be summed up as: We are on top, we can do anything we want and if the rest of the world doesn’t like it we will use our military and economic power to make them submit to our demands.  This mentality hadn’t worked for the Persians under Darius and Xerxes, it hadn’t worked for Athens, it hadn’t worked for Hitler and it won’t work now for Bush and company. There will always be the “other” who will resist with whatever means are at his disposal at a given time. History repeats because people don’t change.

So let us look at Iraq again and how we got into this unfortunate war. It can clearly be laid at the feet of the so-called neoconservatives whose main members I have previously discussed, starting with “The Neocons’ Leviathan” (April 1, 2003). During the Clinton years they had been relegated to the sidelines but in George Bush they had found a sufficiently gullible person who initially had no idea what he wanted to accomplish during his presidency. As such he could be readily seduced to dreams of glory after the 9/11 tragedy. The neocons’ goal was to cement exclusive American world power for the 21st century under the banner of spreading democracy around the globe. Israel’s security was also on top of the list and the road to that end was seen as starting in Iraq. The rest of the Middle East would fall in line like the supposed dominoes of the Vietnam era, and peace and prosperity would reign thereafter. This is why Afghanistan was neglected, and Iraq was placed into the forefront of the “War on Terror.”

Our pundits and commentators now ask why there was no plan for how to govern Iraq after the fall of Saddam. But the neocons, who were running the Pentagon and Cheney’s office, didn’t want the State Department’s plan because they had their own. The man of the hour was to be Ahmed Chalabi; the U.S. educated Shiite mathematician and banker. He would accompany our victorious troops with his militia and his government would, as one of its first order of business, make a peace treaty with Israel. In other words he’d be our Quisling! The fact that the Norwegians didn’t want any part of Quisling under the German occupation had apparently eluded those planners of “The American Century.”  Richard Perle, the spokesman for the neocons, who has been mentioned here repeatedly, was quite dismissive about entrusting the government to competent local anti-Saddam Iraqis because “they don’t exist.”  That Chalabi had no credibility anywhere, apart from members of the American Enterprise Institute, was ignored by the ruling circles.

But the neocons’ dreams went awry from the start. The Powell strategy of using overwhelming force when you begin a war had been ditched for that of Rumsfeld who believed that modern wars will be won with high tech weapons and a minimum of boots on the ground. That was the first and primary mistake from which everything else followed. The few troops we had in Baghdad couldn’t control the looting and didn’t even have the authority to do so if they had wanted. Our commander General Tommy Franks didn’t let the civilians under ex-General Jay Garner into Baghdad until some sort of order had been established. When Chalabi arrived his militia happily joined in the ongoing looting and killing. Thus, valuable time was lost and these false calculations haunt us to this day. To top it off there was a mini-war in the administration as to how Iraq should be run. The moment Garner had set foot into Baghdad he was already told that his tenure was limited and within a month he was replaced by Paul Bremer who promptly undid everything Garner had started. This total incompetence of the American government, which as the Iraqis now say, “could send men to the moon but can’t provide essential services for the country,” damaged our image for years to come in that part of the world.

I never thought that I would have to pay the Soviet Union a compliment but truth compels me to do so now because there is another historical parallel. On April 2, 1945 Stalin issued a “Directive to the Supreme Commanders of the Second and Third Ukrainian Front in regard to measures to be taken at the arrival of the Red Army in the territory of Austria (Sowjetische Politik in Österreich 1945-1955. Dokumente aus russischen Archiven. Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Wien 2005). The key instructions were:

 

“A proclamation was to be issued immediately that the Red Army is not waging war with Austria’s people but only with the German occupation force. The Red Army is not coming as conquerors but only to destroy the ‘German-fascist troops and liberate Austria from German dependence.’ The population was to be told to remain at their domiciles, continue with their peaceful jobs and support the official organs of the Red Army in their efforts to allow for normal work in industry, commerce and other civilian enterprises.

Rumors that the Red Army will annihilate (vernichten) all members of the National-Socialist party shall be denied and it be declared that the party will be dissolved, but ordinary members will not be affected as long as they conduct themselves in a loyal manner towards the Soviet forces.

The mayor of the city of Vienna shall be informed that the Soviet Kommandatura will not prevent the establishment of an Interim Government for Austria in which all democratic forces participate.

Soviet troops within Austria are to be directed not to insult the local population, to conduct themselves in a correct manner and not to mistake Austrians for German occupiers.

In the various communities military commanders are to be appointed who in turn shall appoint from the local population provisional mayors and community leaders.”

 

When one reads this today one asks oneself where was our “Commander in Chief” and “War President” in March of 2003? Had it ever dawned on him that General Tommy Franks could have benefited from similar instructions? Does he even realize it today? The fact that individual members of the Red Army did not follow Stalin’s orders in regard to the treatment of civilians (see War & Mayhem) does not negate the overall intent. Furthermore, the Red Army had what Tommy Franks obviously lacked. They had the manpower to search for weapons not only in each house but in each apartment. After an initial period of lawlessness, people went back to work, started cleaning up the rubble from the streets and rebuilding the bombed country literally from the ground up. In regard to the establishment of the new political system the Soviets did not entirely rely on Austrian Communist refugees in the Soviet Union but acceded to the request of Karl Renner to be allowed to form a broad based provisional government. Renner was an old Austrian Social Democrat and President of the first Austrian republic who had been allowed by the Nazis to remain at home in retirement, while other future government members had returned from concentration camps. This government was sworn in on April 27; fourteen days after the last German troops had withdrawn from Vienna, and while Hitler was still alive in his bunker.

. Although Communists, who had returned from Moscow and Tito’s Yugoslavia, were over-represented in the provisional government this was corrected in the genuinely free elections of November 25, 1945. The communists got all of 174,257 votes which entitled them to 4 seats in the national assembly; the conservative People’s party got nearly 50% of the votes and 85 seats, while the Socialists received 45 % and 76 seats. Stalin was disappointed but with the excuse of insufficient de-Nazification he could drag out the withdrawal of the Red Army for another 10 years. Austria had become a pawn in the Cold War. The US wanted to integrate the western occupation zones into NATO while the Soviets wanted to keep their troops in the eastern part of the country. Only when Bulganin and Khrushchev came to power and the Warsaw pact had been formed, which gave the Soviets the legal right to keep their troops in neighboring Hungary and Czechoslovakia, did Austria finally get her freedom. On October 26, 1955 the last Soviet soldier left the country to a profound sigh of relief by all concerned parties.

Why do I bring up this “ancient history” now? It is intended to be a warning for the neocons in regard to offensive plans towards Iran and/or Syria. Unless one has the ground forces, rather than airpower, and one is willing to lose a significant number of combat troops, any invasion is doomed to failure. The Rumsfeld doctrine is nonsense and needs to be abandoned if one wants to achieve a military victory over any given country. Furthermore reliance on émigrés is ill advised. They have their special ax to grind and are not familiar with the local situation. In addition they don’t have the confidence of the people who have stuck it out in the country under adverse circumstances and who now want to rule rather than be ruled. Finally, even a benign occupation will be resented in the long run and “liberated” nations will insist that their “guests” go home when they have outworn their welcome.

Where does this leave us with options for Iraq at this point in time when it seems that whatever we do is wrong? It is a classic situation of too little – too late. When even Henry Kissinger admits that a military victory is no longer possible any increase in troop strength is now self-defeating. My suggestions are essentially the same as I have outlined in a speech I wrote for our President and which he never saw (September 1, 2005. President Bush’s Dilemma). As a result of his “thumping” he did what had been suggested in the first point, the immediate dismissal of Rumsfeld, but he has so far not acceded to the phased troop withdrawal. The Baker-Hamilton Commission is likely to recommend part of point number 2 of that speech namely direct talks between the US and Syria as well as Iran. I had, however, envisaged a larger conference of Foreign Ministers where Iraqis would participate with those of all the neighboring countries as well as those from the five permanent members of the Security Council. This could have provided a basis for an agreement which could have subsequently been implemented with international backing.

This suggestion was reasonable at the time and may still be our best option. Unfortunately events have acquired further momentum during the past year and may no longer be controllable from the outside. We are now beginning to find ourselves in the situation President Reagan faced in Beirut. The central government, which the Marines were supposed to protect, had collapsed and individual members of the Lebanese army had joined their respective religious groups in a civil war. The Marines were simply caught in the middle and, therefore, called back home as the only reasonable alternative. It seems to be rather obvious that the same situation is now evolving in Iraq. We can train the Iraqi army and police until kingdom come, but we cannot make Shiites obey orders to fire on Shiites, and Sunnis on Sunnis, when those orders are handed down from a government which has neither credibility nor enforcement powers. To send other 20,000-30,000 troops into Baghdad, as is currently being proposed, is futile because the time for such an endeavor has passed. The only thing we can do is to minimize loss of life by hunkering down on reasonably secure bases while proceeding with the phased withdrawal as outlined in the September 2005 article. Iraq is in civil war and from it the country will either splinter or some dictator will emerge and establish order by brute force. Eventually, it is likely that we will have to totally withdraw from all our bases, except for possibly in the Kurdish area, because the new Middle East President Bush and his gurus have tried to create will be nationalistic and/or Islamic. Condi Rice talked about the birth pangs of a new Middle East. This is true but the baby may well arrive with a turban on its head and may have no use for Westerners dictating what it should or shouldn’t do. The era of colonialism is over.

These thoughts apply also to the point I made in the September 2005 article in regard to Israel and the Palestinians. Israel’s most recent war with Lebanon, which was intended to eradicate Hizbollah, has failed. It has destabilized the fragile Lebanese government and has placed the Christians and Druze in a precarious situation because they are clearly outnumbered by Muslims. A genuine democracy would give the vote to Muslim parties rather than the shaky coalition which exists at present. This has also repercussions in regard to an attempt to re-activate the so-called road map for a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Neither the Bush administration nor the Democrats will touch this hot potato because AIPAC is still a dominant force in our country and 2008 votes are at stake. In this republic of ours staying in power, or acquiring it, unfortunately trumps everything else with potentially lethal consequences.

Apart from Iraq the other foreign policy problem which will not wait till 2008 is Iran because Israel feels threatened by that country’s nuclear program. There was a very telling quote in Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker article of November 27 by Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh who said:

 

“The danger isn’t as much Ahmadinejad’s deciding to launch an attack but Israel’s living under a dark cloud of fear from a leader committed to its destruction . . . Most Israelis would prefer not to live here; most Jews would prefer not to come here with families, and Israelis who can live abroad will . . . I am afraid Ahmadinejad will be able to kill the Zionist dream without pushing a button. That’s why we must prevent this regime from obtaining nuclear capability at all costs.”

 

This is the problem in a nutshell because the other reason given for the necessity to prevent Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear bomb, that it would make Sunni Arabs want to build theirs, is not necessarily valid. The Sunnis already have the Pakistani bomb which can be shared with the brothers in faith, especially when and if the Musharaf regime falls. The urgency to halt Iran’s nuclear program is indeed mainly about the viability of the Zionist dream for which we are to sacrifice lives and property. This brings us to the fundamental question: should this dream be adhered to for evermore in spite of its obvious failure to achieve what had been intended; or should the experiment be terminated voluntarily in an orderly manner before the proverbial mushroom cloud rises over the Middle East? This is the question which nobody even dares to utter here but which ought to be faced; most of all by insightful Jews in our own country. It is up to them to guide their Israeli relatives to reason. The goyim can’t do it because they will simply be denounced as anti-Semites.

Political Zionism was built on two assumptions both of which turned out to have been wrong. These were: 1) the vast majority of the world’s Jews would migrate to a Jewish state in Palestine and this would make anti-Semitism disappear. 2) The Arabs who lived in the region were of no consequence; they were few in number and would welcome the economic benefits the Jews would provide for them. As we know only some Jews moved to Palestine and later to Israel, while the overwhelming majority preferred to live abroad. In addition Jewish nationalism collided with Arab nationalism. Although initially Jews had the money and powerful friends, the Arabs had oil and rediscovered Islam as their basic belief system to counter Western, which includes Jewish, secularism. As of this week Prime Minister Olmert has made a belated effort to reach out to the Palestinians and even agreed to a two state solution. But we have not yet seen the fine print and it is doubtful that Olmert has the power, even within his own government, to make the concessions which are needed to create a truly viable and independent Palestinian state. To his credit former President Jimmy Carter has just published a book on the Palestinian problem and has presented his opinions in a clear and concise manner on various cable news outlets. With the provocative book title which contained the word “Apartheid” he tried to start the long overdue discussion on this topic but I am afraid that in the short run his effort will run aground on the scramble for Jewish votes in 2008. Until the time comes when our Jewish citizens begin to see the need to change their opinions in regard to Israeli policies it will be unlikely that a genuine shift by our government towards a truly balanced approach will take place.

Since the Christmas season is upon us I may now be permitted to present my personal wish list. In regard to the Democrats I wish that they would not get bogged down in bickering and in advancing far-fetched social programs that have no chance of passing with the slim majority they enjoy on Capitol Hill. I would be happy to see reasonable investigations into the various aspects of misconduct by the Bush administration, especially in the area of civil liberties. Habeas corpus is fundamental and must be adhered to, regardless of who the presumed enemy is. Listening to private phone conversations when US citizens make calls abroad because the other party might be a terrorist should be abandoned. The inane security regulations at airports, where everyone has to take off one’s shoes, as if one was walking onto holy ground, and where we are not allowed to bring our favorite toothpaste should be rescinded. That is not the way to prevent 9/11 type catastrophes. The cover-up of what really happened on 9/11 (see October 1, 2006) should also be on the agenda.

Investigations of our Vice-President’s conduct starting with his closed-door energy conferences in the spring of 2001 are also on the wish list, but are not likely to get very far. The Democrats may not want to pull off a Spiro Agnew type removal from office. This would give Bush a chance to appoint a new Vice-President, who would then be in a strong position to give Democrats trouble in the 2008 Presidential elections. Even if Cheney were removed from office he would surely get a Presidential pardon from George W. For a replay of the Nixon scenario, namely to get rid of the Vice-President first and then the President, it is clearly too late. Although grounds for impeaching Bush are as ample as in the Nixon era, the Democrats have already ruled it out because they would be saddled with President Cheney; a scenario which nobody wants. Although I don’t expect much to come of a Cheney investigation I would, nevertheless, be glad to see it not only for getting the facts of history straight. It would also keep him occupied and prevent further disastrous dabbling in international policy. This function should return to the State Department rather than the Vice-President’s office in collusion with the Pentagon. The Department of Defense should really live up to its name and renounce the planning of offensive wars which are, at any rate, illegitimate under the UN charter.

From the Republicans I wish for a spirit of cooperation with all reasonable projects the Democrats propose. This should not be a time of stone walling, digging in one’s heels, and run out the clock till the next election. I would also like to see that they abandon their neoconservative dreams, respect the people’s voice of November 7, and return to what the Republican Party really stood for: limited government, fiscal conservatism and a foreign policy which does not trample on the rights of other countries.

For our President I wish that when he goes to his favorite church on Christmas Day he decides in his heart and mind that henceforth he will live by the words of Jesus rather than merely regarding himself as a “born again Christian.” The parable of the Good Samaritan should become his guiding light. I wish furthermore that during the holiday week he would invite ex-President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalyn to the ranch in Crawford for extended discussions of the Middle East’s problems. President Carter is not only a man of intelligence and wisdom but he is also intimately acquainted with the area and has the respect of most of its rulers. If President Bush were not only to listen to his sage advice but also put it into action much good could come from it. Under those circumstances he would abstain from further military adventures and instead devote his last two years in office to genuine efforts of bringing peace to this world of ours. I know that this is wishful thinking but this is, after all, the Christmas Season







January 1, 2007

THE YEAR OF THE MIDDLE EAST

            During the past month there were two events which foreshadowed what we are going to witness in 2007. The Iraq Study Group presented its report which was a clear indictment of the administration’s Middle East policies. The first sentence, “The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating,” provided a dose of realism and in order to make the best of a bad situation 79 detailed recommendations were offered. These were divided into external and internal ones. One part of the external recommendations was to immediately open a dialogue with all of Iraq’s neighbors including Syria and Iran in order to create a united front for the internal security and economic stability of Iraq. This was to be followed by the creation of an International Iraq Support Group to assist Iraq with national reconciliation and freedom from outside interference. The internal recommendations dealt essentially with means to strengthen the current Iraqi government including its police and army. Incompetence and corruption needed to be curbed and integration of the various competing ethnic and sectarian groups endeavored. It was argued that an immediate withdrawal of American troops from that country would be harmful; it should be done on a gradual basis so that no U.S. Combat troops remain there “by the first quarter of 2008, subject to unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground.” On the whole the report portrayed a sense of urgency and it was emphasized that this was a package deal, rather than what chairman Baker called a “fruit salad” from which one might pick and choose.

The Commissioners, under the leadership of Baker and Hamilton, subsequently made the rounds on TV talk shows to drum up popular support and for a brief moment it seemed that even the White House might listen. This hope was promptly dashed when our President, who had at first voiced guarded approval, subsequently postponed his policy speech to later in the month and thereafter to some time in January. It became obvious that he is not inclined to accept the package, and he will simply persist wishing with fervent hope for the miracle which will bring democracy to bloom in Iraq. Instead of endorsing a gradual reduction of troops starting immediately, there is consideration given for an actual “temporary” increase in the level of troops. The rationale is that one more (last ditch?) all out effort to secure the streets of Iraq would now succeed with another 20-30,000 military personnel although all the previous ones have failed. The question what to do thereafter is not being discussed by the White House. Since, realistically speaking, there are no good options how to terminate this war, the search for the least bad one is on. In the meantime the President went to Crawford for the holidays and Iraq continues in chaos.

There were two additional points in the Baker-Hamilton report, which deserve special emphasis. One is buried on p. 92 under “U.S. Personnel,” where we learn that “Our embassy [Baghdad] of 1,000 has 33 Arabic speakers, just six of whom are at the level of fluency.” This is nothing short of disgraceful. What information do these people rely on in their decision making processes? Even well meaning interpreters can get their messages confused and since we are in a country where the majority of the population no longer wants us to be there, we are liable to be subjected to a great deal of disinformation. There is an additional problem. U.S. born Arabic speaking individuals may be suspected of harboring sympathies for Muslims and if we import Israelis, many of whom are bilingual, we can run into the opposite cultural bias. This is where the insularity of the American educational system comes to haunt us. Languages are taught in the most rudimentary way and their study is not compulsory. History classes are largely limited to that of the US and as such our youngsters are ill equipped to shoulder the burdens our politicians are thrusting upon them, in the pursuit of “the American century.”

There was another sour note for the administration on pages 54-56 of the report where it unequivocally linked the Iraq problem with that of the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “The United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict.” This linkage, although obvious to everyone who has ever taken the Arab point of view into account, is shunned by our policy makers because it would mean a return to the more even-handed approach of some previous administrations. Yet this is precisely what AIPAC, and American Zionists of the Jewish as well as Christian denomination abhor.

This brings me to the second interesting event of the past month. Ex-President Jimmy Carter had published his latest book: Palestine Peace Not Apartheid at the end of November and had made the TV rounds during early December. The word Apartheid, which Carter had chosen deliberately to attract attention to the conditions the Palestinians in the occupied territories are currently living under, created a problem for the interviewers. They experienced a mental short-circuit and chided Carter for implying that Israel is an apartheid state. Carter took great pains to point out that he wasn’t talking about the Israel of the pre 1967 war but only about what is left of Palestine which lingers under Israeli occupation. When Larry King asked the ex-President what he thought about the article Alan Dershowitz had published about the book Carter admitted to not having read it. Larry King then presented him with some choice morsels from that article, which in the main argued for massive bias on part of Carter and disliking “Israel or Israelis,” which Carter simply brushed aside as rubbish. Since everybody knows that Carter is a thoroughly decent person he didn’t think he needed to answer that type of invective.

This brief flurry of attention on Palestinians coincided with a talk given at the Salt Lake City Library by a young Jewish-American lady who had recently visited the occupied territories and was appalled by what she saw. There was a large turnout and Tom Wharton of The Salt Lake Tribune wrote a lengthy factual report on it. In a separate notice the newspaper requested comments on the topic from readers, but wouldn’t you know none, including mine, were ever published. When I wrote to Mr. Wharton and congratulated him to his report he said that he had been “happy to get a different perspective.” It is obvious, therefore, that the American public, including journalists, is not informed about the true situation in the occupied territories and efforts are made to keep it that way. If we did not have access to the Internet, or selected small circulation publications such as The Christian Science Monitor, we would not know about the true state of affairs as it pertains to the Middle East. This is why Jimmy Carter’s book is so important for Americans to read. His goal was to draw attention to the deplorable state of affairs in Palestine, which the rest of the world knows about, is shown daily by Al-Jazeera to its Arab viewers, but is largely banned from our TV screens.

The question now is will Jimmy Carter be allowed to succeed? The group which does not want this to happen does not as yet have a name by which it could be readily identified. It would be wrong to lump it under “Jews” or “Israelis” because not all of them want the perpetuation of the unsatisfactory status quo. I shall, therefore, use the term chauvinistic Zionists because this is where the problem resides. Chauvinism is usually defined as: “militant glorification of one’s country,” or “unreasoning attachment to one’s race, group, etc.” It is the “group” and “etc.” I am referring to, because not all Zionists belong to the same nation, race or religion and it is the “unreasoning attachment” to an idea I am concerned about. The common bond which holds this diverse group of people together is the idea that the Jewish people as a nation, rather than religion, need a land of their own and are entitled to it by biblical prophecy.  In the case of Christian Zionists the situation is even worse because they fervently believe that the return of the Jews to the land of Israel is the prerequisite for Jesus’ second coming and the establishment of the kingdom of God. This idea is being pursued in an intensely emotional rather than intellectual manner. That this is hardly the way to create a modicum of peace in the 21st century would seem to be obvious but it is not as the following examples will show.

As mentioned above, Alan Dershowitz published a blistering article in The New York Sun (November 22, 2006). The first paragraph sets the tone for the next three pages of the article:

 

“Sometimes you can really tell a book by its cover, President Jimmy Carter’s decision to title his new anti-Israel screed [for those of us less erudite than Professor Dershowitz the word is defined as “a prolonged tirade, harangue”] ‘Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid’ (Simon & Schuster, 288 pages, $27) tells it all. His use of the loaded word ‘apartheid,’ suggesting an analogy to the hated policies of South Africa, is especially outrageous, considering his acknowledgment buried near the end of his shallow and superficial book that what is going on in Israel today ‘is unlike that in South Africa – not racism, but the acquisition of land.’ Nor does he explain that Israel’s motivation for holding on to land captured in a defensive war is the prevention of terrorism. Israel has tried, on several occasions to exchange land for peace, and what it got instead was terrorism, rockets, and kidnappings launched from the returned land.”

 

When I read the article I had a profound sense of déjà vu because its tone and content are very similar to Josephus’ Contra Apionem which I have discussed in The Moses Legacy (available for downloading on this site). The striking phenomenon is the absence of change over a 2000 year period when it comes to dealing with unwanted facts. The main technique is to disregard the message that is to be conveyed; instead the messenger is denounced as either intellectually and/or morally deficient. This is then demonstrated by examples from his writings, at times taken out of context, which are either ridiculed, or shown as seriously biased and followed by half truths. In Josephus’ case the adversary was the Alexandrian grammarian Apion who had made negative comments about the Jewish religion and had led a delegation to Caligula about the Alexandrian riots which had broken out between Jews and Greeks in 38 AD. I am bringing this up at this time because the current situation is eerily reminiscent of these days which ended a few decades later with the revolt in Judea and the destruction of the temple. The Jewish attitude in those days was that our rights have to be not only safeguarded but expanded, which in turn gave rise to the mentioned clashes in Alexandria, which had a large Jewish minority population. After the murder of Caligula the new emperor, Claudius, had to write a stern letter, which is reprinted in The Moses Legacy and very worthwhile reading in today’s context. It declared unequivocally that both sides to the conflict had to stop what they were doing or else Rome would be forced to step in and establish order.

Thus, when one reads the article by Dershowitz one is impressed that chauvinistic Zionists have learned nothing from history and are steering the same course towards disaster as in 68 AD and the even more catastrophic revolt of 132-135 under Bar Cochba.  In the minds of chauvinists, regardless what cause they espouse, the fault for an unsatisfactory situation always resides exclusively with the opponent, who is to be bedeviled and genuine compromise is not to be sought. There is an additional irony in Dershowitz’s first sentence which seems to have escaped him. The picture on the cover, above the title, shows a pensive Carter looking from the Palestinian side at the concrete barrier which separates Jewish from Palestinian land. Unhappy Palestinians are demonstrating on their side of the border, while there are some lawns and trees on the other. It is a symbolic picture, and meant as such, but this symbolism has escaped not only Dershowitz but all of Carter’s detractors. The current situation is indeed apartheid (Afrikaans: apartness) for the Palestinians who are separated in enclaves which impede them from moving even between their villages and towns in the West Bank.

To gauge the opinions of the American public on the Palestinian question it is useful to read the reviews of Carter’s book on amazon.com. There are three editorial reviews. The one from Publishers Weekly is brief and factual. Booklist confined itself to stating that, “it is a challenging, provocative, and courageous book.” Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote for The Washington Post’s Book World, on the other hand, wrote a long article in the style of Dershowitz. It claims that Carter is hostile to Israel. “Carter’s title notwithstanding, Israel is not actually an apartheid state.” Carter doesn’t recognize that the purpose of the “security fence” is “to prevent the murder of Jews.” These sentences are again examples of the Josephus’ technique. The word Palestine has been omitted from Goldberg’s mind and substituted by Israel. Furthermore, nobody would have objected to a “security fence” if Israel had put up the wall or a fence within its own pre 1967 borders. But I believe that Mr. Goldberg would be outraged if his neighbor were to put up a wall that sits on Goldberg’s property. Even the Berlin wall, abhorrent as it was, was erected on East rather than West German land. This is the crux of the question which is so studiously avoided by people who think like Dershowitz and Goldberg. 

In regard to the settlements in the occupied territories, which are one of the chief obstacles to peace in the area, Goldberg writes

 

“. . . the people of Israel have fallen out of love with the settlers, who themselves now know that they have no future. After all, when Ariel Sharon abandoned the settlement dream – as the former prime minister did when he forcibly removed some 8,000 settlers from the Gaza strip during Israel’s unilateral pullout in July 2005 – even the most myopic among the settlement movement’s leaders came to understand that the end is near.

Carter does not recognize the fact that Israel, tired of the burdens of occupation, also clearly wants to give up the bulk of its West Bank settlements (the current prime minister, Ehud Olmert, was elected on exactly this platform) because to do so would fatally undermine the thesis of his book. Palestine Peace Not Apartheid is being marketed as a work of history, but an honest book would, when assessing the reasons why the conflict festers, blame not only the settlements but also take substantial note of the fact that the Arabs who surround Israel have launched numerous wars against it, all meant to snuff it out of existence.”

 

This excerpt is presented as another typical example of how facts are mingled with fallacy. Yes, substantial segments of Israel’s population want to shed the burdens the settlers impose on the country but when Sharon gave up the occupation of the Gaza strip and removed the Jewish settlers therefrom, the main reason was that the strip provided no benefit to Israel and it was too costly for the military to guard these 8,000 settlers. He did not give up on the settlement idea but continued to expand them in the West Bank. Even in the Israeli peace proposals of Camp David II it was understood that settlement blocks would merely be consolidated within the Palestinian state, rather than removed. Olmert, in spite of what is said in the above quoted statement by Goldberg, also has not only expanded settlements, especially in the Jerusalem area, but as of December 27, 2006 authorized the creation of a new one in the West Bank. The fact that these settlements are illegal under international law is probably not unknown to Mr. Goldberg, but he doesn’t want to acknowledge it. Instead he refers to previous wars and implied security concerns which are irrelevant in the context of what are in essence land grabs. If there is to be any peace in the Holy Land the settlements will have to disappear from the future Palestinian state. Everybody, including Prime Minister Olmert knows this, and to settle Israelis who were removed from Gaza into the West Bank is irresponsible. Unless Israel does opt for apartheid instead of peace these unfortunate people will have to be uprooted again.

Carter is repeatedly chastised for having presented a biased view of the history of Israel but his detractors are also unilateralists who are convinced that only their opinions are the correct ones. They fail to see that the Zionist chauvinistic dream is historically of recent vintage and that there have always been voices raised, even from the Jewish side, about its inherent dangers. It is, therefore, useful to remember under what circumstances the Balfour declaration of 1917, which set this whole process in motion, came about. It was not the Zionists under Chaim Weizmann who by themselves managed this feat but British Christians, especially the then Prime Minister David Lloyd George and his foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour, pushed the plan through, over considerable opposition by members of the War Cabinet and some prominent British Jews.

In this connection it is of interest to read Lloyd George’s Memoirs of the Peace Conference. Although he has also been faulted for some memory lapses on certain details, the memoirs are an important highlight of the circumstances under which this fateful document came about. The essential point Lloyd George made was that in the fall of 1917, when the Declaration was issued, the outcome of the war hung in the balance. The Allies were nearly financially and physically exhausted, Russia was in turmoil, Romania had been conquered by the German army, the Italians had suffered a massive defeat at Caporetto, and there were no American troops as yet in the trenches. The upcoming year was regarded as the decisive one for the war and a massive propaganda effort was put in place. It was designed to demonstrate that the Western Allies were fighting this war not for imperial gains but to liberate the oppressed people who lingered under authoritarian regimes. This appeal to nationalism included not only the people of Europe but also Arabs and Jews. The latter were regarded as especially important because it was feared that they might swing their financial power to the German side since the Zionist movement had, after all, originated in Austria and was regarded as a German product.

In Lloyd George’s words the Jews were felt to be a “powerful people,” and it was thought that a Declaration in favor of a Jewish homeland would not only energize the Jews of Russia to keep that country in the war on the allied side but,

 

“It was believed, also, that such a declaration would have a potent influence upon world Jewry outside Russia, and secure for the Entente the aid of Jewish financial interests. In America, their aid in this respect would have a special value when the Allies had almost exhausted the gold and marketable securities available for American purchases. Such were the chief considerations which, in 1917, impelled the British Government towards making a contract with the Jews.”

 

Apart from the political considerations it must be added that Lloyd George was a profound believer in Old Testament prophecy and he regarded as his greatest achievement having been able to return the Jews to their ancient home. As has been described in Whither Zionism? there was no unanimity on the wisdom of the Declaration in Britain or America. It was feared that the status of Jews in the West would be jeopardized if henceforth they were to be regarded as citizens of Palestine-Israel rather than e.g. England, France or America. For this reason the text of the Declaration had to be watered down from the original Zionist version of, “ Palestine should be reconstituted as the national Home for the Jewish people,” to “the establishment in [emphasis added] Palestine of a national Home for the Jewish people . . .  it being clearly understood that  nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.“ This change in wording was essential for its acceptance by the War Cabinet and since it created mutually incompatible goals between nationalistic minded Arabs and those Jews who regarded the Zionist version as official, it was the source of the subsequent unending conflict. Many Jewish writers, even today, ignore the official Declaration text, which left the size and borders of the “national Home” open, and insist that not only the entire area west of the Jordan river was promised to them but all of the Palestine British mandate which originally included Transjordan, today’s Hashemite kingdom of Jordan.

A similar situation exists today in regard to UN Resolution 242 which was adopted after the 1967 war and stipulated “Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.”  The Security Council members had wanted the document to include the word “all” before territories which would have made it unambiguous but since the U.S. threatened to veto the resolution if this were done, this compromise was reached. It now leaves it at the discretion of Israel how much of the territories it will in the end be willing to cede.

At the Peace Conference it was immediately apparent that President Wilson’s idealism in regard to the self determination of all the nations liberated from the destroyed Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires would run aground on the rocks of Allied imperialism. Additionally, in the Middle East more had been promised than could be delivered because the Zionists and the Arabs wanted the same strip of land. Furthermore there was antagonism between the British and the French. While the Brits were committed to the return of the Jews, the French were dead set against the idea of turning the cradle of Christianity over to a people who have no use for the Christian religion. Wilson thought he could mediate by appointing a Commission which would go to Palestine and ascertain the wishes of the locals. The French balked, the Brits withdrew likewise and only two Americans formed what was called the King-Crane Commission. Since this is a relatively unknown chapter in the post WWI history of Palestine, I shall quote some of their most salient observations which they reported to the Peace Conference in Paris on August 28, 1919,

 

“We recommend in the fifth place, serious modification of the extreme Zionist Program for Palestine of unlimited immigration of Jews, looking finally to making Palestine a distinctly Jewish state. . . .

[After having listed Wilson’s Principle for self determination] . . . If that principle is to rule, and so the wishes of Palestine’s population are to be decisive as to what is to be done with Palestine, then it is to be remembered that the non-Jewish population of Palestine – nearly nine-tenths of the whole – are emphatically against the entire Zionist program. The tables show that there was no one thing upon which the population of Palestine was more agreed than upon this. To subject a people so minded to unlimited Jewish immigration, and to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross violation of the principle just quoted and of the people’s rights, though it kept within the forms of law.

It is to be noted also that the feeling against the Zionist program is not confined to Palestine, but shared very generally by the people throughout Syria, as our conferences clearly showed. . . .

The Peace Conference should not shut its eyes to the fact that the anti-Zionist feeling in Palestine and Syria is intense and not lightly to be flouted. No British officer, consulted by the Commissioners, believed that the Zionist program could be carried out except by force of arms. . . . That of itself is evidence of a strong sense of the injustice of the Zionist program, on the part of the non-Jewish population of Palestine and Syria. . . . For the initial claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a ‘right’ to Palestine, based on occupation of two thousand years ago, can hardly be seriously considered.”

 

The Recommendation of King-Crane was that there would be “no reason why Palestine could not be included in a united Syrian State.” The sense of the report was that Jews would share the privileges of other citizens in Syria-Palestine, could develop their culture and practice their religion but the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine would be a mistake. Since these recommendations ran afoul of British promises and Zionist interests, the proposals were promptly shelved.

As far as the Zionists were concerned they fell into two groups which may be called: the incrementalists and the maximalists. Although differing in methods both had the same goal of establishing a Jewish State based on maximal free immigration on maximum available territory. They differed on the tactics. The incrementalists, among whom were foremost Weizmann and Ben-Gurion, tried to reach as much of an accommodation with the local Arabs as circumstances permitted, while the maximalists under Vladimir Jabotinsky pushed for the immediate establishment of a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan. Jabotinsky’s view was that the goals of Arabs and Jews are diametrically opposed; there can never be peace between the two nations unless the Jews build a “Wall of Iron” with military strength which will separate them permanently from the neighborhood.

This is not “ancient history;” the current and future wars in the Middle East are directly related to the decisions made in the aftermath of WWI and subsequently WWII. As it turned out everybody was right. Ben Gurion’s incrementalist stance gave him the State of Israel within 1948 borders, which were gradually enlarged as a result of subsequent wars. Jabotinsky’s “Iron Wall” is physically being built at this moment and King-Crane’s warning that a Jewish State in Palestine could only be maintained by military force, was also proven correct.

These are some of the historical facts chauvinistic Zionists are apparently unable or unwilling to recognize, and this is why such vicious attacks against Carter’s book have been launched. I have already mentioned the editorial reviews as they appeared on amazon.com. In addition, as of December 30 there were more than 300 readers’ reviews, and the book got a 3.5 star rating. The headlines of the reviews frequently tell us more about the reviewer than the book itself and here are some samples pasted from amazon.com.

 

“A refreshing summary of the current situation.  Great Book.  Not likely to get a fair shake in America.  jimmy carters foolishness.  Courage from a very dedicated public servant.  Revisionist Historian.  Fall of a man's integrity.  Nothing But The Truth...So help Me God !!  A strange book written by a strange man.  Particularly rough toilet paper.  A much-needed book for our troubled time.  Well done Jimmy!!!.  God Bless Jimmy Carter.  what a brave man.  long overdue book - thanks for having the guts to write it.  A Timid Book.  An Outdated Analysis from an Out of Touch Politician.  Master Of Worthless Peace Treaties.  Failed President writes a failed book.  Finally, it's in the mainstream.”

 

It is, therefore, obvious that Americans are far from united how they view the Palestinian situation and that we have some rather vicious people among us who will readily engage in character assassination. Goethe said: Edel sei der Mensch, hilfreich, und gut. The human being is to be noble, helpful and good. Jimmy Carter incorporates these qualities. This made him a mediocre chief executive at the White House, where these characteristics are not in demand, but allowed him to become the best ex-President of the 20th century. Congratulations President Carter for breaking the code of silence towards the Palestinians which pervades our country; may your book remain on the best-seller list for a long time to come and bear the fruit of peace most of us are hoping for.

Finally there was one more event last week. Ex-President Gerald Ford died at a ripe old age. He was likewise a good and decent human being who never got the full recognition he deserved. This upcoming year is likely to be dominated by events in the Middle East and in order to navigate successfully through the coming storms it would help if our leadership were to adopt Jerry Ford’s maxim, “We may disagree, but never be disagreeable” Following this simple rule would go a long way towards a peaceful world for all of us.







February 1, 2007

AMERICANS SPOKE – BUSH LISTENED

            This headline is likely to raise eyebrows among readers because it is well known that the November election was a referendum on the Iraq war and that the majority of Americans want to extricate themselves as soon as possible from the disaster that we have created in that country. The bipartisan Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group advocated a program that would have allowed us to gradually turn over the country to its rightful owners and it seemed for a few days that the proposal might actually have had a chance of being accepted by the White House. That this was not likely was apparent a few days later, as reported in the January 1 installment, when the President decided that he would not announce his strategy in December but at some time in January. When he did so on January 10 it bore no resemblance to Baker-Hamilton and instead announced a “surge” in Iraq with additional “more than 20,000” troops. These were to pacify Baghdad, create security for the citizens and thus allow reconstruction of the country to proceed. No wonder that the American public, as well members of Congress were dumbfounded because instead of getting out, we were getting in even deeper. The newspapers and TV didn’t tell us what was behind this change of heart and to find out what happened we have to go, as usual, to the Internet.

The Neoconservatives in the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) were deeply concerned about how their plans for the Iraq invasion, which they had engineered and were responsible for, had misfired. Since the idea that the entire plan was misconceived and doomed to failure had never occurred to them and that they might be co-responsible for the disaster was likewise foreign to their mindset. Since they were right, according to their opinion, but the situation had turned out wrong it must have been somebody else’s fault. The guilt was, therefore, laid at the feet of the CIA, the State Department and to some extent the Pentagon for not having adhered to the winning strategy they had devised.  Had these organizations rallied behind the leadership of Perle, Wolfowitz and Feith we would immediately have brought in Ahmed Chalabi with his exile brigade to set up a government. He would have been our Vice-Roy and the Iraqis would dutifully have said: Thank you! This fantasy has never been abandoned and is directly responsible for the one that the members of AEI are currently engaged in.

While the Hamilton-Baker Iraq Study Group was preparing its report Frederick Kagan, a resident scholar at the AEI was busy with devising an alternative. This was presented to its membership as a PowerPoint slide show on December 14. Dr. Kagan (he has a PhD in Russian and Soviet Military History) was unknown to me and at first I thought that he might be the Kagan my Viennese brother had asked me about and which had led to the April 1, 2003 installment on this site, The Neocons’ Leviathan. But the Kagan who had upset the Europeans so much at that time was his brother Robert. He had chided them for being pacifists and relying for their security on the good graces of the American taxpayer instead of creating their own military machine, which would help America in its quest for the Pax Americana.

The December 14, PowerPoint presentation, which can be viewed at the AEI’s site on the Internet, had as its title, “Choosing Victory. A Plan for Success in Iraq.” The Executive summary starts out with,

 

“Victory is still an option in Iraq. America, a country of 300 million people with a GDP of $12 trillion, and more than 1 million soldiers and marines can regain control of Iraq, a state the size of California with a population of 25 million and a GDP under a $100 billion.

Victory in Iraq is vital to America’s security. Defeat will lead to regional conflict, humanitarian catastrophe, and increased global terrorism.”

 

 

After having rejected the alternatives, which listed only immediate withdrawal, engaging Iraq’s neighbors and increasing embedded trainers of the Iraqi army, which are bound to fail, he provided his own plan of which the key elements were,

 

“We must change our focus from training Iraqi soldiers to securing the Iraqi population and containing rising violence. . . .

We must send more American combat forces into Iraq and especially Baghdad to support this operation. A surge [emphasis added] of seven Army brigades and Marine regiments to support clean-and-hold operations starting in the spring of 2007 is necessary, possible, and will be sufficient.

These forces, partnered with Iraqi units, will clear Sunni and mixed Sunni-Shia neighborhoods, primarily on the west side of the city.

After the neighborhoods have been cleared, U.S. soldiers and Marines, again partnered with Iraqis, will remain behind to maintain security.

As security is established, reconstruction aid will help to reestablish normal life and, working through Iraqi officials, will strengthen Iraqi local government.

The ground forces must accept longer tours of several years. National Guard units will have to accept increased deployments during this period. . . .

The president must request a substantial increase in ground forces and strength. This increase is vital to sustaining the morale of the combat forces by ensuring that relief is on the way. The president must issue a personal call for young Americans to volunteer to fight in the decisive conflict of this age.

 

Failure in Iraq today will require greater sacrifices tomorrow in far more desperate circumstances.

Committing to victory now will demonstrate America’s strength to our friends and enemies around the world.”

 

Well, it’s obvious our President did what he was told “he must” do and all of us now know whom he listens to. Kagan was, of course, not satisfied with just one PowerPoint presentation and on December 17, he published an article with retired General Jack Keane in The Weekly Standard as well as the Washington Post, under the title, “The Right Type of Surge. Any Troop Increase Must Be Large and Lasting.” They warned that for the surge to succeed it would require an additional “some 20,000 combat troops” and a “reserve of at least one brigade (5,000 soldiers) to respond to unexpected developments. . . . . It is difficult to imagine a responsible plan for getting the violence in and around Baghdad under control that could succeed with fewer than 30,000 combat troops beyond the forces already in Iraq.”

The full plan was unveiled for a select audience around noon on January 5 at the most appropriate venue, the Wohlstetter Conference Center of the AEI (http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25396/pub_detail.asp). For readers who do not know who Wohlstetter was, and what he stood for, I suggest you go to the December 1, 2005 installment on this site, “Albert Wohlstetter’s Disciples.” This essay is also informative about another drama which currently plays out simultaneously with the Iraq war in a Washington Court room and to which I shall return later. The AEI announcement was headlined, “Iraq: A Turning Point with reports from Iraq from Senators John Mc Cain and Joseph Lieberman.” The schedule was for Kagan and Kean to present for an hour, “Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq” and after a 15 minute break McCain and Lieberman would spend another hour and 15 minutes for their presentation.

The Kagan-Keane slide show was extensive, can be viewed on the Internet (http://www.aei.org/docLib/20061219_ChoosingVictory.pdf), and presented colorful pictures on how the pacification of Baghdad should proceed. January 5 was a Friday; the speech writers went to work and on the evening of Wednesday the 10th a serious and rather wooden looking President read from the Teleprompter,

 

“The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people and it is unacceptable to me. . . .

It is clear that we need to change our strategy in Iraq. So my national security team, military and diplomats conducted a comprehensive review. We consulted members of Congress from both parties, our allies abroad, and distinguished outside experts. We benefited from the thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton. In our discussions, we all agreed that there is no magic formula for success in Iraq. And one message came through loud and clear: Failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States.”

 

What the President did not tell us is, that he discarded all of the advice he got from the mentioned sources and that the plan he laid out on January 10 as well as in his State of the Union speech was concocted by members of the AEI who have a very specific agenda. They work in close cooperation with the government of Israel and their propaganda, via “The War on Terror,” has been successful in instilling into the American public the belief that America’s security is identical with that of Israel. This is the group of people the President listens to. When one looks at the roster of AEI members and resident scholars one finds not only some well known neoconservatives but even Lynn Cheney, the Vice-President’s wife. Although this information is in the public domain on the Internet average Americans will not know about it because the mainstream media do not report to whom the President really listens.

The “surge” plan has probably very little chance of success. General Petraeus who has been sent to enact it is a very capable person and distinguished soldier but he is confronted with an impossible task and wrong assumptions. The Kagan plan, because we need to call it by its rightful name, is a typical example of the German saying: Er hat die Rechnung ohne den Wirt gemacht. That is, he calculated the bill without considering the innkeeper. In the present case there are two innkeepers he has not taken into account, the Iraqis and the American public. The underlying assumption for the plan is that there is a functioning Iraqi government which has the support of its army and its people. This is, at present, not the case. For the Iraqi army to fight, as it did against the Iranians in the 1980s, there would have to be a leadership they respect, a sense of belonging to a country, rather than a religious or ethnic denomination, and in absence of those aspects the fear of a gun behind their back as was the case for some units of the Red Army. These preconditions don’t exist in Iraq at this time and are unlikely to exist in the foreseeable future.

Even if the “surge” were to be carried out as planned on Kagan’s PowerPoint slides the insurgents have plenty of time to go home for a while and then come back with a vengeance once the American troops leave again. The Arabs have what Americans sorely lack, namely patience. They know that time is on their side and that we will have to leave eventually regardless of what shape the country is in by that time. In addition, since the “surge,” isn’t a surge at all but a gradual buildup of forces which concentrates on Baghdad, the guerilla forces can simply move into other provinces to create havoc. As the LA Times reported on January 3, 2007, “A promising Iraqi province is now a tinderbox.” The article showed what had happened when the Americans moved out of Diyala and Baqubah and the Iraqi army moved in. Bullying, stealing from homes and cars, kidnappings and torture were the rule until the Americans stepped in again and re-established some sort of order. But how long can they do that? When I read on January 14 in The Salt Lake Tribune, “Kurdish brigade trains for Baghdad,” I said to myself: That’s an excellent prescription for a genuine civil war. Kurds who currently are engaged in ethnically cleansing their province of Sunnis will surely not be met with open arms in Baghdad. One can feel sympathy for General Petraeus because he is forced to violate the very principles he had laid down in his book on Counterinsurgency Warfare. These required a large occupying force, considerably larger than what he will have available, and a long indefinite stay.

This will not be permitted by the second innkeeper, with whom Kagan has not reckoned either, the American people. When a massive peace rally takes place in front of the Capitol and demands an end, it is clear that Professor Kagan (he taught military history at West Point) and his pupil, George W. Bush, have miscalculated. Although the precise number of participants has not been revealed it is noteworthy that the protests in Washington and around the country were similar to those of the Vietnam era. They are even more remarkable because in contrast to those days we don’t have a military draft at this time. Furthermore, Congress has also lost patience and even Republicans are beginning to reflect on how their stance will resonate with the public when they run for re-election in 2008.  It is simply too late for the Kagan plan. What might have been possible in the first few months after the invasion is no longer achievable. Times have changed and local attitudes have hardened against us. I don’t deny that miracles can happen, but experience teaches that they are quite rare.

There is an additional fallacy in Kagan’s thinking. Victory is not a choice, as his rhetoric implies, because the outcome of a war is never determined by one side alone. There are too many imponderables and if will power were to be the decisive factor Hitler would have won WWII because he had plenty of that. A guerilla war, which is what we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, is very difficult to win for a democracy because success would not only require a massive number of ground troops, as well as the acceptance of large numbers of casualties, but also methods which are no longer tolerated and are regarded as war crimes.

At this time we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the American military adventure in Iraq. Plan A has failed; this is Plan B and there can’t be a Plan C. We now have to ask ourselves: Is a failure in Iraq really the catastrophe that Kagan and colleagues as well as his supporters in Congress and the White House expound? No, if we draw the appropriate lesson. This would require, among other aspects, that the people who concocted “the New American Century,” the AEI, and other similar think tanks, are shown the door and foreign policy is again made by professional diplomats where it should be, in the State Department. The idea that we can dictate to other countries what they need and must do will have to be abandoned because it cannot lead to peace; only mutually agreed covenants can succeed.

Currently the State Department is still under the thumb of the White House and Condi Rice has been relegated to the role of the proverbial “Girl Friday” who runs errands but has no say so in the decision making process. This was exemplified last summer by her delay in supporting an armistice in Lebanon and now by not engaging in talks with Syria and Iran as had been suggested by Baker-Hamilton. In an interview with the German News Magazine Der Spiegel on January 22 she said in regard to talks with Iran and Syria, “Of course, the only reason to talk to us would be to extract a price; and that's not diplomacy, that's extortion.”  She had it backwards, the Iranians and Syrians do want to talk to us but we won’t. Obviously diplomacy is give and take but at present we insist on the taking rather than meeting mutual concerns upon which lasting agreements can be reached. This attitude of, “what we say you must do” is also exemplified by the stance of the Israeli government towards the Palestinians which will be discussed in relation to the failed Oslo agreement in another installment. Unless you treat your negotiating partner with respect you can only achieve a Versailles and we know what happened thereafter.

            While Iraq obviously dominates the news, there is the additional drama which is unfolding in form of the Libby trial. The wheels of justice are surely grinding slow in our country and who did what, in the White House in the early summer of 2003, is now being testified to in a Washington Court. The issue is the “outing” of the CIA operative Valerie Plame, ex-ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife. It was widely seen as revenge for Wilson’s op-Ed piece in The New York Times where he stated that the Uranium sale from Niger to Saddam was bogus and he implied that the country had been dragged into the Iraq war under false pretenses. Details on this topic were presented in previous installments (August 1, 2003 The Niger Forgery; April 1, 2005 The Plame Affair; December 1, 2005 Albert Wohlstetter’s disciples). These reports are worth reading in today’s context because the Libby trial is now finally under way. The prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has emphasized that the trial is not about the Iraq war but only the perjury which Mr. Libby (former Chief of Staff for the Vice-President) is alleged to have committed in testimony before a Grand Jury about his role in the “outing” of Ms. Plame. Nevertheless, it is impossible to ignore the context in which the alleged crime has been committed and the White House as well as the Vice-President’s office is bound to come under scrutiny. This cannot be good news especially for Mr. Cheney because he is expected to be called as a witness and hopefully he will have to testify under oath.

            As yet the Libby trial is overshadowed in the media by the “surge” debate. That there is another trial set to begin in the summer of this year is not reported at all, except for a brief note in the Wall Street Journal of January 16, 2007 under the title,

“Ex-AIPAC Executives’ Trial Set for June.” While the Libby trial is a threat to the Vice-President, which he may or may not survive, the McNulty spy trial endangers the entire neoconservative community and the “special relationship” with the State of Israel. I have mentioned the McNulty investigation in the “Wohlstetter” report and here is a summary of the affair with a January 2007 update. For some of the early background I have relied on the article by Stephen Green (www.counterpunch.org/green02282004.html), “Serving Two Flags. Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Administration; as well as the one by Jim Lobe, “Spy Probe Scans Neocons,” which appeared on LewRockwell.com on September 1, 2004. Both individuals are investigative reporters who have a PhD degree.

             The bare bone facts, of what is currently called on the Internet “The AIPAC espionage scandal,” are: a former Pentagon official, Larry Franklin, was indicted in May of 2005 by a Federal Grand Jury for providing classified documents to Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, two senior members of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), whose indictment followed in August of that year. Rosen was the AIPAC’s policy director at the time and Weissman the senior Iran-analyst of the organization. Although AIPAC denied that any spying had taken place both individuals were fired. Franklin pleaded guilty and was sentenced on January 20, 2006 to 12 years, 7 months in prison and a fine of $10,000 for passing classified information to AIPAC and an Israeli diplomat. He has, however, remained free for now because of the pending Rosen-Weissman trial. That trial was supposed to have started in early 2006 but as The Wall Street Journal reported, “has been weighed down by deliberations over which classified materials should be admissible in court, according to the attorney.” The new date for the beginning of the trial is supposed to be June of this year.

            If we truly lived in a free country, as is proclaimed, and this trial were allowed to go forward it could lead to a profound change in American policy towards Israel and, therefore, the Middle East. AIPAC would stand exposed as a lobbying firm for a foreign government it would lose its tax exempt status and would no longer be able to lavish financial support for members of Congress who seek election or re-election as it does at present. While the Libby trial focuses on malfeasance by the Vice-President’s office and only indirectly touches on the Iraq war, the AIPAC trial would go to the heart of the matter. Larry Franklin reported directly to Douglas Feith (deputy to Paul Wolfowitz) who was in charge of the “Office of Special Plans” in the Pentagon, which “stovepiped” false information via Libby directly to Cheney and thus provided the rationale for the Iraq invasion. Although the witness list is likely to be curtailed, one may hope that Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Michael Ledeen would have to testify under oath. Under those circumstances the American public would learn for the first time from the mainstream media what had been going on between various administration officials, AIPAC and Israel for the past 30 years or so. This would include illegal sales of advanced military technology to Israel and its resale by Israel, for some of it, to China and other countries. Some of the material was bootlegged and ended up on the black market. But hardware was only one aspect of this lucrative trade. A U.S. developed case-management software program, which is used to monitor and track files, was acquired by Israel’s MOSSAD then resold, with some modification, to other foreign intelligence agencies. Jim Lobe also wrote that the MOSSAD version was fitted “with a ‘trap door’ that permitted the seller to spy on the buyer’s own intelligence files, according to a number of published reports.”

            The FBI had been investigating these activities for the past 30 years (the Iran-Contra scandal figured in part the same players) but criminal actions were never allowed to proceed. Will it be different this time? For the sake of the country and the world one must hope that it will.  Although the Iraq disaster will be winding down, one way or the other, the neocons will not rest until the war has been widened to Iran and Syria.

Michael Ledeen is not, as yet, a household name but he is one of the major AEI ideologues who vigorously pursue this goal. Who is Dr. Ledeen? For that answer we have to go to JINSA (http://www.jinsa.org/about/adboard/adboard.html?documentid=742) the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, of which he was a founding member, and where he is lauded as “one of the world’s leading authorities on contemporary history and international affairs.” He is also a resident scholar of AEI. Ledeen’s book, The War Against the Terror Masters. Why it Happened, Where We Are Now, How We’ll Win, to which I have referred in the Wohlstetter article, reveals both his Credo as well as the means with which he pursues it. Written in the winter of 2002, to encourage the looming Iraq war, and updated in the spring of 2003 after the fall of Saddam, he argued that too much time had been allowed to elapse between the Afghanistan campaign and the Iraq invasion and that further prompt action was urgently required. The concluding paragraph states,

 

“The war against terrorism was never limited to a single country, or to a single strategy. We have defeated Saddam, now we must spread freedom in the heartland of the terror masters in Iran. If we do, we will find it much easier to deal with Syria and Saudi Arabia. If we fail to act decisively, we will permit the mullahs to define the near future and we will have lost a major battle in the war.”

 

This was written in the first flush of “Mission Accomplished” and to bolster his case he stoked fear of Iran’s nuclear weapons. He asserted that Iran’s nuclear program was very far advanced and “by early summer, the CIA concluded that the mullahs were likely to have the bomb by year’s end.” That was 2003! Four years later we are again bombarded with the rhetoric of a nuclear armed Iran, which will not only threaten the Middle East but the U.S. and Europe. In the intervening years everything Ledeen had written about Iraq had turned out to have been false and we really should take one of his quotes to heart, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me!” The neocons have discredited themselves, but our President still listens to them and it is high time that the American public be informed about the behind the scene forces which direct our foreign policy.

The propaganda that our security depends on the security of Israel needs to be shown for what it is, namely propaganda. It is understandable that Israel is concerned about Iran going nuclear, but there are other means of dealing with this potential threat than military ones. To exaggerate the threat by continually invoking the Holocaust, as was done in a recent article by Israeli historian Benny Morris in the German newspaper Die Welt, merely instills further fear, and can paradoxically produce the result that was feared in the first place. As Job exclaimed, “For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me (3:25).”  We should not allow ourselves to be ruled by fear of what might happen. The future is unknown and to prejudge it on basis of past real or imagined disasters poisons the present and thereby the future.

It is obvious that our eventual withdrawal from Iraq will have some wide-spread adverse effects but they need not be catastrophic if we act wisely. If on the other hand we allow ourselves to be stampeded into an Iran/Syrian war the disaster will be greater still. Thanks to the neocons we are no longer welcome in that part of the world except when we come as individuals with a tourist visa. The assertions by the administration that we will be overrun by terrorists in our country if we leave Iraq can be proven wrong if we take prudent measures here at home and work in concert with the rest of the nations of the world. This could be done by changing the course from confrontation to cooperation but would require a complete regime change at home.

AIPAC and the rest of what I have called last month the chauvinistic Zionists know that the Rosen-Weissman trial is bound to be major problem for them and since they have the financial as well as the political clout they will do everything in their power to hush it up. Whether or not they will succeed in this effort will depend upon the American media and surprisingly enough on Rosen and Weissman. They had expected that AIPAC would cover their legal costs because, after all, they had simply done their duty for the organization. This was not the case; AIPAC disowned them and Rosen-Weissman have sued the organization.  As the Forward of December 23, 2005 reported AIPAC now perceives Rosen and Weissman “as acting ‘like Samson trying to bring the house down on everyone.’” Inasmuch as the AEI and AIPAC are leading the charge against Iran at this time, with the goal of widening the war in order to make withdrawal from Iraq impossible, it is important that the Rosen-Weissman trial be allowed to proceed at the earliest moment. Only full disclosure of what goes on behind the scenes will prevent further disasters. This would be the duty of the mainstream media but it is, unfortunately, obvious that they are tightly controlled and I shall cite relevant examples in next month’s installment.







March 1, 2007

BARAK IN SALT LAKE CITY

            No, this is not about Obama who aspires to the presidency, but about Ehud who has been the leader of his nation, saw himself as a Prince of Peace, and only brought further disasters on the Palestinians as well as his own people. His Prime Ministership is a classic example of good intentions having gone wrong because they were based on false assumptions and a personality structure, which prevented successful negotiations.

            The University of Utah has recently established a “World Leaders Lecture Forum” and Barak was the first person to be invited to give a talk on “The Middle East – Today and Tomorrow.” The venue was Kingsbury Hall which ordinarily serves as the university’s center for the performing arts and is essentially a theater with a stage hidden by a curtain. In front of the curtain was a lectern and to the side of it a table for dignitaries. I am mentioning this only because first impressions are always the most lasting. At the appointed time Barak emerged from behind the curtain with two representatives from the university and what struck me was what can only be described as a smug grin which he wore throughout the introduction. It was this grin that probably had given rise to a statement about him in Clayton Swisher’s book, The Truth about Camp David. He quoted a “veteran U.S. intelligence officer, who had been intimately involved in the Oslo process and was charged with assembling a leadership profile” of the newly elected Prime Minister. The officer “was alarmed by the picture that emerged, and summarized this assessment to Washington via outgoing cables

 

Among Israeli intelligence officers, the election represented a contest between Bibi and Barak – the ‘hated’ guy and the ‘idiot.’ One boyhood friend remarked that Barak is intelligent, but not as intelligent as he thinks. People within the military establishment are not very impressed with him . . . Barak is confident, arrogant, and prone to make decisions on his own, preferably without consulting

others.”

 

Swisher’s book is based on extensive interviews with the major participants in the Israeli-Arab peace process and can be recommended to everyone who is seriously interested in finding out why things went wrong at Camp David II. It supplements the account by Dennis Ross, The Missing Peace. The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace, which is, unavoidably, in part self serving.

When Barak started his lecture the grin disappeared but it did re-emerge intermittently when he discussed the lighter side of issues such as being for the first time in our city and feeling immediately “right at home where a Jordan River brings fresh water into a dead lake” and “the biggest local bank is named ‘Zion.’” In honor of our Great Salt Lake I must mention, however, that it is far from dead. The lake harbors myriads of tiny brine shrimp, which are harvested as fish food for aquariums and as such supports a lucrative industry. Our Jordan River also has the good sense to bypass the Great Salt Lake and continues unimpeded on its travels to the South.

The substance of Barak’s talk was the predictable mantra we have heard over and over again about why Israel is beleaguered. He agreed that there has to be peace between Israel and the Palestinians, but the latter are not ready for it. Arafat could not be trusted because he was a terrorist and had remained a terrorist. The problem is not the occupation of the West Bank but terrorism and Arafat had rejected even “as a basis for negotiations” when over 90 per cent of the West Bank was offered. With Hamas in the Palestinian government there is nothing to negotiate because there’s no sense talking to somebody whose aim is to destroy you. The Palestinians need a Sadat who is willing to make bold decisions even at the risk of his own life. Eventually the two sides will have to separate completely but for peace to come to the region will take decades. In the meantime Israel will have to continue to look for its security, fight terrorism and nuclear proliferation, especially by Iran and North Korea, which cannot be tolerated. Iran is the deadlier of the two because not only will it threaten the whole Middle East but also Europe and the US. Furthermore, it will also lead to bomb building by other Middle East countries such as Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia But the biggest danger is that nuclear material will fall into the hands of terrorist groups and they will have no compunctions about using it. Barak’s suggestion as to how this horror scenario can be avoided was, surprisingly enough, for the US to stop its efforts at democratizing the world and instead cooperate fully with China and Russia because without these countries nothing is achievable. His message was: don’t look at their abysmal human rights record but concentrate on how to get some stability into our world by lifting the economic conditions all over the world. This is indeed a program one can subscribe to and at the end of his talk he received the customary standing applause.

Then came the questions from the audience and the first one was very direct: “Israel has never signed the nuclear proliferation treatment, why not? And does Israel have a nuclear bomb?” Straightforward questions which require a yes or no are, of course, a nightmare for politicians but they are trained to deal with such nastiness. Barak went into a long discourse that Israel lives in a bad neighborhood, has to protect itself, and as part of that protection will keep its cards close to the vest. A second direct question in regard to Jimmy Carter’s book about the occupation of the West Bank and the treatment of the Palestinians was also deflected. The sum and substance of the longish answer was: the measures are justified because of terrorism.

The purpose of Barak’s visit to our State was, however, not solely educational but as Matthew LaPlante of the Salt Lake Tribune informed us there was an additional private dinner talk for the purpose of fundraising. Mr. LaPlante didn’t tell us who was to benefit from the funds but since he mentioned that Barak has launched his campaign to regain the leadership of Israel’s Labor Party it is likely to be used for that purpose. Barak had briefly mentioned in his speech the various investigations about improper conduct by high officials, which are going on in his country, so one may wonder to what extent the use of American money for political campaigns will be tolerated in Israel.

Before discussing the reasons for Barak’s failed Premiership let me just mention why I think he was wrong in his demand that the Palestinians need a Sadat with whom Israel can make peace. The analogy does not apply. Sadat was President of a country which had an army and as such was feared as well as respected by the Israelis. He insisted that Israel honor Security Council Resolution 242 in its entirety and return all the land Israel had conquered from Egypt in the 1967 war. Israel’s Prime Minister Begin was willing to pay that price and he got peace with Egypt. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin intended to follow the same route in regard to Syria but was murdered before he could bring this plan to fruition. The Syrian situation was akin to that of Egypt because the country had an army which could potentially do serious harm to Israel. This is where the analogy in regard to the Palestinians breaks down. They have nothing; they are dirt poor and have no army. As such they have nothing to offer to the Israelis except for appealing to universal human rights and justice as well as the promise to abstain from shooting some ineffective rockets and conducting suicide attacks. This massive imbalance of forces is the fundamental reality which guides Israel’s behavior. Barak did not want a Sadat at Camp David he wanted a Quisling. Arafat was unwilling to assume that role. This is why he had to be labeled as an unreconstructed terrorist and ostracized.

Barak’s current angling for funds in the US is not a new Israeli strategy. The Clinton administration had tried to help Shimon Peres win over Netanyahu in 1996 but burned its fingers in the process. “Bibi” won with a minuscule margin but he lost again within three years to Barak, who had the help of our very own James Carville. The latter was instrumental in the Clinton victory of 1992 and the author of the famous: It’s the economy, stupid! The Clinton administration was delighted when Barak won by a landslide because they had gotten nowhere with Netanyahu. After the Lewinsky debacle President Clinton wanted to redeem his legacy and with Barak’s ostensible desire to make peace with Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians this was the time when all the pieces could have fallen into place. Nobel peace prizes seemed ready to be grasped.

The problem was that the American enthusiasm for Barak was not shared by the Palestinians. After Barak had formed a very broad coalition government which excluded Likud but contained other extreme right as well as left wing parties, he gave a speech before the Knesset on July 6, 1999.  In it he declared his intention to work with Arafat “in partnership and respect, in order to jointly arrive at a fair and agreed settlement for coexistence in freedom, prosperity and good neighborliness in this beloved land where the two peoples will always live.” So far so good but there was the inevitable qualification, “but without compromising on Israel’s security needs and most vital interests, first and foremost among them, a united Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Israel under our sovereignty [Laqueur and Rubin. The Israel-Arab Reader. A documentary history of the Middle East Conflict].” This is a condition no Arab is likely to agree to in the foreseeable future. When Barak then gave the ministry for housing and development to Yitzhak Levy, the head of the “settlers” party, the Palestinians knew that there wouldn’t be any real change in government policy. Settlements on unilaterally expropriated land would continue as they had under Netanyahu, in spite of the Oslo agreement, and Palestinians would be squeezed out from “Greater Jerusalem.”  

During the election campaign Barak had also promised that he would pull the Israeli army out of Southern Lebanon by 2000 and conclude a peace treaty with Syria. To the dismay of the Palestinians, whose living conditions were steadily getting worse, Barak gave first priority to the Syrian track. In Barak’s view Syria was the potentially greater threat and the Palestinians would just have to wait some more. Barak feared that if he fulfilled the Lebanese troop withdrawal promise without having a peace treaty with Syria it would be seen as a unilateral move. Hizballah, Syria’s client, would claim victory, take over at the border and  Sharon’s 1982 operation “Peace for Galilee,” which started the Lebanon invasion in the first place, would finally have collapsed completely. If he could show that he had obtained peace with Syria, Hizballah could have been reined in and Israel’s northern border would have been secure.

This was reasonable as far as it went because Hafez Asad, Syria’s president, was willing to make peace if Barak gave up the Golan Heights and withdrew to the June 4, 1967 borders. Asad ‘s reasons were simple; he was seriously ill, intended to turn his job over to his son and didn’t want him to be burdened with unfinished business, which included bad relations with the US because of Israel.

The Clinton administration initially had some misgivings about the Syria first policy, because the occupied territories were increasingly restive and deserved immediate attention. Barak had strung Arafat along with promises which were not fulfilled and when the Palestinians saw that their rights continued to be ignored as well as compromised they grew increasingly upset and distrustful.

Under pressure from Barak Clinton finally agreed to the Syria first strategy and on Barak’s insistence convened a secret meeting in secluded Sherpherdstown, West Virginia, which is only a little over an hour from Washington by car. This meeting between the Syrian, Israeli and American delegation was important because it revealed for the first time Barak’s character and negotiating strategy. Barak set the agenda for the meeting and every American proposal had to go through him before it could be shown to the Syrians. There was to be a minimum of a paper trail and the Syrian’s sine qua non for any agreement, namely Israel’s troop withdrawal to the June 4, 1967 border, was not to be broached up front but left for the “endgame.” With other words, put what is most important last and maybe the Syrians will relent. But the Syrians saw only delays and concluded that Barak wasn’t serious.

The Americans were handicapped on two fronts. Although Clinton wanted a peace treaty very badly our chief negotiator was Dennis Ross whom the Syrians had come to mistrust over the years. Not only was Ross Jewish, but he was also known to be very pro-Israel and, according to Swisher, in some instances his positions went even farther in favor of Israel than that of the Israelis. The second handicap was internal politics in Israel. Barak’s coalition was on shaky grounds and it was feared that unless America gave Barak complete freedom of action his government would fall, Sharon would take over and all hopes for peace would be gone. This is also the reason why Barak was not up front with the June 4, 1967 border because if his agreement to relinquish the Golan Heights were leaked before an agreement was signed he would be in serious political trouble. But Barak’s problems did not interest the Syrians. All they saw was procrastination and the US siding with the Israelis. The Syrians went home empty handed and felt that they had been brought to the US on false pretenses.

But Barak didn’t give up thereafter. He kept pressuring Clinton; told him that he would abide by the June 4, 1967 border and a direct meeting between Clinton and Asad was the only solution. As mentioned, Asad was seriously ill and reluctant to leave his country but that did not concern Barak. He promised what Clinton understood as giving up the Golan Heights and asked him to present this assurance to Asad in a face to face talk. Clinton then agreed to meet with Asad in Geneva in March of 2000. Again Barak tried to set the timetable. Clinton was scheduled to visit India and Pakistan, who were at that time close to a possible nuclear war, and did not have unlimited time for the extended Geneva negotiations that Barak had in mind. When Ross told him so Barak blew up and apparently felt that the president of the US was supposed to do his bidding at all times and under all circumstances. Ross achieved a compromise that Clinton could stop in Geneva on his way home from Asia. But in order to bring Asad to Geneva Clinton needed a firm commitment from Barak on the June 4, 1967 border which could be conveyed to Asad directly by a trusted intermediary. This task was entrusted to Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia who had served in this function previously and who was on good terms with Asad. Bandar was assured by the Americans that they had Barak’s agreement and if Asad were to come to Geneva the guarantee would be delivered in person. Asad agreed and the meeting was set for March 27, 2000.

In the meantime, unbeknownst to the Syrians the Ross-Barak haggling over what constituted the June 4 border continued. As it turned out, according to Ross, there existed no map which showed this border. There was one from colonial days in 1923 which depicted the border between the French-Syrian and the British-Palestine mandate, and did not give Syria direct access to Lake Tiberias, or Lake Kinneret as it is known by the Israelis. There were also aerial photographs of the lakeshore from 1967 but in the meantime there had been a drought and the lake had receded. Ergo from the Israeli point of view there was no fixed border and everything was negotiable. The Syrians who had been used to having been in control of the eastern shoreline of the lake before 1967 didn’t concern themselves with such subtleties and insisted that the land was theirs the water was Israel’s. This was not good enough for Barak who wanted to control a strip of land on the eastern shore and this basic misunderstanding wrecked the Geneva talks.

Hasad had not come with great expectations to Geneva because Shepherdstown had thoroughly disillusioned him about Barak’s intentions. After some initial pleasantries Clinton proceeded to read slowly a position paper which had been drafted by Ross and Barak which said that the “The Israelis are prepared to withdraw fully to a commonly agreed border [italics in the original].” whereupon, according to Swisher, Asad asked, “is this line of June 4, 1967?” When Clinton continued with “Israel will retain sovereignty along Lake Tiberias and a strip of territory . . .” Asad had heard enough and said “The Israelis don’t want peace! There’s no point in continuing.” For Asad it had always been “full peace, for full withdrawal” and he had not come for haggling. Ross’s version differs slightly because he didn’t see how “a commonly agreed border” could be a stumbling block. In my opinion Ross did not realize that Asad had come for a signing ceremony rather than negotiations, and that Asad who was terminally ill (he died a few months later on June 10) was no longer in the mood to play games with anyone. Clinton’s pleas that he consider Barak’s delicate political situation fell on deaf ears because that was not Syria’s problem. The summit was a fiasco. It accomplished nothing except for increasing the bad relations between Washington and Damascus by laying the blame on Asad’s inflexibility.

It is reported that Barak might have been willing to make more concessions on the Lake Tiberias issue, which was in fact all about control of water resources, but it was a fallback position. Had he been up front and not engaged in what was regarded by the Syrians as duplicity, success might have been achieved. This aspect is important because Barak pursued the identical strategy during Camp David with the same result.

As mentioned above the Palestinians had good reasons not to trust Barak. When they saw that Barak instead of addressing their problems first but instead devoted his time to the futile Syria strategy they felt themselves being treated as “the other wife.” When he finally turned his attention to their concerns he again did so on his terms, rather than abiding by previous agreements. In October of 1998 Netanyahu and Arafat had signed the Wye River Memorandum which was to be a further step to “final status negotiations” between the Palestinian Authority and Israel to end the decades’ long conflict. Among other aspects it called for a three step phased redeployment of Israeli troops in the West Bank. Phases one and two were completed with some delays but there was to be no phase three and settlement building proceeded unabated.

Barak tried to persuade Arafat that instead of phase 3 one should proceed immediately to a final agreement on all aspects which would make all interim agreements obsolete. Although this sounds fine in theory it neglects the human factor. Agreements to be meaningful have to be precise and built on trust. Over the years the Israelis had given the Palestinians little chance to develop that trust because they preferred vague formulations which could then be interpreted in Israel’s favor. The insistence by Israel to the US that the Security Council Resolution 242 omit the definitive word  “the” in regard to “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from the territories occupied in the recent conflict,” and leave it only with “withdrawal from territories,” is perhaps the most glaring example. This gave the Israelis an “out,” because they felt that it allowed them to decide at what point they had complied with the Resolution. Had the Security Council stayed with the original formulation the US would have used its veto. Since the UK violently disagreed with the change in wording a secret understanding was reached between the UK and the US which retained the famous “the” in relation to future negotiations but this did not rise to the level of the official UN document and could be ignored by the Israelis.

  While Arafat wanted a step wise approach that honored previous commitments, Barak was in a hurry. He wanted the Palestinians to knuckle under but needed Clinton’s help for that. But chastised by Geneva the president was not particularly enthused about having potentially another failed summit at hand. This is where Mr. Fixer, Dennis Ross, came in again and whose role in the Clinton US Middle East policy fiasco should not be underestimated. He had served the first Bush as well as the Clinton administration as special envoy for the Middle East and had racked up innumerable frequent flyer miles during his decade of shuttle diplomacy. There is some question who he really was supposed to report to and since he preferred the direct route to the President, Sandy Berger (National Security Advisor) and Madeleine Albright (Secretary of State) were intermittently miffed about what they regarded as him having gone behind their backs. At any rate Ross, who was by now distrusted by the Palestinians, as well as some people in our own administration, succeeded in persuading Clinton that Barak was sincere and that this opportunity should not be wasted. Arafat tried to tell Clinton that the scenario was far from as rosy as it was presented to him by Barak and Ross. His fear was that a precipitate summit which aimed to come up in a few weeks with a “final agreement” to an intractable problem that had poisoned the atmosphere for decades could not possibly succeed and that failure would make a bad situation worse. The only thing he asked for was that if the talks failed, he would not be blamed and Clinton gave him this assurance.

The summit was doomed before it even started. On the eve of his departure for Washington Barak made it clear to his Israeli audience on July 10, 2000 that, the following principles would have to be adhered to: A united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty; an amendment of the 1967 border, the overwhelming majority of the settlers in “Judea, Samaria and Gaza” would remain in consolidated blocs; there was to be no foreign army in the entire area west of the Jordan River and a solution to the refugee problem was to be outside Israeli sovereign territory. “These are the principles – these and no other.”  It is understandable that with these preconditions for negotiations Arafat had no interest in this type of summitry. His stance was: if the Israelis could offer to Sadat and Asad that they would go back to the June 4, 1967 border they should be willing to do the same for him: full peace for all the land the Palestinians had been living on prior to the 1967 war. He regarded this as their inalienable right as stated in Resolutions 242 and 338. Arafat was concerned that he would be pressured into agreeing to a retreat from the international resolutions and have to agree to vague promises which would subsequently not be honored. This fear was also expressed by the Chairman of the Palestinian negotiating team, Saeb Erekat, to Madeleine Albright on the eve of the summit. Erekat told Swisher in May of 2003:

 

“I said to Albright, ‘Madeleine please don’t make it sound like a one-time summit. Don’t make it sound like people should expect white smoke from Camp David. We’re not ready. You’re not ready. The Israelis are not ready. Unless you want to blame it on us this will backfire! Make a series of summits. Don’t tell Palestinians and Israelis that it’s either/or. . . .

I told them. You have a difficult situation on the ground. The lack of further redeployment; the lack of prisoner release, the lack of hope – it’s a pressure cooker situation. It will explode! . . .  . Some Americans said later, ‘Oh they were planning the intifada!’ You know? We knew it was coming – we knew it was coming! All of us knew!”

 

This was the Palestinian assessment of the context of the talks. From the American side one needs to remember that 2000 was an election year and that Hillary was running for the Senate in New York which has a considerable Jewish population. Bill Clinton could not embarrass his wife’s candidacy by appearing to “lean on the Jews.” Especially when her opponent, Rick Lazio, was already promising to push for the relocation of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which is an absolute no no for Arabs because it would legitimize Israel’s unilateral annexation of the city. As Swisher wrote the summit “was set up to fail.”

But Clinton had persuaded himself that a summit was the right thing to do and he even swallowed Barak’s other demands, which were not made public at the time and included: a financial package to the tune of $35 billion over several years as well as “a formal mutual defense agreement including a commitment by the US to come to the assistance of Israel in the event of attack in the future, enshrined in a treaty to be ratified by Congress and the Knesset. This treaty would be fully like the American treaty relationship with its NATO allies, and thus include a nuclear umbrella commitment by the U.S, i.e., an American promise to respond to a nuclear attack on Israel with America’s nuclear forces [Bruce Riedel www.bitterlemons.org July 15, 2002]” In addition Barak wanted some of America’ most advanced defense technology, the transfer of which was possibly illegal.

Clinton supposedly accepted the fiscal part of this package, probably feeling that if you can buy yourself peace it’s still cheaper than war. In view of the staggering costs of President Bush’s current Iraq disaster this seems actually reasonable. But the Americans were not prepared for the difficulties of a summit and to the chagrin of the Palestinians about two thirds of the American delegation was Jewish with various degrees of pro-Israel leanings. Thus the Palestinians were at a distinct disadvantage and could only insist on their rights as enshrined in International law and International agreements.

As far as Barak was concerned he regarded himself as the person in charge and used the same delaying tactics as at Shepherdstown. Nobody knew what his bottom line was and when he eventually revealed it to Clinton it was a nonstarter for the Arabs. Although he agreed to return about 90% of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians; sovereignty over the Christian and Muslim quarters of the Old City of Jerusalem, as well as over some other areas where Arabs lived, he insisted that the Haram al-Sharif, Temple Mount, be under Palestinian “custodianship” rather than sovereignty. This was a point Arafat could not possibly agree to because a) it would legitimize Jewish control over one of the Arab’s holiest sites and b) it was not even in his power to grant it because this would have required consent by representatives of the entire Islamic world. As Arafat remarked to Madeleine Albright when she pressured him, “The Palestinian leader who will give up Jerusalem has not yet been born. I will not betray my people or the trust they have placed in me. Don’t look to me to legitimize the occupation! . . . Our people will accept nothing les than their rights as stated by international resolutions and international legality.”

The Americans didn’t believe Arafat’s stance and thought it was simply obstinacy that could be overcome by pressure from friendly Arab leaders. But as Ned Walker, who had been an ambassador to Israel as well as Egypt and was then Deputy Coordinator for the Middle East in the State Department, told Swisher, “The [world’s Arab leaders] were all totally in the dark. . . . When the president at the eleventh hour asked them to press Arafat to accept a compromise on Jerusalem, he got a resounding silence.” This silence becomes even more understandable when one reads that in the phone calls from Camp David with MuBarak, as well as Prince Bandar they were requested to intervene with Arafat but when they asked what the offer was they were told, “Sorry, we can’t tell you that as yet.”  As Ned Walker also said, “The guys who were running it [Camp David] . . . when they told me what they were talking about in terms of Jerusalem it just seemed like a joke to me! I mean, they seem to think that, first of all, it was this theory that Jerusalem was only the third most important site for Islam, therefore it’s not as important as the Western Wall is to the Jews their first most important site [italics in the original]. How that thinking got started I don’t know.” Regardless how it got started it is regarded as a fact by the Israelis with literally fatal consequences.

When the summit broke down the spin started. Clinton and Barak blamed Arafat for the disaster while the Palestinians cheered Arafat for having stood up to pressure. Barak was under severe criticism at home for having intended to give up parts of Jerusalem and in order to demonstrate Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount Sharon held his provocative “visit” there. The Palestinians regarded this as an insult; stones flew from their side, rifle fire came from the other and the second intifada started. Our media place the responsibility for the renewed outbreak of violence on the Palestinians and omit to inform us about Security Council Resolution 1322 of October 7, 2000 which was adopted unanimously with one abstention (the US). It “deplores the provocation carried out at Al-Haram-Sharif in Jerusalem on 28 September 2000 . . .  condemns acts of violence, especially the excessive use of force against Palestinians . . . Calls upon Israel, the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations and its responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949 . . . calls for the immediate resumption of negotiations within the Middle East peace process on its agreed basis with the aim of achieving an early final settlement between the Israeli and Palestinian sides. . . .

Further “peace proposals” were indeed put forth by Clinton in the last few weeks of his presidency but were ineffective because Barak’s government had fallen, Sharon was on his way in and so was Bush. Oslo was dead and the carnage accelerated. Half-hearted road maps or the current belated efforts of Condi Rice notwithstanding, nothing can be accomplished at this time in the Israeli-Palestinian war because Ehud Olmert is neither interested in a genuine peace deal nor does he have the support from his constituents to do so if he wanted. In addition the fight between Hamas and Fatah suits the Israelis perfectly well because they believe it demonstrates to the world that the Palestinians are incapable of governing themselves. That Israel has colluded in this situation by not giving Mahmoud Abbas the help he had needed early on, Israel and its supporters are not likely to acknowledge.

What can we learn from this debacle wrought by Barak’s Prime Ministership?

1) For a leader of a nation to make permanent agreements he must have the trust not only of his own people but also that of the adversary. Yet trust cannot be demanded it must be earned by previous conduct. Furthermore, especially with Jewish negotiators, one has to be aware of the difference between the truth as most of us see it and “technical truth.” As Ross pointed out he had learned the distinction from Rabin, “he would never lie but also not reveal.” Ross used it in connection to a leak of secret talks that were held prior to Camp David II. The press had reported that negotiations were going on in Stockholm, but since they were actually in Harpsund, 90 minutes outside Stockholm, the report could be denied. The Palestinians have over the years learned this distinction and that is why they insist on precise language. Unfortunately most Americans are still unaware of it.  2) When problems as intricate, as the status of Jerusalem, are tackled, sufficient groundwork has to be laid, which will have to include not only politicians from various countries but also religious leaders of Judaism, Islam and Christianity. As a result of Camp David II, and what followed thereafter, the conflict has achieved an additional religious dimension which can no longer be ignored. 3) Summits should be reserved for signing ceremonies rather than protracted negotiations because their failure leaves the world worse off than before.

This is Barak’s legacy and if he were to gain the Prime Ministership again we would be well advised to remember these past experiences in order to avoid the previous mistakes.







April 1, 2007

PEACE ON EARTH

            This month’s title may sound like an April fool’s joke because nothing is further from the minds of our leadership than to work for peace rather than wider expansion of the existing war. At the time of writing these lines two aircraft carrier groups are holding “maneuvers” in the Persian Gulf, a few miles off the Iranian shore line, to demonstrate “America’s might.” The unspoken purpose appears to be to provoke the Iranians to some kind of incident which could be used as a pretext to bomb the country in retaliation. The idea that other people don’t want to be bullied does not enter into the minds of Cheney-Bush and company. In addition to provoking the Iranians they also intend to put missiles on Russia's doorstep in Poland and the Czech Republic and President Putin is supposed to accept this without taking countermeasures. What would be the administration’s reaction if Russia were to place missiles again into Cuba, or the Chinese held maneuvers 20 nautical miles off our Pacific coast while the Russians were practicing war games off our Atlantic coast? Yet this is what we and our friends the Brits are doing at this time in the Persian Gulf. It is no wonder that the world doesn’t trust us and even if we proclaim that we only want what’s best for all; our actions speak louder than words.

            The reason why I chose the title is because this is Easter season, when hope springs eternal, and it commemorates the Encyclical Pacem in Terris of Pope John XXIII which was issued on April 11, 1963. The Pope who was already gravely ill at the time and died two months later intended to leave a program which contained sufficiently realistic material that it could be enacted by “Men of Good Will.” It was precipitated by the Cuban missile crisis of the previous October which had brought the world to the brink of all out nuclear war. Kennedy and Khrushchev had pulled back in the nick of time and with the declaration of détente and “peaceful coexistence,” there was a glimmer of hope that the world’s leadership would put reason before passion and that from détente could come peace. This hope was, however, cruelly dashed a few months later with the murder of President Kennedy. A brief moment of golden opportunity was lost because Kennedy and Khrushchev had learned to trust each other. There had been a chance that the American “advisors” would be withdrawn from Vietnam and a peaceful solution to the problems of that unfortunate country could have been worked out. It was not to be, the forces of hate in our country were stronger and the real culprits of the Kennedy assassination and their motives still await disclosure.

There was no immediate reaction to the Encyclical but in February of 1965 “An International Convocation on the Requirements of Peace,” sponsored by the “Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions,” was held in New York City. It was attended by the most outstanding people of the time from all over the world and had the explicit purpose of discussing the Holy Father’s Encyclical in order to see what kind of agreement might be reached. The problem was regarded as urgent at the time because the nuclear stand-off continued; there was dissent about how to deal with the war in the Congo, and the U.S. was intensifying its military build-up in Vietnam. The cold war was heating up and to make matters worse during the week of the Convocation the UN General Assembly was deadlocked over how to deal with the Soviet Union which refused to pay its dues for supporting “peace keeping” forces in the Congo.

There was a fundamental philosophical difference between the US and the USSR in regard to the emerging new nations which resulted from the disintegration of Europe’s colonial empires. The people in these former colonies aspired to independence and nationhood, but they were too weak to immediately stand on their own feet. The US and the USSR, therefore, wanted to draw them into their respective orbits by installing regimes of their choice, which were not necessarily the ones desired by the people. What we called “communist aggression” the Soviets called “wars of liberation.” How to end these “proxy wars” and the nuclear standoff was the goal of the Convocation.

But before we discuss the specifics there are further points in regard to the history of what may be called the “peace movement” that are of interest. In “The Neocons’ Leviathan” (April 1, 2003) I have already discussed the difference between the Hobbesian and Kantian views of the world and also mentioned Kant’s short pamphlet Zum ewigen Frieden. When Kant wrote this “philosophical sketch” on eternal peace in 1795 there was also a very brief moment in time when reason could have triumphed over passion. The French revolution was successfully completed; le terreur was over; an oligarchy ruled France under the name of a directorate, and with Prussia having signed the peace of Basel earlier in the year the European war against France seemed to be winding down. But Kant couldn’t have known that Napoleon was already waiting in the wings for his chance to change the world and that Europe wouldn’t see peace for another twenty years.

When I wrote about Kant’s ideas in 2003 I had found them in a volume of his complete works and was unaware of another separate publication on it by Karl Vorländer: “Immanuel Kant. Zum ewigen Frieden. Entwicklung des Friedensgedankens (On eternal peace. Development of the peace idea).  I discovered it in the Marriott library of the University of Utah and what struck me was the date of publication of the first edition: November 9, 1913. The author wrote in the Preface, “The present time which is filled with war and danger of war seems inappropriate for the first modern special edition of Kant’s Peace pamphlet. But ideas as expressed here by the philosopher do not age. The publication may, therefore, go out into the world and gain the result which it deserves.” The catastrophe of WWI came less than a year later. On May 1, 1919 Vorländer published the second edition and mentioned in the Preface that there had been no need to change what he had written earlier and that the tragedy of the worst war in human history had only made the acceptance of Kant’s thoughts more urgent.

As Vorländer pointed out Kant’s inspiration had actually come from a French member of the clergy the Abbé Charles Irenée Castel de Saint-Pierre (1658-1743) who had published a tome of 3 volumes entitled: Projet de la paix perpétuelle. The Abbé had been secretary to the French peace delegates at the treaty of Utrecht (1712/13) which ended the wars of Spanish Succession and wondered how this treaty could be made permanent. His key suggestions were: 1) The 24 Christian sovereigns of Europe were to pledge themselves to an everlasting Peace Federation to which, if possible, Muslim princes would be invited to join. 2)  The Federation would not interfere into the internal affairs of its members. 3) No state was to have a standing army of more than 6000 men. 4) Further territorial changes would henceforth not be allowed to take place. 5) All disputes were to be settled by a court of arbitration.

These points were incorporated and expanded in Kant’s preliminary and definitive theses. The preliminary ones were: 1) No peace treaty should be regarded as such when it is concluded with the secret intention to become the material for the next war. 2) No existing state should be acquired by another one through inheritance, barter, purchase or gift. 3) Standing armies should be gradually abolished. 4) No state should incur debts in its own household by entering into external disputes. 5) No state should interfere by military force into the constitution and government of another state. 6) During war no state should be allowed to use means in its hostility which make mutual trust during the subsequent peace impossible. Examples were: assassinations, fomenting of treason etc. As Kant explained, these are dishonorable stratagems and “a war of extermination, where both parties are affected can only lead to the perpetual peace of the cemetery (Friedhof).

The definitive theses were: 1) Each state should have a republican constitution. 2) International law should be based on a Federation of free states. 3) The right to be a World citizen (Weltbürgerrecht) should be limited to hospitality. Kant assumed that only autocrats make war and that the citizens of a country which has a republican form of government would not consent to bearing the burdens in lives and treasure which any war inevitably brings about. Although he recognized what he called the Bösartigkeit (inherent evil) of human nature he did not consider the problem that even republics are not governed by the people at large but by representatives. These form an oligarchy which can readily be bribed and bought. This situation, unfortunately, exists in our own country at this time as, among others, the book by Greg Palast, “The best Democracy that money can buy,” testifies to.

This brings us to the Pope’s Encyclical and we may now ask what had been accomplished in regard to peace efforts since these thoughts were first voiced in the 18th century. Wars have obviously persisted, become increasingly violent and now threaten to utterly destroy major portions of the world and make them uninhabitable for future generations. This is not a record to be proud of. On the other hand some baby steps have been taken towards peaceful conflict resolution. The Abbé’s and Kant’s Federation of States has taken shape to some extent in the United Nations and a World Court exists, but these organizations do not have enforcement powers and all the other prerequisites for peace are also still lacking.

Pacem in Terris was supposed to focus on what could and should be accomplished. As mentioned it addressed itself not only to Catholics but to “All Men of Good Will” and is an extensive document which in the English translation from the original Latin makes 168 points. In contrast to the two previous authors who concentrated only on peace among States, the pontiff started with the individual. Wars originate in the minds of men and this is also where peace has to start. It is obviously impossible to discuss all of his points in detail and I shall, therefore limit myself to some of the key aspects. Inasmuch as the pope wanted to reach the world at large theological comments were kept to a minimum, although the acknowledgment of God as the creator and sustainer of the universe was regarded as fundamental. For peace to be established in the world there has to be order among human beings in their respective societies. This order requires that each human being, regardless of race, sex, or national origin is regarded as a person with inalienable rights which in turn engender the acceptance of duties. This fundamental principle must be upheld because everything else flows from that. There needs to be an attitude of responsibility and social life should only be conducted in “Truth, Justice, Charity and Freedom.”

He went on to say that governmental authority needs to be based on the appeal by rulers to the individual conscience of the citizens, with every person contributing voluntarily to the common good. The reliance on threats or intimidations is to be shunned and laws which are passed in contravention of the moral order have no binding force. The pope also stated that, “the attainment of the common good is the sole reason for the existence of civil authorities.”

These principles which govern human behavior in their respective societies need also to be observed in the relations between States. States must deal with each other in “truth and justice.” Truth demands the “elimination of every trace of racial discrimination, and the consequent recognition of the inviolable principle that all States are by nature equal in dignity.” Justice demands the recognition of mutual rights and the fulfillment of respective duties.

The pontiff then discussed the causes of the arms race, the need for disarmament and that “nuclear weapons must be banned.” He realized that the goal of a lasting peace among mankind cannot be reached in one giant leap but only by small steps and steady effort. He also quoted Pope Pius XII that, “Nothing is lost by peace; everything is lost by war.” He concluded that since “the common good presents us with problems which are world-wide” they can only be solved by “some general form of public authority.” He warned, however,

 

“This general authority equipped with world-wide power and adequate means for achieving the universal common good cannot be imposed by force. It must be set up with the consent all nations. . . . The forcible imposition by the powerful nations of a universal authority of this kind would arouse fears of its being used as an instrument to serve the interests of a few or to take the side of a single nation, and thus the influence and effectiveness of its activity would be undermined. For even though nations may differ widely in material progress and military strength, they are very sensitive as regards their juridical equality and the excellence of their own way of life.”

 

He praised the United Nations Organization for its efforts and added that it “may be able progressively to adapt its structure and methods of operation to the nobility of its task.”

This was the document to which the Convocation devoted its time in February of 1965 and some excerpts of the Proceedings have been published and edited by Edward Reed. What struck me most on reading this book was the essential unanimity of all participants, from the most diverse backgrounds, on the fundamentals. Everyone, including the representatives of communist governments, praised the pope for his initiative and whenever disagreements on some points arose they were uttered in a respectful non-hostile manner.

It is again impossible to deal with this document in detail and I will simply present some key points. The major disagreement was on the Vietnam War. Everyone including the American delegates regarded that war as unjust and as a catastrophe for the Vietnamese people. Only Vice President Hubert Humphrey defended America’s actions in that country and he could hardly have been expected to do less. But he used half truth in doing so. He stated:

 

“In 1954 the Geneva Accords were ratified, guaranteeing the independent status of South Vietnam. Today in Vietnam that freedom is endangered by the systematic attempt of foreign-backed subversives to win control of the country. Today peace in Southeast Asia can be obtained if the violators will cease their aggression.

Our policy is clear. We will continue to seek a return to the essentials of the Geneva Accords of 1954. We will resist aggression. We will be faithful to a friend. We seek no wider war. We seek no dominion. Our goal in Southeast Asia is today what it was in 1954 – what it was in 1962. Our goal is peace and freedom for the people of Vietnam.”

 

What Humphrey had not said was that the Geneva Accords had required free elections in all of Vietnam by 1956. We, as well as the South Vietnamese government of the time, refused to allow these elections to proceed. It was felt that completely free elections were impossible with a communist government in the North and it was a foregone conclusion that Ho Chi Minh would win. We wanted to freeze the status quo in Vietnam similar to the two Koreas. Humphrey also failed to mention that the South Vietnamese government did not have popular support and would have fallen if we failed to prop it up. These facts are important because the current Iraq war is a repeat of the mistakes made in Vietnam and Americans are still not fully informed in spite of the fact that authoritative books are available. The best one I have seen on Vietnam is by Stanley Karnow: Vietnam. A History. Karnow was there most of the time and since he was fluent also in French he could interview most of the key players on both sides as well as the ordinary people whose lives were devastated by the war.

There were other aspects of Humphrey’s speech which are relevant today. He announced that we and the Soviet Union had agreed “not to station weapons of mass destruction in space.” “This was a vital step toward preventing the extension of the arms race into outer space.  We seek to make outer space a laboratory, not a battlefield.” In this respect the Vice President was sincere but ever since President Reagan’s Missile Defense Shield program, aka Star Wars, we are using outer space for military purposes as discussed in “The Quest for Perpetual War” ( June 1, 2006).

Paul Tillich, the well known Protestant theologian and philosopher, took the pope to task for having addressed his Encyclical to “All Men of Good Will.” He pointed out that it should have been addressed instead to “all men,” because man incorporates good as well as evil. “I see human nature determined by the conflict between the goodness of man’s essential being and the ambiguity of his actual being, his life under the conditions of existence.” While the pope had declared that all wars need to be abandoned and thus did away with the concept of the “just war,” Tillich argued that, “there are situations in which nothing short of war can defend or establish the dignity of the person. Nothing is more indicative of the tragic aspect of life than the unavoidable injustice in the struggle for justice.”  With this statement Tillich came dangerously close to “the end justifies the means,” a stance which has been thoroughly repudiated by the civilized world. My personal opinion on the question of “just war,” can be found in “Moral Clarity” (July 1, 2002). That headline was prompted by the title of Bill Bennett’s book in which he defended the War on Terrorism as a Christian moral imperative and he tried to bolster his argument by scripture. I don’t know how he feels today about the morality of this “just war” but most people have come to agree that the current Iraq war is as immoral as the Vietnam War was.  When what was “just and moral” becomes unjust and immoral within the short span of 5 years one is entitled to question the underlying assumptions.

Tillich found himself, however, in the minority and most of the other participants sided with the pope although the question of “wars of national liberation” had to remain unresolved. The participants agreed that the UN was the essential tool to provide for peace in the world although some reforms were needed. The key question was in regard to national sovereignty and this where the Americans and the Soviets split. Understandably the Soviets regarded non-interference into the internal affairs of any nation as a sine qua non, while the Western world delegates felt that no country could be given a blank check in regard to how to treat its citizens.

The delegates from the newly emerging nations made the point that they do need external economic and scientific assistance but they did not want it to come from a specific country, which was bound to have strings attached, but instead it should be channeled through the UN or other international organizations. The suggestion was also made that the UN needs a fact finding center, which is independent of the propaganda apparatus of specific countries. Furthermore, the veto in the Security Council should be abolished. The representative of Jordan to the UN raised the concept of freedom, for which most of the new wars are fought. He stated, “In our concept of peace we envisage freedom - freedom in its widest sense - freedom from supremacy of one nation over another, and from one policy over another. This statement was echoed by Robert Buron, the Chairman of the National committee on Productivity of France, who said, “The dangers lie not in the political colonialism of yesterday but in the ‘intellectual neo-colonialism’ and ‘social neo-colonialism’ of today.”  Yet, this is precisely our administration’s endeavor. We are trying to shape the Middle East in our image but the locals have different opinions.

Another highly relevant point was made by the author and critic Marya Mannes in regard to rhetoric. “The vocabulary goes something like this: ‘negotiation’ is surrender and appeasement. ‘Disarmament’ is equated with total naiveté. ‘Socialism,’ of course, is communism. . . . Our ‘honor’ is in some strange way transmuted into retaliation. ‘Peace’ is something that beatniks march for, and ‘security’ is nuclear superiority. This is the vocabulary of no return.” Let us remember now that this conference was held in 1965 and more than 40 years later we are being exposed to the same rhetoric to justify the ongoing and possibly expanding war.

This brings me to the final point of the Conference. Is it realistic for a country to renounce war as a means to settle a given conflict? Kenzo Takayanagi, Chairman of the Japanese Cabinet Commission on the Constitution, told the assembly that “Article 9 of the postwar Constitution of Japan of 1946 contains a provision renouncing war as a sovereign right of the nation and banning the maintenance of armed force in all forms. This apparently fantastic provision originated not in Washington but in Tokyo.” The full article 9 states:

 

“Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat of the use of force as a means of settling international disputes.

In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”

 

Under pressure from Washington, which needed a Japanese military force as an ally against China, a “Japanese Self-defense Force” had to be created. This resulted in a legal quandary and as Mr. Takayanagi explained, “The present legal position of the Japanese Self-Defense Force is a compromise between the ideal enunciated in Article 9 and the international realities. Though the forces are now generally held constitutional, they cannot be dispatched abroad. This article has, moreover, served to reduce military budgets to the minimum.”  

The Convocation ended with an address by the Secretary General of the UN, U Thant, who agreed that the organization needed to be restructured to reflect the changes that have occurred since its foundation in 1945. Especially Chapter VII of the Charter, which deals with actions of the Security Council when a threat to peace exists, no longer conformed to the new realities the world was confronted with. The key problem as U Thant saw it was:

 

“ We are now witnessing the beginning of the great debate – whether the big powers in unison, through the agency of the Security Council, should take exclusive responsibility for maintaining international peace and security while the General Assembly functions as a glorified debating society in political matters, or whether an attempt should be made to secure a fair, equitable, and clearly defined distribution of functions of the two principal organs, in the light of the changing circumstances, and , particularly, bearing in mind the increase of the membership from 50 in 1945 to 114 in 1965.”

 

This was and still is the crucial problem and goes to the heart of the pope’s message: Should all people and all nations, large or small, have an equal share in the decisions which affect the fate of all of us or should it be business as usual where the high and mighty rule and all the rest of us have to submit?

Let us now look back at what has been accomplished in the intervening 42 years and what still needs to be done. The pressing problems in 1965 were, apart from Vietnam and the Congo, the unsettled state of affairs in Cyprus and most seriously of all Berlin, the question of German reunification, and the role of Europe in general. Most of these problems have been solved, albeit with a great deal of bloodshed in Southeast Asia. Germany has been reunited; the European Union has become a fact and although still beset with problems it has proven itself a constructive rather than destructive force. Its currency the Euro is sound and stronger than the dollar. China, which disdained détente in 1965, has emerged as a full partner in the global economy although its internal domestic policies do not conform to the principles the pope has laid out. These are achievements on the road to peace which should not be minimized.

On the other hand, in some ways, we are worse off than in 1965. Nuclear disarmament has not occurred and there is a move afoot in the US to make “tactical” if not “strategic” nuclear arms respectable. Although we try to limit nuclear proliferation by other countries we show not the slightest willingness to foreswear their use on our part. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been allowed to grow into a major disaster for the Palestinian people and is part of the reason for the current Middle East wars. A historic opportunity for world peace was lost in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union and we in the US have to shoulder the blame. We chose the way of power politics as usual and gloried in the myth of the “only superpower,” which could arrange the world to its liking. We neglected the pope’s admonition that each person has inherent dignity and needed to be treated in that manner. Instead we did precisely the opposite. We pretended to know what is best for others. Those who disagreed and fought back for their goals with the only means at their disposal were labeled terrorists and/or unlawful enemy combatants. As such they were no longer human beings and one could deal with them in any way one wanted. States whose policies we did not agree with became “rogue states,” and if they were regarded as weak, such as Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq, they were invaded. But the hypocrisy is blatant; if a State has “nukes” we are considerably more circumspect as the examples of North Korea, Pakistan and, of course, China show.

At this moment our country is violating all the measures that have been advocated since the early 1700s, which could have a modicum of success for gaining peace in the world. We use the suggested World Federation, the UN, only when it suits our purposes and ignore it when it does not. We freely and massively interfere into the internal affairs of other countries. Although our army is relatively small, the navy and air force are not. We have the largest arsenal of WMDS, keep enlarging it, and are the major exporters of lethal weapons. Although we do not acquire new territory we do subject small countries around the world to our will especially if they have oil or natural gas underneath their soil. We do not settle our international disputes by recourse to the World Court or some other means of arbitration. We do not regard the opinions of the World Court as having any validity for us and even the Geneva Conventions to which we are signatories have become “quaint” and need not be adhered to. We are running up a huge internal debt to finance our military efforts and the way we treat the civilian population in the countries which are under our military control is more conducive to create further hate rather than love and respect for us.

These are the current realities and the tragedy is that the citizens of our country are not properly informed about the malfeasances our government is engaged in. Although the information is available in books and on the Internet, there is apathy and a feeling that: since I can’t do anything about it I might as well keep my nose to the grindstone and ignore the rest. As it says in Johann Strauss’ Fledermaus: Gluecklich ist, wer vergisst, was doch nicht zu aendern ist. Happy is he who forgets about what can’t be changed anyway. Unfortunately this type of happiness cannot last because events are brewing right now which will lead to an accounting for our sins of commission as well as omission. Some examples of our actual, rather than professed, behavior and suggestions how to remedy this situation will be presented in the next installment.







May 1, 2007

OBSTACLES TO PEACE

            In the previous installment, Peace on Earth (April 1, 2007), I discussed the prerequisites which would allow for a semblance of peace to come to our world as well as the fact that current US policy is in direct contravention of them. I also mentioned that I would present in the current issue some details of our actual conduct around the world rather than the well worn rhetoric of defending freedom and democracy. In his Farewell address to the American people on January 17, 1961, President Eisenhower had already warned us of the “military-industrial complex” which has by now indeed become the engine that drives America’s economy and quest for global power. It is also inextricably linked to the political structure of our country. Former captains of industry assume high government posts and on return to the private sector they reap the financial rewards of their government contacts. In other instances, Secretaries of Defense, such as Robert McNamara or Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz become presidents of the World Bank. Our economy depends on this symbiosis. We have “outsourced” most of our major manufacturing industries except for the production of military hardware, while consumer goods are imported from all over the world. This in turn results in a huge trade deficit and a massive foreign debt. Although we are being assured by our government that this is not a problem, we were also told that the Iraq war would pay for itself but the opposite has happened. We are hemorrhaging in blood and treasure with no end in sight and trust in the government has been shattered. We are now reaping the fruits of empire building; an empire which we can neither fully control nor have the wisdom how to divest ourselves from it.

            To understand how we got to this impasse, without resorting to outlandish conspiracy theories, there are several books available which tell the story. I shall discuss mainly two which complement each other. “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” by John Perkins provides the inside story of how America’s global empire was created through economic pressure, while Chalmers Johnson’s Nemesis represents the military counterpart.

            When John Perkins was a youngster he didn’t know what do with his life and when he was approached by the National Security Agency (NSA), via his uncle Frank, he took the required exams to become a spy. He was opposed to the Vietnam War, which was in progress at the time, and the NSA job would have provided an alternative to military service. But he did have a social conscience and after listening to a recruiter for the Peace Corps he joined that organization instead. The decision was made easier when he was told that in the Amazon rain forest the people still lived like the Native Americans before the Europeans came and this excited his sense of adventure. Uncle Frank, who remains a somewhat shadowy figure in the book, was all for it. He told him that the area “was loaded with oil,” and that “we’ll need good agents there – people who understand the natives.” Furthermore he added, “you might end up working for a private company instead of the government.” Young John had no idea what the uncle was talking about but it was the start of his career as an EHM (economic hit man), as they privately referred to each other.

            After his tour of duty for the Peace Corps in Ecuador, where he not only learned the language of the country but also grew to love its people, he was hired by Chas. T Main Inc. (MAIN) to provide economic assessments of the growth potentials of various countries. All of us know that the World Bank extends loans to underdeveloped nations but most of us have no idea how this process works in actual practice. This is the reason why Perkins book is important and deserves to be widely read.

            MAIN was an international consulting firm and although its primary business was engineering its biggest client, the World Bank, required that MAIN kept economists on its staff who would produce forecasts of a given country’s growth of the Gross National Product (GNP). These forecasts would determine the feasibility and magnitude of engineering projects. While this seems rather straightforward there was a darker side to it, which was a direct outgrowth of the CIA’s overthrow of Iran’s Prime Minister Mossadegh in 1951 and the installation of the Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi as our pawn. It was the CIA’s first attempt at empire building but since it was a government agency and thus susceptible to Congressional oversight a more subtle route was required for the future. The answer was: Privatization!

            By the 1960s international agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which are in effect controlled by the US, were already in place and the various spy agencies of our government simply recruited suitable young people who would be employed by private corporations to do their work for them. In this way our government’s hands would remain pristine clean and when things went wrong there was “plausible deniability” because it was all up to private industry to police itself. Although people like Perkins never drew a government check they were in fact in the front line of empire building as our economic soldiers. When they failed to have a given third world country submit to US demands, they were followed by the “jackals.” These were operatives who engaged in assassinations and other ways to topple a given government. When this likewise failed, for some reason or another, the military moved in with uniformed soldiers on the ground. Afghanistan and Iraq are only the latest examples of this process. Our efforts in Iran are currently at stage II.

            Perkins’ first job was in Indonesia. By 1971 the outcome of the Vietnam War was in doubt and the Indonesian domino could not be allowed to fall into the communists lap. As Perkins wrote, “MAIN’s electrification project [for Indonesia] was part of a comprehensive plan to ensure American dominance in Southeast Asia.” Although everybody would agree that bringing electricity to rural areas is a good idea, the methods employed deviated, however, from what one might expect. When Perkins arrived in Jakarta and Bandung MAIN’s engineers, who had come earlier, were already studying “the amount of energy and generating capacity (the load) the island of Java would need over the next twenty-five years.” Since electric demand is correlated with economic growth Perkins, as an economist, was to develop that projection. There were, of course, no reliable figures, to allow a scientific analysis; guess work was called for. But on this guess depended the amount of money Indonesia’s government would have to ask from the World Bank and thereby determine the amount of debt the country would incur.

            This by itself is no trivial task, but it gets worse when one knows, that the EHMs were encouraged to make their estimates as high as possible, rather than err on the low end. As such a given country, and Indonesia is merely one example, would be saddled with a debt it was not likely to be able to repay and would thereby remain under the thumb of the US.  Needless to say, the higher the projection, the more kickback arrived at MAIN from the lending institution. This in turn resulted in promotions and financial benefits for the EHM. Thus, not only did the profits of this scheme remain at all times in American hands but the receiver countries were also dependent upon American companies to provide the critical technical help, hardware and replacement for worn out equipment. 

            Let me now give some excerpts of how the game was played. For Perkins to get his data on which to base the forecasts he would make appointments with various business and government leaders. But he couldn’t just walk in and have conversations; instead he had to wait for quite some time until the respective individual would see him. He was then given folders with charts and graphs which provided the most optimistic picture about the country’s incipient massive economic growth. At no time was he given any information which might raise questions. In addition he noted that he was treated with suspicion and would be introduced to others with terms such as “inquisitor” or “interrogator” in the native Bahasa tongue, which he was not supposed to understand. It was obvious that the leadership he had to consult with was not free to discuss the real facts but acted under orders from above. As he wrote,

           

“It occurred to me that everything I was doing in Indonesia was more like a game than reality. It was as though we were playing a game of poker. We kept our cards hidden. We could not trust each other or count on the reliability of the information we shared. Yet, this game was deadly serious, and its outcome would impact millions of lives for decades to come.”

 

Another eye opening experience was when he was taken by an Indonesian colleague, Rasy, whom he had come to trust, to one of the famous puppet plays (Dalang) in Bandung. I’ll now let Perkins again speak for himself.

 

“It was a remarkable performance, combining traditional legends with current events. I would later learn that the Dalang is a shaman who does his work in trance. He had over a hundred puppets and he spoke for each in a different voice. It was a night I will never forget.

After completing a classic selection from the ancient texts of the Ramayana, the Dalang produced a puppet of Richard Nixon, complete with the distinctive long nose and sagging jowls. The U.S. president was dressed like Uncle Sam, in a stars and stripes top hat and tails. He was accompanied by another puppet, which wore a three-piece pin-striped suit. The second puppet carried in one hand a bucket decorated with dollar signs. He used his free hand to wave an American flag over Nixon’s head in the manner of a slave fanning a master.

A map of the Middle and Far East appeared behind the two, the various countries hanging from hooks in their respective positions. Nixon immediately approached the map, lifted Vietnam off its hook, and thrust it to his mouth. He shouted something that was translated as, ‘Bitter! Rubbish. We don’t need any more of this!’ Then he tossed it into the bucket and proceeded to do the same with other countries.

I was surprised, however, to see that his next selections did not include the domino nations of Southeast Asia. Rather, they were all Middle Eastern countries – Palestine, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. After that he turned to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Each time, the Nixon doll screamed out some epithet before dropping the country into his bucket, and in every instance, his vituperative words were anti-Islamic: ‘Muslim dogs’, ‘Mohammed’s monsters,’ and Islamic devils [the crowd became agitated] . . . Then Nixon said something that made my scalp tingle when Rasy translated it

‘Give this one to the World Bank. See what it can do to make us some money off Indonesia.’ He lifted Indonesia from the map and moved to drop it into the bucket, but just at that moment another puppet leaped out of the shadow. This puppet represented an Indonesian man, dressed in batik shirt and khaki slacks, and he wore a sign with his name clearly printed on it.

‘A popular Bandung politician,’ Rasy explained.

This puppet literally flew between Nixon and Bucket Man and held up his hand.

‘Stop!’ he shouted. ‘Indonesia is sovereign.’

The crowd burst into applause. Then Bucket Man lifted his flag and thrust it like a spear into the Indonesian, who staggered and died a most dramatic death. The audience members booed, hooted, screamed, and shook their fists. Nixon and Bucket Man stood there, looking out at us. They bowed and left the stage.

‘I think I should go,’ I said to Rasy.

He placed a hand protectively around my shoulder. ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘They have nothing against you personally’. I wasn’t so sure.”

 

Afterwards they went to a coffeehouse where Perkins received additional insights as to how the locals really felt. When he told them that he wasn’t working for the World Bank but the Asian Development Bank and the United States Agency for International Development, he was confronted with “’ aren’t the really all the same?’”  He was told that, they regard the world’s countries “’just like a bunch of grapes. You can pick and choose. Keep England. Eat China. And throw away Indonesia. After you’ve taken all of our oil’ another woman added.” Perkins tried his best to defend our country but was told that Vietnam is just “a stepping stone,” and that the real target was the Muslim world. When Perkins protested that the US is not anti-Islamic he was told that the “real war in the next century would not be between Communists and capitalists, but between Christians and Muslims.” Since this seemed outlandish to Perkins he was informed that the Soviet Union has no spiritual base and will collapse because of that fact. The Muslims have their faith and that is why they will endure. Furthermore, this wasn’t their idea in the first place but it had been published decades earlier by Toynbee. When Perkins was stunned he was told that he should read Civilization on Trial and The World and the West.

Let us now remember that this took place in one of Indonesia’s provincial cities in 1971! Sukarno who had been named president for life in 1966, and was suspected of pro-Soviet leanings had been replaced in 1967 by General Suharto who reoriented the country towards the West. The Time 2006 Almanac informs us that under his rule “Indonesia’s economy improved dramatically and national elections were permitted, although the opposition was so tightly controlled as to virtually choke off dissent.” In our announced quest for Freedom and Democracy we had bought ourselves a dictator whose opponents had a limited life expectancy. The mentioned popular Bandung politician who had stood up to Nixon in the puppet show was killed by a hit-and-run-driver a few days after the performance.

As mentioned, Indonesia was merely one example. Perkins did what was expected of him; wrote glowing forecasts, got promoted and became wealthy. But he had a conscience which made him feel guilty for enjoying his life style while ruining that of others. In this connection one needs to know that even correct forecasts of GNP numbers are misleading. They only show the average per capita income of a given country rather than the median. When our policies make the rich richer and the poor poorer this is still reflected in an increase of the GNP and we are not told what the actual median income of a family in the less well developed countries is after our blessings have been bestowed upon them. For the real facts one has to consult specialized articles rather than rely on our mainstream media. Indonesia’s economic miracle didn’t last very long. According to UN sources the median monthly household income in Jakarta, the capital, is $114 and in Bandung $112 www.unchs.org/programmes/guo/guo_databases.asp

After Indonesia, Perkins plied his trade in Panama whose leader, in 1972, was General Omar Torrijos. The general was wise to the ways of the EHM and told him bluntly that he did want MAIN’s help but on his terms; no inflated costs! This was agreed to but when Torrijos subsequently negotiated with President Carter the return of the Panama Canal he became persona non grata in certain Washington circles. Many of us remember the outcry against Carter in those days but we didn’t know the Panamanian side of the story. We didn’t know that the Canal Zone was a country within a country. Our people were exempt from Panamanian laws and taxes and lived luxuriously in a self contained enclave, which ordinary Panamanians were forbidden to enter. Furthermore, since our US citizens had no particular regard for the locals, whose language they did not speak, they were resented. An additional irritant was the “School of the Americas” and the US Southern command’s tropical warfare training center which were located in the Canal Zone. These were facilities where Latin American presidents and dictators were invited to send their sons and military leaders to in order to learn “interrogation and covert operational skills.” These were to be the tools to fight communism in their countries as well as to protect the oil companies and other US private assets.

Another source of aggravation was the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL). This is an evangelical missionary group which works in various countries around the world with the officially stated goal: to study, record and translate indigenous languages. As usual there was more to it than meets the eye. The organization also worked in collusion with the oil companies and other private US enterprises. Wherever there was a high probability of oil to be found the natives were “encouraged” to move onto missionary reservations where they would receive free food, shelter, clothes, medical treatment and missionary-style education. This was, for instance, the fate of the Huaorani tribe in the Amazon basin area. But not all Huaoranis were happy with this arrangement which despoiled their land. Some fought back with their spears and the president of Ecuador, Jaime Roldós, eventually expelled the organization in 1981.

But by that time Jimmy Carter had been replaced by Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office. Nationalist and/or populist governments were no longer tolerated in the fight against the Soviet Union’s “evil empire,” which was portrayed as having its claws everywhere around the globe. Roldós died in an airplane crash a few months after the SIL expulsion. Under the aegis of his successor, Osvaldo Hurtado, the SIL was allowed to return and business as usual continued. Roldós “accident” happened on May 24 of 1981 and Panama’s President Torrijos immediately realized that he was a marked man. He had refused to renegotiate the Canal treaty, which had included the removal of the School of the Americas as well as closure of the tropical warfare center, and he had also expelled the SIL. His fatal plane crash followed on July 31, 1981. He was replaced by Manuel Noriega our CIA man in Panama. He lasted, however, only as long as he didn’t have ideas of his own and when this was no longer the case George H W Bush invaded the country. This was a great success but we have never been told the number of civilian casualties that occurred, nor the amount of destruction that was inflicted. News reporters were barred from the scene.

Perkins’ book, although somewhat redundant with mea culpas, provides the details how the empire was built and how its expansion proceeds. It should be read by everyone who cares about the future of our country. He stated, “The global empire . . . is the republic’s nemesis. It is self-centered, self-serving, greedy, and materialistic, a system based on mercantilism. Like empires before, its arms open only to accumulate resources, to grab everything in sight and stuff its insatiable maw. It will use whatever means it deems necessary to help its rulers to gain more power and riches.”

Before we discuss Perkins’ counterpart, Chalmers Johnson’s Nemesis, there is an additional element our economic prosperity is based on which likewise has not received the attention it deserves. I vividly remember the October 1992 three-way presidential debate where President Bush was surreptiously looking at his wristwatch, apparently thinking, “how much longer do I have to sit through this?” while Ross Perot forecast the “giant sucking sound” that would accompany the movement of our industries to Mexico if the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were to be enacted. I did not remember all the details but found them on the Internet and here is the relevant Perot quote,

 

“Well, everybody's nibbling around the edges. Let's go to the center of the bull's-eye, the core problem. And believe me, everybody on the factory floor all over this country knows it. You implement that NAFTA, the Mexican trade agreement, where they pay people a dollar an hour, have no health care, no retirement, no pollution controls, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and you're going to hear a giant sucking sound of jobs being pulled out of this country right at a time when we need the tax base to pay the debt and pay down the interest on the debt and get our house back in order http://www.debates.org/pages/trans92c.html.”

 

NAFTA was enacted in 1994 and Ross Perot’s prediction came true with the growth of the Maquiladora industries. It consists of factories which have sprung up mainly in Mexico but also in other Latin American and some Asian countries which, according to Wikipedia, “import materials and equipment on a duty-free and tariff-free basis for assembly or manufacturing and then re-exports the assembled product, usually back to the originating country.”  The people who work in these factories conform to the picture Ross Perot has painted. They get substandard wages for long hours, without the benefit of health insurance or other social benefits. In addition, “NAFTA also made it illegal for nations to pass laws that infringe on a corporation’s ability to make a profit, which means that labor and environmental protections are eliminated. This lead to high- paying, environmentally-regulated jobs in the United States being converted into low-paying, environmentally-unregulated jobs in Mexico, and has been blamed in part for the rise of undocumented laborers crossing the Rio Grande for jobs in the United States.”

It has been reported that Mexico has lost nearly 30% of its farm jobs since NAFTA went into effect and the number of illegal immigrants has risen from 3.9 million in 1992 to 11.1 million by March 2005. It has kept growing and we are now following the Israeli example of building a wall to keep the Mexicans out, albeit on our side of the border rather than theirs. The living and working conditions in the maquiladoras have been documented in Maquilapolis http://www.maquilapolis.com/project_eng.html.” The film tells the story of “. . .  a border city where it takes an hour of drudgework inside a poisonous factory to earn enough to buy a jug of potable water. Where it takes two hours to earn a gallon of milk.” The film was shown in 2006 on PBS but is now relegated to obscurity. Corporate greed has consequences and we may not be able to rig the next Mexican elections in our favor the same way as has apparently happened last year.

Let us now look at Perkins’ counterpart, Chalmers Johnson. His appropriately titled book: Nemesis. The Last Days of the American Republic is actually the final one of a trilogy. First came, The Sorrows of Empire and then Blowback. In Nemesis Chalmers Johnson documents the military aspect of Eisenhower’s military industrial complex. The book details: the extent of the global reach of our armed forces, the existence of a secret government which holds itself unaccountable, the increasing use of covert activities as well as the existence of huge ‘black budgets” which never show up in official documents, and our quest for military domination of outer space.

He also points out that we no longer manufacture much except weaponry. “We are without question the world’s greatest producer and exporter of arms and munitions on the planet. Although we are going deeply into debt doing so, each year we spend more on our armed forces than all other nations on Earth combined. . . . We now station over half a million troops U.S. troops, spies, contractors, dependents, and others on more than 737 military bases spread around the world . . . in more than 130 countries, many of them presided over by dictatorial regimes that have given their citizens no say in the decision to let us in.’

These bases are disliked by the locals because their governments have to sign a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). While this sofa is very comfortable for us to recline on it is frequently an unwelcome burden on the host country. As part of the agreement the bases are extraterritorial, similar to the Canal Zone, and our people are exempt from the laws of the host country. Since not all members of our society, at home or abroad, are law abiding, conflicts are unavoidable. The most common problems involve rape, which has created serious anti-American bitterness among the populace, especially in South Korea and Japan. The local national governments are reduced to protests which fall on deaf ears in Washington.

In the April 1, 2007 essay I had mentioned that Japan’s Constitution allows for only a small self defense force. This is no longer in the interest of the defenders of our empire, who see China as a growing threat, and Japan is now being pressured to become militaristic again. The country is supposed to assume the role of our aircraft carrier in the Pacific which has been assigned to the British in the Atlantic. This is another example of how our mercantilism really works. One the one hand we feed China with technology, reaping the financial benefits therefrom, and on the other hand we arm Japan, likewise for money, because we know that sooner or later the Chinese will come to the conclusion, “Asia for Asians,” and will not be happy with our continued presence in that part of the world. Our politicians are either unable or unwilling to grasp that the famous “staying the course” will no longer work and that a complete reorganization of our national priorities is in order.

Since politicians react only to public pressure it is incumbent upon us to demonstrate to the world that Americans are not merely a bunch of greedy capitalists who want to subjugate the world but that we have people with a conscience who see what is going on and want to remedy the situation. It will not be easy but we have to put before the nation the stark choice: either we live by the vision of the Founding Fathers of the country who created a republic where government is responsible to its citizens, or we let things slide the way they are. The first course would require a change in national habits. Time spent on Television viewing of soap operas and other entertainment would have to be replaced by reading relevant books and other information that is available on the Internet. This is the first and most fundamental step. A democracy cannot function without an educated citizenry. Once we are informed about what goes on behind the scenes which are played out on the public stage, we will demand accountability and if it is not forthcoming the leadership needs to be changed.

If we fail to do so, continue in the laissez faire policies, enjoy a spurious stock-market growth and close our eyes to the inhumanity that is being perpetrated abroad in our name we must accept some facts. Empires need an emperor, or at least a group of oligarchs. These rulers are neither concerned about, nor responsive to, the wishes of the citizens who have become their subjects. Furthermore, a large military is required which makes the draft inevitable. This is what is bound to happen because empires have to grow in order to perpetuate their existence.

 If there are parallels in history the current era does not reflect the 1920s and 1930s, as the neocons would like to make us believe, but the era of 1900-1914.  WWI was fought for the economic resources of the world, as is the case now. Behind the “Global War on Terror” is nothing else but the ruthless attempt to subjugate the rest of the world, including outer space, to our desires. This is Hubris, written in capital letters and bold print on our foreheads for the rest of the world to see. Nemesis, daughter of the night and goddess of divine retribution, will return and her visit will not be pleasant. Neocons relish the thought that the current era is WWIII. As a member of the WWII generation I can only tell them, “You don’t know what you are talking about. You ain’t seen nothing yet.” Those of our children and grandchildren who will survive the real WWIII will not have to worry about global warming because nuclear winter will have replaced it.

Now is the time to stand up for them and bring forth candidates for political office who see clearly what is ahead. They will have to have the courage to renounce the empire in favor of the republic and use the savings which accrue therefrom to create a just society where its citizens will not have to go into bankruptcy when illness strikes and where quality education is available to all who apply themselves. This is the only way to a more peaceful world. Americans pride themselves of being a “can do” people; so let’s do it!







May 10, 2007

IS ZIONISM MORAL?

            As the saying goes, “this is a loaded question!” The mere fact that it immediately elicits a visceral reaction should give us pause and make us reflect. In the current era of our “War on Terrorism” where our leadership drapes itself constantly in the mantle of morality and where Zionism is one of the principal bones of contentions, it behooves us to address this question forthrightly. There exists so much misinformation on this topic that it is difficult to sift facts from fancy and the topic is further complicated by the frequently used cynical statement that, “there is no truth, but only opinion.” Nevertheless, truth can be found if one applies oneself diligently to its pursuit, and as mentioned on another occasion, its hallmark is that it stands the test of time. If one can agree with what has been written decades, centuries or even millennia earlier and still say yes to a given statement then it contains a truth about mankind which should not be ignored.

Political Zionism, rather than religious Zionism, has a history which is somewhat over a hundred years old and in this essay I shall limit myself strictly to the political aspect because the purely religious one, which remains in a person’s heart, is of no concern to others. I have already discussed this topic in books and several articles so one may ask what is the need for another one, and especially one with such a provocative title? The reason is that I have recently come across an article on the Internet entitled: The Iron Wall (We and the Arabs) – Ze’ev Jabotinsky 1923. It was the date, 1923, which makes it of utmost relevance because as mentioned, if what was written decades ago is still correct we have met the truth. The article was placed on the Internet by Likud, Canada, and as such has impeccable credentials (http://www.likud.ca/site_files/Articles/TheIronWall.htm).

In the early years of the Zionist enterprise, immediately before and after the Balfour Declaration, which committed the British government to establish “a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine,” there were two factions in Zionist circles as to how this should be accomplished. One was what I have previously called the incrementalists under David Ben-Gurion and the other the maximalists under Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky. The goal, namely a Jewish State which covered the entire area of the original Palestine Mandate on both sides of the Jordan, was identical.  The only difference between the two factions was that Ben Gurion had opted for gradual colonization while Jabotinsky wanted immediate massive immigration.

In order to achieve a Jewish state, which was camouflaged under the term of “national home,” Jews had to attract a great number of settlers which in turn brought them into inevitable conflict with the local Palestinian population. It needs to be remembered that in 1919 the King-Crane Commission, which has been referred to previously (The year of the Middle East. January 1, 2007), estimated that Palestine had a population of 647,500 of which 65,000 were Jews i.e. somewhat over 10% of the total. The obvious question what to do with the indigenous population in a Palestine that was all of a sudden to become as Jewish as “England is English and France is French,” was unavoidable.

Jabotinsky’s views, which are the only ones we shall consider for now, had evolved over time as one of his biographers Raphaella Bilski Ben-Hur has documented in Every Individual a King. Prior to the Balfour Declaration Jabotinsky espoused the then prevailing European colonial attitude, which regarded Arabs and others of non-European descent as inferior who needed to be guided into Western civilization, while remaining under European tutelage, presumably for ever. One way to do so was, as Bilski Ben-Hur wrote, through Jewish schools which were springing up in Palestine during the first decade of the 20th century. She quoted Jabotinsky as writing,

 

“The children must become accustomed to the thought that everything comes to them from the Jews: both physical and spiritual culture. . . . In general, we must, methodically, win over the Arabs. . . . It seems to me that the bad habit of acting boorishly towards the Arabs has developed among the settlers. This must be strictly avoided. We must treat the Arabs with strength and friendliness, without violence, without any injustice whatsoever; we must impress them with our external and internal culture, because that is what subdues wild people.”

 

This benevolent but patronizing attitude could not succeed in the long run because the natives of even then existing colonies had become restive as for instance in India. In the wake of WWI Arab nationalism was also on the rise. Jewish immigration of any size or magnitude was resented and armed clashes between settlers and the indigenous population resulted. This led Jabotinsky to reappraise his views. The 1923 article is a seminal document which deserves wide distribution because it is unusually honest on the subject. His major point was: stop beating around the bush; nobody will believe the fiction of a homeland because we want a state with a solid Jewish majority where the Arabs are treated with dignity but without political power. In order to get the flavor of Jabotinsky’s thoughts I shall now excerpt the most relevant quotes and invite the reader to compare them with the original to make sure that they are accurate. After having stated that the then prevailing idea that he is an enemy of the Arabs is not true Jabotinsky wrote, 

 

“My emotional relationship to the Arabs is the same as it is to all other peoples – polite indifference. My political relationship is characterized by two principles. First: the expulsion of the Arabs from Palestine is absolutely impossible in any form. There will always be two nations in Palestine – which is good enough for me, provided the Jews become the majority. . . . Our credo is completely peaceful. But it is absolutely another matter if it will be possible to achieve our peaceful aims through peaceful means. This depends, not on our relationship with the Arabs, but exclusively on the Arabs’ relationship to Zionism. . . . That the Arabs of the Land of Israel should willingly come to an agreement with us is beyond all hopes and dreams at present, and in the foreseeable future. This inner conviction of mine I express so categorically not because of any wish to dismay the moderate faction in the Zionist camp but, on the contrary, because I wish to save them from such dismay. Apart from those who have been virtually “blind” since childhood, all the other moderate Zionists have long since understood that there is not even the slightest hope of ever obtaining the agreement of the Arabs of the Land of Israel to “Palestine” becoming a country with a Jewish majority. . . .

Any native people – its all the same whether they are civilized or savage – views their country as their national home, of which they will always be the complete masters. They will not voluntarily allow, not only a new master, but even a new partner. And so it is for the Arabs. Compromisers in our midst attempt to convince us that the Arabs are some kind of fools who can be tricked by a softened formulation of our goals, or a tribe of money grubbers who will abandon their birth right to Palestine for cultural and economic gains. I flatly reject this assessment of the Palestinian Arabs. Culturally they are 500 years behind us, spiritually they do not have our endurance or our strength of will, but this exhausts all of the internal differences. We can talk as much as we want about our good intentions; but they understand as well as we what is not good for them. They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie. To think that the Arabs will voluntarily consent to the realization of Zionism in return for the cultural and economic benefits we can bestow on them is infantile. . . . It is of no importance whether we quote Herzl or Herbert Samuel to justify our activities. Colonization itself has its own explanation, integral and inescapable, and understood by every Arab and every Jew with his wits about him. Colonization can have only one goal. For the Palestinian Arabs this goal is inadmissible. This is in the nature of things. To change that nature is impossible. . . .

Thus we conclude that we cannot promise anything to the Arabs of the Land of Israel or the Arab countries. Their voluntary agreement is out of the question. Hence those who hold that an agreement with the natives is an essential condition for Zionism can now say “no” and depart from Zionism. Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy.

Not only must this be so, it is so whether we admit it or not. What does the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate mean for us? It is the fact that a disinterested power committed itself to create such security conditions that the local population would be deterred from interfering with our efforts.

All of us, without exception, are constantly demanding that this power strictly fulfill its obligations. In this sense, there are no meaningful differences between our “militarists” and our “vegetarians.” One prefers an iron wall of Jewish bayonets, the other proposes an iron wall of British bayonets, the third proposes an agreement with Baghdad, and appears to be satisfied with Baghdad’s bayonets – a strange and somewhat risky taste’ but we all applaud, day and night, the iron wall. We would destroy our cause if we proclaimed the necessity of an agreement, and fill the minds of the Mandatory with the belief that we do not need an iron wall, but rather endless talks. Such a proclamation can only harm us. Therefore it is our sacred duty to expose such talk and prove that it is a snare and a delusion.

Two brief remarks: In the first place, if anyone objects that this point of view is immoral, I answer: It is not true; either Zionism is moral and just or it is immoral and unjust. But that is a question that we should have settled before we became Zionists. Actually we have settled that question, and in the affirmative.

We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not.

There is no other morality.

            The article was first published in Russian on November 4, 1923 (Jabotinsky hailed from Odessa), in English in the South African Jewish Herald on November 26, 1937 and “transcribed & revised by Lenni Brenner” for the Internet. The revisions were apparently not substantive because the text can also be found on other Internet sites. Let us now look at the various points Jabotinsky made. An attitude of “polite indifference” could be maintained when one lived mainly in the West, as Jabotinsky did with only occasional prolonged visits to Palestine. It was another matter for the Jewish settlers who were in daily contact with their Arab neighbors. As every one knows some people get along with each other while others do not and there were many points of friction, especially when one side regarded itself as “cultural and spiritual” superior.

The main point that Palestinians could not be bribed to voluntarily give up their land has been proven correct but the assumption that they do not have “our endurance or our strength of will,” has been proven wrong. In some way or another Palestinians were supposed to have either disappeared or at least have willingly submitted to Jewish rule. In spite of intense pressure from the Jewish state they have tenaciously clung to their land regardless of expropriations and other daily chicaneries. The fact that they will continue to do so into the foreseeable future is the Zionists’ major problem and has now also become ours.

Jabotinsky was, furthermore, correct in asserting that the Jewish state can only be maintained by military force. This was supplied initially by the British Empire and the task has now shifted to its heirs, the US. Yet no state can exist indefinitely if it is not carried on the shoulders of the people living in the country and its neighbors. Whether or not Zionists like it, Jews have only a tenuous majority in the area under their control, a point to which I shall return later. After the Suez debacle in 1956 Ben-Gurion saw that he could not rely on European bayonets anymore to keep his state from being overwhelmed by the neighbors and this is why he started to develop his nuclear deterrent. It made sense at the time, just like the Zionist idea initially, but times change and what seemed to be a good idea at one point may turn into a disaster later.

Israeli politicians still act in the manner that was so vigorously denounced by Jabotinsky: double talk! The phrase “Israel will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East,” uttered again as recently as 3 months ago to my own ears, (Barack in Salt Lake City. March 1, 2007) is just as duplicitous now as the phrase “national home,” instead of state, was then. Jabotinsky would not have tolerated it. He would have said, “Yes, we have the bomb; and not only the bomb but also sufficient quantities of chemical and biologic weapons with the means of delivery to blow all of you to smithereens, if you fuss with us.” But such straight talk is not likely to be forthcoming from politicians on either side of the Atlantic because speaking with “forked tongue” is part and parcel of the “Judeo-Christian tradition.” The Native Americans learned this in the 18th and 19th century and the Arabs in the 20th.

This brings us to the question of morality which was raised in the headline of this article. Jabotinsky’s assertion that “Zionism is moral and just” needs to be dispassionately re-examined because wars are fought over it and people are dying. Even at the time the statement was made it was self-serving because it would have been vigorously denied by the Arabs. If something is “moral and just” for one side only, the premise needs to be questioned. In order to do so we have to categorically state one simple fact: Zionism is not Judaism! Not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews! The equation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is a propaganda tool and devoid of truth. There is one excellent example for this statement: Iran. Although the country’s current President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is threatening the Jewish state and is widely denounced as an anti-Semite he has nothing against Jews per se if they behave as good citizens. As the Christian Science Monitor reported recently (April, 27, 2007) the Jewish minority in Iran is not molested by the mullahs and can go about their business without onerous restrictions. Muslims are supposed to treat the “People of the Book,” with dignity as long as they do not raise their hand against fellow Muslims. It is the Zionist state, which is the problem for Muslims, not individual Jews.

Having stated what Zionism is not, it also needs to be clearly stated what it is: a political action program to obtain as large a portion of historic Palestine as possible for a Jewish state, regardless of the wishes of the locals or the neighborhood! Remember what Jabotinsky said: Zionism is moral and just, “regardless whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it.” This is the crux of the problem! Morality, therefore, simply does not enter into the picture. Politics have always been power politics where the stronger dictates to the weaker. This is a brutal fact of human nature and this is how countries as well as empires are built and maintained. The denial of this fact of life leads to hypocritical moralizing, which is immediately recognized as such by the adversary. Morality does not apply to a goal but depends upon the means with which it is pursued. The means to the end are the relevant factor! If these adhere to internationally recognized norms they will be applauded, if they do not they will be condemned.

The tragedy of the Zionist enterprise is that it not only came too late but it was not even supported by the majority of the Jewish people. It was an attempt by a subgroup of Jews to remedy a perceived need by creating a European colony at a time when colonialism was breathing its last gasp. Herzl and his immediate followers couldn’t have known that but it was apparent soon after WWI and especially WWII. In order to justify the enterprise, when the original reason had outlived its usefulness, subterfuge and myths have to be resorted to. Among these are that the Balfour Declaration had promised all of Palestine to the Jews and the British had no right to close Transjordan to Jewish immigration. This is a deliberate misrepresentation as can readily be verified by anyone who reads the Declaration and consults Article 25 of the Mandate.

The ambiguity in the text “national home in Palestine” as well as the qualifying phrases that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country,” was not the work of gentiles but of British and American Jews who saw their position in their respective countries threatened if they were to be all of a sudden declared citizens of Palestine rather than the countries they were born in or had migrated to. This fact is known to anyone who reads the history of the Declaration but it is swept under the rug now. The fiction that all of Palestine was promised to the Zionists is maintained even today as the map, reproduced below shows.

 

http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_maps.php

 

The map depicts correctly the British Mandate for Palestine before Transjordan was split off in 1922 but it is wrong to label it, “Eretz Israel. The Jewish National Home,” because the area allotted to the “national home in Palestine” had never been officially defined.

All human relations among individuals as well as nations have to be based on trust, which in turn requires honesty. Zionist propaganda, and the map reproduced above is just one example, has been brilliantly successful by taking sentences out of context and omitting qualifiers. But the Palestinians have come to know this technique and now insist on clarity and seeing the fine print before signing final agreements. In the essay on Barack in Salt Lake City I have already shown why Arafat could not have signed the “most generous offer ever.” Yet in spite of the fact that the documentation on which the article was based is readily available to any literate person, Zionist propagandists continue to blame Arafat and Palestinians for refusing an agreement which would have left a dismembered and impotent Palestinian entity rather than a viable state. In this connection it is of interest to remember what happened in 1937. The British had appointed a Royal Commission to investigate the causes of Palestinian unrest. It concluded that there was no hope of Arabs and Jews ever living peacefully together in Palestine and the only solution was a partition of the country into a Jewish and an Arab state. The Arabs rejected it and so did the Jews. The book by J.M. Machover, Jewish State or Ghetto. Dangers of Palestine Partition. Royal Commission’s Proposal Examined, provides the reasons. Partition was felt to be unworkable because complete ethnic separation could not be achieved in the way the Commission had outlined and in addition Britain had kept zones involving the Holy Places for itself. Here is an excerpt from Machover’s Summary and Conclusions.

 

Palestine, as it exists now, is a small country, and its prosperity is entirely the result of the great Jewish effort on behalf of the Jewish National Home. The Jews are certain that if they are given an opportunity, they will be able to develop the country economically to such a degree that it would be able to support under good conditions a population of several millions.

The ‘Jewish Area,’ which in all the circumstances, can obviously be only a fraction of Palestine, divided into several fragments by Corridors, cut off from Jerusalem and Haifa, from the two most important, historical, administrative and economic centers in the country, will be so seriously crippled economically and politically that it will hardly be able to absorb any large number of Jewish settlers, and therefore the figure of two or three million Jews in the Jewish State plus a couple of million Arabs, who would probably by that time reside in the ‘Area,’ is as remote and fantastic as the plan itself.”

 

Both sides were correct in rejecting the plan because as the map shows (included in the book), the borders were unrealistic. On the other hand we now have the equivalent of a plan that Jews have categorically rejected for themselves in 1937, presented by them to Palestinians. Americans who are in general not well versed in history do not know these antecedents and can, therefore, readily fall prey to propaganda about a “most generous offer,” to the Palestinians.  Regardless of current lip service to the “Two State Solution,” the Likud party (Jabotinsky’s successor) and others do not want two states in Palestine but only one with a Jewish majority.

But this brings up the second problem Zionists close their eyes to because the reality is too painful to perceive. They have failed to persuade the majority of the Jewish people to move into the Jewish state once it had been established. The state of Israel has a demographic problem it will not be able to solve by military means. With the 1967 war Israel has created for itself a situation which only statesmen rather than politicians will be able to resolve. For all practical purposes Israel has de facto annexed the West Bank, as the ancient lands of Judea and Samaria, and it is also exerting full control over the Gaza economy in spite of the military withdrawal. Regardless how ill treated the local Palestinian population is they have staying power and a Jewish majority even in the truncated British Palestine Mandate, to the west of the Jordan River, cannot be maintained for any length of time and may even no longer exist. Exact figures of the current ethnic distribution in the area of the British mandate west of the Jordan are difficult to come by, because they vary depending on the source that is being used. Jewish sources give significantly higher numbers for Jews and lower ones for Palestinians while CIA figures,www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html, show near parity. The projection for July 2007 (made on April 17, 2007) gives a total population of 6.426,679 for Israel with the Jewish proportion of 76.4 per cent. If one were to subtract the 23.6 per cent non-Jews one would end up with 4.910,002 Jews. When one adds the settlers in the West Bank the Jewish total comes to 5.341,103 individuals. The estimated combined non-Jewish population, including the Gaza strip, is 5.103,906 persons. There is no need to quibble over exact numbers. The fact seems to be that the two populations are near parity and it is known that Palestinian mothers have higher birth rates than secular Jews. This will inevitably slant the ethnic distribution towards non-Jews in the near future.

This brings me to the final point. How much land do 5-6 million Jews really need for a State of their own? The Zionist dream of the majority of the world’s Jews to move to Palestine has not been fulfilled and it is safe to say that it never will be. Throughout their history Jews have always been a minority in Syrio-Palestine and there are no indications that this is likely to change. To this fact we have to add that Jews are an urban rather than rural people. At present 92 per cent of Israel’s Jews live in urban communities.

It would, therefore be perfectly feasible and rational to develop the Mediterranean coastal plain from the Lebanon border to the Gaza strip into a flourishing Jewish megalopolis, while leaving the hill country and the Jordan valley to the Palestinians. This would give both ethnic groups contiguous borders once arrangements to connect the Gaza strip to the West Bank are made and an outlet to the sea would, thereby, exist for both states. A solution of this type would, in all probability, be subscribed to by Palestinians as well as the other Arab states. Formal peace treaties could be signed and the existence of the Jewish state within these borders would be guaranteed by the UN. The money saved from military expenditures could be turned, among other aspects, to desalination projects, which would make the country independent of the need for water from the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan. Furthermore, since eighty per cent of the settlers are in the West Bank because of cheap, subsidized housing they would have no objections if similar facilities, at similar cost, could be provided for them within the new borders. Those settlers who would not want to move would lose their current privileged position but they could continue to live in the same way as Jews live at present in other Muslim countries. Jerusalem would need to be internationalized; taken out of the political equation and become strictly a religious center for Jews, Muslims and Christians. Under these circumstances the city would at long last be able to live up to its name: city of peace and shed its bloody history.

This type of a solution would be both moral and just but it is obviously too good to come to pass in my lifetime because passion rather than reason rules the human mind and “he who has” is not willing to part with it, even when it is demonstrably to his own detriment. Nevertheless, it is a plan to work towards because the only alternative is ever increasing violence. Fortunately there are some Jews in our country, as well as Israel, who see the injustice which is currently perpetrated in and by Israel but these voices are stifled by very effective Zionist lobbying efforts. These lobbyists are unaware that they are acting to the detriment of their own people as well as the rest of us. Their demand for unconditional, unquestioned support by our politicians of Israel’s policies should give way to a more nuanced approach which takes international law and the needs of the Palestinian people into account. This would be the only way that could bring lasting peace.

 

As a final note I would like to mention that this installment appeared earlier than usual because I shall be spending the rest of the month in Europe, where I shall also have an opportunity to ascertain how people in that part of the world really feel about us and our policies.







June 8, 2007

VIEW FROM ABROAD

            As mentioned in the previous installment I spent most of the month of May in Europe. The purpose of the trip was to attend a joint meeting of the German, Austrian and Swiss sections of the International League against Epilepsy and present some of our data at that conference. In addition, it provided the opportunity to spend some time with colleagues in their laboratories and discuss areas of mutual scientific interest. The official language of the conference was German which also gave me the opportunity to immerse myself again not only in the language but also the culture of the three named countries.

            The first stop was in Munich which could be reached directly from Atlanta and since the friend and his colleagues whom I intended to visit had his office in a little town about 35 miles southwest of the city a taxi was called for. This provided the first surprise; the cab driver was not Bavarian but hailed from Hanoi! This unusual situation was a result of the now defunct German Democratic Republic (DDR) which had attracted people from Communist societies and since living conditions are still somewhat harsh in former East Germany enterprising people gravitated to wherever living was best. From all German provinces Bavaria is tops and its neighbor Baden-Wuertemberg not far behind. The rest of Germany still suffers from problems related to reunification.

            Although few people shed any tears over the demise of the DDR it did have some advantages which may well become important in the near future. The biggest loser of the two world wars was the German language and thereby the cultural heritage enshrined therein. While English has the advantage of being easier to learn it suffers from the fact that native languages have to be translated and translations can never provide the flavor of the original. For instance: I have Nietzsche’s Zarathustra in the original German and in an English translation. There is a passage where the prophet comes down from the mountain into a little town and the people are watching a high wire artist delicately traversing a rope. This leads Zarathustra to muse,“Der Mensch ist ein Űbergang und ein Untergang.The translator, who shall remain unnamed, rendered the phrase as, “Man is an over going and a down going.” This is the sort of translation one finds nowadays generated by computers and is, of course, nonsense. A better one might have been, “Man is a transition as well as perdition.” Languages have nuances which at times simply defy adequate translations.

            This is where the lack of education in the current leadership of our country becomes so important and tragic. President Bush will never understand Putin and thereby create a potential catastrophe which will be discussed later. On the other hand Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and Putin can get along famously because due to her upbringing in the DDR she is fluent in Russian and he, having been stationed as KGB officer in the DDR is fluent in German. As such they don’t need translators and as the German saying goes; “Also jetzt lassen wir uns einmal Deutsch miteinander reden,” which means that we will refrain from diplomatic double talk and present our views as we really see them. So we may have to be grateful for the DDR after all.

            Since cab drivers represent the genuine voice of the working people I always like to sit next to them and have a discussion while we are going to wherever the destination might be. With my Hanoi counterpart I didn’t get very far because I was too hung over from the previous day and subsequent night spent on planes and the eight hour time difference didn’t help either. So I don’t remember much of our conversation but the next one is vivid. It was from the train station in Basel to the hotel which had been assigned to me by the Congress Bureau. As usual I asked the driver what he thinks about America and he immediately exploded with, “Die gehoeren ja alle umgebracht - they should all be done away with.” This was a knee jerk type reflex and before I could say anything he corrected himself by stating that he meant only the politicians because the people themselves are good and he likes them. He was from Sarajevo and deeply resented what had happened to his people. He felt that the war had been instigated by America because it wants only small countries which are powerless so that it can dominate them. As he saw it there was no hatred between the various ethnic or religious groups in Yugoslavia. They all got along and intermarried; just as now after the war, Muslims and Christians, Serbs and Bosnians visit with each other again without rancor.

Similar sentiments, although not as vigorous, were expressed by another Bosnian cab driver on another occasion who explained that after Tito’s death the new President tried to gradually ease the country towards democratic reforms with concomitant improvements in the economy. He said that although there were only few consumer goods in Yugoslavia, its currency, the Dinar, was on a par with the Austrian Schilling and they would go the few miles to the border where shopping centers had sprung up and they bought themselves whatever they wanted. The American push for economic globalization and the wars ended all this. Now Bosnia-Herzegovina as well as Serbia are dirt poor again and the social safety net, which had been one of the best in Europe, was also destroyed. The Kosovo conflict which was supposed to have been solved by our Madeleine Albright, first by bombing the Serbs and then NATO occupation, still simmers and all hell is likely to break loose again in the near future. The constant refrain from everybody I spoke to was, to put it colloquially, “keep your cotton-picking fingers out of our affairs. You only make things worse because you don’t know what you are doing.”

            This sentiment was also expressed later by an Iranian cab driver in Vienna who was concerned about what we are thinking of doing with our bombs to his relatives in his home country. He didn’t like the current regime there, but the people can go to work without being blown up, they don’t get kidnapped and they have gas for their cars as well as electricity. Yes, they can’t criticize the government but why make a bad situation worse and the example we have set with Afghanistan and Iraq, their immediate neighbors, surely doesn’t deserve to be followed.

            If one were to get the impression that I disdain public transportation and rely exclusively on cabs this would be in error because in the cities themselves i.e.  Basel, Zurich and Vienna public transportation is excellent with an extensive network that gets you everywhere in short order. Furthermore the Swiss as well as the Viennese have remodeled their streetcars so that the elderly and handicapped no longer have to make a giant first step up into the tram but it is now at street level. When the cars are in motion the step either folds up or retracts. Furthermore, the Swiss, and to some extent the people in Vienna’s streetcars, are exceedingly polite and immediately jump up and offer their seat to an older person. The reason for the difference is that in Basel as well as in Zurich you mainly meet the locals in streetcars while Vienna is being overrun by other ethnic groups with different mores.

            Another noteworthy feature of streetcar travel in Basel was that at each station there was a neon sign which told you the time at which the tram that would take you to your destination would arrive. If it says for instance 08:34 it will indeed be 08:34 rather than 08:35 or 08:33. Swiss punctuality can be expected not only from trains but also within their cities. Vienna has tried to emulate this system to some extent but Gemütlichkeit interferes because who wants to be run by a clock!

            In Basel I had been assigned to the Hotel Krafft which faces the Rhine River and has a proud tradition of which I had been unaware. All hotels offer spiritual sustenance to the weary traveler usually in form of a Bible but Hotel Krafft was a notable exception. It featured a bound copy of Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf. This unexpected anomaly was due to the fact that Hesse’s girl friend, whom he later made into an honest woman by marrying her for all of three years, lived there and he had written part of Steppenwolf at the Krafft. By the way, the Bavarians as well as the Swiss and Austrians have no use for the entire Bible and instead present you with the New Testament in German, French and English. I appreciated this feature because, as mentioned above, each language differs in the translation of the same material and I was surprised that the German version used considerably harsher expressions in some instances than the French or English. I shall discuss this aspect in a separate issue.

            The Congress was very well attended, and my presentation of the data, which are currently rejected by the scientific powers in the U.S. because they go against the grain of the establishment, was well received. Furthermore, several important contacts with younger European co-workers, who can carry on after my demise, were established. People who are not actively involved in scientific research tend to have the opinion that scientists are free from original sin and live in the rarified world of truth. This is far from being the case and in this area of human endeavor politics also rules the roost. One gets ahead by being a good boy, engaging in back slapping, and conforming to current scientific dogma. When one fails to do that and tries to chart one’s own course one can expect grief. Inasmuch as Science with a capital S is the new god this aspect will also be more extensively covered in a separate essay. Suffice it now to say, that none of the great scientific medical breakthroughs of the 19th and 20th century could have occurred under current regulations.

            From Basel I went to Zurich to work for a day in the lab of one of my friends before going on to Vienna. But since the Congress ended on Saturday I had the Sunday to myself in Zurich and used the time for a cruise on the lake which can be highly recommended. It was wonderful to see all the little towns where the highest man made structure is the church steeple and where people congregate outdoors in lakeside restaurants, a feature which is typical for Europe and sadly lacking in the U.S. There was one ominous feature, however, it was middle of May and there was hardly any snow on the mountains. Another item of interest was the Sunday newspaper. Politics and the arts from all over the world were extensively covered and the sports section featured an article headlined, “Der Russe der für Utah zu kreativ ist. Andrei Kirilenko, der vielseitige NBA-Europäer, hat es beim Halbfinalisten schwer – The Russian who is too creative for Utah, Andrei Kirilenko, the many faceted European, finds himself in difficulties in the semifinals.” The article on the Utah Jazz, our main claim to fame, apart from Mormon missionaries, was well written and again highlighted the difference which exists between our two continents. Europe admires individual creativity while America insists on team play. The latter involves all areas of life from politics, through science to sports and obviously religion. The fact that individual creativity could also help the team has not yet properly sunk in here.

            Instead of flying from Zurich to Vienna I took the train, which is the only civilized way to travel nowadays. European trains are comfortable, not particularly expensive, and you can enjoy the country side that passes by your window. But if you prefer to work on your laptop you can do so without running the battery down because electric outlets are provided for every seat.  It’s an eight hour trip and you essentially spend the day sightseeing and having a good meal in the dining car. I had brought a book along but didn’t need it because the scenery is so pretty that in watching it time flies by. It is a trip into the past as well as the future. One still sees cows grazing contentedly, looking for the choicest greenery, or just lying down chewing the cud instead of being locked into tiny cubicles where they are automatically milked and fed with God knows what while waiting to be slaughtered. The train heads east and since Switzerland is not part of the EU there is a border control when you enter Austria but looking out the window there’s no difference. As long as you are in Vorarlberg and Tirol the mountains are the same, so are the cows and the church steeples also have their needle like characteristic. This changes when one gets to Salzburg and beyond where the mountains become hills and the onion dome steeples take over. Usually it’s just one onion, sometimes two and on the return trip from Vienna to Munich I saw one in Bavaria which outdid all its rivals by having four. But again there was evidence of climate change. The glaciers were practically gone and white snow has been replaced by grey moraine. Further harbingers of the future were high rises in the bigger cities as can be seen anywhere in the world lacking indigenous culture. On the other hand the fortress Hohensalzburg, which can be seen from the train has been rejuvenated and is now gleaming white.   

            I arrived in Vienna one day before Czar Wladimir Wladimirowitsch Putin, as he was referred to in the Vienna papers, and the day thereafter Bill Clinton as well as Sharon Stone came to town. Photographers had been instructed to avoid taking any pictures of Bill and Sharon together but, it’s obvious that they couldn’t resist and a montage appeared which showed the film star in the center, a somewhat smiley Putin to her right and a rather animated Bill to her left.  While Bill Clinton came to pick up a $1 million check for whatever purpose, Putin came accompanied by three of his billionaire oligarchs to do business. The talks went well beyond local expectations; oil and gas were to continue to arrive for the next 15 years and the newspapers talked about the Geldregen – rain of money - that had resulted from the visit. But something more important for the long run than money had also happened. Plans were formulated to extend the wide track Russian railroad system via Bratislava to the doors of Vienna. This means Vienna would reassume its old role as gateway to the East and Western goods could be directly transported all the way to Vladivostok if need be.

Let us now compare this with what Bush intends to bring to Europe this week. The Czechs are supposed to get radar installations and the Poles a missile defense shield against a threat which obviously doesn’t exist. Putin was right when he said it would be laughable if it were not so tragic. The Bush administration is accusing Putin of Cold War rhetoric and seems to be oblivious to the fact that is they who started this ill begotten scheme of putting missiles on his doorstep. Let us also not forget that it was the Kennedy administration which had provoked Khrushchev in 1962 by putting our missiles into Turkey before he put his into Cuba. While our press reported at the time that “Khrushchev blinked” it failed to mention that the resolution of the missile crisis was a tit for tat. The Soviets pulled their missiles out of Cuba and we removed ours from Turkey. But the current situation is even worse not only is an Iranian nuclear threat to Europe a figment of the imagination of our neocons but the fabulous missile defense shield doesn’t even work, and won’t work for decades if ever!

The Viennese are fun loving people and they used the Putin-Clinton visit to crack jokes. Below is a translation of an article that appeared in the magazine profil on May 21 by Rainer Nikowitz, (rainer.nikowitz@profil.at)

 

            RUSSIAN DEFENSE

                       

Wladimir Putin and Bill Clinton are in Vienna this week –

For a fireside chat like this one there will probably not be enough time.

 

Clinton: First of all I want to make it absolutely clear that I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

Profil: I’m happy to hear that, but which woman are you talking about?

Putin: Probably his own.

Clinton: First of all this is outrageous and second how d’you know this?

Putin: One learns a lot at the KGB

Profil: As long as we have such two important persons in regard to world politics in Vienna then …

Putin: Who is the second one?

Clinton: Now listen, if you insist on insulting me I’d rather play a round of golf with Don Rumsfeld.

Putin: But it’s correct anyway; you’re only a pensioner.

Clinton: Well you too by next year.

Putin: Yes my secretary – with the support from my cook and my dog – will carry on with the business of governing Russia, of course, without any interference by myself.

Clinton: And my wife will be president in America.

Putin: Right; she did that already while you were president.

Profil: I’m not sure but do I feel a certain degree of hostility here?

Clinton: Wow, this guy is good.

Putin: Have you been with the KGB too?

Profil: Currently there is considerable bad blood between your two countries because of the planned missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. Condoleezza Rice …

Clinton: I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

Putin: Hmm; too bad.

Clinton: Well, the figure is ok, but wrong party.

Profil: Condoleezza Rice regards the Russian policy in this regard, and I am using her word now, “ridiculous.” What is your opinion?

Putin: She really doesn’t have such a phenomenal figure.

Clinton: Well when she’s right she’s right.

Putin: The last one who called me ridiculous is making brooms in Siberia right now which will be sent free of charge to the suffering people in Chechnya.

Profil: Brooms?

Putin: Brooms! Next year they get cuckoo clocks. The world should see that we have genuinely warm feelings for Chechnya and all the accusations which are leveled against us are nothing but Western horror propaganda.

Clinton: Well, I don’t know . . . I’ve always had more fun with Boris Jelzin than with this guy, at least as long as the vodka lasted.

Putin: With all the natural gas which you are not going to get from us any more, you could have added another degree to the world’s temperature. So, now the Chinese will get it.

Profil: Are you really heading for another Cold War? Angela Merkel says …

Clinton: I did not have sex . . .

Putin: Me neither.

Clinton: Gerhard Schroeder was probably more your type or?

Putin: Iran will certainly be very happy with the excellent Russian atomic technology.

Clinton: I thought that went down the drain with that submarine.

Putin: You are really no different from Bush. You could have saved yourself the elections.

Clinton: That’s actually a very common thought in your country. When you had the chess world Champion Kasparov, arrested at a demonstration was that the well known “Russian defense?”

Putin: Do you want me to show you what a Russian defense looks like? I have a black belt.

Profil: Gentlemen, we don’t want to …

Putin: Oh yes!

Clinton: By all means.

Putin: I won’t have this oral fixated hashish smoker, who has the same job as that awful Gorbachow; explain to me how I should run my job.

Clinton: Might actually be good for you since you’re so uptight.

Putin: What?

Clinton: In case of doubt try both.

Profil: Let’s return to the actual problem of the missile defense shield. If you were still president Mr. Clinton – would you go ahead with it?

Clinton: Well, you know that George Bush is no special friend of mine, but in this situation where I see how it annoys Mr. Putin, certainly!

Putin: So you would likewise have marched into Iraq. You Americans are obviously all alike. Nothing but John Wayne’s.

Clinton: And you Russians? Nothing but Boris Karloff’s

Profil: But he wasn’t Russian at all.

Clinton: Aha, so you take his side too.

Putin: Oh I think he just wants to be able heat his house next winter.

Profil: Gentlemen; I thank you for this interview. But I have to admit that I have never had one like this before.

Putin: That’s what the KGB said too.

 

            Jokes aside, the matter is serious and our president is probably going to get an earful this week from the Europeans at the G8 meeting in Heiligendamm. Whether or not he is capable of absorbing the truth of what he will be told is another matter. But let us get back to personal experiences in Vienna. As documented in these pages I visited there for the last time three years earlier and the main change that has taken place in the meantime was the appearance of the people. There were a great many more Muslim head scarves as well as black faces. People from the Balkans and Turkey as well as sub-Saharan Africa are finding refuge in Austria’s prosperity. This creates, however, serious social problems, not only for welfare agencies but also the school system. There are already some grammar schools in certain Viennese districts where 96 per cent of all children do not have German as their native language. As a teacher, who himself came from Turkey, explained to the Kurier reporter: the problem is the parents. The children have to learn German in school and are willing to do so but the parents do not and at home only the native language is spoken. The problem is compounded by religion because as Mr. Pero (the teacher) delicately put it, “Islam does not particularly encourage integration and many children spend their afternoons in nearby clubs or mosques.” His solution is a school for parents where they are taught the language and how one acts in a democracy such as Austria. This problem pertains, of course, not only to Austria but the EU at large and while Congress is debating here what to do about illegal immigration including building a wall for sections of the Mexican border, the Mexicans have at least the same religion, which is not the case for the massive Muslim entry into Europe.

            The weekend was Pentecost which is taken very seriously, albeit not in the religious sense. It’s a long weekend which included the Monday and actually coincided with our Memorial Day, but in contrast to here everything shuts down except for a few emergency pharmacies, restaurants and entertainment venues. Most everybody who could, left town and the papers reported the usual spate of accidents but remarkably enough not on the Autobahnen where when you travel only at the speed of 160 km (about 100 mph), you are being passed by cars cruising at 200 km (about 134 mph), but on the way to them. I used the Sunday to go to one of my favorite swimming areas at the Danube, the Klosterneuburger Strandbad, and didn’t recognize it any more. It was completely renovated with separate swimming pools for adults and kiddies added as well as a restaurant. But one could also still head for a branch of the Danube and after swimming across one could get to the Danube proper. On Monday I had intended to go via hydrofoil to Bratislava but it was sold out so I made do with a trip down the Danube to Hainburg, the Austrian border town, and an excursion to the newly renovated hunting lodge of Prince Eugene.

            Every Austrian schoolboy learns the song of “Prinz Eugenius der edle Ritter” which celebrated his victories over the Turks in the 18th century and brought city and fortress of Belgrade back into the hands of the emperor. He became immensely rich and since his passion was the hunt he needed a hunting lodge which grew into a palace called Hof. After his death it was bought by Empress Maria Theresia and remained in the possession of the imperial family until the end of the monarchy, when it became property of the Republic. But since there was no money for the upkeep it was allowed to decay until 2002 when the necessary funds for complete renovation became available. The buildings of the palace complex, their support facilities and furnishings have been completely restored to their original glamour and one can now get a glimpse of how aristocracy lived more than 250 years ago. The park and gardens have also been restored in part but this aspect is still a work in progress. Here again is the fundamental difference between Europe and America. Europeans are proud of their heritage, take care of it with whatever means at their disposal and try to pass it on to future generations. Although we have some historical sites in this country which are being preserved, the spirit that, “new is better,” which dominates here, contrasts with the reverence for the past one finds in Europe.

This difference is in part due to, what one may call the insularity of America. Our educational system concentrates its efforts on this country to the exclusion of the rest of the world. Under these circumstances it should not be surprising that when the Baghdad museum, which harbored artifacts from the beginning of human civilization, was plundered the only response from our Donald Rumsfeld was, “Stuff happens” and “Freedom is messy.” As a technocrat he may not even have known that there was such a museum and the excuse that we didn’t have enough troops is not valid. He had tanks to guard the oil ministry and one of them would have been sufficient to protect the museum. Actions like these are interpreted by the world what America really stands for. They are not due to ill will but simply reflect profound ignorance.

On the way home from Munich to Atlanta I read the Stern which is the German equivalent of the long defunct Life or Look. The title page showed on top a picture of the Baltic Seaside resort of Heiligendamm behind a barbed wire fence and below the sumptuous suites of the hotel, where the G8 meetings are being held this week. The inscription was: Das ist der Gipfel. Hinter dem Zaun von Heiligendamm. This is another example for the inadequacy of translations. By someone who is not steeped in the German culture the sentences would probably be translated as, “This is the summit. Behind the fence of Heiligendamm.” It would be literally correct but completely miss the point because the word Gipfel in this context also means, “this is the height of folly, or extravagance.” The article points out that these meetings are extraordinarily expensive, serve mainly propaganda purposes, require inordinate security measures and for the “leaders of the free world” to meet behind barbed wire sends exactly the opposite signal to the world than what is supposed to be conveyed. The Heiligendamm meeting is not likely to produce anything but platitudes because the differences between Bush and the rest of the group in regard to missile defense shield and global climate change are just too profound to be effectively bridged at this time.   

To summarize: what I found in the countries I visited was a deep distrust of current American policies. While the people are grateful for what America has done for them and their parents in the past they have moved on from war and disasters and now want to use their resources on the improvement of the quality of life rather than becoming a staging ground for new military adventures. Let America solve its problems at home and let us solve ours here, was the constant refrain from high and low. Furthermore, “Yes, we want and need to work with America but it has to be on the principle of equality where our voices carry the same weight as yours.”  This would be good advice if it were heeded in Washington and so would be the statement by one of my Egyptian taxi drivers in Vienna which applies to all of us. When I asked him how he was doing economically he said “fine” and then added, “One shouldn’t chase after money, because it gets frightened and runs away.”







July 1, 2007

SAVING THE BUSH LEGACY

                        It is no secret that America’s foreign policy has been an unmitigated failure during the Bush administration. The tragedy of the current situation is that the president still seems to be oblivious to this fact and even seems to believe that like President Truman his actions will be vindicated by history. Unfortunately, this is not likely to be the case if he stays on his present course. Truman knew the limits of military might and this is why he dismissed General McArthur when the latter proposed to “nuke” China.

            When I came to this country in the summer of 1950 I encountered the anomalous situation where the Austrian visitor had to defend the American president against his own countrymen. For us Europeans he was a hero. He had kept Greece from falling into the hands of the communists, had instituted the Berlin airlift and had enacted the Marshall plan which started the European economic recovery. Americans saw him differently; for them he was simply a haberdasher who would never have become president had Roosevelt, not picked him for the vice presidency and died soon thereafter. When Truman fired McArthur he was viciously attacked in the press and one cartoon which read, “Who does Harry think he is? The President?” summed it up.

The differences between Harry Truman and George Bush are that Truman had to work himself up from humble beginnings, was always a man of the people, and having been in war himself had a healthy dislike for it. George Bush is the opposite. For him the words of the former governor of Texas, Ann Richardson, about his father are even more correct, “poor George, he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.” George jr. was not interested in military service; his National Guard attendance was spotty; he failed in all civilian enterprises; was always bailed out by his father’s connections; frittered away the first 40 years of his life and then after a religious conversion stopped abusing alcohol and decided to become a politician. With his father’s connections and the unscrupulous shenanigans of Karl Rove he managed to first become governor of Texas and then president. Thus, not only are the careers of Truman and Bush polar opposites but also their insights into the minds of men. While Truman was able to grow into the office fate had thrust him into there is as yet no evidence that President Bush has been able to do so. This is why he entirely relied on the savvy Dick Cheney who apparently appointed himself vice president and thereby de facto president.

There is some talk in the media of impeaching the president but this is not realistic. One would first have to get rid of Cheney which takes time and even if this maneuver succeeded the Democrats simply don’t have enough votes in the Senate to remove the president from office. At this time it is, therefore, very likely that we are stuck with George W. Bush for another 18 months which is not a happy prospect for these turbulent times we live in. It seems that he now has three options: 1) he can let the clock run out and hand the disaster over to his successor; 2) initiate military action in Iran which will lead to further tragedies; or 3) set the country on a new course. Judging from his character, as revealed during the years of his presidency, he is likely to choose option number 1 or 2. Either one will only make matters worse. In regard to the first one it needs to be recognized that world events don’t wait for American elections. There is an avalanche in progress and steps need to be taken to limit its impact. The second option can only bring more harm to the people of the Middle East and does not have the slightest chance to bring stability, let alone peace, to the area.

The only hope for some improvement in the present situation would be a course change. If the president were a sailor, which John Kennedy was and therefore knew danger when saw it during the Cuban missile crisis, he would realize that he is heading for a rocky lee shore and would immediately go on the opposite tack. This is what reason demands. To live by reason, which we have a right to expect from our president, he would have to discard bias and prejudice and talk not only to “a higher father” but listen to knowledgeable people on planet earth. The media told us that the president regards himself as “a born again” Christian. If this were to be the case we have not seen any evidence for it in his actual conduct. The hallmark of Christianity is the Sermon on the Mount which enjoins us not only to love our neighbors but also those who hate us. Loving one’s enemy, as I have pointed out in a previous essay (Love your enemy. January 1, 2005) goes beyond human ability but the Greek word “agapate” which has been translated as “to love” has a wider meaning and encompasses esteem. This is a fundamental difference. While love is an emotion which cannot be commanded, esteem is an intellectual process one can engage in. With other words by not immediately returning hate for hate on an emotional reflex type basis, we can sit back and try to find out why our adversary hates us. To use Jesus’ words it is about: removing the beam in our own eye before removing the speck from our brother’s eye.

For the true Christian hate should have no place in private or public life. The word “enemy” should likewise be banished when one refers to leaders of other countries. It is true that some people are our adversaries and opponents who want to harm us but that does not mean that we have to respond in a similar manner. As rational human beings we ought to base our conduct on an accurate assessment of the needs and goals of our adversaries who should be seen as they see themselves rather than what the media and other parties portray them as. This has very practical consequences because it does away with propaganda and provides first hand information.

Let me demonstrate this by reference to our judicial system. If you were to be accused of an unlawful act would you trust a defense attorney whose only information comes from the media or witnesses? Wouldn’t you rather insist on talking to him in person and explain your case? I believe the answer is obvious, yet in the most important aspect of human life, the question of war and peace which affects hundreds of thousands if not millions, decisions are taken so to say by remote control. The adversary is declared as evil, an enemy of humanity, and has to be done away with. The good and evil dichotomy, which is the hallmark of the Bush administration, has led us into the terrible dilemma we are currently facing especially in the Middle East. Let us not forget that “ye shall be as gods; knowing good and evil [King James version, Gen 3:5] ,” was a ploy by Satan, the original adversary, which appealed to our ancestors pride. When this is recognized in its full implications the wisdom of the Buddha becomes even clearer. He was not concerned with good and evil but insisted that all human problems result from ignorance. This distinction is vital. We cannot change the character of another human being but we can educate ourselves about how the other person thinks and freed from prejudice we can then deal rationally with a given problem we are confronted with. 

This brings us to the only way how President Bush might yet save his legacy and spare the world further disasters. On July 1 and 2 he is supposed to meet with President Putin at Kennebunkport in Maine which is an excellent idea. Putin will undoubtedly explain to him why the intended missile defense shield in Eastern Europe is a serious mistake. It cannot fulfill the officially stated purpose of defending Europe from Iranian missiles because a) Why would Iran send missiles into Europe? Since there is no purpose it will not do so; and b) the current system doesn’t even work properly. If we look behind the scenes, as the Russians have surely done, we will come to the conclusion that the perceived danger is not to Europe but to Israel, and that there is an additional military-political motive to tie Poland and the Czech Republic even closer to the U.S. than they already are. From Russia’s point of view this missile defense shield is just another example of American imperialism on their doorstep which they cannot accept without taking some countermeasures. The Russia of 2007 is no longer that of the early 1990s and the sooner our media and politicians accept this fact the better off we will be. Putin will not arrive hat in hand at Kennebunkport; he will want to be treated as an equal and deserves to be so.  

The Kennebunkport meeting will be crucial. If President Bush desists from the missile defense shield the world can breathe a sigh of relief. He would not have to announce it publicly, just put it on the back burner and hand the decision eventually to Congress where it would find a well deserved demise. If, and this is a big if, our president were able not only to listen to President Putin but show that he can understand another country’s legitimate concerns, a major step in bringing sanity to our foreign policy would have been taken.

The fact that they are meeting at all at Kennebunkport rather than in Crawford’s heat tells us something else. George W may have started to listen to his earthly father because the latter had during his presidency frequently invited world leaders to his home where they would informally discuss major outstanding issues. President Putin’s visit could, therefore, become an important precedent for our current president. Instead of spending the summer in Crawford he should use it to get a first hand personal education from world leaders in the Kennebunkport family compound. But in order for these meetings to be fruitful they should include people he intensely dislikes. President Bush should set bias aside and muster the personal courage to invite thereafter Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to Maine. I realize that this sound preposterous but George W needs first hand unfiltered information in regard to Ahmadinejad’s opinions and how he proposes to defuse the current dangerous situation. He had written a personal letter to our president last year, which was received with ridicule and has remained unanswered. The situation has gotten worse in the meantime. Iran is a key player in the region and its Prime Minister does not deserve ridicule but serious attention. If we are too haughty to do so we are likely to pay a heavy price in the future. By swallowing his pride and talking directly to the Iranian Prime Minister as an equal, rather than a client, our president would for the first time show statesman-like qualities.

The next visitor should be the President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad. He is an educated person, trained as a physician, and has no interest in getting his country into a war. All he seems to want is keeping his job, stability in the region, and the status quo of June 5, 1967. This means Israel’s return to Syria of the Golan Heights and parts of the eastern shoreline of Lake Tiberias. Neither he nor his father ever wanted anything else. This is not an outlandish demand but anchored in Security Council Resolution 242, which required of Israel to withdraw from territories it had conquered in the Six-Day War.       

Although we don’t like the governing style of any of the three mentioned individuals they are responsible to their people rather than our government or citizenry. None of the mentioned countries are Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union where popular dissent was out of the question. Putin has a genuinely high approval rating in his country and the Iranians as well as Syrians are not sufficiently cowed by their leadership that they could not get rid of it. In Iran they were able to depose the Shah against our will and are capable of removing the mullahs without our help if they so wanted to The intense desire for regime change in various countries which permeates the Bush administration needs to be abandoned because as our efforts in Iraq and Palestine show it has the likelihood to achieve the opposite of what was intended.

From all of the three mentioned individuals our president is also likely to get an earful about Israel and its unequal treatment of Arabs versus Jews in Israel proper and its repressive policies towards the natives in the West Bank and Gaza. It is essential that President Bush listens and takes their suggestions to heart because he is likely to learn aspects of the Palestinian problem which he is unaware of. Americans who read only popular US publications and watch only American TV programs have a very one-sided picture of what really goes on in that part of the world. To appreciate the complexity of the problem one needs to go to the Internet and pull up www.ynetnews.com , the Israeli equivalent of CNN, as well as the English edition of al-Jazeera. Contrary to expectations, the latter does not spew hate and the former provides authentic views from Israelis which differ considerably at times from what the American Jewish leadership presents us with. As mentioned in the June 8 installment, I was in Europe last month and even European CNN brings a much more global picture than what we are treated to here. President Bush should, therefore, personally talk to not only Prime Minister Olmert, and Prime Ministers in waiting Barack and Netanyahu but people like retired Brigadier General Shaul Arieli. He had commanded the Israeli army in Gaza prior to its withdrawal in 2006 and has a realistic view of the situation.

The current policy of attempting to isolate and destroy Hamas in Gaza while providing money and token prisoner releases (250 out of 10,000) to Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah section in the West Bank is bound to be another serious mistake. Hamas has the support of a major segment of the population in Gaza and Fatah has been routed. Even in regard to Fatah versus Hamas the good and evil dichotomy is inappropriate. As a recent report from the German news magazine Spiegel online on June 21, 2007 noted, Fatah had its own torture chambers in Gaza which were opened to public inspection after the Hamas victory. We don’t get this information here and we also don’t see the pictures of Gaza’s people on the beach finally enjoying a measure of temporary peace and quiet in the same issue (Gaza-Streifen: So schoen ist Hamastan). The emphasis is on temporary because Israeli planes and tanks are again creating havoc.

All available reports show that Fatah is corrupt and this is part of the reason why it lost the election in 2006. Furthermore, Abbas has been unable to obtain meaningful concessions from the Israelis during his entire tenure and this is why the people voted for change. Israel, the US and the EU then punished the Palestinians with severe economic sanctions because free and fair elections are apparently allowed only for the purpose of keeping “our people” in power. Since Hamas is regarded by the locals as more honest they wanted to see what it could accomplish to ameliorate the intolerable burdens Israel places on their daily lives. If the situation would have gotten worse under a coalition government they could have voted them out again. This is how democracies are supposed to work. The fact that the Bush administration did not allow this democratic process to succeed because Hamas has been labeled a terrorist organization made it clear to the Muslim world that all our talk about promoting freedom and democracy is merely rhetoric.

Our policy of conflating genuine national liberation movements such as Hamas in Palestine and Hezballah in Lebanon with organizations such as Al-Qaeda is at the root of our failed policies and unless this differentiation is made no peace is possible. The Spiegel Online published on June 22nd an interview with Mahmoud Zahar, a founder of Hamas and one of its most militant hardliners. It is in English and deserves to be read. To the question of whether or not Hamas wants to establish an Islamic state in Gaza? He replied,

 

“Of course. We want to do that, but with full support of the people. At the moment we can’t establish an Islamic state because we Palestinians have no state. As long as we don’t have a state, we will try to form an Islamic society.”

 

To the question what this would look like Zahar replied,

 

“There would be no difference from how it looks today, because our customs and traditions in Gaza are already Islamic. Marriage, divorce, daily business – everything is Islamic. As soon as we have a state, then everyone will have their freedom. Christians will remain Christians, parties could be secular or even Communist.”

 

 

In regard to the future relationship with Israel he said,

 

“We are ready to speak with everyone about everything. Of course we have to speak with the Israelis, de facto, for example over trade. We also have to speak with them about cross-border issues, like the movement of severely ill patients and protection from bird flu and how we can avoid environmental catastrophes. We won’t discuss politics, because the Israelis have no political agenda with us. The political agenda of Condoleezza Rice and Ehud Olmert with President Mahmoud Abbas consists of trading kisses every two weeks – but with empty hands. We will only talk about essential things.”

 

As to the perceived danger “that the Gaza strip may become a playground for international terrorism,”

 

“Our people can’t distinguish between resistance and terrorism. We’re fighting for the liberation of our land from an occupation. When people in Europe had to fight the Nazis, they were honored, later, as freedom fighters. No one would have called Charles de Gaulle a terrorist.”

 

This goes to the heart of the question and Zahar might have included as ex-terrorists the former Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. The widening tragedy of the Palestinian people highlights again the fact that US policy is not neutral in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict but heavily biased toward the Israeli side. This is known in the Arab world and has literally fatal consequences. The Palestinian unity government which was first established after the 2006 elections was deliberately sabotaged by our Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy, Elliot Abrams. He operates out of the vice president’s office, and is not only a confirmed neoconservative who was co-responsible for the Iraq invasion, but also a convinced “Likudnik” who is unalterably opposed to any meaningful concessions Israel might make in exchange for peace with the Palestinians. Abrams had served in the Reagan administration, was convicted and sentenced as part of the Iran-Contra scandal, but pardoned by the incoming President George Herbert Walker Bush.

When one types the key words: “Abrams Gaza Dahlan” into Google a wealth of information becomes available which has not yet been properly reported by our media. We are aware that it is current US policy in Iraq to arm Sunnis against suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists, over the objections of the Iraqi government. But we have so far not been told that the model was the arming of Fatah against Hamas after the 2006 elections which is carried out under the aegis of Elliot Abrams. The goal is to foster a civil war among Palestinians and thereby demonstrate that they are incapable of governing themselves which in turn is supposed to benefit Israel because final status negotiations cannot take place under these circumstances. Former President Jimmy Carter was aware of this state of affairs and this is why he labeled our Middle East policy “criminal” in a recent speech. He was correct because deliberately inciting war is indeed criminal conduct. Mr. Abrams ought to be taken to task for it by Congress because he also sabotages, according to these reports, Dr. Rice’s efforts to reach a peaceful settlement. 

For the Abrams’ policy to succeed he needs Palestinians who are sympathetic to America and Israel rather than acceptable to their countrymen. The newly appointed Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad, who is now responsible essentially only for the West Bank, receives high praise from the West but his party got 2 per cent of the vote in 2006. Praise is also bestowed on the former Fatah Security Chief of Gaza, Mohammed Dahlan. He was one of the Palestinians main negotiators at Camp David in 2000 and is being groomed by Abrams and associates to emerge as the Palestinian strongman once Abbas decides to wash his hands of this unmanageable affair or is disposed of in some other manner.

Although Dahlan is highly favored by the US and Israel, he has little credibility among Palestinians. While in Gaza he created a mini-empire for himself which was referred to by the locals as “Dahlanistan.” He occupied the single most expensive villa, oversaw an Abu-Ghraib type prison where people were tortured and disappeared, albeit without the specifically American sexual outrages, and was the benefactor of Abrams’ money as well as arms largesse. This was put to good use by instigating the civil war which erupted earlier this year in Gaza and has led to the Hamas victory.

The ostensible reason why Israel and the West rejected the duly elected Palestinian government in 2006 was the refusal of Hamas to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Furthermore, as far as Israel is concerned, Hamas must forswear armed struggle and promise to abide by existing Palestinian and Israeli agreements. This sounds reasonable from the Israeli side but Hamas argues that only states can recognize each other and since there is no Palestinian state the question is moot. In addition, recognition is based on internationally recognized borders but these do not exist for the State of Israel at this time. As shown above Hamas cannot be expected to give up armed resistance against Israeli occupation because all other measures have failed and Israel has not negotiated in good faith. This applies also to the third condition. Although one of the statutes of the Oslo accord was that Israeli settlements be frozen in the occupied territories they have doubled since that time. Furthermore, as reported in “Barack in Salt Lake City” (March 1, 2007), Barack had not fulfilled his promises prior to urging on Bill Clinton and a reluctant Yassir Arafat the Camp David meeting. Unless and until Israel provides tangible benefits for the Palestinian people, Hamas will not only remain a force to be reckoned with but continue to gain support from the disenchanted population.

The idea that Hamas, and with it the people in Gaza, can either be starved to death or militarily defeated by Israel has no merit as one glance at demographics shows. Gaza has currently 1.4 million people of whom nearly a quarter of a million males are in the military age bracket (www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook). Many, if not most of them, are unemployed and see no hope for a better future unless they engage the Israelis and their Western stooges in violent struggle. Regardless how many “gunmen and terrorists” the Israelis kill in Gaza and the West Bank, all they will achieve is more fierce determination. The Palestinian youngsters live not only by the Koran but they also read Che Guevara’s “Guerilla Warfare,” Vo Nguyan Giap’s “How we won the war [Vietnam],” and Mao Tse tung’s “On Guerilla Warfare.” These are the instruction manuals they live by and for every dead youngster, 10 more will stand up. Although the West can deny Hamas money, some will arrive from Arab countries as well as Iran. Furthermore, in contrast to Fatah, whose members are known to feather their nests, Hamas fighters are frugal.

Israel’s neighbors, Jordan and Egypt, as well as the Saudis have come to see this impasse and are pleading for international acceptance of another unity government which includes all Palestinian factions but this has so far fallen on deaf ears. The need to negotiate with all Palestinians rather than a segment is also recognized by some Israelis and the previously mentioned Brigadier General Shaul Arieli wrote an article, “Fatah isn’t enough. Israel needs to finalize agreement acceptable to vast majority of Palestinians [ynetnews.com. June 22, 2007].” 

After having neglected the Palestinian problem for more than six years and merely watched it going from bad to worse President Bush has finally begun to show some interest but he is still subservient to the homegrown Jewish leadership and Christian Zionists, who are adamantly opposed to genuine concessions by Israel. They live in the delusion that somehow by maintaining current policies the status quo in the occupied territories can at least be maintained and eventually the Palestinians will submit to their dictates. They do not realize that a fair number of Israelis have already begun to move into what may be called the “post-Zionist” phase. The former speaker of the Knesset, Avram Burg, is a typical example. He sees the injustices that are being perpetrated against Palestinians, the changing demographic picture in the former British Mandate territory, the disenchantment of his fellow citizens with what has happened to their country and he voices his concerns. Israelis who can afford it have already an additional non-Israeli passport; many of Israel’s young people don’t see a future in their country and intend to emigrate. I have repeatedly pointed out in these pages that Israelis have to make a decision: do they want a secular democracy or a Jewish state? If it is the former they might as well live in a secular state of Palestine which guarantees equal rights to all citizens regardless of race, creed or gender. If they want a purely Jewish state surrounded by Arabs they have to agree to give up dominating the Arab population within their sphere of influence and withdraw to internationally recognized borders, sanctioned by the UN. This is the only choice and neither Americans nor Palestinians can make it for them. The longer Israeli politicians persist in ignoring this stark choice, the worse the situation will get with the possibility of a nuclear holocaust at the end.

When one keeps the above described situation in mind it is apparent that even the appointment of Tony Blair as mediator and facilitator is not likely to bring lasting results. There is no doubt that he will be sincere in his efforts and that he has excellent negotiating skills. What is missing is the trust from major segments of the Palestinian public including, of course, Hamas. Whether or not he will earn this trust through open discussions with the Hamas leadership the next few weeks will make clear. If he were able to do so and overcome his image of simply being a Bush surrogate there would be hope for progress. If he could also manage to persuade the Israelis to provide significant improvements for the lives of the Palestinians in the West Bank as well as Gaza, the future would begin to look somewhat brighter. Obviously every one wishes him success and for achieving this I would suggest that he should live in three different cities: Jerusalem, Ramallah and Gaza. Only by working in the midst of the locals will he be able to get a full appraisal of the situation which would then allow him to make a comprehensive unbiased report to the Quartet.

Thus, if President Bush wants to save his legacy he would have to take at least two steps. The single most important is that he makes a decision in his own mind who he wants to conduct our Middle East policy. Will it continue to be Elliot Abrams and the vice president or Condoleezza Rice and the State Department? This is a decision the president must make immediately because two fundamentally different visions cannot be executed simultaneously. The success or failure of Tony Blair’s mission will also depend on that. In as much as the vice president’s advice has been consistently bad it needs to be shunned in the future. The vice president should be relegated to his constitutional role of presiding over the Senate as well as ceremonial functions and removed from shaping the country’s policies in his image. The second step would require for the president to obtain first hand information about the various trouble spots in the world but especially the Middle East and to stop the good and evil rhetoric. Scaring the American people with terrorists in every corner will no longer suffice. He will have to come to realize fully that insurrections against occupying forces regardless whether they are in Iraq, Afghanistan or Palestine cannot be won militarily. The lessons of China, Cuba and Vietnam should be that in guerilla warfare, where the local population favors their own insurgents over foreigners or America’s proxies, even superior military forces can be defeated. The locals have time on their side and America will never have enough boots on the ground to control its contested dominions. 

We will know by the end of the summer whether or not our president is capable of learning and accepting obvious facts. If he keeps frittering it away, as he did in the past, his legacy is doomed. On the other hand if he were to show himself capable of insight and formulates a policy that takes the concerns of our adversaries into account he might yet be able to salvage some of his reputation and reestablish a positive image in the world for our country.







August 1, 2007

OUR NEED FOR MAAT

Whenever I am in Vienna one of my first visits is to St. Stephen’s Cathedral and this year was no exception. When I asked the cab driver who, by the way hailed from Iran, to take me there he seemed to be surprised. Why would a Viennese want to go there on a weekday morning when the church is actually hardly a place of worship any more but a museum overrun by tourists with cameras? So I explained to him that before I set out into the unknown in 1950 I had gone to St. Stephen’s and asked the Lord to stand by me in this endeavor. He did, now it’s payback time and show gratitude. As a good Muslim he understood and appreciated the sentiment.

Thereafter I went to the Dombuchhandlung which is behind the Cathedral on St. Stephen’s square. It used to sell only books that carried the Vatican’s nihil obstat seal of approval but in the spirit of ecumenism the strict rule has been relaxed and one now finds in addition other books dealing with matters of the spirit. This is where I saw in the window Ma’at Konfuzius Goethe. Drei Lehren für das richtige Leben by Jan Assmann, Ekkehart Krippendorf and Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer. Although Maat, as well as Confucius and Goethe have been long standing friends of mine, with whom I consult on occasion, I was surprised to see their juxtaposition and inasmuch as I also saw on the shelf Assmann’s more detailed exposition Ma’at. Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im alten Aegypten (Maat, Justice and Immortality in ancient Egypt) I bought that one too, as well as some others.

Assmann is a highly respected German Egyptologist, Krippendorff a Sinologist and Schmidt-Glintzer a Philologist; so what could motivate these three people to jointly prepare a small book of 166 pages which spans 5000 years of human history? The answer is that they looked for models which created and maintained a culture that could last thousands of years. Ancient Egypt from the Old Kingdom to its final collapse, as a result Caesar’s conquest, had lasted more than 3000 years, the China of Confucius had likewise a long history and is actually experiencing a renewal in our day. Thus, the motivating underlying idea for both of these states must have had an intrinsic beneficial quality that deserves to be brought to light. But one still wonders what role Goethe played in this context. In the US, if he is remembered at all, one knows him only as a poet. Yet, he was also for some time the Chief Minister of State for the small duchy of Saxe-Weimar- Coburg, and as such intimately involved with affairs of State, and in addition he was keenly interested in all phases of nature. He wrote about optics, botany, anatomy, anticipated Darwin’s theory of evolution and Nietzsche’s Ewige Wiederkehr. Goethe’s life (1749-1832) spanned the Seven Years War (called here the French and Indian wars), the American war of Independence, the French revolution, the Napoleonic era and the first stirrings of German nationalism. This period marked the beginning of the end of the feudal era and the transition to modernity as characterized by industrialization, the machine age, and the concomitant change from an autocratic monarchical system of government to a democratic one as exemplified by the founders of our republic. As such Goethe is the link between the past, present and future and this is why, as a genuine polymath, he belonged in the mentioned book.

The authors explained that the purpose of writing this small treatise, published in 2006, was to present some ideas in regard to questions which are not addressed today and for which conventional political thoughts have no answer. The book was written for those who do not regard the current world political developments as progress but as an Irrweg (mistaken direction, wrong track). It was the authors’ intent to at least make conceivable another form of “modernity” which does not consist of the mere prolongation of an industrial-capitalistic, market and profit oriented type society which has lost its “soul” long ago. By “soul” they meant a political ethic which would deserve the name “ethic.” This ethic can only be gained or regained by careful study of previous successful societies with ancient Egypt having been the first.

To discuss Maat, Confucius and Goethe is impossible in a few pages and I shall therefore limit myself to Maat as the motivating force of a civilization that had prevailed for thousands of years. But before doing so, one needs to know current American thought, which drives our policies into the mentioned Irrweg. This is perhaps best expressed in Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man. Even the title of this book, which was published at the end of the Cold War (1992), is probably not readily understandable by the majority of the American public because the American educational system no longer teaches world history and the rudiments of philosophy. We are training mainly technocrats and businesspeople. Fukuyama’s End of History deals with the thoughts of Hegel, and the Last Man came from Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Hegel is now known mainly as the intellectual father of Marxism while Nietzsche is equated with the superman and Nazism.

In essence, Fukuyama endorsed the idea of history moving – arrow like – forward with liberal democracy as its goal. Inasmuch as this has been achieved in many countries of the world it will eventually encompass all. Although some dangers to it may well arise from the restless human spirit it is in his view, nevertheless, the best form of government. In spite of detours such as communism, Nazism and the like he regarded as a “fact that history is being driven in a coherent direction by rational desire and rational recognition.”  He wrote that, “We can think of human history as a dialogue or competition between different regimes or forms of social organization. . . .  If there do not appear to be viable alternatives to liberal democracy, and if people living in liberal democracies express no radical discontent with their lives, we can say that the dialogue has reached a final and definitive conclusion.” Fukuyama thereby rejected the cyclical nature of human events. Although he mentioned Plato in another context he did not deal with the Socratic idea that tyranny is always followed by oligarchy, which in turn leads to democracy. But democracy cannot be a stable form of government for any length of time because individual freedom will always lead to excesses. Eventually chaos results from which the cry for a strong leader will inevitably arise and the cycle starts anew.

We thus have two fundamentally different views of history and our current administration is hell bent on pushing the messianic age of liberal democracy with sanctions, bombs and tanks on countries which hold different views. The inherent fatal flaw namely individual profit, which fosters greed and does not consider the rights of others, is ignored. CEOs of major companies are paid obscene salaries for concentrating on the supposed value of their stocks thereby reducing the people who do the actual physical work to chattel that can be disposed of for the sake of shareholders. The dehumanization of our “liberal democracy” is in full swing and this is the Irrweg Assmann and his colleagues want us to reconsider before it is too late.

As mentioned above I had become acquainted with Maat decades earlier through Breasted’s The Dawn of Conscience which can be highly recommended to the English speaking public. It explains the development of ethical thought in ancient Egypt and how it had found its way into the Old Testament. As explained in The Moses Legacy. Roots of Jewish Suffering we now see Egypt and its contribution to human civilization only through the lens of Jewish writers with its concomitant inevitable distortions. This is why we have to go back to the original texts which in turn show us why Maat is needed for a stable society which serves both the individual and the state.

The concept of Maat arose during the Old Kingdom, which encompasses dynasties III- VI (ca. 2686 - 2181 B.C.), but entered classical Egyptian literature mainly during the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2133- 1786 B.C.). It should be mentioned that the dates are by necessity approximations and the ones given here come from The Cambridge Ancient History. The catastrophe which had befallen Egypt in the Intermediate period was regarded by the Egyptians as the typical example of what was bound to happen when Maat was not actively maintained by joint action of the people, the king and the gods. Just as youth does not know what youth is until one has lost it, Maat was recognized as such mainly after the chaos of the first Intermediary period and subsequently deified as a goddess after the Hyksos had been expelled at the beginning of the XVIIIth Dynasty (1567 B.C.). She was then portrayed during the judgment of the deceased in her capacity as justice where her feather had to balance the scales of the person’s heart, i.e. his ethical behavior, during life. The type of conditions that prevailed in the first Intermediate period are depicted in: The prophecies of Neferti; The Complaints of Kakheperre-sonb; The Admonitions of Ipuwer; and The dispute of a Man and his Ba. (Miriam Lichtheim. Ancient Egyptian Literature Vol. I) All describe profound social upheavals and natural disasters.

Inasmuch as we enter with this literature into a realm of thought which profoundly differs from our current way of thinking I have refrained from defining Maat up to now and shall continue to use the Egyptian term rather than one of its various meanings. By coincidence Maat made a cameo appearance in a National Geographic TV presentation, “Engineering Egypt,” last week. The program tried to show how and why Khufu had his pyramid built and Ramesses II, Abu Simbel. Maat was mentioned as “order” according to which the structures were erected, to ensure the king’s immortality and ascent to the stars. This is correct but also potentially misleading because it omits the wider social context. Abstract words denote concepts which encompass a wide variety of meanings. What happens when only one of them is selected is perhaps best exemplified by the Greek word logos which can have, according to Langenscheidt’s Pocket Classical Greek Dictionary, 53 different meanings. Among them are: speech, conversation, deliberation, thought, reason, order, word, etc. When St. Jerome translated the gospel of John into Latin he used “verbum” for logos. This made the first sentence of the gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God” rather difficult to apprehend intellectually. St. John wanted to identify Jesus’ spirit with God, as the eternal Christ, but this can get lost when logos is rendered merely as “word.” Maat likewise has many meanings the principals of which are: truth, justice, righteousness and order. To isolate just one of these terms as a translation of the word Maat violates the entire concept because they are mutually interdependent. To explain the role Maat played in Egyptian society I shall now summarize the essence of Assmann’s views with apologies to the author because they are by necessity abbreviated and for interested German speaking persons the mentioned books can be highly recommended.

The first six dynasties, which had lasted approximately a thousand years, with the pyramid age at their center, were regarded in the chaotic Intermediary period as a golden age and when society had reconstituted itself in the Middle Kingdom the question what had gone wrong and why was given literary form and became part of the famed Egyptian wisdom teachings. The disasters of the Intermediary period taught the Egyptians that the natural state of man and the world is what may be called: all against all; a conclusion which Hobbes had arrived at about 3000 years later. Hobbes wrote “Unless there is a common power to keep them all [mankind] in awe . . . [there is] continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

This was the state Egyptians experienced in the Interregnum between the Old and the Middle Kingdom and they called it Isfet. It consists of: deceit, lies, brutality, greed, crime and war. One might summarize it as absolute egotism which rides roughshod over the wishes and concerns of others, or “my will be done.” Maat is the exact opposite: cohesion and harmony. This is to be achieved first within the family then the tribe and subsequently the state. Each individual knows his role and voluntarily cooperates in a harmonious society simply because it is the right thing to do. But because Isfet is the natural condition, Maat has to be acquired through patient education of one’s children. Isfet is not overcome by brute force but by acts of Maat where each particular act destroys one particular aspect of Isfet.

Assmann used the term “vertical solidarity,” which includes responsibility, and contrasted it with “horizontal solidarity.” The latter was the goal of the French revolution, with its offshoot of liberal democracies, under the banner of: Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood. Since human beings are by nature not equal and liberty uncoupled from responsibility leads to egotism, brotherhood never had a chance of coming into being. Vertical solidarity, on the other hand, is nature’s aristocratic principle at its best. The inherent inequality of high and low, strong and weak is recognized but counteracted by the demand for the strong to protect the weak from the power of the strong. In Egyptian society the power was concentrated in the crown and the king’s officials. They had to rule on the principle of Maat: truth will lead to justice and when justice is done order is established. When the king, as son of God, lived in Maat he reflected as well as established not only terrestrial but also cosmic order. But Maat is not self-perpetuating; it requires effort.

In contrast to biblical tradition, where God created the world and then took time off to rest, the Egyptians were aware that the forces of creation and destruction are eternally ongoing and since Maat is a product of effort against the natural destructive tendencies, Maat has to be recreated on a daily basis. The analogy was the sun, Ra, who rose in the morning, thereby allowed Maat to occur on earth and sank into the underworld at night to bring Maat to its denizens. Furthermore, for the Egyptians the dichotomy in the life of man was not between good and evil but between natural chaos and Maat which needed to be practiced in everyday life. The key to understanding Maat lies in what one may call “connectedness.” To be human required another human being or as the proverb had it; “a human comes into existence when he is surrounded by others. He is greeted with reverence for the sake of his children.” and “one lives when one is guided by another.”

Living in Maat required what Assmann called: 1) Communicative solidarity: listening, speaking and silence. 2) Active solidarity: when injustices were committed the wrong had to be corrected. 3) Abstention from greed. The sequence in point 1 is important because listening comes first. Its meaning is the biblical word “hearkening,” paying attention and taking to heart what the other person has to say. Turning “a deaf ear” to a complaint is a sin against Maat and leads to a bad end. The Instructions of Ptahhotep contain this admonition,

 

“One beloved by God hearkens

One who does not is hated by God.

The fool who does not listen

Nothing will be done for him.

He regards knowledge as ignorance

Something helpful as hindrance.”

 

Furthermore, the person who listened had to give the speaker a chance to fully unburden himself because for a person who is distressed pouring out his heart may be even more important than achieving success in his desire.

When speech was called for it had to be modest, rather than brash or querulous, and it had to be truthful. Whoever was unable to use well meaning speech was incapable of fitting himself into the community and thereby belonged to the “living dead.” Speech had to come before action because when, “words cease force takes over.” Here is another saying from Ptahhotep,

 

“Be a master of speech.

The sword arm of a king is his tongue.

Speech is mightier than battle.”

 

Equally important as speech, however, was the knowledge when to remain silent. This is still expressed in our proverb, “speaking is silver, silence is gold.” Furthermore, tattling and spreading rumors did not belong to Maat.

For Assmann’s second point namely active solidarity the key sentence is, “the deed returns to the doer.” This corresponds to the Indian concept of Karma where each action has a consequence which is either good or bad depending on its origin. Or in current parlance: what goes around comes around. With other words: you will reap what you sow. For the Egyptian life and death were a continuum and if an injustice had not been remedied during the lifetime of the individual it would be at time of death. Individual life could persist as long as the tomb was properly cared for. This is why the person, and not just the king, had to establish a proper tomb for himself during his lifetime which had to be subsequently maintained by his son. In this way solidarity extended beyond the limited lifespan of the individual, broke the shackles of time, and thereby removed the fear of death.

To discuss the religious aspects of Maat further at this time would lead too far afield and I shall therefore limit myself to the practical aspects of how justice was to be dispensed by the magistrate. In civil disputes the goal was not to punish one of the litigants but to achieve mutual agreement i.e. arbitration. In this way harmony was restored and another major sin against Maat, greed, was avoided.  For criminal cases the death sentence was rare, more commonly it involved physical punishment especially beatings and in case of severe offenses mutilation such as cutting off one’s tongue or nose which provided a visible permanent deterrent. In contrast to our blindfolded “Lady Justice,” who graces our law courts and still holds Maat’s scales, Maat’s eyes were open in order to detect injustices carried out against the weak and powerless anywhere.

Inasmuch as Maat was the ruling principle a written law code was not necessarily required and if a magistrate did not act in accordance with Maat complaints would be lodged against him which might even reach the king. This is exemplified in the tale of “The Eloquent Peasant” which will be discussed later. For now let us read what Ptahhotep had to say about greed,

 

“If you want a perfect conduct

To be free from every evil,

Guard against the vice of greed:

A grievous sickness without cure,

There is no treatment for it.

It embroils fathers, mothers,

And the brothers of the mother,

It parts a wife from husband,

It is a compound of all evils

A bundle of all hateful things.”

 

These were just three samples of the 37 Maxims in regard to Maat of the Vizier Ptahhotep who lived during the Old Kingdom and whose teachings were revered. A good example of how Isfet can be overcome by Maat is the mentioned tale of the Eloquent Peasant which originated during the Middle Kingdom. It also makes the point of another one of Ptahhoteps’ instructions, “Worthy speech is more hidden than greenstone, being found even among slave-women at the mill-stone.” With other words, even the lowliest of the low may know Maat and are entitled to it.

The narrative is of a peasant from Wadi Natrun whose family faced starvation and he, therefore, loaded all his property on his donkeys to exchange it in the city of the king for food. On the way a greedy rich man saw the laden donkeys and decided to rob the peasant of his belongings. The path which the peasant had to follow beyond that man’s house was narrow. On one side there was a canal and on the other a barley field. In order to maintain a sense of legality the greedy man ordered one of his servants to spread linen clothes over the path and he told the peasant not to step on them. This forced the peasant’s donkeys into the barley field. One of the donkeys then did what comes natural and took a mouthful of barley. The greedy one then claimed that his property had been violated and took the peasant’s goods. The latter complained about the injustice and said that if there was no restitution he would go to the magistrate, Rensi, who was known to be a just administrator, and put the case before him. This incensed the greedy one and he gave the peasant a sound threshing. When the peasant’s appeal for justice proved fruitless he went to Rensi’s estate and complained to his servants. They made light of it but were impressed by the peasant’s eloquence of speech who kept remonstrating that what was happening to him did not accord with Maat. Rensi then personally listened to the peasant’s appeal for justice but did not commit himself to a course of action. Instead he went to the king and brought this unusual situation of an apparently wise peasant to his attention. In order to elicit further sayings from the peasant the king advised Rensi that he should turn a deaf ear to the peasant’s complaints, while at the same time providing in secret some food for him as well as his family. This set the stage for the peasant’s nine complaints against Rensi, whom he regarded as forsaking Maat and fostering Isfet.

Key excerpts are: first he praised Rensi’s power and then reminded him of his duties “For you are father to the orphan, husband to the widow, brother to the rejected woman, apron to the motherless.” When this fell on deaf ears he continued to point out that the scales of justice need first of all to be to be straight and then balanced. Rensi’s conduct, therefore, was reprehensible, “a man who saw has turned blind, a hearer deaf, a leader now leads astray.” Since there was no response from Rensi exhortations of this type continued and became increasingly harsher, “You are learned, skilled, but not in order to plunder! You should be the model for all men, but your affairs are crooked! The standard for all men cheats.” In the face of silence he continued to plead, “Speak justice, do justice, for it is mighty; it is great, it endures, its worth is tried, it leads to reveredness. . .  . Crime does not attain its goal” When this also failed to make an impression he gave up and said, “Here I have been pleading with you, and you have not listened to it, I shall go and plead about you to Anubis!” Having been unable to achieve justice from the living he will now kill himself and take his case to the gods. At this point Rensi no longer continued the charade and restored not only the peasant’s property to him but saw to it that he and his family was taken care of.

When we now compare this state of affairs with what is currently happening in our country we will have to admit that Isfet has been allowed to drive out Maat. Keeping Ptahhotep in mind it is obvious that our president has behaved like a fool because he failed to listen to wiser council before invading Iraq. He was warned by some members of the administration, as well as probably by his father, in addition to the Saudis, the Jordanians, the Egyptians and the Turks not to engage in military action against Iraq. He was deaf to advice and now in the words of Ptahhotep, “nothing will be done for him.” He is discredited and will not be able to achieve anything constructive at home or abroad. Mr. Bush also violated the instruction that “a king’s sword arm is his speech.” He did not allow the UN inspectors to finish their task but rushed into war. He won one battle but is now stuck in a situation he can no longer control. Nevertheless, he still eschews listening and talking to his enemies.

In spite of the fact that it should have become painfully clear that this “War on Terror” cannot be won militarily our administration is now intending to sell $60 billion of military equipment to Israel and some Sunni Arab countries. We are exporting death and destruction as a means to keep our economy going and that is also Isfet. Since this weapons deal is directed against Iran the Iranian government may well respond with an acceleration of its nuclear program, as a deterrent against invasion. As the old Egyptians said, “The deed returns to the doer,” and some of our troops may well find themselves eventually on the wrong end of this fire power. A situation similar to our support for the jihadists who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the 1980s might be in the offing within a few years but in a much wider context. Thus, we have in the words of the eloquent peasant a president who “has turned blind, a hearer deaf, a leader now leads astray.”

Obviously our vice president is not only no better but even worse. Furthermore, the highest law enforcement officer of the land, Attorney General Gonzales, has either such a serious memory problem that it should disqualify him from holding office or has committed perjury in the recent Senate hearings. As such, Maat cannot be found in the Department of Justice either. The peoples’ representatives in the Senate and House are bitterly divided, cannot get any meaningful work done and, therefore, have the lowest approval rating ever since polling began.

The country at large also reflects the lack of a common ideal. The economy is based on greed and a person’s value is measured in dollars. Assmann’s horizontal solidarity, which is supposed to exist in Fukuyama’s vision of the liberal democracy, expresses itself merely as a lack of respect where everybody is addressed only by his/her first name. Fear is a dominant factor which even goes to the extent of some parents being afraid of their children lest by disciplining they hurt their feelings. In sum and substance Isfet in form of lies, deceit, and quest for personal advantage, rather than Maat, is the reality at present.

How do we rectify this situation? If it can be done at all it will take decades because like everything else that lasts Maat will have to be grown organically from its roots. There is an innate sense of goodness and compassion within the human being which manifests itself as an outpouring of helpfulness after catastrophes. We saw it in the days immediately after 9/11, Katrina, and the Southeast Asia tsunami. This feeling is spontaneous but unfortunately brief and within less than a week personal priorities take over again. Nevertheless, this sense of responsibility towards unfortunates can and should be cultivated. Once it is established in the individual, it will be automatically transmitted to the family, from there to co-workers and eventually society at large. This is the only way to replace Isfet with Maat because it comes from the heart rather than as an imposed doctrine which one has to obey. This will take decades but the time to start the process is now!

In this essay I have limited myself to the concept of Maat in the social sphere rather than its additional religious connotation which became prominent during the Egypt’s New Kingdom. This aspect and its importance for our time will be taken up in the next installment.







September 1, 2007

COUNTER-RELIGION

            In the previous installment I discussed the idea of Maat as the principle which provided the glue for a successful society in ancient Egypt. As mentioned the key word for the understanding of the term Maat is connectedness. To live in Maat meant to be and act in harmony with the natural order as it exists on earth as well as in the cosmos. In contrast to current democratic societies which emphasize equality among all its members the Egyptians recognized the aristocratic principle of nature where there are the strong and the weak, with the former dominating the latter. Because of this inherent inequality it was the duty of the powerful to protect the weak in order to attain a durable and just society. Maat in her aspect of justice was not blind but all seeing as represented by the sun god, Ra, whose eye she was. Thus, the king was responsible for seeing that his ministers settle disputes on basis of Maat where the goal was not to punish one of the litigants but, whenever possible, arbitrate the dispute so that both sides were satisfied and harmony was restored. But since nature is also chaotic and the human being harbors destructive tendencies, Isfet, the rule of Maat had to be reestablished on a daily basis.

            Living in accordance with Maat required from everyone, high or low, what Assmann in his book Ma’at Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im Alten Ägypten (Justice and Immortality in ancient Egypt) had called communicative and active solidarity. Communicative solidarity required of the person to listen to another’s complaint or viewpoint, to speak calmly in a polite manner and to keep silent when silence was called for. Active solidarity demanded that injustices had to be corrected. To turn a “deaf ear” or a “blind eye” to a person in need was a sin against Maat. But the overarching sin was greed, as the root of all evil. These principles were regarded as self-evident and transmitted as such within the family unit which was held in high esteem. Thus, Maat can be viewed as a positive feedback system. The people here on earth, foremost the king as their representative, live in accordance with Maat which is also offered in form of liturgy to the gods who in turn see to it that cosmic order is maintained which reflects itself in well-being on earth. Or as the Egyptians put it, “the deed returns to the doer.”

Life for the Egyptian meant that one’s name be remembered. This is why the householder had to provide a proper tomb for himself. It would be the resting place for his Ka (one aspect of the soul) and it was up to his son to provide for its upkeep. In this manner solidarity was extended beyond a given generation into the future. The other aspect of the soul, the Ba, established connectivity with the cosmic realm. It was depicted in form of a bird, because it flies to heaven at time of death, where it was weighed against the feather of Maat. If the scales balanced the person was pronounced eligible to enter the heavenly realm otherwise the Ba was devoured by the water monster Apopis, against which even the gods had to guard themselves. To successfully pass the ordeal the dead man’s Ba had to address each god of Egypt’s 42 provinces with the assurance that he had not committed a particular sin and since each sin recitation started out with “I have not” it has been called “the negative confession.” This litany was also placed in the deceased’s coffin and it was hoped that it would thereby provide protection against the forces of the underworld..

With these concept we have entered the religious realm, which was however not separate from the state because initially God, the cosmos and our world were regarded as having been one. The pre-existent God, Atum (the all, the not yet existent) did not create the world through biblical executive fiat, but the universe, so to say, unfolded in analogy to a seed. In this view God was not external but immanent in all aspects of the terrestrial and cosmic world. From Atum came Shuh, the wind and life. But inasmuch as life without direction is meaningless he had a twin sister, Tefnut, which equaled Maat. 

 

“Then said Atum:, Tefnut is my living daughter,

She is joined with her brother Shu.

Life is his name,

Maat is her name.

I live conjoined with the pair of my children,

Together with my twins,

By being in the Middle of Them,

The one on my back, the other on my front.

Life sleeps with my daughter Maat,

One in me. One all around me.

I have raised myself between them,

While their arms enfolded me.”

 

These speculations about the origin of the universe, which remind one also of the Chinese Tao, which is nameless and from which the “ten thousand things” appeared were, however limited to the priests. The common people had a natural religion, like everywhere else, which personified the forces of nature and represented them in a variety of images.  This polytheism, inasmuch as it was grounded in observable phenomena of nature which were common to mankind, had the advantage that the names of the various gods such as the sun, the moon, the storm etc. could be readily translated into other languages and as such these gods were universal. International treaties could be confirmed by oaths on a respective god because he pertained to both countries. Religious wars were unthinkable under those circumstances.

Although there were power struggles within the priesthoods of various cities such as Memphis, Heliopolis and Thebes as to the supremacy of Ptah, Ra or Amun, these were solved when the ruling dynasty of the particular city became dominant over the country at large by simply appending the name of the other god to that of their own. The Heliopolitan Ra as the visible image of the sun was merged with Amun (the hidden) of Thebes and as Amun-Ra he became the chief god of the New Kingdom after the Hyksos (invaders from Syrio-Palestine) had been expelled around 1546 B.C. The Hyksos invasion and partial occupation of the country had been successful because a considerable number of Asiatics had previously been allowed to settle in the Eastern Delta und the central royal power had been weakened. Even after the Hyksos’ expulsion royal power was shared with that of the priesthood of Thebes who even arrogated to itself at times the privilege to designate a successor to a deceased pharaoh. As royal power increased, through successful military campaigns in Asia and Nubia, priestly interference in affairs of state was resented and under Amenhopis III a backlash began to develop. It reached fruition under his son and successor Amenhopis IV who became known as the “heretical king.”

Amenhopis IV was loath to share power with the priesthood and instituted what has been called the Amarna revolution. He took the drastic step of abolishing all gods and their images in favor of a single god, represented by the sun-disc, Aten. This became the only legitimate symbol and consisted of the sun with its rays ending in hands. These were extended to all but only for the pharaoh and his wife Nefertiti did the hands also hold the symbol of life the Ankh before their noses. Since all gods including Amun, also spelled Amen, were now decreed as fictional Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten and removed his capital from Thebes to “the horizon of Aten”, Akhetaten, today’s Tell el Amarna.

With Akhenaten we enter the onset of exclusive monotheism, and to use Assmann’s term “counter-religion.” Its importance must not be underestimated because it impacts directly on the politics and policies of the United States in the current century. I have discussed some of these aspects in The Moses Legacy (available on this site) but inasmuch as events are going from bad to worse it is useful to discuss Assmann’s book, Moses the Egyptian. The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism, in some detail.  Assmann defines counter-religion as a rejection and repudiation of everything that went before and what is outside as “paganism,” and in the case of Mosaic religion “idolatry.”

Akhenaten completely overthrew the old order as it has been described above. No longer was Maat the common property of all in the sense that one could expect justice from men and gods but it was redefined exclusively as “Truth.”  This truth was revealed, however, only to pharaoh as the son of Aten. In the Great Hymn to Aten, Akhenaten declared, “There is no other who knows you, only your son Nefer-kheperu - Ra Sole – one of Ra, whom you have taught your ways and your might.” Although everyone saw the disc, Aten, and lived by its rays only the king knew, understood and executed the will of God. Aten, as supreme and only god, was made co-regent and had his own royal cartouche, which was another complete break with the past. As such Aten became king of Egypt and Akhenaten, his son, was the executor of God’s perceived will. This was then regarded as “living in Maat (truth).” The previous religious thoughts were now anathema, a pack of lies, and had to be extinguished. Religious persecutions ensued. The monuments were defaced, the names of the gods had to disappear and wherever the word gods showed up it had to be changed to the singular. As a result the mentioned positive feedback system was destroyed and replaced by arbitrary rule against which there was no recourse. One could petition pharaoh but there was no guarantee that the wish would even be listened to, let alone granted.

The impact on the country was devastating. Time honored customs were all of a sudden outlawed. The previous provincial ruling classes, who were familiar with the concerns of the people, were replaced by newcomers loyal only to the crown and even festivals and burial customs were affected. Festive processions which allowed the people to adore the god in his bark could no longer be performed and the gates to heaven via Osiris were also closed. When the sun disappeared from the horizon there was indeed night, rather than Ra continuing his voyage through the world of the departed. With nocturnal darkness came now all the evils that required secrecy and although the pharaoh’s Ba could continue to exist after his death we have no information what was expected to happen for the rest of the people. Amidst all this upheaval massive building projects were undertaken, to create new monuments and stamp a city literally out of the desert. The manpower came from the military as well as civilian forced labor. It is no wonder that under these circumstances Akhenaten neglected foreign affairs and his vassals in Palestine vainly appealed for help against marauding tribes. The empire which previous pharaohs had created fell into disarray and contrary to the Aten hymn which depicts the lives of people as happy during the day when they see him, they were actually miserable.

It should not be surprising that this monotheistic fury did not outlive its creator. Within a year or so his successor young Tutankhhaten was returned by his regent back to Thebes and given the name of all us know: Tutankhamen. Order was restored and the reverse process set in. Akhetaten was given back to the desert and all references to the previous regime were expunged. Akhenaten’s name and deeds were removed from all official records. What has been related above was unknown to historians until the end of the nineteenth century when the royal correspondence was accidentally discovered at Amarna and the other circumstances came to light through painstaking archeological work.

Nevertheless some memory traces of these traumatic years had remained and were given literary form by an Egyptian priest, Manetho, in the middle of the third century B.C. This was also the time when the first Greek translation of the Bible, the Septuagint, appeared in Alexandria. As mentioned in The Moses Legacy, Ptolemy II was an enlightened ruler who was interested in the histories of the people he was in charge of and he probably commissioned these works. This detail is important because it presented in part what were regarded as the same events from the Egyptian and the Jewish point of view especially in regard to the Exodus. Manetho’s version is lost apart from excerpts which were vigorously refuted by Josephus in his polemical work Contra Apionem. Inasmuch as this material has been covered in The Moses Legacy I shall mention only that the Manetho account as well as the biblical narratives are not history but belong to “collective memory,” as discussed in “Understanding the Holocaust Part II Dogma and Skepticism.”  The problem arises when collective memory of events which took place thousands of years ago are taken as facts and political decisions are justified by them.

As mentioned above Akhenaten’s counter-religion was the first radical monotheism the ancient world had seen and it has always been tempting to regard this epoch as the model for the Moses’ Exodus story. Several books including on by Freud, Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion (published in English as Moses and Monotheism) have been written which discuss the topic. We find in both instances a rejection of previous religious norms, the abolition of gods and their traditional worship and the establishment of  a single God whose will is initially made known to only one other human being; Akhenaten in the case of Egypt, Moses in regard to the Hebrews. The Bible tells us that when Moses was reluctant to accept the task of leading the Israelites out of Egypt and made excuses that he doesn’t have sufficient language skills to convince Pharaoh, the Lord told him that Aaron’s would suffice. “And he shall be thy spokesman and . . . thou shalt be to him in God’s stead {Ex. IV 16].”  Furthermore, “And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh: Thus saith the Lord: Israel is My son, My first-born [Ex. IV: 22].”  In this way Moses assumed Akhenaten’s role for the Israelites and by speaking in the name of God his will was not to be challenged. The main difference was that sonship was conferred to all of Israel instead of Moses in person.

There was another difference in how the rejected religion was treated. In Akhenaten’s case it was relegated to oblivion while in Mosaic tradition Egypt became the ultimate symbol for evil. Its persecution of the Israelites and idol worship together with the covenant became the hallmark of the Mosaic counter-religion. In the Old Testament and the Talmud we are confronted with a veritable Egyptophobia which is unparalleled in other great religions of the world. This phobia, unwarranted by historic facts, is the raison d’être of the Mosaic religion. Even when Egypt is not specifically mentioned the word “idolaters” takes its place as the symbol for the hostile “other” who has to be overcome by force or shunned. As a counter-religion of exclusion it set itself in direct opposition to the rest of the civilized world and had to live with the consequences ever since.

This would not matter much if the Exodus story had not been turned into a symbol for liberation of a people from slavery into freedom. In disregard of the biblical reports where the Israelites left Egypt reluctantly, remonstrated against Moses’ theocratic rule throughout their sojourn in the wilderness, and finally did not succeed in occupying the entire “promised land,” the events have consistently been portrayed as a grateful people who have been liberated from untold suffering. The covenant with the Lord was supposedly freely entered into although the Bible reports fear and trembling in the face of a volcanic eruption rather than joyful clapping of hands. The only festive occasion was during Moses’ absence on the mountain when they danced around the golden calf (symbol of the Egyptian Apis) and for which they had to pay dearly.

The Protestant reformation with its emphasis on the Old Testament provided the cultural soil for the transposition of the Exodus with its highlight of the gratefully liberated slaves’ myth into modernity. This is documented in Walzer’s book Exodus and Revolution. He shows its influence on Oliver Cromwell’s battle against the monarchy, the Puritans in America, Karl Max’s post-1948 revolution thoughts and most recently the Civil Rights movement in the United States, as well as post-Vatican II liberation theologies in Latin America. Thus, it is obvious that even in our so-called secular society religious myth provides the fodder for political expediency.

In this connection it is also of interest to explore the latest myth namely the constantly repeated phrase of “Judeo-Christian tradition,” which America is now forced to defend against radical Islam. In previous installments I have pointed out why I regard this term as inappropriate but was unaware of its origin until I came across an article by Mark Silk in the American Quarterly of spring 1984 entitled Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition in America. (http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0678(198421)36%3A1%3C65%3ANOTJTI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O). To my surprise I found out that we have to thank the Nazis for it. Silk explained that during the 1930s,

 

“Fascist fellow-travelers and anti-Semites had appropriated ‘Christian’ as an identifying mark; besides Father Coughlin’s Christian Front there were such organizations as the Christian American Crusade, Christian Aryan Syndicate, Christian Mobilizers, and Christian Party, and publications like the Christian Defender and Christian Free Press. ‘Judeo-Christian’ thus became a catchword for the other side.”

 

WWII was fought here ostensibly for the defense of the “Judeo-Christian tradition” or “heritage” and when that war was followed by the Cold War the term was immediately transferred to that conflict. From there it has entered the mainstream media because the word tradition or heritage requires an adjective. This is how we find ourselves saddled today with a totally inappropriate term in our new “existential” struggle with the Islamic foe. Since “Judeo” equals in the minds of Muslims in general and Arabs in particular the State of Israel and since the “Christian” tradition evokes memories of the Crusader era our benighted media and politicians keep pouring fuel on the fire.

The original proponents of the term were for the most part Protestant theologians with a few Jewish sympathizers. Other Jews such as Arthur Cohen dissented vigorously. He published a book in 1970 The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition, in which he pointed out that the concept was flawed because the gulf between the two faiths was too wide to be papered over by a glib term. He wrote “The only authentic Judeo-Christian tradition is that God bears both communities down to the end unreconciled.”  Yet Cohen was not a pessimist because he could conceive of a state in which the two religions co-existed more or less amiably on basis of universal humanism.

While Protestant theologians were originally the main champions of the term Catholics were considerably more wary, at least until Vatican II, which hoped for an improvement in the strained relationship. This difference in the two Christian denominations has historical roots and Protestantism can also be seen as a partial counter-religion to Catholicism. The Egypt-Israel controversy was played out again in the 16th and 17th century. In the Protestant view the purity of Hebrew prophetic thought had to be re-established against the corrupt idolatry of the papacy. Although there is no biblical evidence that the prophets had a democratic rather than theocratic society in mind they were nevertheless turned into democrats because they taught social justice. That the Bible used in part the same phraseology in this regard as the hated Egyptians was not known in those days. The additional fact that the Prophets were fervent nationalists with little regard for the concerns of other countries did not matter either.

Nevertheless the Protestant reformers did have a point when they compared the Catholic Church with Egypt. When the Christian Church definitively split from Judaism after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD it did not assert itself as a counter-religion either to Judaism or Roman pantheism. Christian thinkers integrated Judaic and Hellenistic thought, to the extent possible, and only drew the line at Emperor Worship. This brought them into conflict with the State and led in some instances to martyrdom. The success of the Church was precisely due to the amalgamation and integration of existing thoughts, i.e. the Hellenistic model rather than their rejection i.e. the Hebrew model.

In the catholic (which translates into universal) Church the former gods became saints whose intercession was requested; the divine judgment after death was retained; holidays remained at their customary dates but now celebrated Christian events. It is also probably no coincidence that Mary’s name change from Deipara (having given birth to God) to Theotokos (mother of God) was effected by Cyrill of Alexandria at the Council of Ephesus in 431. This title had previously been held by the Egyptian Isis. The Madonna with Jesus on her lap had its prototype in Isis with baby Horus. The eye of Ra can be found in most Catholic churches, especially those of the baroque era, and incidentally, due to the influence of Freemasonry, it also graces the back of the great Seal of the United States and is depicted on our one dollar bill. In addition Catholic thought in general is much closer to Egyptian-Hellenistic ideas than Old Testament Jewish ones. This should not be surprising because Alexandria, which had become the center of Hellenistic culture, was also the cradle for much of Christian thought. Egypt provided a fertile soil for the first Christian communities. Monastic life began there and so did Gnosticism. It may also not be too far fetched to assume, although I have currently no firm evidence for it, that the change from the original Christian symbol, the fish, to the cross as the symbol for eternal life may also have been an Egyptian contribution since it bears a close resemblance to its ancient symbol for life, the Ankh  .

When one keeps these circumstances in mind the Puritan revulsion against “Papism” and its “idolatry” which is based on OT exclusionism becomes more readily understandable. The question, however, is: which of the two models: the Egypto-Hellenistic integrative or the Mosaic exclusionary is more appropriate for our day and age?  In the nuclear age the answer would seem to be obvious but reconciliation of differences is at present not in the cards because influential Jewish organizations have succeeded in persuading the media and Congress that the fate of Israel is, via the “Judeo-Christian tradition,” inextricably linked to that of the U.S. Voices which call for an independent U.S. foreign policy that supports the right of Israel to exist within its pre 1967 borders but also demands withdrawal to those are not given consideration. When the undue influence of Jewish organizations on American policies is pointed out authors are called-anti-Semites and their jobs are in jeopardy. When politicians do so, they cannot win an election or re-election.

On August 27 Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt published a book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy where they deal with this problem but although it had not yet appeared on the market Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-defamation League, immediately prepared a reply: The Deadliest Lie: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control, which will be published later this month. In view of the importance of this debate for the future of our country and the world I shall discuss both books in the next installment.







October 1, 2007

THE ISRAEL LOBBY

ACUTE DANGER RATHER THAN MYTH

 

            In the May 1, 2006 installment (What are they smoking?) I mentioned that in March of that year Professors John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard had jointly written a position paper, “The Israel Lobby,” which was not published in the U.S. but instead had appeared in the London Review of Books (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html). Although I did not know it they had simultaneously published a more detailed 82 page report in the Faculty Research Working Paper Series of the John F. Kennedy School of Government Web site, http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP06-011, The article and the paper led to a vigorous refutation on April 4, 2006 by Professor Alan Dershowitz of the Harvard Law School. The 44 page rebuttal was published on the same website under the title, “Debunking the Newest - and oldest – Jewish Conspiracy; A Reply to the Mearsheimer-Walt ‘“Working Paper.’”  When I wrote the May 1 essay I had not been aware of the reason why these distinguished academics had to go to London to present their opinions rather than using one of our magazines. But it is this fact which immediately refutes the thesis of Dershowitz and other detractors that there is no undue influence on American public opinion by some Jewish pressure groups.

            In spite of severe criticisms, which accused the authors of anti-Semitism, anti-Israel bias, sloppy scholarship and similar epithets, the professors, to their credit, were neither deterred nor intimidated but, as mentioned in last month’s installment, they persevered and published in late August of this year a book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. In this 484 page work they tried to meet the criticisms that had been leveled against their previous publications by providing a detailed bibliography which takes up 106 pages of the book. For those of us who are familiar with the topic the authors have addressed themselves to, there were few surprises. What makes the book necessary and important is that two distinguished academics have made a valiant effort to break the code of silence which is enforced by our media when criticism is leveled against the policies of the State of Israel and that they present the data in a factual well documented manner for all to see who are willing to do so.

            The book also cleared up my question why the original article had to be published in England rather than here. The authors wrote in the Preface,

 

“In the fall of 2002, Atlantic Monthly invited us to write a feature article on the Israel lobby and its effects on U.S. foreign policy. We accepted the commission with some reservations, because we knew this was a controversial subject and that any article that scrutinized the lobby, U.S. support for Israel, or Israeli policy itself was likely to provoke a harsh reaction. Nonetheless, we felt this was an issue that could no longer be ignored especially in light of the September 11 terrorist attacks and the looming war with Iraq. If U.S. support for Israel was a significant source of anti-Americanism in the Middle East and a source of tension with key strategic allies, and if pro-Israel groups and individuals were a major influence on U.S. foreign policy in this vital region, then it was important to raise the issue openly and encourage public discussion of the lobby’s actions and impact.”

 

The authors went on to say that they worked over the next years in close conjunction with the editors of the magazine, meeting various objections and

 

 “. . .  sent them a manuscript conforming to our prior agreements and incorporating virtually all of their suggestions in January 2005. A few weeks later, to our surprise, the editor informed us that the Atlantic had decided not to run the piece and that he was not interested in our attempt to revise it.”

 

This fact tells the story: two experts in the field are requested to write a paper on a highly controversial but vital topic, a chore which they accepted somewhat reluctantly, they were then led on for a period of more than two years to make corrections and changes, and when all was said and done the article was rejected. Mearsheimer and Walt subsequently considered writing a book but finding no publisher they essentially dropped this unrewarding subject. In October of 2005 they were, however, contacted again by a distinguished colleague who had read the rejected Atlantic article and suggested its publication in the London Review of Books. After some revisions and updating it was finally published on March 23 as The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.”

The main points of the book are: Congressional financial support for Israel far outstrips that of other much more needy countries; instead of being an asset to the U.S. at this time Israel has become a liability; the moral cause for supporting Israel’s policies is on shaky grounds; the lobby strongly influences American foreign policy in the Middle East and dominates the public discourse. In the extensive documentation of these statements the authors keep repeating that the Israel lobby is not a secret conspiracy or cabal and that as American citizens Jews have every right to lobby Congress for their causes, but the methods used exceed the norms for other pressure groups. Mearsheimer and Walt also emphasize that Jews have a right to exist in a state of their own within internationally recognized borders but so do the Palestinians. Furthermore, since the present policies of the state of Israel, especially in regard to the occupied territories, do not conform to international law they should no longer be condoned by America and the identification of Israel’s policies with our foreign policy is not only wrong but dangerous for the future of our country.

In their Conclusion as to “What is to be done?”  they emphasize that the U.S. must again reassert an independent foreign policy because the interests of our country differ from those of Israel. In order for this to occur the power of the lobby needs to be reduced. The authors are under no illusions that this will be an easy task but they hope that through public disclosure and discussion of the impasse current policies have created enough Americans will speak up so that constructive steps toward a more realistic foreign policy can be taken. The task is urgent because the lobby, which is defined as various pro-Zionist organizations and individuals in the Jewish and Christian community, is now just as eagerly promoting a war with Iran as it did against Iraq prior to the invasion of that country.

The reaction to the book was predictable. Without having waited for the appearance of the book Abe Foxman, National Director of the Anti-defamation League, attempted to preempt its impact and published a reply The Deadliest Lies. The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control, to which I shall return later. For now it is of interest to look at the American reaction to the Mearsheimer and Walt book. The most impressive aspect is that for all practical purposes it has not reached mainstream America. When I asked family, friends and colleagues, “what do the names Mearsheimer and Walt mean to you?” I got blank stares. What is not presented on TV does not sink into American awareness and I have yet to see programs which are exclusively devoted to this issue. Books are hardly read; from newspapers mainly the headlines are noted and since these present for the most part the Israeli side, the Palestinian view remains underreported. There is, of course, a great deal of debate on the Internet but it takes time and effort to sift fact from fancy. Ordinary Americans who are engaged in professional life and are overwhelmed by cares for their families simply don’t have the time to devote themselves to this task.

When one does so it is instructive to note that battle lines have been drawn. There is little discussion from the pro-Israel side but mainly polemic, similar to the reaction to President Carter’s book (January 1, 2007. The Year of the Middle East). To gauge the reaction of the public at large it is interesting to check reader’s reviews on amazon.com. By the middle of last week there were 46 reviews and the average score was four stars out of a maximum of five. Some of the titles for positive reviews are: “An objective appraisal of the situation in the United States today;” “The destructive role of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy;” “Documents the very sad state of U.S. Middle East policy;” “American Jewish Power under the spotlight;”  “Let the sun shine in;” “Extremely important book for all Americans.”

Some of the headlines from readers who had negative views were: “Biased;” “Lack of facts to back it up;” “Now for real facts;” “Beating up on a boogey man;” “A low-quality research one of the lowest I have read;” “Dangerous book; authors demonize Israel as the root cause of all evil.” But more important than these headlines are the views of readers in regard to the helpfulness of a given review. It was striking to note that reviews which gave the book a 4 or 5 star rating were regarded by at least two thirds of the readers as having been helpful; while those reviewers who had given one or two stars to the book were regarded as helpful by less than a third of the readers of their review. This suggests that Americans are tired of being fed a one-sided diet and are eager to read a non-polemical presentation of other points of view

The essentials of the criticisms of Mearsheimer and Walt’s book are, as mentioned above, contained in Foxman’s book. The fact that it addressed itself to their working paper rather than the book does not matter because the substance of the criticism has remained the same and is also echoed by the writers of negative reviews for amazon. The main difference between Foxman’s and the Mearsheimer and Walt book is that the former is written in a polemical manner and the references to bolster his views are sparse; of 235 text pages only six are devoted to the bibliography. The main points of Foxman’s book can be summarized as follows: Mearsheimer and Walt’s writings are dangerous because they focus on Israel’s “sins,” rather than showing that Israel is only acting in self-defense; they “deliberately distort basic realities;” they present an anti-Semitic stereotype which will be taken up by extremist groups in defense of their views; Jewish power in the United States is a myth and feeds into conspiracy theories; Israel is a small country in mortal danger from her enemies which deserves all the help it is receiving from the U.S.; Americans like Israel and U.S. support simply reflects their views. Mearsheimer and Walt are not the only ones taken to task by Foxman but a chapter is also devoted to President Carter’s book under the title, “A president loses his way.” We are told that Carter “distorts the facts of history” in relation to the failed Camp David II meetings. But Foxman’s facts rely exclusively on Dennis Ross’ and President Clinton’s words. He fails to take into account Clayton Swisher’s book The Truth about Camp David. The Untold Story of the Collapse of the Midldle East peace Process (March 1, 2007. Barack in Salt Lake City) and that of Charles Enderlin, “Shattered Dreams; The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002. These books should have been known to Foxman and taken into account.

Some key sentences which reveal Foxman’s thinking are “there is also a large infrastructure of Arabist thinktanks, university chairs and journalists with an interest in or ties to the many Arab nations, all of whom exercise their influence on behalf of ‘balance’ in U.S, Middle East policy;” “the idea that colleges and universities in the United States are dominated by pro-Israeli voices is absurdly laughable.”  “As a strong military power and a U.S. ally, Israel has proven to be the single greatest source of stability in the region.”  Or, “Far from being a strategic liability, Israel is a major source of American strength and influence.” Are statements like these really credible? Is not the opposite closer to the truth?

Another key sentence is, “They [Jews] haven’t changed their nature in the past 6000 years, and they won’t do it just because a community leader expresses an opinion.” This appeared in the context of Jews being highly individualistic people, as shown even in the Torah, and that “. . .  Jewish American organizations support and encourage such diversity of opinion [italics in original].” While the 6000 years seems to reveal a penchant for the number six, which we commonly find when a great many is meant, and is clearly an exaggeration, it is true that a diversity of opinion exists among Jews even in regard to Israel. But as Foxman states these are arguments within the family and can as such be aired in Israel but the Diaspora has to close ranks. There is indeed a great difference between how our media report political events and those in Israel. Israeli papers and Internet sites present a much more varied picture than Americans are being treated to; a point which is also made by Mearsheimer and Walt. It is also true that the way some Jewish writers have dealt with their adversaries for the past nearly 2000 years has remained constant. As I pointed out in The Moses Legacy, in the paragraphs dealing with Josephus’ Contra Apionem polemic (ca. 80 A.D.), the methods to defame an adversary have remained constant. They consist of slandering his competence, proving one’s opinion by taking statements out of context and using half-truths.

A modern equivalent of Contra Apionem is not only the treatment Mearsheimer and Walt received but also President Carter for the title of his book Palestine. Peace not Apartheid. The word apartheid was pounced on and applied to Israel although Carter meant to describe the conditions in the occupied territories for which it is entirely appropriate and the word has been used also by Israelis. In view of the mentioned problems with Foxman’s book, I was surprised to see that George Shultz, Secretary of State in the Reagan administration, would not only endorse the book but write its Foreword. How a man of his stature can write the following is difficult to understand.

 

“It has taken not a little courage to write The Deadliest Lies. Perhaps what impresses me most of all is the fair-minded and carefully judicious tone of Abe Foxman’s voice as it is heard in these pages. This is not an angry riposte, but the responsible and admirable effort by a good man to return the discourse to a civil, sane, and constructive level.”

 

These words would seem to apply considerably more to the Mearsheimer and Walt book than to Foxman’s. Although Mr. Shultz is advanced in age I do not believe that he is senile and instead I assume that he simply lent his name to the Foreword which may actually have been written by someone else. When one looks at the endorsements of Foxman’s book on the back of the dust jacket one finds two well known Jewish authors, Dennis Ross and Elie Wiesel, as well as Charles Hill, Distinguished Fellow in International Security Studies at Yale University, and Robert Satloff, Executive Director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, of whom I knew nothing. Although Mearsheimer and Walt had gone out of their way to emphasize repeatedly that they do not regard the activities of the lobby as a conspiracy Charles Hill nevertheless wrote,

 

“Conspiracy theories are a measure of a society’s mental health; when on the rise, trouble lies ahead. In The Deadliest Lies, Abraham Foxman diagnoses the ‘Israel Lobby’ conspiracy theory and reveals how sick it is. In doing so, he does a service to all Americans.”

 

Robert Satloff wrote,

 

“Abe Foxman, one of the most passionate men in public life, has written a sober, methodical, and laudably dispassionate indictment of well-known politicians, pundits, and professors who dress up centuries-old canards about Jews in more acceptable twenty first century garb. The impact of his work will have on the credibility of the pseudo-scholarship he debunks is devastating.”

 

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) is known to be a pro-Israel think tank and extensively discussed in the Mearsheimer and Walt book as part of the lobby. It is, therefore no surprise that its executive director lauds the Foxman book. One may ask, however, are statements in Foxman’s book such as, “a sloppy diatribe;” “[they] deliberately distort basic realities;” “depth of irrationality;” “disjointed argument;” “one of the most unprofessional works of scholarship;” a series of fantasies;” which are directed at Walt and Mearsheimer evidence of a “sober, methodical and laudable detachment”?

When one looks up Charles Hill on the Internet one can find that he was a co-author of the “Project for the New American Century,” the neoconservative blueprint for pre-emptive wars in the Middle East which was discussed in the December 1, 2005 issue (Albert Wohlstetter’s Disciples). More importantly, for the current context, he was the former executive aide to President Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State George P. Shultz.  Since both Shultz and Hill are also listed as members of the Hoover Institution it seems plausible that Mr. Hill might have had a hand in the composition of the Foreword to Foxman’s book. An excerpted version of the Foreword also appeared with George Shultz’s name under the title, “The ‘Israel Lobby Myth” in the September 17, 2007 Commentary section of U.S. News & World Report. The Editor-in Chief of that weekly publication is Mortimer Zuckerman, a vigorous defender of Israeli policies. When one also reads in Human Events that Charles Hill is currently “acting as Giuliani’s Chief Foreign Policy Advisor” one has reason to be concerned about the direction U.S. foreign policy would take if the former mayor of New York were to win the 2008 presidential election.

            While Foxman’s book did contain all the statements I have referred to above there are also conciliatory gestures. For instance in the final chapter, The Way Forward, Foxman writes,

 

“Our enemy, always, is simplistic thinking, rigid ideology, and the biased refusal to face facts honestly and forthrightly. When these are the dominating features of discourse on any [italics in original] side in the long struggle for peace, hatred and violence are the beneficiaries.”

 

This is correct but Foxman did not seem to realize that the entire tenor of his book is in contrast to what he has advocated here. I believe that all of us can also subscribe to

 

“Let’s agree to adhere to a single standard of expectations for moral behavior by all parties, rather than applying to our opponents a far stricter set of principles than we ourselves would agree to follow. Let’s stipulate that deaths to civilians on all [italics in the original] sides of any dispute are tragic and deplorable; that all [italics in the original] people should be entitled to basic rights of freedom and decent living conditions and that all [italics in the original] nations deserve a chance to live in peace and security, without fearing violence from their neighbors.”

 

            If Mr. Foxman and those who agree with his condemnation of Mearsheimer and Walt’s as well as President Carter’s book would really live by these words, the world would indeed be a better place.

            Let us ask now what average Americans think about Foxman’s book on amazon.com. There were 13 customer reviews with an average score of two stars. There were only four reviewers who gave the book a four or five star rating with headlines such as, “Provides clarity;” “An important rebuttal to Mearsheimer and Walt’s ignorance;”  “Foxman fights for his cause;” “Exposing the deligitimization of Israel efforts of Walt-Mearsheimer- Carter.” Less than half of readers thought that the reviews had been helpful. All the negative responses gave the book one star with several readers commenting that it actually deserved zero stars but there was no provision for doing so.  Some typical headlines are, “Foxman at his worst- Again;” “Deflecting Truth is a Full Time Job for Some;” “Thou Protesteth too Much.” “A faulti [sic] logic- should get zero stars.” In these instances more than half of readers found the reviews helpful.

            It should be pointed out in addition that the Dershowitz-Foxman type of thinking is also imposed on Jews in our country. Rabbi Lerner, Editor-in Chief of Tikkun, published in the May-June issue of that magazine an extensive description of his experiences with the lobby. (http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0709/frontpage/israellobby). He grew up in a family where both parents were not only vigorous supporters of Zionism but also played active roles on the national scene in behalf of the cause. Young Michael was also firmly convinced of the righteousness of the Zionist endeavor until he learned the Palestinian side of the story from the Israeli historian Benny Morris. Inasmuch as the events surrounding the foundation of the state and the subsequent conduct of Israeli politicians did not conform with what he saw as the true mission of Judaism, being a light to the world and bringing relief to the oppressed, he could no longer condone what the state was doing. Attempts to get his views across in the Jewish community were quashed and he, as well as like-minded other Jews, was shunted to the sidelines. As a result he founded in 1986 Tikkun, which stands for healing, but as he wrote in the mentioned article,

 

“Some of the most famous younger Jewish authors who today represent the mainstream of American Jewish fiction or literary writing admitted to me off the record that they felt reluctant to write for Tikkun because of the vulnerability they felt being associated with a magazine that was wiling to publicly voice criticism of Israel.”

 

            This is the crux of the problem. The lobby demands exclusive adherence to its views and stifles other well meaning voices by intimidation. As far as Congress is concerned the lobby’s major arm AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) not only operates through spreading fear but also generously supports senators and representatives who toe the line, while bedeviling as “anti-Israel” those who do not. Once this label has been attached election or re-election is basically out of the question.

Inasmuch as AIPAC currently has become a major danger not only to America but also Israel and the world because it foments military action against Iran, I shall discuss its history and modus operandi in more detail in the next installment.

            For now I would simply like to add one more observation that immediately sprang to mind when I saw the front of the dust jacket of Foxman’s book. It is ironic that neither Mr. Foxman nor the jacket designer realized that the top half could actually be used by anti-Semites to prove their point. To see this irony one needs to know something about the meaning of symbols. When I visited India some years ago I noted that the swastika and what is called the Star of David co-existed in harmony. The swastika, as an ancient symbol of the sun and power, was present in Hindu temples while the hexagram could be found as decoration on some buildings. On the return trip home I stopped to see my family in Vienna and also bought several books one of which was Das Grosse Yantra-Buch by Madhu Khanna

All of us are familiar with mantras which originally were sacred syllables or words to be repeated, but have now become political slogans. Yantra and Tantra on the other hand were new words for me. I learned that Yantra stands for a religious symbol while Tantra refers to religious practices and ideas. In the Yantra book one is immediately confronted with a large number of “stars of David” and as the book explains the upward pointing triangle represents the male and the downward pointing triangle the female principle. In addition the hexagram has usually a dot, a circle or on occasion an image of a deity in the center, which is called the bindu. Furthermore the hexagram is commonly imbedded within a larger geometric context which likewise has symbolic significance. The important aspect is that the bindu denotes the origin of all being and the point to which everything returns. It is the essence that holds everything else together and when the hexagram is embedded within another design it denotes connectedness to the natural world. It could thus also stand for Maat, which was discussed in the two previous installments. An example of this Yantra is shown here

 

           

 

Whoever adopted the hexagram as the symbol for Judaism calling it either the “Star of David” or “Shield of David” had unknowingly removed its profound symbolic context by omitting the bindu. In so doing the symbol has actually come to denote an absence of “rootedness” within the larger human community and the universe. But to be able to see these connections an open mind to the thinking of others and an interest in learning is required.  When we now look at the top of Foxman’s dust jacket, as shown below, it becomes apparent that the bindu has been replaced with the word “Lies.”

 

 

Neo-Nazis and others of their ilk could thus readily use it for propaganda purposes and say, “whatever the Jews write is a bunch of lies because that’s what holds them together.” Fortunately for Foxman and company, most Americans will probably not see the connection of the word “Lies” with the bindu because it requires having studied comparative religion which is not a favorite topic in our day and age. Nevertheless, unless we do so and open our minds to how others see us and the world we will be condemned to live in a land of fantasy as exemplified by the Bush administration.

The Israel lobby is not a myth but represents a genuine and acute danger because it falsely identifies America’s foreign policy interests with those of Israel. Iran is not a threat to the U.S. but a potential threat to Israel. Even if the Iranians were to develop nuclear capabilities in the future (experts estimate it would take several years) this does not necessarily mean that they would use them for offensive purposes. The alarmist propaganda our country is currently subjected to needs to be resisted. Americans need to be informed that individuals and groups who oppose the workings of the lobby are not anti-Israel but only want to save the Israelis and ourselves from misguided policies which may soon bring about another catastrophe of major proportions. To avoid this outcome the methods used by the lobby, namely: slander, intimidation and bribery, must be exposed by our media so that Congress can at last act responsibly.







December 1, 2007

ANNAPOLIS DÉJÀ VU

            On July 16 of this year president Bush gave a speech in which he announced that “a moment of clarity for all Palestinians” had come. They have the choice between “murderers in black masks, and summary executions,” which referred to Hamas, or “a vision of a peaceful state, called Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people.” The latter was to be achieved by the Abbas government which is “working to strengthen the Palestinian security services, so that they can confront terrorists and protect the innocent  . . . taking steps to improve the economy . . . ensuring that Palestinian society operates under the rule of law. By following this path, Palestinians can reclaim their dignity and their future – and establish a state of their own.” “As I said in the Rose Garden five years ago, a Palestinian state will never be created by terror.” He conveniently failed to mention that Israel as well as many other post WWII emerging nations had used terror against their colonial overlords to gain statehood.

            In order to help the Palestinians to choose the desired path the U.S. would provide “the Palestinians with more than $190 million in American assistance – including funds for humanitarian relief in Gaza. . . . [and] a direct contribution of $80 million to help Palestinians reform their security services.” Another $228 million would be solicited to help Palestinian businesses. With this help the Palestinian government “must arrest terrorists, dismantle their infrastructure and confiscate illegal weapons as the road map requires. They must work to stop attacks on Israel, and to free the Israeli soldier held hostage by extremists. And they must enforce the law without corruption, so they can earn the trust of their people and of the world. Taking these steps will enable the Palestinians have a state of their own. And there’s only way [sic] to end the conflict, and nothing else is acceptable.” Again he failed to mention that the Israelis will get $30 billion over a 25 year period to keep them secure.

             Having laid out the Palestinians’ obligations in extenso the president then addressed what the Israelis need to do, “continue to release Palestinian tax revenues . . . unauthorized outposts should be removed and settlement expansion ended. . . . Israelis should find other practical ways to reduce their footprint without reducing their security – so that they can help President Abbas improve economic and humanitarian conditions. They should be confident that the United States will never abandon its commitment to the security of Israel as a Jewish state and homeland for the Jewish people.” 

            In order to achieve these goals the US would host an international meeting, chaired by Secretary of State Rice in the fall which “will review the progress that has been made towards building Palestinian institutions. They will look for innovative and effective ways to support further reform. And they will provide diplomatic support for the parties in their bilateral discussions and negotiations, so that we can move forward on a successful path to a Palestinian state.”

             To fulfill this presidential vision Condi Rice then engaged over the intervening months in vigorous shuttle diplomacy to cajole the Israelis, Palestinians and other Arab leaders to come to the Annapolis conference and show their solidarity with the goals president Bush had outlined. It was rough sledding because no one believed that she had the power to bring about significant changes in the region. The Palestinians insisted that the meeting makes sense only if there were a prior Declaration of Principles that were to be adhered to and a timetable for their achievement. The Israelis didn’t want to put specifics on paper. They would be happy to talk on anything the Palestinians wanted to talk but a commitment to definitive actions was not in their game plan. The other Arab states knew this and as the Saudis said they were not interested to attend a photo-op.

            But one must give our Secretary of State credit for trying and against all odds invitations went out to 44 countries to attend a one day meeting on Tuesday November 27, in order to once again jump start the peace process. Apparently the thought had been, “the more the merrier” because it is difficult to see what, for instance, Senegal, Slovenia or the Sudan could contribute to a Palestinian-Israeli peace accord, while on the other hand the Swiss had failed to make the list. At any rate the goal was modest and became increasingly more so during the run-up to last Tuesday. It was perhaps best summed up by Dennis Ross, the US former Middle East mediator, “You can’t just have everybody convene in what was going to be a conference. And I’m – then I guess it became a meeting. Pretty soon it’ll be a get-together and before we’re done it’s going to be a hoedown.” This was clearly the voice of experience because Ross had spent his life trying to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. It is documented in his book The Missing Peace, which I have discussed here previously in “Barack in Salt Lake City” (March 1, 2007).

            In order not to offend our president, a great many of the invitees did show up and on Monday there were private talks between Bush and Olmert as well as Bush and Abbas The plan was for Bush to then give a speech at a welcoming dinner on Monday evening where he would lay out his ideas of what was to be accomplished on Tuesday. It had been intended that he would also read at that time a joint declaration of the Israelis and Palestinians which would outline their goals and ways to achieve them. Unfortunately the key players did not act the way Condi had hoped. Olmert and Abbas were unable to agree on what the document should contain. Abbas wanted the previously mentioned Declaration of Principles and a fixed time table while Olmert preferred generalities. One must feel pity for Ms. Rice who had gone to all this trouble and even an hour before Bush’s speech there was still no joint statement. We don’t know what she promised Abbas during that interval but eight minutes before the scheduled speech they handed Bush their consensus, which reflected essentially the Israeli view. There hadn’t been time to print this “Statement,” which had been downgraded from “Declaration,” in large print for our president’s presbyopic eyes and he had to use his half-glasses to read the content. This didn’t help his TV image when he glowered above them to the audience.

            As one might expect, the statement simply said that the Israelis and Palestinians would “engage in vigorous and continuous negotiations, and shall make every effort to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008.” A steering committee was to be appointed which would meet regularly, with the first one to be held on December 12, 2007. Abbas and Olmert are to meet every other week to follow up on these negotiations. The document also committed to

 

“. . . immediately implement their [Israelis and Palestinians] respective obligations under the performance-based road map to a permanent two-state solution to the Israel Palestinian conflict . . .” and that the “United States will monitor and judge the fulfillment of the commitment of both sides of the road map. Unless otherwise agreed by the parties, implementation of the future peace treaty will be subject to the implementation of the road map, as judged by the United States.”

           

            I have set this paragraph apart because it accepts for the first time Israel’s obligations under the 2002 road map to which we will return later.

            Thereafter Abbas and Olmert gave their speeches in their native languages, probably to stress to their people that each one will stand his ground. A technical glitch prevented the audience from understanding what Abbas was saying for the first several minutes because the translation device didn’t work. But no harm was done because we have the transcript and neither he nor Olmert made any points that were new. On Wednesday there was another set of private meetings between Bush and Olmert as well as Bush and Abbas then everybody went home glad that it was over and that at least nothing bad happened. While bilateral talks are to continue between the Israelis and Palestinians in the manner outlined above the international community will get to listen to progress some time in January at another meeting in Moscow.

            Before discussing what was really accomplished in Annapolis and the goal of peace by the end of 2008, it is useful to look at two key landmarks from the past; the Madrid Conference of October 1991 and the road map of 2002. In the summer of 1991 president Bush’s father basked in the glory of the successful first Gulf War and intended to turn the coalition that had driven Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait into one that would now push for peace between Israel and the Palestinians as well as the region at large. To get this process moving then Secretary of State James Baker, jointly with Dennis Ross, shuttled during that summer between the US, Israel and various Arab countries to coax them into an international conference. For the first time all the Arab leaders would sit down with the Israelis under the aegis of the US and the USSR to find a way how to bring peace to the region.

            This was apparently the model Condi Rice used now and this is why it is important to look at that conference. The invitation to the Madrid conference stated that,

 

“Direct bilateral negotiations will begin four days after the opening of the conference. . . . The conference will have no power to impose solutions on the parties or veto agreements reached by them. It will have no authority to make decisions for the parties and no ability to vote on issues of results. . . .

With respect to negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, who are part of the joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation, negotiations will be conducted in phases, beginning with talks on interim self-government arrangements. These talks will be conducted with the objective of reaching agreement within one year. Once agreed, the interim self-government arrangements will last for a period of five years, beginning the third year of the period of the interim self-government arrangements, negotiations will take place on permanent status. These permanent status negotiations, and the negotiations between Israel and the Arab states, will take place on the basis of [UN Security Council] Resolutions 242 and 238.”  

 

With other words, by late 1997 the Palestinians could celebrate Independence Day. But Shamir, who was Prime Minister of Israel at that time, and whose “Wanted Poster” for terrorism that had been issued by the British during the Mandate period was carried along by protesters outside the meeting, had other priorities. For those we have to consult the above mentioned book by Ross. Due to Gorbachev’s glasnost policy the Soviet Union had allowed massive Jewish emigration to Israel and Shamir was busy building settlements. Initially he had asked the US for $400 million loan guarantees, but after the Gulf War, when he had yielded to president GHW Bush’s urgent requests not to retaliate against the Iraqi Scuds, he felt that Bush should reward him for good behavior and upped the amount to $10 billion. This request came at a particularly bad time for Bush because you can’t give money for settlements while at the same time launching a peace initiative with the Arabs. If the settlements had been built in Israel proper (within the 1949 armistice line) there might not have been a problem but as Ross explained, Shamir “could not accept that there was a difference between Israel within the ‘green line’ and Israel beyond it in the territories.” Bush, therefore, defied AIPAC and its supporters on Capitol Hill and asked for a 120 day postponement of these loan guarantees. He succeeded, but the resulting uproar from Jewish voters, as described by J.J. Goldberg in Jewish Power, was probably an additional factor which cost him the 1992 re-election.

The son, George W Bush, learned this lesson and has been extra careful not to offend Jewish sensibilities as expressed by the leadership of Israel and the major Jewish organizations in our country. Although Annapolis was clearly modeled on Madrid there was a major difference. The Palestinians, or at least some of them, were now official partners in the peace process. Shamir had refused to sit down with representatives of the PLO, which had been exiled to Tunis, and had insisted that only West Bank residents were to be allowed at the table as part of the Jordanian delegation. In those days Arafat’s PLO and its Fatah organization were the terrorists one does not negotiate with, while they are currently praised as the moderates who deserve to be armed against Hamas. During the rest of the decade came the Oslo accord. Arafat was no longer regarded as a terrorist but worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Yitzhak Rabin. But Oslo came to naught after Rabin was murdered by an Israeli ultra-orthodox youth. Camp David II, in the last year of the Clinton administration, likewise failed, Arafat was returned to terrorist status by Israel and the US and on April 30, 2003 the oft mentioned road map was formally spelled out and put on the table.

Those were the days of George W Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq and on the urgings of Tony Blair the Palestinian problem became topical again. At the end of the road lay “a viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbors.” A quartet, consisting of the US, UN, EU and Russia, was to be the midwife to this overdue birth. The road map envisioned three phases.

 

Phase I: Ending terror and violence, normalizing Palestinian life, and building Palestinian institutions (present to May 2003).

Phase II: Transition (June - December 2003).

Phase III Permanent status agreement and end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (2004-2005).

 

In phase I the Palestinians were to prepare for statehood by drafting a Palestinian Constitution and hold “free and fair and open elections.” Israel was to take “all necessary steps to help normalize Palestinian life . . . withdraws from Palestinian areas occupied from September 28, 2000 . . .  freezes all settlement activity . . . immediately dismantles settlement outposts erected since March 2001.

Phase II which was to start immediately after the Palestinian elections and was to end with the “possible creation of an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders in 2003.”  The Quartet would also convene an international conference to help in this effort.

During Phase III there would be a second international conference which would deal with final borders, Jerusalem, refugees and settlements. Furthermore, a comprehensive Arab - Israel peace agreement would also occur.

As such Palestinian Independence Day was then envisioned for 2005 and after Annapolis it’s currently 2008. We must now ask ourselves what keeps going wrong that pushes Palestinian independence further and further into the future while making life for ordinary Palestinians increasingly miserable. The simplest answer is that in the past Israeli politicians had no interest in creating a viable Palestinian state and kept dragging their heels.

The road map had, of course, a fatal flaw by insisting right from the start on cessation of terrorism by Palestinians. By equating a national struggle for liberation with terrorism a demand was placed on the various Palestinian factions they could not meet. As has been pointed out previously, here and by others, terrorism ceases when a state has been achieved but hardly ever before. The Palestinians did come up with a constitution which in form of its Third Draft, dated March 25, 2003, can be found on the Internet. They have also had free and fair elections in January of 2006 where to most everybody’s surprise Fatah lost and Hamas won. A national unity government was formed but our president’s quest for Middle East democracies stopped right then and there because we had labeled Hamas a terrorist organization with whose leadership one does not talk. Thereafter Israel and the US, via Elliott Abrams in the vice president’s office, engineered a mini-civil war between Fatah and Hamas in Gaza (Saving the Bush Legacy, July 1, 2007; The Most Dangerous Nation, November 1, 2007). Although Fatah was supposed to win, they lost and the Palestinian people in Gaza now live under a Hamas government.

Our president and other countries who are so concerned about human rights violations in the rest of the world have no problem with accepting the fact that the Gazans are incarcerated by walls and fences in their little strip of land. There is only one border crossing for pedestrians and another for the transport of goods which operate under rules that are known only to the Israeli soldiers who are guarding it. The Gaza economy has been strangled and the poverty rate has been estimated at 70%. What Hamas does have is weapons and to make their presence known they shoot off rather ineffectual Qassam rockets on a daily basis across the wall into neighboring southern Israel, which in turn leads to predictable Israeli reprisals. In the West Bank we are arming Fatah so that they can battle Hamas there and while this is going on the Israelis can say, “look, these are just a bunch of wild people how can we possibly make peace with these folks?”  In spite of all the nice words we heard this week from Annapolis this seems to be the real objective. Keep the Palestinians fighting each other then we have an excuse not to proceed with the road map.

Whether or not this assessment is correct will become obvious in the next few months. If Prime Minister Olmert goes ahead immediately with his part of the road map obligations, as outlined above, peace may have a chance. If he does not he will strengthen the hand of Hamas because they can say that, regardless of what the Israelis promise, Abbas and Fatah are unable to improve the lives of the people and continued armed struggle is the only answer.

There are additional aspects of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation Americans simply are not told because we have a very effective media censorship in this respect. For instance the fact that the Under-Secretary General who was also the UN’s Middle East negotiator had resigned on June 12, 2007 in protest over the inability of the UN to stop the human rights abuses, which are occurring on a daily basis in the occupied territories. In his private “End of Mission Report” to the Secretary General, Alvaro de Soto minced no words about the inability of the Quartet to achieve anything useful and urged that the UN ought to remove itself from this group. As mentioned in last month’s installment the report was leaked to The Guardian and is available on the Internet. It should be read by everyone who really wants to know the facts as they exist in the occupied territories. De Soto made it clear that the Quartet is “simply a side show” and used by the US for its own purposes. The UN, as an organization which represents all the people of the world, should not be put into a position of supporting one political group i.e. Fatah against another i.e. Hamas. He stated furthermore, that Israel has adopted an “essentially rejectionist stance” towards the Palestinians.

De Soto is not alone in his views that the UN should leave the Quartet because on October 15, 2007 the BBC reported that the UN Human Rights envoy for the Palestinian territories, John Dugard, “will urge the world body to withdraw from the Quartet of Middle East mediators unless it addresses Palestinian human rights. Mr. Dugard said that the situation has been going from bad to worse and that he was ‘very struck by the sense of hopelessness among the Palestinian people.’” He attributed it to “the crushing effect of human rights violations” and especially the restrictions on the freedom of movement by Palestinians within the territories. He regarded the situation as sufficiently bad that a third intifada may well be in the offing. He also stated that any occupation is bound to lead to military resistance and as history has shown, today’s terrorists become leaders of their countries once independence has been achieved.

Mr. de Soto and Mr. Dugard actually have a very good point that the UN should not be part of this continuing charade which calls itself peace process. When Israelis and Americans speak of “painful concessions” Israel will have to make to the Palestinians and vice versa they blind themselves to the fundamental fact spelled out in the UN Charter that “acquisition of territory by force” is inadmissible. The occupation of the territories is illegal under international law and so is the wall Israel is building to enforce a separation from the Palestinians.  Earlier this week I received from the organization for a Just Peace in the Holy Land an Open Letter written by Al Haq for the West Bank and Al Dameer for Gaza which had been sent by these organizations to Annapolis. Al Haq is the West Bank affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists-Geneva, while Al-Dameer is the Association for Human Rights in Gaza.

The letter stated in clear language that the overarching principle of all negotiations must be in accord with international law as expressed in the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions. According to article 47 of the Geneva Convention Palestinians are to be regarded as “protected persons,” whose civil rights must be respected by the occupying power. Furthermore, any treaty which is not based on international law is null and void as stated in article 53 of the Vienna Convention on the Laws of Treaties. Since I am a physician rather than a lawyer I was not certain whether or not these views were correct, but a visit to the Internet confirmed their veracity.

Since 1983 there have been 27 resolutions introduced into the Security Council which condemned Israel’s actions against Palestinians or Lebanese. Each one was vetoed by the US. Let me just cite the problem of the wall which had been presented to the American public by Mr. Zuckerman, Editor-in chief of US News and World Report, under the headline, “Good fences make good neighbors” (Herzl’s Dream, August 1, 2004). When Israel started building this wall on Palestinian land, outside the green zone, the Palestinians lodged a complaint with the UN. It was referred to its judicial organ the International Court of Justice which ruled 14:1 that

 

“The construction of the wall being built by Israel, the occupying power, in the occupied Palestinian territory, including in and around East Jerusalem . . . are contrary to international law.

Israel is under an obligation to terminate its breaches of international law; it is under an obligation to cease forthwith the works of construction of the wall being built in the occupied Palestinian territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, to dismantle forthwith the structures therein, and to repeal or render ineffective forthwith all legislative and regulatory acts relating thereto, in accordance with paragraph 151 of this Opinion.”

 

The Opinion continues for several pages but this was the essence. A resolution was then introduced in the Security Council which stated in its key aspects,

 

“Reaffirming the principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force,

Reaffirming its vision of a region where two States, Israel and Palestine, live side by side within secure and recognized borders . . .

Reiterating its call upon Israel, the occupying power, to fully and effectively respect the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 . . .

Reiterating the opposition to settlement activities in the Occupied Territories and to any activities involving the confiscation of land, disruption of the livelihood of protected persons and the de facto annexation of land,

1. Decides that the construction by Israel, the occupying Power, of a wall in the Occupied Territories departing from the armistice line of 1949 is illegal under relevant provisions of international law and must be ceased and reversed,

2. Requests the Secretary-General to report on compliance with this resolution periodically, with the first report to be submitted within one month.

 

 

The resolution was adopted by 10 members on October 14, 2003; there were four abstentions, the US vetoed it and wall building continues to this very day. When one keeps these facts in mind it is clear that a peace treaty by the end of 2008 can hardly be expected. As an Israeli friend quipped to Tom Friedman, “Annapolis turned the ignition key on a car with four flat tires.”

It is difficult to conceive that in an election year the US will shed its partisan role towards Israel. President Bush is unlikely to accept international law, including the Geneva Conventions which our ex-Attorney General has so famously referred to as “quaint.” Yet without adhering to this basic principle there can be no peace in the Middle East or elsewhere. By having appointed ourselves in Annapolis as the guardian of this peace process the president may have made temporarily political hay at home but he lacks credibility abroad. Furthermore, although he has pledged his personal unstinting effort one may doubt that he will follow through because he is a “delegator” and self-described “decider” rather than a hands on individual working in the trenches. In addition none of the viable candidates for the 2009 presidency will touch this “hot potato” during the campaign because it spells instant suicide. Those are the realities in our country and one can only pity the Palestinian people because there is at this time no one who can really effectively help them apart from nongovernmental agencies on a purely humanitarian level.

If the Israeli government really wanted peace it should respect international law and follow the advice Yeshayahu Leibowitz gave to his countrymen in 1968 and which was extensively quoted in Whither Zionism. His essays collected, edited and translated by Eliezer Goldman under the title Judaism, Human Values and the Jewish State should be read and taken to heart by everyone who wishes the Jewish as well as the Palestinian people well. The sum and substance of Leibowitz’s counsel was: get out of the occupied territories now because unless you do so it will corrupt your souls. Practically forty years later all that he had foreseen has occurred and Israeli politicians have still not found a way to convince their countrymen of the errors of their ways.

This is why some thoughtful Israelis no longer believe in the Zionist dream and even a two-state solution. They are already preparing for the future when Arabs will outnumber Jews and there will again be only one Palestine where those Jews who will want to remain will live in a mainly Arab, and hopefully democratic, country where human rights are respected regardless of ethnicity or religion. Those Israelis who will not accept this law of demographics have for the most part already their second passport and will again move on to some other country which they will regard as more hospitable. When Arabs and Iranians are talking about Israel disappearing from the map within the next fifty years they don’t necessarily mean a military solution but they bank on the staying power of Muslims and the well known search for greener pastures by Jews. When I wrote Whither Zionism? in 2001 I still believed in the two-state solution, as it has now been finally espoused. But the “facts on the ground,” as Prime Minister Sharon has called them, have probably made it increasingly more unlikely. In the headline of the article on November 29, from which the previous statement was quoted, Tom Friedman posed the question, “Middle East peace initiative: Is it an oasis or a mirage?” We will know the answer within the next few months. But since this is the Christmas season we might as well hope for the best in the near rather than distant future.







January 1, 2008

2008 OUTLOOK

            At the end of one and the beginning of another year it is customary to look back at the past, gauge the future, and make resolutions to avoid the mistakes that have previously been made. This upcoming year is likely to be a pivotal one. Decisions will be made that will affect our children and grandchildren for years, if not decades, to come. Will our people and its leadership have the wisdom to make the correct ones, is the key question.

            First let us look at 2007. One year ago I headlined this monthly installment as, “The Year of the Middle East.” This was correct because apart from presidential contender politics the Middle East did dominate the news. In Iraq the “surge,” about which I had expressed considerable doubt in February, has indeed brought some improvement in the level of violence of that unfortunate country. But whether this is a temporary lull or a permanent change for the better has yet to be demonstrated. The reason why I am hedging my bets in this regard is twofold. On the one hand we are arming Sunnis to fight against Al Qaeda militants in Iraq while at the same time not pursuing a strategy that will bring peace to a unified country. The Shia majority will under these circumstances continue to mistrust us and see our arming of Sunnis merely as a prelude for the probably inevitable full blown civil war once our troop strength is reduced.

            Our administration has been told over and over again that there is no military solution to Iraq’s problems yet all pleadings, including those of the November 2006 Baker-Hamilton Commission report, fell on deaf ears. We still support a government which has no standing among its people and the only route to achieve a modicum of peace in the area has not been taken. For this to come to pass we would have to put prejudices aside and start direct and honest negotiations, without preconditions, with all of Iraq’s neighbors. Not only Turkey but Syria and especially Iran are essential.

            President Bush is supposed to visit the region some time later this month but with his penchant for avoiding direct contact with common people and preaching to others instead of listening to their concerns we can unfortunately expect only a propaganda exercise rather than a genuine breakthrough. For that to occur he would have to include Tehran and Damascus on his schedule. If he did so, in a spirit of friendship and learning, he would find, to his surprise, a warm welcome not only from the people at large but even the leadership of those countries. People in the Middle East and around the world don’t hate us, but they vigorously resent our mistaken policies, which need to be rectified.

While in the Middle East the president is supposed to also visit Israel and the West Bank but he will studiously avoid Gaza which we, jointly with Israel, are strangling economically. It is predictable that in the West Bank he will be chauffeured on Israel’s new highways, built on expropriated Palestinian land, and the use of which is exclusively reserved for Israelis. Palestinians have to make do with run down country roads which snake from one checkpoint to another. Spending one day with ordinary Palestinians, rather than merely with leaders of Fatah, might open even the most closed minds to the Palestinians real problems.

In years past kings and potentates gave audiences where ordinary people could come and present their petitions but our “democratic” society has done away with this time honored custom. Yet, it had a dual purpose the king, sultan or whatever the title, heard the concerns of his subjects and the people, in turn, realized that their king was interested not only in his own, but also their well-being. But, as mentioned before democratically elected leaders no longer concern themselves with people at large and deal only with their so-called representatives. Yet, the king of the Saudis and some other Arab Emirs still give audiences for the populace.

The much touted Annapolis peace conference, of which the president’s visit is supposed to be a follow up, is already showing itself as another maneuver to avoid coming to grips with the real problem. This consists of the unalterable fact that we are supporting a political regime in Israel which blatantly defies international law, while blaming the Palestinians when they react against their occupation with violence. Yes, suicide bombing is reprehensible but exhortations and wall building cannot stop them for any length of time. Only good will combined with patient, concerned listening to the needs of an oppressed people will do so. Remove first the necessity for fighting then decent people on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide will start cooperating and no longer yield to incendiary rhetoric from either side.

It is already clear that the Annapolis meeting was not primarily for the benefit of the Palestinians. It had apparently two aims. One was to bolster Israel’s status in the Arab world by showing Arabs the reasonableness of Olmert’s words. Having major Arab leaders sit down in the same room, albeit not at the same table, with Israelis provided much needed legitimacy for the Zionist cause. The other unstated goal was to create a Sunni Arab League against Shiite Iran.

But Arabs are no fools they have a long and rich history which has given them ample reason to mistrust the West of which Israel is a prime representative in their very midst. They see that Israeli politicians are unable, unwilling or both to come to a genuine peace agreement with the Palestinians because it would mean a return to the June 5 1967 borders. This is what International law, which has forbidden acquisition of land by war, demands. This fundamental principle is enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and as long as it is not adhered to there can be no peace. The obstacles which Israel has created in form of settlements on occupied land and the annexation of all of Jerusalem are tremendous. But they were created by Israel, with our help, and it is up to us and the Israelis to remove them now. Yet, at a time when there are supposed to be final status peace negotiations in progress, West Bank settlements are further expanded. This blatant show of disregard for the needs of the negotiating partner can only lead to further violence and a strengthening of the Islamic parties. The fact that our administration tolerates this state of affairs makes us again co-responsible when another Intifada will erupt.

Our totally inept foreign policy and meddling in Pakistan has now further aggravated the problems of that country too. The pursuit of the Holy Grail called “democracy” in states which simply are not ready for it has just caused another tragedy. Benazir Bhutto did not necessarily volunteer for the suicide mission we had sent her on. What I am going to say now is my private opinion and not necessarily the whole truth because documents to support it are still lacking. But it appears that Musharaff who had been trying to hold the country together by authoritarian means had found disfavor in certain Washington circles and Bhutto was drafted as the savior of democracy. Although she had misgivings, having been fully aware of her father’s fate, she accepted the challenge, possibly out of a sense of duty. Her assassination last week dooms any hope for genuine democracy to emerge in Pakistan during the upcoming year and more chaos is bound to be in store.

It is truly remarkable that our politicians are completely incapable of learning from history. In Iran we had put the Shah on his throne in 1953, after toppling a duly elected democratic government, but by the late 1970s his excesses led to popular unrest. He had, therefore, become a liability for the Carter administration which had made human rights concerns its hallmark. The Shah was then urged to make democratic reforms. Since they were too late the safety valve turned into an explosion of the overheated kettle, sweeping Ayatollah Khomeini into power. President Carter was and is an honorable man but he had no idea about the degree of hate the Shah had created against himself in his own country. When Carter, out of a sense of common human decency, then allowed the Shah to come to the US for medical treatment all hell broke loose in Tehran. The U.S. embassy was stormed, its personnel taken hostage, and the ensuing deep freeze in relations has lasted to this day. The Iranians have since made several attempts to ease the tensions but were rewarded with membership in the “axis of evil,” which further poisoned the waters.

Musharaff is no fool either; he knows what happened to the Shah when he tried to loosen his grip, on America’s urging, and he may not readily relinquish power in the face of impending chaos. Why American politicians believe that a democratically elected government will be better able to deal with Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the northwest border region of the country than an autocratic government is difficult to fathom. If Musharaff or some other general were to find themselves unable to control the country during the next year the danger of Muslim radicalism coming to power is a very real one.

Last year my friend and colleague Professor Petsche of Vienna sent me a book which is highly relevant in this context. It was written by Gerhard Schweizer, published last year and is called, “Der Unbekannte Islam. Sufismus -  die religioese Herausforderung. [The unknown Islam. Sufism- the religious Challenge].” The author points out that Sufism tends to transcend narrow religious bias not only within Islam but even towards Christians, Jews and Hindus. The Sufi seeks for mystical union with God which automatically breaks down sectarian barriers.  Schweizer recounted with amazement what he had experienced at a visit to one of the main Sufi pilgrimage centers, Ajmir, in India. The city of Ajmir is regarded as India’s “Mecca” because Muinuddin Chisti had died there in 1236. Chisti had been a major force in the Islamisation of parts of India but instead of the sword he had used good works and persuasion. Apart from his veneration in the city there are numerous shrines to other Sufi saints, who had in the past been drawn to this holy area, in the neighboring mountains. During the ascent to the mausoleum of Meeran Hussein on one of the mountaintops, in the midst of a throng of pilgrims who had come from all over India and beyond, Schweizer entered into a conversation with two of them. They told him that they had been on the road for four days having come from the state of Madhya Pradesh, more than a thousand kilometers distant, that they were friends and had already made several pilgrimages together. One was a teacher the other a hotel manager.  Let me now translate some key passages,

 

 “When the mausoleum came into sight the teacher surprised me with the request if I would mind to be blessed jointly with them by one of the holy men?  - Jointly? But I’m not a Muslim.

The teacher laughed. He wasn’t Muslim either, he was a Hindu; his friend was Muslim. But, I remonstrated, Hinduism and Islam are completely different religions there is no spiritual connection between them – All religions are manifestations of the All-One, the Hindu replied. God is One, for Hindus as for non-Hindus. To some believers He appears as Shiva, to others as Vishnu, still others as Allah or Jesus Christ. The divine is in all religions.” 

   

In the Mosque after having bought a bowl of flower petals which one of the members of the clergy distributed over the grave of the saint, they received after another small fee an amulet to ward off evil. The holy man also asked for their first names which he used in the subsequent blessing. “He then spread a green cloth over our heads and asked us to silently pray under this common canopy – a Muslim, a Hindu and a Westerner of Christian descent peacefully united.” Thus, peace between the most diverse religions is achievable; all it needs is an open mind and good will. Schweizer then uses this and other experiences with Sufis as a measure of hope that Pakistan might not fall victim to Muslim extremism because several Sufi religious centers are located in that country. All we can do is hope that he is correct.

While Pakistan is going to be of serious concern in this year there are other areas around the world which will pose a challenge to our “global leadership.” Newsweek devoted its first of the year edition to China and proclaimed 2008 as the year when that country will celebrate its final arrival among the big players on the international scene. The Beijing Olympics are coming up and the country will put its best foot forward. Somehow I am reminded of 1936 and the Berlin Olympics at which time Hitler had put on a show for the world to convince it that Nazism was not what they had thought and heard but that there were genuine achievements in which one could rightfully take pride. He accomplished his objective and two years later he could drop pretenses and embark on the conquest of central and eastern Europe which had been the goal all along. The question now is: what will China do after its successful debut and how will the U.S. react? This is one of the overarching problems of our time.

The current issue of Foreign Affairs has several articles on this question and the voice of reason would demand that we do not meet China’s emergence with hostility and increased military buildup but as an opportunity to create a more stable balance in the world. This possibility exists but everything would depend on the outcome of this year’s presidential elections. Unfortunately, the choices we are currently presented with do not necessarily bode well for the future. I shall take up this topic in the March installment because the field of contenders will have narrowed considerably after “super Tuesday” on February 5. For now here are some statistics to ponder especially when one reads them from the Chinese rather than American point of view. The article by Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt and Andrew Small, entitled. “China’s New Dictatorship Diplomacy. Is Beijing Parting With Pariahs?” presents a table which projects “Defense Expenditures, 2003-30.”  Estimated in billions of dollars the numbers for 2003 are 60 for China and 417 for the U.S.; for 2010 88 vs. 482. By 2030 the numbers are 238 vs. 808.  This is, of course, pure fantasy, because by then we’ll either have had a major war, the outcome of which cannot be guessed, or we won’t need the weaponry any more because the world will have come to its senses.

When the Chinese and Time magazine’s Man of the Year, Vladimir Putin, see these numbers they will ask themselves the obvious question: who is supposed to be on the receiving end of this arsenal? The answer is, of course, clear. We are not going to need it for fighting Islamic terrorists, or “rogue states” such as North Korea. The buildup of this vast amount of armaments will force Russia and China into an arms race with us to the detriment of all three countries because the money is wasted. In addition it ought to be apparent that a conventional war against either Russia or China cannot be won and a nuclear one will leave all of us destitute. Since this is, or at least should be, obvious to anyone one wonders why we let our politicians get away with their fear mongering instead of working on creative solutions.

If we persist on our present course a conflict with China over Taiwan will become inevitable. It probably won’t happen this year but thereafter all bets are off. Will we persist in defending the independence of Taiwan and will we go to war over the issue will become an important question. In the mid 1950s Eisenhower could credibly threaten war over the islands of Quemoy and Matsu but those days are gone. Conventional weapons will no longer intimidate because Chinese missiles can blow our aircraft carriers out of the water and what good are nuclear weapons when we destroy ourselves in the process. Are we also suicide bombers? 

In regard to Russia the question is whether or not our administration will be sensible enough to shelve the so-called missile defense shield against Iranian nukes in Poland and the Czech Republic? Will we continue to antagonize Russia by putting our missiles in her front yard? Let us remember the Cuban missile crisis, of which our president’s press secretary had never heard of.  What prompted it? Khrushchev putting missiles into Cuba? Yes, but why did he do so? Answer: because we had put our missiles into Turkey. The crisis was resolved not just, as it was proudly declared here, when “Khrushchev blinked,” but when we promised him a tit for tat. His missiles would disappear from Cuba with an additional guarantee that we will never again attempt to invade the island to remove Castro’s regime and that we will also remove our missiles from Turkey. Obviously, the Kennedy administration didn’t tell us about those little details at the time because the glow of victory might have been somewhat tarnished.

While the misbegotten idea of the missile defense shield will be one area of potential friction with Russia, there is also the unresolved Kosovo question. The Kosovars want independence from Serbia. The U.S., EU and NATO concur but Serbia is against it and banks on Russia to support its point of view. It is truly ironic that 100 years later Serbia is again placed in a role which can seriously destabilize Europe if not the world. It is, therefore, interesting to look back at what had transpired in a Moravian castle in the middle of September 1908. Since this important prelude to catastrophe is hardly known in this country I have briefly mentioned it in War&Mayhem. Here is a somewhat fuller but still abbreviated account.

The Ottoman Empire was regarded in those days as “the sick man of Europe” and the various European powers were already busy “Balkanizing” its European possessions. The process had started in earnest with the Berlin Congress of 1878 which superceded the treaty of San Stefano of the same year that had ended a Turko-Russian war. Among its various provisions were that Serbia and Montenegro were increased in size, Bulgaria emerged as a practically independent state but still under official suzerainty of the Sultan, and Austria-Hungary was given the right to occupy and administrate Bosnia-Herzegovina, although these lands too remained officially under the Sultan’s turban. In effect the Balkan Peninsula was divided between an Austro-Hungarian and Russian zone of interest while lip service was paid to Turkish authority. But Turks are resilient and various factions arose in the country and among émigrés which did not want to sit idly by while their country was being dismembered. In June of 1908 segments of the Turkish Army stationed in Macedonia began to march under its officers, the proverbial “Young Turks,” on Constantinople and upon arrival they forced the Sultan to revive the Constitution of 1876 allowing free elections and other reforms.

This created an immediate problem for the European powers because a strong resurgent Turkey was clearly not in their interest. They wanted the Turks out of Europe altogether and divide the spoils. The problem was especially acute for the Habsburg Empire and its Balkan possessions where the process of pacifying Bosnia-Herzegovina had taken longer and proven more expensive than had been anticipated. Furthermore, the Serbs living there were unhappy because they wanted union with Serbia and detested the Habsburgs. But since Bosnia-Herzegovina also had a considerable Muslim population, government circles in Vienna became concerned that Bosnian Muslims might want to follow the example set by their Turkish brothers and demand to participate in Turkey’s elections. This would have ended Austrian occupation and had to be forestalled.

Frantic meetings between heads of the European states ensued during the summer and the one of most immediate concern took place between the Austrian Foreign Secretary Alois Lexa von Aehrenthal and Russia’s Alexander Izvolsky. At this fateful get-together on September 15 the two men hatched a plan which lit the fuse that led directly on June 28 of 1914 to the murder of Austria’s Archduke by a Bosnian student and WWI.

In 1908 Russia still smarted from the defeat by the Japanese and felt that if it had been able to move the Black Sea fleet through the Dardanelles the debacle could have been prevented. Aehrenthal, therefore, promised to support Russian claims if not to Constantinople itself but at least to free passage of its warships through the Dardanelles. In return for that favor Russia was not to object to Austria’s outright annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. They agreed, furthermore, to give Bulgaria its full independence and to pacify the Serbs by enlarging their country to some extent.

Obviously these talks were held in secret and their success depended on the agreement of the other powers and especially of the Serbs. The official announcement was to be made simultaneously in Vienna and St. Petersburg but Aehrenthal jumped the gun by having Franz Joseph declare the annexation on October 6. This had disastrous consequences. The Russians immediately denied having had anything to do with the plan, the Serbs were furious and all the rest of Europe, except Germany which had been previously notified, was aghast at this violation of the Berlin protocol. The British were especially annoyed at having been left out of consideration and their hostility to the Danube Monarchy can be traced to those days. The Serbs mobilized their army and war appeared imminent. Russia’s denial of complicity could not be upheld when Vienna threatened to publish the Buchlau protocols (castle where the talks had been held). War was narrowly averted but Russia vowed “never again” would it back down from its patronage of Serbia; a promise which was fulfilled in 1914 and extends to this very day. If Kosovo were to declare its independence this year Russia would be on the side of Serbia and if a resolution in regard to that effect were to be introduced in the Security Council Russia would likely veto it. Thus, we are still reaping the fruits of the seeds sown more than a hundred years ago.

When one reads the Vienna newspapers of that era, which are made available on the Internet by the Austrian National Library under http://anno.onb.ac.at/ one is impressed how little has changed even in regard to language. Below are excerpts of Franz Joseph’s Annexation Proclamation of October 6, 1908

 

“When a generation ago our troops crossed the borders of your lands, you were assured that they came not as foes, but as friends, with the firm determination to remedy the evils from which your fatherland had suffered so grievously for many years. This promise given at a serious moment has been honestly kept. It has been the constant endeavor of our government to guide the country by patient and systematic activity to a happier future.

To our great joy we can say that the seed then scattered in the furrows of a troubled soil has richly thrived. You yourselves must feel it a boon that order and security have replaced violence and oppression, that trade and traffic are constantly extending, that the elevating influence of education has been brought to bear in your country, and that under the shield of an orderly administration every man may enjoy the fruits of his labors. . . .

The established new order will be a guarantee that civilization and prosperity will find a sure footing in your home.”

 

Does this sound familiar? The seeds have indeed sprouted but not in the way it had been hoped for. In 1908 it was Austria bent on civilizing the Balkans, now it is America intent on bringing the backward Muslims into a happier future. The proclaimed “new order” led to WWI and our new order in the Middle East is creating untold misery for the people living there with no end in sight. The methods, especially the secrecy, have also stayed the same. We are also learning that when it comes to empire building or defending there is no difference between monarchies or democracies. 

It is a crying shame that our Congress has allowed the Bush administration to keep not only all presidential documents but even those from the vice-president’s office secret. On December 24, 2007 Charles N Davis, Executive Director of the National Freedom of Information (FOI) Coalition of the University of Missouri, published an opinion article in The Christian Science Monitor entitled, “Let the presidential record show . . .” In it he pointed out how the Bush administration had “gutted the Presidential Records Act of 1978 and gave presidents the right to prevent release of their presidential papers – forever.” If the current system is allowed to persist honest historical research will no longer be possible and we will live indeed in Orwell’s 1984. Our children will be taught propaganda because historical documents will be unavailable. We expected this state of affairs in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union but not in the country of the “free and the brave.” Protests should be shouted from the rooftops throughout this republic of ours and not be relegated to the pages of a small private newspaper with a limited circulation.                                                                                                        

We are currently governed by fear mongering and greed. Since the real ambitions of our ruling circles cannot stand the light of day secrecy is necessary and the objectives are camouflaged under noble phraseology. This does not bode well for the future and we can only hope and pray that our deluded administration will not provide us during its last year in power with another ill-conceived foreign policy adventure, which will compound all the other mistakes. What we need is an aroused public where people reassert the rights that have been taken from them during the past seven years. But looking at the educational level and the interests of the majority of our fellow citizens this is not likely to be the case as will be documented in next month’s installment.







February 1, 2008

IS AMERICA FIXABLE?

            Although the country at large is not going to vote until November the election campaign is in full swing and for practical purposes preempts all other topics on Cable TV. Pundits present their wise opinions based on the latest poll numbers, although they have been proven fabulously wrong in caucuses and primaries, and speculate who is ahead in the race and for what reason. There is a long time between now and November 4 but they love to declare, if not a winner, at least a frontrunner. The futility of this enterprise does not seem to daunt them because there are 24 hours of continuous “news time” to fill. Debates are being held by the candidates of both parties and every little potential faux pas is carefully dissected and then slanted to fit the pundits’ preconceptions.

            Ever since Barack Obama declared himself the candidate of “change” all the others, regardless of party affiliation, have jumped on this phrase in spite of the fact that most of them represent the establishment. The change is to consist of the person who will sit in the Oval Office but otherwise things are likely to remain remarkable the same. I shall discuss the candidates and their views in detail in next month’s installment because Super Tuesday of next week, when primaries are held in about half of the country, is likely to narrow the field even more.  For now it suffices to mention ex-Governor Mitt Romney’s mantra that “Washington is broken,” needs to be fixed, and that he is the man to do it. He is correct. Washington is broken but the problems American society faces are not limited to Washington they are deeply rooted in our current culture.

            I was reminded of the saying that all countries have the government they deserve, by an article in a Vienna newspaper, which my friend Dr. Walter Petrowitz (Pedro in War&Mayhem) had sent me, to whom I am also indebted for some of the other information which will appear later. The article dealt with the new Ambassador our president had sent to Austria and whose prior diplomatic experience in the service of our Country had been in Tobago! Austrians, who still see themselves as heirs of the Habsburg Empire were understandably miffed, but since our president’s understanding of history and the feelings of people living in other countries is rather limited the choice didn’t surprise me all that much.

            America’s tragedy is that with all the intellectual limitations George W. Bush brought to his exalted office he is unfortunately fairly typical of the baby boom generation which now runs this country. Their parents were reasonably well off, so the offspring indulged their whims. Pursuit of happiness rather than excellence was the goal. One went to school because one had to but school was to be “fun” and demands limited. Athletic achievements were valued higher than scholastic ones and one went to college either to party or to escape the draft during the Vietnam War. While in college one also had plenty of opportunity to demonstrate against all the social ills of the time and proclaim the dawn of a bright new era which they would inaugurate. Those were the 60s and early 70s which shaped the minds of many who are currently in leadership positions. The hallmark was the Woodstock festival which they loved so much that they even want to put up a museum for it, with our tax money, of course.

            There is perhaps no better phrase which demonstrates the level upon which most of our people operate, than the one which was supposed to help us make up our minds during the 2004 elections. It ran, “Who would you rather have a beer with, George Bush or John Kerry?” In spite of George Bush’s demonstrated incompetence they did reelect him because Kerry obviously was too effete and probably preferred French wine. We can’t blame the government in Washington for having provided George W with another four years in office, that burden of guilt clearly rests on the voters of this country.

            It has been said that for a republic to function properly it requires an educated citizenry and this is where the problem starts but does not end. That the American educational system has notoriously lagged behind that of other “first world” nations is no secret and during the campaign for the November 2000 elections George Bush proclaimed that, if elected, he would be the “Education President.” True to his word he initiated an educational reform package immediately upon taking office. On January 23, 2001 it was sent to the Congress under the inspiring title of, “No Child Left Behind.” Congress deliberated for a year and the final bill was signed on January 8, 2002. The title of the legislation already tells us what this was all about. All children regardless of mental ability have to be educated in public classrooms and it is the teacher’s responsibility to see to it that even the less mentally acute pupils will be able to pass the required tests or else she/he will lose their job and the school may lose its accreditation with consequent loss of funding. What this obviously leads to will be discussed later.

            Professional educators have long known about the problems of American education especially at the high school level and in 2005 Edward E Gordon published a book, The 2010 Meltdown. Solving the Impending Job Crisis. The year 2010 was chosen because that is when the first baby boomers reach the age of 65 and will be starting to retire en masse with serious consequences for our country. The book should be read by every parent as well as grandparent because it presents us with undeniable facts and figures which will impact on our children and grandchildren. Although our politicians are concerned about how this avalanche of retirees will bankrupt the Social Security system less attention has been paid to how it will affect America’s competitiveness in the Global Economy. This is why Edward Gordon wrote the book.

            Gordon wrote that the American work force consists at this time of three groups: “about 25 per cent ‘smart people’, who are well educated and also have special career skills; another 25 percent are the ‘walking dead,’ victims of mergers or technical change and need to acquire new skills in order to change jobs … and up to 50 percent are the ‘techno-peasants,’ poorly educated adults with few if any special career skills.” The problem our country will be facing from 2010 on is that the “smart people” will be retiring in increasingly larger numbers and the resultant gap cannot be filled by younger people because they lack the education which is necessary to become successful in our computer-driven, greed-ridden society.

            Some of the statistical facts in regard to the educational level of our youngsters are:

 “The United States ranks 49th out of 158 nations in literacy. Sixty percent of adults never read books; only six percent read one book per year.

47 percent of job applicants lacked the reading, writing and math skills for the jobs they sought.

73 percent of U.S. employers cited ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ difficult conditions hiring qualified workers. Forty percent said that applicants have ‘poor or no employment skills.’

50 percent of U.S. manufacturers found that their current workers had serious reading, writing, and math skills problems.

53 percent pf adults in Los Angeles have literacy skills so low that their ability to work and be productive is threatened.

90 million Americans (nearly half of all adults) face higher health risks because their low literacy leads to trouble understanding medical terms and following directions.”

            These are just some morsels and I have omitted the references which are given in the original. Some other items were:

In an international study 15 year old American students ranked 24th out of 29 nations in mathematics.

If Americans read a book at all, 47 percent read only fiction.

69 percent of high school students actually graduate the others drop out. As one might expect there are ethnic differences in the graduation figures; 79 percent of Asian-Americans, 76 percent for Anglo-Americans (I guess Gordon wanted to avoid the term Caucasian), 57 percent for native Americans (formerly called Indians), 55 percent for African Americans (obviously excludes whites whose parents have left various African nations when decolonization began), and 53 percent for Hispanics.  

Only about 25 percent of fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-graders can write a thoughtful essay free of grammar, spelling and punctuation errors.

Martin Rochester, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-St Louis who reads “every paper line by line,” said, “It’s one of the most painful ordeals you can go through. Students today cannot write a complete sentence.”

They are equally benighted when it comes to knowledge about the world they inhabit. In an international poll conducted by National Geographic in 2003 of 3,000 18-24 year olds only 13 percent of Americans could locate Iraq or Iran, 17 percent could find Afghanistan but 24 percent managed to find Saudi Arabia. I guess because it’s a bigger splotch on a map.

Although children know more about computers and the Internet than their parents, this does not translate into useful knowledge. “Fourth-graders who were taught math without computers did better than fourth-graders taught with them.”

            Here is a quote of what is happening in our schools:

 

“Take, for instance, using the Computer Algebra system calculator (CAS) to spit out the answers to even the most difficult equations. ‘This is just another excuse to let people forward without a conceptual understanding,’ says Wayne Bishop, a math professor at California State University. ‘The kids become absolutely helpless, and yet they are given credit for algebra.’ Many teachers lack the training to clearly explain the underlying mathematical principles and logic that would help students understand the basis of these calculations (National Science Foundation).

Instead, billions of dollars have placed computers in the classroom rather than improve teacher training . . .  The bottom line for computer-education, says Dr. Angrist of Hebrew University, is ‘[T]he costs are clear-cut and the benefits are murky.’”

 

            So, what is wrong with the American educational system that it leads to such dismal results? One obvious answer is the lack of good teachers. But this in turn points to another profound problem of our society. This consists of: lack of respect for superiors and elders, lack of interest in intellectual achievements and resultant lack of adequate pay for teachers. Furthermore, the quest for instant financial rewards is also the major goal of why students want to go to college. In a 2004 a UCLA study of over 267,000 students, 73.8 percent listed ‘being very well-off financially’ as very important or essential. In 1967 the situation was different; 86 percent said ‘It was important to find a meaningful life philosophy. As Gordon said, “this is today’s American culture. The ‘greed is good message’ has really penetrated all the way down to the next generation.

            Another study showed that while 71 percent of students expect to go to a four-year college only 32 percent are actually academically qualified. Once in college 59 percent of freshman required remedial math or English tutoring and because of poor prior education the graduation rate after four years of college is only 27 percent. But as Gordon remarks this is actually good news for parents because some high tech jobs require only 2 years of college and a four year education costs more than $100,000.

            But let us return to the problem of the teachers. Not only are they underpaid and frequently lack the information on the subjects they are supposed to teach they are also commonly confronted with an unruly mob of adolescents for whom the word discipline does not exist. The teacher is often unable to enforce discipline because the parents may disagree and sue. Even the most idealistic teacher may under those circumstances throw in the towel and head for industry where remuneration is better and the stress less. This burn-out adds to the already existing teacher shortage across the country and math teachers, especially, are very hard to find and keep.

            The idealistic teacher who remains on the job, in spite of the mentioned obstacles, is now confronted with our president who once so famously asked, “Is our children learning?” The mentioned No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation forces teachers, out of self-preservation, to teach mainly the answers which are asked on the test and in addition devote themselves to the dullards who need extra coaching thereby boring the bright ones to tears. Why should anybody want to go to school under these circumstances? How this teaching for the test actually works, even for professionals, will be presented later.

            What I have shown so far are mainly numbers and one may cite the famous adage, “figures don’t lie but liars figure.” That these numbers do reflect reality is apparent when one compares how high school students are taught here with what happens in Europe and specifically Vienna. While the subjects American children get exposed to are similar, the time spent on them varies considerably. For some it is measured in years while in others one semester or one year may suffice. As such they receive a smattering of information on a variety of subjects but not in depth knowledge from which a coherent picture can emerge. Furthermore, exams are mainly in multiple choice formats rather than in oral or written form.

            Even in some private high schools there is at times a teacher shortage. The students may in part be left to their own devices via computer and see a teacher only once a week; likewise on a computer screen. For this privilege the parents pay $7300 and more per year per child. Public schools vary immensely across the country and in neighborhoods within a given city. The last year of high school, especially, tends to be wasted. One example might suffice. The course work for the first semester, which ended in December, encompassed: Math, English, Art, and Drivers’ Education. The latter consisted of being taught traffic signs and rules of the road without setting foot in a car. The current second semester courses are the same for the first three subjects but instead of Driver’s Ed there is “Free enterprise,” which deals with economics and then comes cooking!

Compare this now with the curriculum which is currently provided by the high school I attended in Vienna and which is available on the Internet under http://www.rg18.ac.at/. As mentioned in War&Mayhem the European school system differs from the American because high school starts at age 10 and goes to age 18. What is here called middle school is Unterstufe and high school is Oberstufe. The difference is that the major subjects are taught all 8 years but with increasing depth and only some others are added in the years of the Oberstufe. There have been some changes since I left school and the student now has a choice in the Oberstufe to take extra credits in either the natural sciences or technology. Let us just look at the final year curriculum: Religion, German, English, Latin or French, Mathematics, History and social studies, Geography and economics, Chemistry, Biology, Music, Psychology and Philosophy, Gymnastics and 2 elective courses of the student’s choice among any of the above with increased in-depth knowledge as well as other languages of choice. Those students who prefer natural sciences get more exposure in those fields including laboratory experience, while the technically inclined ones get more Informatics and Geometry. For the natural sciences students spend 33 hours/week in school and the technologically inclined 34.

In America once you have the required grade points you can go to college while in Europe you have to pass a stiff written and oral exam which subsequently allows the student to go to University. With other words college is absorbed into middle and high school.  This is the time when the brain is being taught to learn the essentials for a successful professional life and an attempt is made to produce a well-rounded individual person. Furthermore, the student is still under the guidance of parental authority and is less distracted by peer pressure. Since I was not sure to what extent the final exam, Matura, had changed since 1943 I asked my Viennese friends to send me some current examples. It was clear that there had not been any dumbing down, as has happened here and the exam was as difficult as it had been previously.

The written exam consists of essays in English, French and German as well as Mathematics. One typical example for the latter is:

At a river’s edge is a tower with the height h=35meter. At the opposite bank there is a mountain ridge which inclines at an angle of 76 degrees. Measured from ground and the top of the tower the angle to the peak of the ridge is 46.1 and 42.8 degrees respectively. a) What is the elevation of the ridge peak compared to the river bank? b) What is the angle under which a rock climber appears from the bottom of the tower when the climber is exactly half way to the summit of the ridge? Calculators or computers are, of course, not allowed and it is, of course, impossible to guess at the correct answer.

I have omitted other examples of greater complexity because I wasn’t sure that my translation would be correct.

Some examples of part of the oral exam, which in this instance was given in English and the candidate also had to respond in that language, are:

 

For “Spiral Dynamics” the student had to: “Explain briefly the different forms of spiral dynamics, give concrete examples of applications in modern society, explain the Humpty-Dumpty- Effect.” There was also an exam portion on “Constructivism.”

The quote by von Glasserfeld, “Knowledge, no matter how it be defined, is in the heads of persons, and the thinking subject has no alternative but to construct what he or she knows on the basis of his or her own experience.” Based on this sentence the candidate had to describe the meaning of the word, and give definitions for Educational constructivism, Personal constructivism, Philosophical constructivism.

Another sentence to be discussed was, “One of the misconceptions of constructivism is the notion that because individuals make meaning based on their prior experiences, anything and everything counts equally as knowledge. Von Glasserfeld effectively points the inadequacy of this perspective: truth in constructivism . . . is replaced by viability.” The candidate had to explain what the author had meant by viability.

 

What does this type of education cost the parents? Not one red penny because education is free for anyone who can pass entrance and yearly exams. University study was likewise free until last year. Now the parents have to pay 500 Euros per semester which means that a university education, which traditionally lasts 10 semesters, comes to 5000 Euros; a sum most parents can readily afford and if not grants are available.

            As mentioned these were oral exams and not multiple choice tests where an answer might be guessed at. In addition multiple choice type testing via computer encourages cheating because no one can read massive amounts of text from a computer screen and be expected to retain the information. Reading from a screen usually amounts to scanning, because the human brain was not designed for it. In this way wrong impressions can arise. Many of us will have encountered the problem that exists in regard to e-mails, even in professional circles. One may raise several questions but only one or two may be answered and the answer given may not be relevant. This results from scanning the screen and it is impossible for most of us to keep the attention span focused on every word in every sentence. This is why I have to print out important information which requires action.

In America’ computerized society rules and regulations are passed without thought of what they lead to but they have to be blindly followed. An article of October 7, 2007 by Dr. Douglas Jackson, orthopedist, highlights the situation for today’s physicians. It is entitled, “Autonomy and Income: the decline continues for orthopedic surgeons.” In it he discusses his problems with the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and for renewing his license. The IRB is a relatively new Washington brain child which requires every physician who is engaged in research to pass an exam on medical ethics. The exam consists of several “modules” (modern word for chapters) on various technical and historical aspects. Each of these consists of several pages which appear on the computer screen. Subsequently five multiple choice questions test the physician’s information for that module.  Since it is difficult, if not impossible, to retain all the details from these chapters one either has to print out this book or take the more efficient way of looking for the key word(s) in the question, go to “Edit “ “Find” and then check off the appropriate answer which is buried somewhere in all these pages.  As part of his license renewal Dr. Jackson was mandated to take an examination on pain management and care of patients who are terminally ill and/or have Alzheimer’s disease. These are not the patients he sees, yet he has to devote 12-hours to this exam, time which he doesn’t have and is simply wasted.

Let us now return to the question of the purpose of higher education. Gordon discussed the topic in some detail but it immediately reminded me of an article by Nietzsche written in 1873 under the title: Űber die Zukunft Unserer Bildungsanstalten (On the future of our institutions of higher education).  Nietzsche foresaw the cultural change that was bound to happen as a result of the drive towards higher education for everyone. It will be directed towards utility, he wrote, its purpose will become a “better life” which means more money with a resultant loss of depth of knowledge. Some gifted people will become specialists who will know everything about a screw and its uses and while developing phenomenal virtuosity in this area they will be ignorant of everything else. This is precisely what was expressed also by Gordon in his 2010 Meltdown. America’s problems are cultural and do not lend themselves to the quick fix our politicians are promising.

He offered a number of suggestions as to how the situation could be remedied but since they are all long range and would require a rethinking of the foundations of the capitalist society this is not likely to take place in my lifetime. What stands in the way is, paradoxically, the Declaration of Independence which stated that “all men are created equal . . .” Jefferson wrote this stirring document to foment a revolution but he knew, of course, that these words were not true. All human beings differ in physical structure and mental abilities. To ignore this fundamental biologic fact and use the current approach of “one size fits all” can only lead to the leveling of society to the lowest common denominator. This can be seen not only in education but also in every day life where respect for others is notably lacking. We are all equal so let’s all dress as sloppily as possible and refer to each other only by first names. Adding a respectful Mr., Mrs., or Ms. as feminists prefer, let alone an academic degree, violates this fundamental precept and must be shunned.

It will be argued now that we are all equal before the law but that is not true either. White collar crime usually does not only elude punishment but is rewarded. A CEO of a banking institution who is negligent and runs up billions in public debt (e.g. Citicorp, Merrill Lynch) does lose his job but with a parting gift of millions of dollars. The same happens in the airline and other industries where corporate mergers are being carried out on the back of the employees’ salaries and pension funds while the CEO bails out on his millions of dollars “golden parachute.”

Someone who is aware of these facts will have little faith to believe in any of the promises by the current crop of politicians vying for victory in November, although some candidates are clearly worse than others. But who will be doing the voting, let alone vote counting? We the people! Who are the WE? The answer came after the president’s State of the Union speech on Monday night. The speech itself was a laundry list of what Bush should have done during the past 7 years and he now wants Congress to do, while promising to veto any bill he doesn’t like. He read the speech well, punctuated it with frequent customary smirks, but failed to impress even some of the TV pundits. The eye-opener came in form of a “focus group” where a TV journalist charted the responses of about thirty citizens on a graph to key aspects of the president’s speech. They were supposedly equally divided in regard to political affiliation. When Mr. Bush said that the budget would be balanced by 2012 (he’s of course already in Texas for three years by then) the positive response reached phenomenal heights. When he declared that Congress must make the current tax cuts permanent the Republicans moved the curve up and the democrats down. These aspects one can understand but the clincher came at the end. The moderator asked the audience: How many of you had a positive impression of the president before his speech? About half a dozen hands went up. When he asked the next question: How many have a positive impression of him now? Nearly all the hands rose.

When the country is confronted with an electorate that is so gullible it is not likely that the needed fundamental reforms will take place which gets us back to culture and education. Ideally the purpose of higher education should not be merely utilitarian in terms of providing the student with the means to command the highest possible salary but to create a human being who is at home in all cultures of the world, respects them out of knowledge rather than on a “Thou shalt” basis, and is conversant with the ideas which shape our world. But this can only be achieved by hard work and not by the current belief, that the tender psyches of children must be coddled and praise be heaped even when it is not deserved in order to foster “self-esteem” You too can be a Michelangelo; all you have to do is paint by numbers,  seems to be the attitude. Ask yourself: How can America be expected to “lead the world” during this century when these conditions prevail?

Yet, we do have good people in our country who genuinely mean well and still value hard work. An example can be found in the most unlikely places. The Prophet, Seer, Revelator and President of the Mormon Church died at the ripe old age of 97 last Sunday. He was genuinely admired for his wit, erudition, competence and humanity by everyone who ever met him and the Salt Lake Tribune paid its appropriate respect. But one sentence, which appeared below his portrait, struck me, “We say to people: you bring all the good that you have, and let us see if we can add to it.” The same sentiment is expressed as the banner of The Christian Science Monitor, “To harm no man, but to bless all mankind.” In this context the motto of the Mayo Clinic also came to mind, “Here is an opportunity, what you make of it is up to you.”

America is fixable but the medicine is so unpalatable that it will take more than the good intentions of a few to make it come to pass.







March 1, 2008

VOTING IN AMERICA

            February has, as expected, considerably narrowed the would-be Presidential field. Barring unforeseen circumstances it is now down to three contenders. While on the Republican side the McCain nomination seems virtually assured, a fierce battle is raging among the Democrats. But before examining how we got to this point readers from other countries around the world will need to become acquainted with the archaic way how this bastion of democracy elects its presidents.

            In most other democracies or republics the process is quite simple. Different parties select one person and these individuals exert themselves over a period of a few months in a strenuous effort to convince the voters of that country that they are the best qualified person for the job. On the specified day the citizens trot to the polls, cast their votes and if there is no clear majority a run-off election is held between the leading candidates.

            A system as simple as this, which gives the people at large the say so, was clearly inappropriate for the 13 colonies at the time they formed their Union. At first it was obvious that only white adult males would be allowed to vote. But even they could not be trusted to make the right decision; they had to have a certain amount of property which in those days consisted also of slaves. The rousing Declaration of Independence which had declared the self-evident truth that all men were created equal obviously had to give way to practicalities. But one propertied man-one vote for Congress or the Presidency was also impractical and the system of delegates was adopted, which had been so successful in the founding of the Republic.

            This was a necessity in the 1770s. The distances were vast; communications slow and entrusting one’s vote to a person one knew was the most efficient way of meeting these problems.  But what was useful at the end of the 18th century became a serious problem at the end of the 20th when a candidate who had a majority of the popular vote, Al Gore, was defeated by one vote of the Supreme Court on a  legal challenge launched by George W Bush.

            There have, of course, been some changes in the election process since the 1780s. First all white males regardless of amount of property could vote for their delegate to the state and national conventions, although one had to pay a fee for this privilege. This “poll tax” was subsequently eliminated and women gained the right to vote in 1920. Negroes, as they were called at the time, although emancipated by Lincoln, had to wait a hundred years until the Voting Act of 1965 and the final hurdle, a literacy test, was abolished in 2006. Now every American citizen regardless of sex, race, religion or IQ can vote unless one happens to sit in prison or is a convicted felon. Nevertheless, we are still voting for delegates to conventions and that is the crux of the problem. It doesn’t matter how many people vote in a given state for a given person; the outcome is decided by how many delegates are pledged to a given candidate in a given state. This is why the delegate count becomes the critical variable and an election can hang on a single state such as Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004.

            The choice of the delegate who will cast his/her vote for us begins at the grass-roots level in voting districts around the country. This would seem to be straightforward but over time politicians at the state and federal level have engaged in “gerrymandering.” This consists of drawing the borders of voter districts in such a manner that a given party will reap the greatest benefits. In this way politics entered the process already at the grass-roots level.           

The next step is the selection of delegates, the date of which is set by the political party bosses. Each state has a set number of delegates which varies between the parties. Voting for candidates takes place at primaries or caucuses, but the way delegates are awarded also varies between states. In some there is proportional representation per district while in others, such as California it’s “winner take all.” This leads to the anomalous situation in the Republican Party that if the race in that state were to be exceedingly close the candidate who has the higher number would still get all the delegates of that state. The Democrats are more democratic and award their delegates on a representative basis so that each district gets the delegate for the candidate who had locally received the highest number of votes. This would strike one as fair but since when do politicians trust the people? To ensure that voters for the Democratic Party choose the nominee, who in the wisdom of the party officials is best qualified to defeat the Republican opponent in November, they have created the class of “super-delegates.” These are persons prominent in the Democratic Party who will cast their vote at the Nomination Convention for their candidate of choice, regardless of how many votes that candidate has actually garnered in the primary/caucus process. Obviously “the will of the people” can again be relegated to the back seat.

            I have mentioned above that states elect their delegates either at primaries or caucuses. Although Martha and I are reasonably well versed in political affairs we still had no idea what the difference between these two systems was. We are not affiliated with a political party and simply voted every four years for the presidential candidate who seemed most qualified for the job at a given time. I have even bypassed the midterm elections unless there was a crisis such as in 1994 when the Clinton White House had to be curbed by a Republican Congress, or in 2006 when President Bush had to be prevented from creating further havoc in the world. Inasmuch as the primary/caucus process tended to be limited to registered party members it was of no concern to us and millions of other voters.

But this year is different and crucial. The next president of the U.S. will either attempt to restore sanity to our foreign policy or pave the way to WWIII. The choice in November is indeed as stark as this and this is the reason why I had to vote in a primary for the first time in my life. How this actually worked and why it may well become a “preview of coming attractions” will be presented later.        For now we have to direct our attention to the difference between primaries and caucuses and the dates at which they are held in the various states.

            Traditionally New Hampshire was always the first state to cast its votes for presidential candidates. The most devoted party members showed up on a Tuesday in the middle of February braving snow and ice to cast their votes for a candidate of their choice. The good citizens of Iowa had, however, caucused for a hundred years but nobody paid any attention to the results. Only after the debacle at the Chicago Democratic Convention of 1968 did the party bosses realize that it was time to listen to the voices of the people. In 1972 Jimmy Carter won the Iowa caucus, which was held before the New Hampshire primary. When he subsequently won New Hampshire and eventually the presidency Iowa’s prestige skyrocketed and its caucuses have been wooed ever since by presidential candidates who regard it as a “must win” state.

In contrast to primaries a caucus is more personal and could irreverently be called a “coffee Klatsch.” The registered voters of the various districts would get together at a given location and segregate themselves into groups which favor a given candidate. Those who are still undecided form another group. Speeches are then held by the supporters of each of the candidates to entice the undecided ones to flock to their banner. Once this has been achieved the votes are counted and the party then decides how many delegates this actually amounts to. But this is not the end because candidates can either be “pledged” or “unpledged.”  With other words, the pledged candidates have to vote for the candidate who was just chosen by the people, while the unpledged ones are free to change their mind at any time even as late as at the Convention. The rules under which the number of delegates, as well as pledged vs. unpledged, are selected are unknown to me and probably to most of the American public but “We the People” have no say so in the process.

            In states which hold primaries instead of caucuses the voting is simpler. One just goes to the polling station, casts one’s vote just as at regular midterm or presidential elections and one has fulfilled one’s civic duty. On the other hand the process dealing with number of delegates to be awarded and pledged vs. unpledged is the same as in caucus states. Inasmuch as the vast majority of citizens used to be ineligible to vote in primaries or caucuses most of us were presented in November with a fait accompli and had a choice of two candidates unless there was a third party candidate who had no chance of winning but was on what amounted mainly to an ego trip.

            This year, however, the Democrats proved smarter than the Republicans and opened the primary/caucus voting in some states to all registered voters regardless of party affiliation. Independents and even Republicans could vote for a Democratic candidate. The Republicans declined to follow suit and their voting remained limited to party members. The Democrats’ decision to hold open primaries/caucuses proved to be a God send for Barack Obama because it allowed people at large and not just party members, to vote for him.

            But before we get to the personalities of the leading candidates for the November 4 election, the dates at which primaries/caucuses are held, as well as a potentially serious problem for the national Democratic leadership have to be discussed further. The dates at which votes are cast in the primary process are important because they can lead to a bandwagon-stampede effect. After the first two states have cast their votes the media, especially 24 hour cable TV news channels, jump into the fray. They declare a “front runner” and cheer on their candidate while throwing whatever dirt that can be uncovered on the other. Public opinion is thereby molded and states which hold their primaries/caucuses later in the year are decidedly disadvantaged by all the propaganda that has been created in the wake of earlier victories. The potential gullibility of voters who neither have the time nor inclination to delve not only into the issues but also the character of the candidates is exploited. The herd instinct then takes over and people vote for the person whose best image has been created by the media.

            The importance of early votes by the various states has led this year to the anomalous situation that votes were cast in Iowa and New Hampshire in January already instead of February. In addition 22 states voted on the first Tuesday of February and since Americans like superlatives they called it “super-Tuesday.” This meant that candidates had to begin their campaigns in the spring or summer of last year in order to emerge victorious on February 5. This, obviously, consumed an enormous amount of time and money. Since leading candidates were mainly senators, congressmen or governors of various states the duties they had been elected to perform had to take a backseat and money went down the drain. It has been estimated that in order for a candidate to make a credible attempt at the nomination at least one million dollars were needed for the start up and vigorous fund raising has to continue thereafter. The total cost of the November elections will be staggering.

            The problem for the national Democratic Party is in regard to Michigan and Florida. Michigan Democrats decided that they would beat the clock and hold their primary on January 15. The national Party said no, Michiganders voted anyway but their 156 delegates are now in limbo because they are not eligible to cast a vote at the Convention. The Floridians likewise moved their primary into January, the Party nixed it and Florida’s 185 delegates are also still not part of the national equation. What to do with the votes cast in Michigan and Florida remains a problem which has as yet not been addressed.

 The crowding of the primary/caucus process into the winter and spring of this year has not only led to wasted time and money but had also apparently unintended consequences for major candidates including Hillary Clinton. She had expected to sail through Iowa, New Hampshire and by super-Tuesday it was supposed to have been all over with the nomination secured. But the road proved more difficult than imagined; she ran out of money and had to “loan” her campaign $5 million from her own bank account.

But before dealing with Hillary’s problems we need to look at what happened on the Republican side because it demonstrated, among other aspects, that religious bias is alive and well in our country. The outcome of a race between a Mormon and a Southern Baptist preacher was a foregone conclusion. Four million Mormons are simply no match against forty million or so Southern Baptists. It was surprising, however, that a nation-wide poll revealed that 43 per cent of all respondents said that they would not even consider voting for a Mormon in a presidential election.

But Romney’s religion was only one, albeit important, factor for his lack of success. He might have made a very good president had he been appointed to the office instead of having to run for it. His main failing was that he was a poor campaigner. When he announced his candidacy last  year I was ready to vote for him because he had, after all, rescued the Salt Lake Olympics (March 1, 2002. The Mormon Olympics) and I had repeatedly voted for his father George as governor of Michigan. Yet, instead of displaying the principles, which he undoubtedly has in his private life, he tried to be all things to all people and this didn’t work. It was perceived as a lack of convictions and the media pundits had ample opportunity to make hay. Even this would not have deterred me, but when he started to praise George Bush by stating that we “love a president who has kept us safe these last six years” and added as one of the president’s achievements the “No Child Left Behind Act,” which was discussed in last month’s installment, I drew the line. We can’t afford another 4-8 years of a Bush surrogate.

The other two major Republican hopefuls, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson fizzled likewise. Giuliani had only one theme song which he repeated in mantra like fashion: “9/11” and how he had proven his worth on that day. Residents of New York City who appeared as witnesses at the 9/11 hearings were considerably less impressed and he was also faulted for not having provided the fire department with modern communication equipment which could have saved the lives of numerous fire fighters that were lost when the Twin Towers collapsed. He also promised that he would keep the country strong, continue with the “forward leaning” offensive military strategy, and his senior foreign policy advisor was Norman Podhoretz, former Editor in-Chief of Commentary and inveterate neoconservative hawk. Giuliani’s personal life, which was devoid of the principles the evangelical base of the party demands, as well as poor campaign planning were additional factors contributing to his political demise.

Fred Thompson was well known from his TV appearances on the popular Law and Order show but he never seemed to be really interested in campaigning for the nomination. He would have accepted it had it been handed on a platter but the hard work, which is inevitably associated with this endurance contest candidates are subjected to nowadays, was not to his liking.

Mike Huckabee the, former Baptist minister and subsequent governor of Arkansas, on the other hand clearly not only wants to be president but also enjoys himself on the trail. He comes across as a likeable, competent person with a sense of humor but since his policies don’t promise a marked departure from the past and his support is rooted mainly in the Bible belt his chances for the nomination, let alone the presidency, are slim indeed.

Apart from Mc Cain and Huckabee there is still another candidate in the running; Dr. Ron Paul whose existence the media tend to ignore. He is a 72 year old Congressman from Texas and obstetrician by profession who has delivered over 4000 babies as his website informs us. But he really doesn’t seem to fit into the Republican Party as it is constituted today. At heart he is a Libertarian and as such at odds with the “conservative” values of the party’s base. America differs from Europe in a variety of unexpected ways which include the meaning of the term “liberal.” “Far left liberal” is currently one of the worst insults that can be hurled by Republicans against any person they detest. They don’t seem to realize that the term “liberal” referred in Europe to the laissez faire policies of unbridled capitalism, rather than the socialistic type intrusion of government into the lives of people.

To avoid this confusion the Libertarian Party established itself in 1971. Its policies consist mainly of: laissez faire capitalism, strong civil liberties without government interference into the private lives of the people, minimal regulation of cross-border migration and non-intervention into the foreign affairs of other countries. Since third parties do poorly at elections in the U.S. Dr. Paul joined the Republicans. But his civil liberties stance (which might be interpreted as to allow abortions and/or, homosexual marriages) clashes, of course, with the Religious Right without the support of which a Republican cannot win at this time. As far his policies are concerned they can be summed up as: “America for Americans.” He does not want interference by the UN, the International Criminal Court and the World Trade Organization. The U.S. should withdraw from NAFTA as well as CAFTA. Furthermore, all foreign aid, including that to Israel, should be abolished. Although he is a decent person who means well the percentage of votes that have been cast for him is in the single digits and his chances for the nomination are nil.

The feud between Romney and Huckabee proved to be Senator McCain’s good fortune. In the summer of last year his campaign was written off as having failed. He changed campaign managers, but his big break came in Iowa where the unexpected happened. Romney had made a massive financial effort as well as traveling up and down the state to show that he could be a credible candidate but came in second to Huckabee who had spent considerably less money. The Huckabee victory set off a media frenzy which propelled him into the national spotlight and set the stage for the fight with Romney from which McCain emerged as the smiling third. For a Republican to win the nomination 1,191 delegates are needed. Mc Cain has, as of this week, 1,032 vs. Huckabee’s 247.  For the sake of party unity Huckabee is urged to quit because it is mathematically impossible for him to win. But he refuses to do so at this time because he obviously enjoys his place in the sun, doesn’t have another job and, in contrast to Romney, isn’t spending his own money anyway.

Thus, barring some emerging scandal or health problem, McCain is assured of the nomination at the Convention in the first week of September. But health will become an issue in the subsequent presidential campaign. At the time of his acceptance speech he will have turned 72 and his body had to endure a great deal of stress in younger years. When he was shot down over Hanoi he suffered serious injuries, which were inadequately treated. He had subsequently undergone torture and various other deprivations at the “Hanoi Hilton,” as it was referred to by the POWs. This fortitude earned him public love and respect but has left his body in less than optimal condition. The problem with aging is that the body cannot shrug off previous insults and they come to the fore again during the inevitable aging process. In addition he has had two bouts of melanoma; a virulent skin cancer. In 1993 a melanoma was removed from his face as well as arm. There was a recurrence in August of 2000 in the left temple; lymph nodes and portions of the parotid gland were removed which showed no signs of spread. The surgery resulted in scarring of his left face which is why we are mainly shown the right side of his profile on TV. Although scarring is only a cosmetic blemish, melanomas have not only a tendency to recur but they also tend to metastasize. Senator McCain has enjoyed a seven and a half year remission by now but cancer is unpredictable.

One wishes Senator McCain well but should he really be president? Not only will health inevitably become a problem if he were to be elected, his policies which are essentially a continuation of the neoconservative posture of: shoot first, ask questions later, are not likely to bring peace to our world. When one couples this with his well known temper outbursts the outlook for a successful White House tenure is not bright.

The contest between the remaining two Democratic candidates is too important to be relegated to a few paragraphs and will, therefore, be taken up in the next installment. This will also have the benefit of knowing the results of next week’s mini super-Tuesday which is likely to clarify the outlook for the rest of the Democratic campaign.

For now I shall merely describe the primary process as experienced in Utah on February 5. After breakfast I drove down the road to the local fire station where the voting took place and was surprised that the parking lot was already full and people stood in line to be checked against the voters’ lists. After this was done and I was assured that I could indeed vote for a Democrat I was led to a separate room which contained about half a dozen voting machines that proudly carried the Diebold name. Some readers may remember that I have expressed concerns about this system in the past (December 1, 2004 Why Bush Won. November 1, 2006 Diebold to the Rescue?) and these were now validated by personal experience. I was assigned to one of these computers and on the screen appeared an alphabetic list of the Democratic candidates. I touched the screen at the appropriate place and it led to another one which asked me to confirm that this was the name I had chosen for our next president. I did so but the surprise came thereafter. Instead of a Thank you or the printing of a receipt, as would happen in any store, the machine simply reverted to the original screen with the list of names. Well, I touched the name again ended up again with the second screen and was caught in a seemingly endless loop. I then called the supervisor, he tried it with the same result but the machine started cluttering as if it were printing the vote and the screen stated that I had voted three times. The supervisor informed me that this didn’t matter because it’ll be counted manually later as a single vote and he took the machine out of service. I never saw a print out.

Well, I can trust our Utahns but what happens in large inner city voting districts under those circumstances? It’ll be November with miserable weather in many parts of the country and lines may be immense before one even gets into the building. There won’t be enough machines, some will break down, people will take a long time to get acquainted with the process, they will become confused and the machines may do whatever they want. As an additional bonus the secrecy of the ballot is, of course, voided because supervisors who will be needed to help will know perfectly well for whom you have voted. Is this really the best America can do for the most primitive right of its citizens?  

On the Republican side the outcome of the primary was, of course, no surprise; Romney got 90 per cent of the votes. But that for the Democratic nominee was interesting. There are only 2 areas in the state which have some Democrats: Salt Lake County and Summit County (which includes Park City). These are largely urban with predominantly, white middle and upper middle class voters, yet Obama received 57 per cent of the vote and 14 delegates while Clinton had to make do with 39 percent and 9 delegates. John Edwards got no delegates at all. The result confirmed that Obama’s support is not limited to a specific segment of the population but is widely distributed among races and social classes. How this will play out in the long run will, as mentioned, become clearer next week but one thing is certain. The Clinton campaign will pull out all stops and we can expect rather vicious attacks on Senator Obama. How he will handle these will be another measure of his character.







April 1, 2008

HILLARY VERSUS OBAMA

The events of the past month confirmed the expectations that were mentioned in the previous essay. Senator McCain has indeed clinched the Republican nomination and will be on the ballot in November. This is not necessarily good news for the country and the world because a “forward leaning” military posture is likely to be the centerpiece of his administration since he seems to have little use for the intricacies of diplomatic foreign policy. He has already shown in the past week that his grasp of details is tenuous. He kept insisting that Iran has ties to Al Qaeda for which there is no evidence, and it appears that the only difference between Bush and McCain is that a “q” will be exchanged for an “n” in the four letter word. What Bush said about Iraq prior to the invasion will be warmed up for Iran as soon as McCain takes office. If the McCain campaign were to find itself in trouble during the summer or early fall his new found friend George W might even instigate a serious incident in the Gulf so that the party with the impeccable credentials on “keeping our country secure” will win in November. That the real problems in our country at this time are domestic and that they cannot be solved unless the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, which are bleeding us dry financially, are stopped appears to be beyond the mental capacity of the Bush administration and its supporters.

While the Republican nomination is no longer an issue all eyes and ears are now turned on the Democrats and as mentioned in the March 1 issue Barack Obama has indeed become the target of rather vicious attacks. Let us, therefore, look at the backgrounds and the political positions of the two Democrats who are now so vigorously battling for the nomination.

I shall continue to refer to Senator Clinton as Hillary not only because every one else does so but she keeps changing surnames. Hillary Rodham was raised in a Chicago upper middle-class suburb, received local attention for a fiery Valedictorian speech at graduation from Wellesley College and then went to Yale Law School where she not only got her law doctorate in 1973 but had also met Bill Clinton in 1971. He wooed Miss Rodham vigorously, but unsuccessfully, for several years until she finally relented and moved with him to Arkansas in 1974. They bought a house, taught law and married in 1975. To the consternation of both of their mothers, Hillary insisted on retaining her maiden name in order to become known as her own person. This did not sit all that well with the good citizens of Arkansas who cherished the old traditional family values and when Bill ran for re-election to the governorship (which he had held from 1979-1981) in 1982, Hillary relented for the sake of Bill’s political future and became Hillary Clinton or Mrs. Bill Clinton. Over the years as America’s First Lady she became officially Hillary Rodham Clinton. As evil, or prescient, tongues currently have it if she were to be elected we would have President Rodham.

There is no need to detail her illustrious career which is extensively documented on Wikipedia suffice it to say that she has always been interested in social causes and especially the welfare of children. Laudable as they are there have been many bumps on the road which have made her into the controversial person as she is regarded today. She engenders fierce partisanship and one is reminded of Schiller’s depiction of Wallenstein, the emperor’s general during the 30 Years War: Von der Parteien Gunst und Hass verwirrt, schwankt sein Charakterbild in der Geschichte (To and fro sways the historians’ image of his character; confounded by the parties hate and admiration). For her admirers Hillary is the modern Joan of Arc who will rescue America from the quicksand the country has entered. For others she is Lady Macbeth who will walk over corpses to achieve her aim - the Presidency, which has been a long term goal. Ardent feminists of the 1960s see her as the embodiment of the female dream, while other men and women of her generation have no objection to a woman president but balk at that particular woman.

When one looks at the political issues she champions and wants to be enacted: affordable health care, better schooling for our children as well as a less militaristic foreign policy there is not much difference between her and Barack Obama. This is why the majority of Democrats say that they could support either candidate in the general elections. The difference, for those of us who are not wedded to a political party, is the most important aspect for the highest office in the land: trustworthiness!

In defining her candidacy Hillary has insisted that she has much better qualifications for the presidency than her opponent and keeps telling us of having “35 years of experience.” This would take us back to 1973 when she graduated from law school. It is true that she was already at that time interested in Children’s causes. In the following year she worked as a staff member for the House Committee on the Judiciary during the Watergate scandal where she researched historical precedents for impeachment of the president. Helping to bring about Nixon’s resignation was the first feather in her Washington hat and this is what she might mean when she talks about her 35 years. But subsequent success in Arkansas and the White House was not exactly stellar. Although she was a highly regarded lawyer and was listed twice as one of the one hundred most influential lawyers in America (1988, 1991), there were also some shady deals which emerged during the Clinton presidency.

There is no doubt that without Hillary Bill Clinton would not have become president. Bill had a serious problem with philandering which was brought into the open by Gennifer Flowers during the Clinton 1992 presidential campaign. During the famous 60 minute interview with Mike Wallace, Hillary “stood by her man” and thus, kept his candidacy viable. She also remained steadfast during the Paula Jones and subsequently the Lewinsky affair but Bill had to pay a price. As he put it during the campaign that if elected America would “get two for one.”  Hillary would become unofficial co-president. In the White House she had a special office with a large staff and was placed in charge of the Health Care Reform effort, which failed because it was held behind closed doors and Congress was never allowed to participate.

Her tenure as First Lady was also plagued by scandals of her own doing. First came the firing of the White House travel office staff which was deemed inappropriate and resulted in law suits. Then there was the failed real investment Whitewater afffair which led to criminal prosecutions. During her Arkansas days Hillary was a partner at the Rose Law Firm. Since she said that her legal work in regard to Whitewater was minimal her billing records were subpoenaed. They “could not be found” until they miraculously turned up two years later suddenly in plain sight in the private book room of the White House. Hillary was subpoenaed to testify under oath before Congress; the first time that this had ever happened to a First Lady in the history of the U.S. 

The circumstances around Vince Foster’s suicide also gave rise wonderment. He had been a friend, confidante and legal advisor of Hillary for a long time and was about to be subpoenaed in regard to the travel office affair when he was found with a gunshot wound in his head at Fort Marcy Park in neighboring Virginia. The circumstances of his death have been disputed and before the police and FBI had an opportunity to inspect his office Hillary’s Chief of Staff, Maggie Williams (who is now in charge of Hillary’s presidential campaign) as well as the Clinton’s lawyer, Bernard Nussbaum, were seen to remove stacks of papers from it. These were supposed to have contained information relating to the Whitewater deal which was also brewing at the time. For anyone interested in the timeline of the Clinton’s Whitewater problems the URL is

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/gen/resources/infocus/whitewater/timeline1.html. Although the Hillary campaign will do its level best to dismiss these aspects of her “35 years of experience” as “ancient history,” they will in all probability surface again if she were to win the nomination.

            Possibly in order to deflect attention from her political problems and to re-focus media interest on her devotion to children’s causes Hillary decided in 1995 to become an author. One year later Simon&Schuster published the result: It Takes a Village; and other lessons children teach us by Hillary Rodham Clinton. But as an article in the New York Times on April 22 1995, written by Mary B. W. Tabor, informs us this effort was likewise not without its problems. Tabor wrote that Hillary will be taking no money except expenses and royalties will be donated to charity. So far so good but,

                       

“The book will actually be written by Barbara Feinman, a journalism professor at Georgetown University in Washington. Ms. Feinman will conduct a series of interviews with Mrs. Clinton who will help edit the resulting text.”

 

Everybody knows, of course, that there is hardly a politician or politician’s wife who writes their own speeches let alone books and that ghost writers are employed for that purpose. Professor Feinman labored for seven months and was paid $120.000 for her work. This would have been ok had Hillary acknowledged Professor Feinman’s help in some form or another in the book which would have been customary. Not only did she not do so for Feinman’s contribution but instead she decided to write,

 

“It takes a village to bring a book into the world, as anyone who has written one knows. Many people have helped me to complete this one, sometimes without even knowing it. They are so numerous that I will not even attempt to acknowledge them individually, for fear that I might leave someone out. Instead I would like to thank those who encouraged and advised, read and reacted; those who typed and retyped, edited, copyedited, proofread, designed, set type, and printed; and those who kept the engines of daily life humming the whole time.”

 

The dustcover of the 10th anniversary edition names the jacket designer, the photographer and the illustrator but Professor Feinman would have searched in vain to find her name anywhere in or on the book. She swallowed her tongue even when, according to Wikipedia, Hillary stated during her book tour “I actually wrote the book … I had to write my own book because I want to stand by every word.” The article also reports that, “Clinton stated that Feinman assisted in interviews and did some editorial drafting of ‘connecting paragraphs’, while Clinton herself wrote the final manuscript in longhand.” 

Some people who value truth have a problem with that because it blurs the line between exaggeration and outright lie. It would not have mattered had this been the only instance but it is part of a pattern and as one British observer wryly remarked during her tenure as First Lady, “She is economical with the truth.” This has also been the pattern during her presidential campaign. She claimed to have been instrumental in the Ireland Peace Accord which Lord Trimble Lisnagarvey, who had received a Nobel Prize for his efforts in the process, called “a wee bit silly.” On March 5 in an interview on CNN she stated, “I negotiated open borders to let fleeing refugees into safety from Kosovo.” The problem with that statement is that the border had been opened on the previous day; Hillary’s entire visit lasted only 12 hours and was mainly a good will tour.  Most recently she told us that she braved sniper fire on her visit to Bosnia but CBS kept rolling the tape how she and daughter Chelsea were actually greeted on the tarmac by a little girl presenting flowers. As such she exhibits a penchant for bending the truth which is troublesome.

            The run for the White House was expected to be a shoe-in but something unexpected happened in Iowa: Obama won the primary and although he lost in New Hampshire he kept winning thereafter more states, more popular votes and more convention delegates than Hillary did. By March 1 her campaign was in considerable trouble and voices arose that she ought to quit, but the Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island victories revived her hopes, although Obama made up for the delegate losses in Mississippi and Wyoming. In addition the Texas win actually turned into a tie when all of the caucus votes had been counted and some late vote counts in California added a few more delegates to Obama which allowed him to retain his lead. At present Hillary can no longer win the nomination on basis of elected delegates. This is where the Florida and Michigan problem, which was mentioned last month, comes in.

The national Democratic Party had declared that if Michigan and Florida insist on holding their primary in January the elected delegates will not have an official vote at the Convention in August. Obama and many of the other democratic candidates removed their names from the Michigan ballot but Hillary did not. She received 55% of the vote which would have entitled her to 73 delegates but, since the vote had been held in defiance of party rules, they don’t officially exist. A similar situation pertains to Florida; although Obama’s name was on the ballot in that state. Hillary won 49% of the votes vs. Obama’s 33% which would have given her 105 delegates while Obama would have received 67. The delegate count is the major issue and Hillary has currently 1498 delegates to Obama’s 1629. If her 73 Michigan delegates were to be counted and the 105 from Florida she would have 1676 delegates while Obama would have 1696 because he only got 67 in Florida and as mentioned his name was not on the ballot in Michigan. The Clinton campaign has, therefore, made every effort to claim these potential delegates but has so far been unsuccessful. The Obama people are saying: rules are rules, you agreed to them earlier and it’s impermissible to change them now; if these two states wanted to hold new primaries/caucuses now there would be no objections but these elections would have to meet legal requirements for fairness. At the present time the issue what to do with the Michigan and Florida delegation in August is still undecided.

One may now ask how Hillary got into this fix she is currently in. One of the reasons is that she was overconfident and thought that she would easily sweep the primaries; so there was no need to worry about Michigan and Florida. But the major event was the totally unexpected Barack Obama phenomenon. That, “a skinny kid with a funny name,” as he referred to himself, who is half white and half black, would be taken seriously by voters had been inconceivable. In addition the man was in his first senate term and had previously served only in the Illinois legislature for eight years, so what was there to worry about?  But he surprised all of us.

Who is he? Here are the bare bone biographical facts. He was born in 1961 in Honolulu of a white mother and Kenyan father while they were students at the University of Hawaii. The father left two years later to go to Harvard for further studies and the parents divorced at some time thereafter. The mother then married an Indonesian student and when the boy was six years old they moved to Jakarta for the next 4 years. After returning to the States Obama continued to live with the maternal grandparents in Honolulu until graduation from High School. Thereafter he went to Occidental College in Los Angeles and Columbia University. Having finished college he became a community organizer in the decaying South Side of Chicago but then applied to Harvard Law School. He became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude in 1991. After returning to Chicago he worked at the law firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland as an associate attorney, lectured on constitutional law at the University of Chicago, and published his first book Dreams from my Father. A story of Race and Inheritance. He was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996 and relinquished his seat in 2004 after election to the U.S. Senate. He had come to national attention because of his Keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention where he pleaded for greater unity among the citizens of our country. In February 2007 he announced his candidacy for the 2008 presidential election. While working as a summer associate at the Chicago law firm Sidley&Austin in 1988 he met his future wife Michelle Robinson; they married in 1992 and have two daughters.

This tells us that he is an intelligent and eloquent person with a great deal of ambition but gives us little insight into his character. The details set forth now come from Dreams from my Father which should be read by everyone who wants to understand the man. The book is important because, in contrast to Hillary’s, it is obviously written by himself. It is not a political book because it was written before he had entered the political arena and it shows us the struggles of a human soul in search of an identity.

Barack Hussein Obama got his name from his Kenyan father with precisely the same name. The middle name Hussein, which is now a point some of his detractors delight in, was his paternal grandfather’s first name. When Obama’s parents met at the University of Hawaii in a Russian studies class the mother was only 18 years old. She had a strong social conscience for the downtrodden and introduced him to her parents who liked Barack senior. But a black son-in-law was not exactly what they had envisioned for their future. The circumstances of the mother’s marriage to Barack sr. were in Obama’s words, “a bit murky,” which has most recently provided grist for the mills of some of his opponents. As Obama wrote:

 

“There’s no record of a real wedding, a cake, a ring, a giving away of the bride, No families were in attendance; it’s not even clear that people back in Kansas were fully informed. Just a small civil ceremony, a justice of the peace. The whole thing seemed so fragile, in retrospect, so haphazard. And perhaps my grandparents intended it to be, a trial that would pass, just a matter of time, so long as they maintained a stiff upper lip and didn’t do anything drastic.”

 

Let us remember this was 1961, a time where laws against intermarriage were still on the books in half of the U.S. and had his parent met in one of the southern states Obama sr. might well have been lynched and his mother cast out. In this country the term was miscegenation, while in Nazi Germany the father would have been executed and the mother sent to a concentration camp because of Rassenschande. But they were in Hawaii where there were hardly any blacks, racial mixing was commonplace and a brown boy was no exception. His four years from age 6-10 are, however, also of interest; not only for character formation but also for the light they shed on an aspect of American foreign policy most of us are not familiar with. Obama’s stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, had to interrupt his studies in Hawaii as a result of the Indonesian revolution which removed Sukarno from power and installed Suharto in his place. This was at a time when Diem had already been murdered in Vietnam and U.S. troops were pouring into that country. Washington had become concerned that Indonesia might fall into communist hands and there is good evidence that the upheavals from 1965-1967 were not entirely due to internal disputes within the country but had considerable help from the CIA.

These events had a direct impact on Obama’s life. We don’t know exactly when he and his mother arrived in Jakarta but it must have been either in late 1967 or early 1968. At that time the major anti-communist purges were over, Suharto enjoyed good relations with the U.S. and American contractors were pouring into the country. I have discussed the Indonesian situation of those years in “Obstacles to Peace” (May 1, 2007), in relation to John Perkins’ book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Perkins’ story begins in 1971, the year Obama and his mother left the country. It provides an insight into the feeling of the locals and corroborates what one finds in Obama’s book. The May 1, 2007 article is worth re-reading in the present context.

Obama’s stepfather had not voluntarily terminated his studies in Hawaii abruptly, but as part of the ongoing “purge” the visas of students in foreign countries were revoked and he was forced to return. When Obama and his mother arrived in Jakarta she found her husband a changed man. He was still polite and helpful but had become taciturn and was no longer the hopeful, joyful person she had married. He evaded her questions and she only found out the reason after talking to some of his relatives. They told her that upon Lolo’s return he had been arrested and then sent by the military, which ruled the country in those days, to the jungles of New Guinea for a year. This happened to all foreign students. Those who had studied in communist block nations were even worse off, they had to serve longer terms and some of them were never seen again.

To supplement her husband’s meager income Obama’s mother took a job teaching English to Indonesian businessmen at the American embassy and her experience, as related in Obama’s book, confirms, as mentioned above, what Perkins wrote. Indonesia was regarded as an American dominion to be developed on the American model with a hand picked government and its massive corruption was overlooked.

Between the age of 6 and 10 children have already reached some understanding of what is going on in the larger world around them and although Obama only mentions personal stories in his book he must have seen and heard what transpired around him. In February of 1934 I was eight and a half years old but I still remember vividly the day when I came home from school and found the trolleys standing empty on their tracks. When I asked the parents what had happened I was told that the Reds (Sozis, socialists) had called for a general strike because they wanted to take over the government. At night while my brother and I lay in our beds we heard cannon fire from the neighboring 19th district. They were shelling the large communal housing project (Karl Marx Hof, renamed by the Dollfusz government to Heiligenstädter Hof) which was one of the centers of socialist resistance. As mentioned in War&Mayhem (p.86) we inspected the result on the following weekend with our grandmother. Episodes of this type are unforgettable even when the child does not fully understand the political context at the time.

Thus, when Obama’s stepfather exhorted the little boy to be strong he knew what he was talking about. Furthermore, Obama learned two more aspects of life in those days. His consternation about seeing in a copy of Life magazine at the embassy a picture of a black man having tried to bleach his skin so that he could pass in white society produced a profound shock which only those of us can understand who have been discriminated against because of ancestry. The other aspect was Power. Although the child was not confronted with it, the mother was and I shall now let Obama speak for himself,

 

“Power. The word fixed in my mother’s mind like a curse. In America, it had remained generally hidden from view until you dug beneath the surface of things; until you visited an Indian reservation or spoke to a black person whose trust you had earned. But here [Indonesia] power was undisguised, indiscriminate, naked, always fresh in the memory. Power had taken Lolo and yanked him back into line just when he thought he’d escaped, making him feel its weight, letting him know that his life wasn’t his own.  That’s how things were; you couldn’t change it you must just live by the rules, so simple once you learned them. And so Lolo had made his peace with power, learned the wisdom of forgetting, just as his brother-in-law had done, making millions as a high official in the national oil company, just as another brother had tried to do, only he had miscalculated and was now reduced to stealing pieces of silverware whenever he came to visit, selling them later for loose cigarettes.”

 

Those of us who have lived under dictatorial regimes be they of the Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet, or whatever variety, surely can relate to what Obama said here and, sadly enough, power is again at work to derail his bid for the presidency. In asmuch as his opponents have so far been unable to find major personal failings they have resorted to character assassination via guilt by association. His membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ under the Reverend Jeremiah Wright is condemned on a daily basis by some TV pundits in spite of the fact that Obama has disavowed the more radical rhetoric of the pastor. Although the entire Obama campaign was founded on reconciliation of the various factions that divide the country he is not allowed to pursue this road. Race and gender dominate the public discourse. Obama’s masterful speech at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on March 18, where he tried to take the racial issue to a higher plane, was not good enough for his detractors. Instead of healing the rifts in the country, they are widened by what can only be called vicious propaganda.

Others, who do not “play the race card,” point instead to his “lack of specificity” in regard to the programs he intends to enact if he were to win the presidency; while still others, especially in the Clinton campaign, point to his relative lack of government experience. This supposedly renders him unsuited for the role of Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. The first point is clarified in Obama’s second book, The Audacity of Hope; Thoughts on reclaiming the American dream, published in 2006 which discusses his political views in detail. The sad fact of life is that those who criticize him on this point have failed to read the book. Those who charge him with lack of experience would profit from reading Dreams from my Father because it reveals how he became the person he is. His is the experience of life under a variety of difficult circumstances which will allow him to use judgment when to employ the military, under what circumstances, rather than to use it as an instrument of naked power.

Our country stands at a crossroad. The next few months will show whether or not we can rise above the divisive elements in our land or succumb to them. The current election cycle will be a referendum not only on race, gender, national security and domestic issues but also on the intelligence of American voters. Will they be swayed by endlessly repeated sound bites or will they look at the character of the candidates as revealed by what they have written and done? But since race and Obama’s church have become such a major issue it will be discussed in the next installment in more detail.







May 1, 2008

RACE IN AMERICA

            Whenever the subject of race comes up in today’s political climate the mind tends to jump to “black and white,” with its literal as well as figurative implications. In the literal sense the debate has been reignited by Barack Obama’s bid for the presidency but in the figurative context the old stereotype between good and bad still lurks in the background. In the old black and white Western movies the good guys wore white hats while black hats were bestowed on the bad ones. This stereotype is deeply woven into the fabric of America’s culture and will be very difficult to overcome in the near future. Although the new voting generation no longer adheres to it, as the youth vote for Obama shows, younger people do not as yet have the power of the media at their disposal. But it will be the media that will, to a large extent, decide the outcome of the election.

The methods which are used to literally denigrate Obama’s candidacy have become apparent and will be discussed on another occasion but to understand America’s racial problem we have to go back to the very first European settlers of this country. Their belief systems and attitudes towards the indigenous population colloquially referred to as Redskins set the stage for all the subsequent events.

Although the political character of the country tends to be defined by the Puritans who arrived in the Mayflower in 1620 they were not the first because Jamestown, in today’s Virginia, had been founded 13 years earlier. But the motives, which sent these British and Dutch colonists to the New World, differed between North and South. The Virginians had come for fame and fortune while the Puritans intended to establish a Calvinist Kingdom of God in their realm. Thus, the split between North and South which eventually culminated in the civil War was unavoidable. The North won this battle and with it came religious intolerance. Since for the Puritans even the Anglican Church was much too liberal they could not possibly tolerate Catholics. Although this religious conflict never assumed the magnitude it had in Europe it did profoundly affect subsequent immigrants up to this day as will be shown later and it aggravated the battle between Protestant England and Catholic France for the domination of this continent. In spite of our so-called “secular” country, religion is still a powerful force and is again harnessed for political purpose during this election cycle.

When the first colonists arrived their survival depended entirely on the good will of the locals who were misnamed Indians, due to Columbus’ original mistake. The English language does not allow a differentiation between the inhabitants of the Asian subcontinent who derive their name from the Indus River and the people who inhabited the Americas but the German language is more precise in this respect. The local population is called Indianer while the people who inhabit India are Inder. The semantic difference might be small but precision in thought and language is always beneficial. Neither Redskins nor Indians is acceptable any more in polite conversation so they are now referred to as “native Americans,” although the vast white population who arrived since the 1600s and stayed here can rightfully now be regarded also as “native.” I shall avoid political correctness and since we are speaking English in this country I will continue to refer, for historical reasons, to the pre-colonial inhabitants of this country as Indians. 

The Indians helped the Puritans to build Plymouth and the first Thanksgiving, albeit fictionalized subsequently, has become the symbol of good will between the races. But good will evaporated rather early when the settlers arrived in larger numbers and brought not only their weapons with them but also ideas of how this world should be run. Foremost among them, apart from religion, was the notion that an individual could buy and own a piece of land which could be held in perpetuity. For the Indians this was unheard of, if the land belonged to anyone it was to The Great Spirit or the tribe. But buying and selling land was not in their vocabulary. As the colonial settlements expanded they inevitably encroached upon more and more of the various tribes’ hunting grounds and clashes became inevitable. In the South it took only a few months before peace was established for some time with the marriage between John Rolfe and Pocahontas. But this miscegenation would have been unthinkable for the Puritans in the North and within less than 20 years they had their first full-blown war on their hands.

The so-called Pequot war from 1637-1638 deserves to be recalled in some detail because all the other “Indian” wars were fought for the same reasons and followed the same pattern. The main problem was control of the fur trade. The Pequot preferred the Dutch while the Mohegan traded with the British. Trade involves an exchange of goods and the local currency was wampum – a string of artistically arranged white shell beads which symbolized internal energies of peace, harmony and contentment. Up to 1633 the Pequot had a monopoly on its manufacture but the Massachusetts’s Bay Colony had also started to produce it which was a further cause of aggravation. Initially isolated killings involving colonists as well as Indians led to revenge and eventually “massive retaliation” by what has been called the Misistuk massacre (today’s Mystic in Connecticut). The leader of the colonial militia, John Mason, reinforced by Mohegan, Narragansett and Niantic warriors made a surprise attack on the village of Mystic but since the Pequot warriors were engaged on another raid at the time mainly women and children were left. The village was burned to the ground and orders were given that if any Pequot attempted to escape the flames they should be killed too (May 26, 1637). The Narragansett and Mohegan warriors who valued hand to hand battle where they could distinguish themselves by individual valor were supposedly horrified by the way the English fought their war and went home. John Mason on the other hand is said to have proclaimed that this “was the act of a God who ‘laughed his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to scorn making [the Pequot] as a fiery Oven . . . thus did the Lord judge among the Heathen, filling [Mystic] with dead Bodies’” (Wikipedia; the Pequot war).   

This was the pattern: use the locals as long as they are useful and when they develop ideas of their own get rid of them with all means at your disposal. The other aspect is that colonization of North and South America would not have been possible had the colonists, or conquistadores, not exploited the internal tensions between the various local tribes. There were several additional conflicts with associated massacres over the next 100 years but the first full blown world-war erupted in 1754 with what is known by the French as: L’affaire Jumonville. It lit the fuse for what is called here the French and Indian War while it spread to Europe as the Seven Year’s War. While the details are disputed the outcome of the Jumonville affair was aptly summarized by Horace Walpole (1717-1797) as “a volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America that set the world on fire.”  That “young Virginian” was 22 year old Major George Washington of the Virginia militia.

The French as well as the English had steadily expanded their trading posts and forts and both claimed the territory between the Appalachians and the Mississippi from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, loosely known as the Ohio Country. Initially a French expedition under Céloron established French sovereignty by burying plates to register their claim to possession and whenever English traders arrived they were told that they had trespassed on French property (1747). But the local tribes were not pleased with the French because they already traded with the British and when the French subsequently built Fort Le Boeuf (today’s Waterford PA) the local Mingo Chief protested and so did the Iroquois. The governor of Virginia Robert Dinwiddie was also confronted with a dilemma. Fur trading with the Indians was big business and if the French now asserted authority a lot of people would lose a lot of money and that was unacceptable.

The governor, therefore, sent Major Washington with a message to the French commander at Fort Le Boeuf in October of 1973 to demand immediate French withdrawal. On his way he met the Indian Chief Tanaghrisson who had his own reasons to want the French out and they proceeded together for the meeting with the commander of the French forces. When Washington and his little group arrived with a Dutch interpreter they were treated to dinner by the French but the demand for a withdrawal of French troops was politely but firmly refused.

Washington had to return empty handed but a military conflict was now unavoidable. It came in May of 1754 with what has been called the Battle of Jumonville Glen. The details depend on whom you listen to but the facts are that Washington who had in the meantime been promoted to Lt. Colonel had with a small group of militia and native auxiliaries stumbled upon a small group of French military under the command of Joseph Coulon de Villiers, Sieur de Jumonville. The French had 31and the British 40 men. During the skirmish 10 French soldier were killed and the others taken prisoner. Jumonville was initially taken prisoner but then killed by Tanaghrisson. Thereafter Washington retired to hastily erected Fort Necessity and awaited the French counterattack. The fort was poorly planned and the expected attack from Fort Duquesne (today’s Pittsburgh), led by Jumonville’s brother, resulted in a French victory. Washington was taken prisoner and made to sign a document in which he admitted responsibility for the murder of Jumonville. This document was then used for propaganda purposes in Europe to show the brutality of the Americans. Washington did not know French and when he signed that fateful document he supposedly did not realize that he had accepted responsibility for the murder of Jumonville rather than for him having been killed. 

In the ensuing war the French used their Indian auxiliaries while the British relied on the Iroquois Confederation. When the war was over in 1763 England and Prussia (which had been supported by the British) emerged victorious. France had lost: Canada, all it possessions east of the Mississippi, its last remaining foothold in India as well as several islands in the West Indies. The country was financially exhausted and thoroughly humiliated. The British Empire had emerged but so had Prussia, as a continental power, to the chagrin of later British and French generations.

When one is aware of how America’s Indians had helped the British and the colonists in French and Indian War, one may be somewhat surprised at what Benjamin Franklin wrote 13 years later in the Declaration Independence. As the last one in the long list of King George’s many sins which necessitated breaking the ties with the motherland one finds,

 

“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.”

 

George Washington’s signature does not show up on this document and he might have argued for the omission of that paragraph because he would badly need the savages in the upcoming war. The American Revolutionary War was also a civil war among the Indian tribes and it split the Iroquois Federation. Only students of history are aware that two wars were fought simultaneously at that time: in the East against the British and in the West against the Indian tribes. When Great Britain lost it was a disaster for the Indians because the treaty which had limited Western expansion of settlements was void and the Americans could now sweep unopposed to the West. The culmination came after the Civil War when young men who had served on either side of the war found themselves out of jobs and joined the army. The Indians had to fight their last rearguard battles before being finally restricted to a few reservations. The mental attitude of the army towards the tribes was perhaps best expressed by General Philip Sheridan in 1869. One of his duties was to ensure that the Indians remained on their allotted reservations and would not harass the ever increasing number of settlers. At a conference with 50 Indian chiefs, in what is now Oklahoma, the Comanche chief introduced himself as, “MeToch-a-way, me good Indian.”  Sheridan supposedly smirked saying, “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.” The phrase subsequently morphed into, “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” and has persisted in this form for the enemy du jour.

Having solved the Indian problem in this manner and populated the West Coast the next goal for “Go West young man,” was Hawaii. This is the island where another clash of civilizations in the true sense of the word had taken place in 1779. When Captain Cook arrived in January of that year he was at first welcomed, having been mistaken for a divine messenger. But when he insisted on the European notion pf private property rights, which was unknown by the natives, trouble started brewing. Since the locals shared everything, they thought the Europeans would do likewise and took from the English whatever they desired. Real trouble erupted when Cook, after having left, was forced to return within ten days because of a split foremast which required replacement. By then it was obvious that he had worn out his welcome. When one of the locals disappeared with Cook’s cutter the friendship had come to an end. A scuffle ensued shots were fired and one version has it that the first one came from James Bligh of Bounty fame who was Cook’s cartographer. The Hawaiians were however undeterred and killed Cook. Revenge was not long in coming in form of missionaries who brought not only the Bible but also infectious diseases previously unknown in these islands which decimated the population.

The commercial value of the islands for sugarcane and pineapple production was soon discovered but the islanders were not used to back breaking work and a labor force had to be imported. American agents began to scour China and later on Japan for cheap workers, which in turn became the source of America’s next race problem. In this connection it is also interesting to look back at the November 2001 installment (Hawaii) of this website not only in relation to Hawaii but also to our continuing “War on Terrorism.”

The Japanese had had bad experiences with Christian missionaries when the Portuguese first arrived so they had restricted all trade with Western countries to a single small island in the bay of Nagasaki for Chinese and some Portuguese traders. But this was not to the liking of America’s businessmen who clamored for an open door policy in China and Japan. Commodore Mathew Calbraith Perry was dispatched with a small fleet and a friendly letter by President Millard Fillmore in 1853 to assure the Japanese emperor “that I entertain the kindest feelings toward your majesty’s person and government, and that I have no other object in sending him to Japan but to propose to your imperial majesty that the United States and Japan should live in friendship and have commercial intercourse with each other.” The message also pointed out that America and Japan are practically neighbors because it took only eighteen days from California or Oregon to reach the emperor’s domain and in case he might have second thoughts the message was reinforced by Perry’s guns trained on his capital.  

The Japanese reluctantly acceded to the demands and along with goods flowed people into Hawaii. But since the working conditions on the plantations were miserable to the highest degree a great many subsequently removed themselves to the mainland. The Chinese had arrived earlier in Hawaii as well as on the continent and when the1850s gold rush was on they diligently mined for that precious metal. As long as it was abundant nobody cared, but when the mines began to be depleted it became: gold for Americans and not for Chinese. The Chinese were segregated into their own communities, condemned to menial labor which included laying the tracks for the Central Pacific railroad, while those for the Union Pacific railroad were laid mainly by the equally despised Irish. Only the Utah stretch which joined the two lines at Promontory Point (1869) was accomplished with Mormons doing the work because Brigham Young was not interested in letting “Gentiles” (i.e. anybody not of the Mormon faith) come into his bailiwick and potentially take up residence.

The influx of Chinese into California had created a problem and legal measures were taken. In 1862 a monthly $2.50 police tax had to be paid by every Chinese person and in 1878 Chinese were ruled ineligible for American citizenship. Immigration was severely restricted and the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers, regardless whether they were skilled or unskilled, for ten years. California also banned intermarriage between Chinese and whites. One of the consequences was that Chinese men could no longer visit with family at home nor could they bring their spouses. For some time Chinese school children were separated from whites but this segregation attempt did not survive legal challenges. The “self-evident truth that all men are created equal” obviously was not applicable to red or black skinned people as well as to those of the “yellow race.”

With the “opening of Japan” immigrants from those islands had also started to arrive in larger numbers threatening the status quo. By 1908 President Theodore Roosevelt was sufficiently concerned about this dilution of the racial stock of the country that he had to send a lengthy note to Senator Philander Chase Knox who was Chairman of the Committee on Coast Defenses and about to join the Cabinet of the incoming Taft administration. The letter is definitely worth reading in its entirety and can be found on http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/trjapan.htm. Here is an excerpt of Roosevelt’s assessment of the situation.

 

 “She {Japan] is a formidable military power. Her people have peculiar fighting capacity. They are very proud, very warlike, very sensitive, and are influenced by two contrary feelings; namely. a great self-confidence, both ferocious and conceited, due to their victory over the mighty empire of Russia; and a great touchiness because they would like to be considered as on a full equality with, as one of the brotherhood of, Occidental nations, and have been bitterly humiliated to find that even their allies, the English, and their friends, the Americans, won’t admit them to association and citizenship, as they admit the least advanced and most decadent European peoples. Moreover, Japan’s population is increasing rapidly and demands an outlet; and the Japanese laborers, small farmers, and petty traders would, if permitted, flock by the hundred thousand into the United States, Canada and Australia.”

 

The proposed remedy was that the U.S. would have to close its borders, build up its navy to prevent any military moves by Japan but the administration should do its utmost not to give unnecessary offense. After having discussed what was supposed to be done in Hawaii he wrote the following prophetic paragraph,

 

“As regards the mainland our policy should have three sides and should be shaped, not to meet the exigencies of this year or next but to meet what may occur for the next few decades. Japan is poor and is therefore reluctant to go to war. Moreover, Japan is vitally interested in China and on the Asiatic mainland and her wiser statesmen, will if possible, prevent her getting entangled in a war with us . . . .

There is no more important continuing feature of our foreign policy than this in reference to our dealing with Japan; the whole question of our dealings with the Orient is certain to grow in importance. I do not believe that there will be war, but there is always the chance that war will come; and if it did come, the calamity would be very great. And while I believe we would win, there is at least a chance of disaster. We should therefore do everything in our power to guard against the possibility of war by preventing the occurrence of conditions which would invite war and by keeping our navy so strong that war may not come or that we may be successful if it does come.”

 

Teddy Roosevelt’s advice was only partially heeded. The navy was indeed increased but at an international conference in the winter of 1921-22, held in Washington D.C., the Japanese were allowed only three “big warships” for every five for Britain and the United States. When the negotiators returned home there was universal indignation and Japan’s Chief of the Naval Board, Commander Kato Kanji, was so upset that he regarded a war between the United States and Japan as having begun. America’s subsequent policies especially under Franklin Roosevelt openly favored China over Japan and made demands the Japanese could not possibly meet without loss of honor. He cut off their steel as well as oil supplies and deliberately left the Pacific fleet exposed in Pearltheir steel as well as oil supplies and deliberately left the Pacific fleet exposed in Pearl Harbor rather than returning it to its home port of San Diego. He baited the Japanese to attack, which they did, and they were condemned for treachery thereafter.

While discrimination against the Chinese and Japanese was racially motivated, that against the massive influx of Irish was ethnically based. The Irish were poor and in the 1850s no national group was considered lower than an Irishman. Being Catholic was an additional strike against them. The Chicago Post wrote, “The Irish fill our prisons, our poor houses . . . Scratch a convict or a pauper, and the chances are that you tickle the skin of an Irish Catholic. Putting them on a boat and sending them home would end crime in this country.” But the Irish persevered and a hundred years later an Irish Catholic became president of the country.

The next big immigration wave in the 1890s, which was equally resented, consisted of Jews from Polish Russia who had fled pogroms. Discrimination in regard to housing, admission to social clubs, and institutions of higher learning was likewise the rule which ended only after WWI. But even in 1958 when we moved to Grosse Pointe in Michigan that suburb of Detroit was still off limits for my Jewish co-workers.

What the Asians, Irish and the Jews were in the past century are now the Mexicans who are engaged in a peaceful reconquista of the states they had lost during President Polk’s war. Driven by economic necessity and looking for a better life they are being denied entry because the country needs to retain its white identity. In imitation of the Israelis we are building a wall on our southern border to stem the tide and illegal immigration is one of the issues in the current presidential campaign. The fact that Mexicans are also mainly Catholic is another unspoken hurdle.

All of the mentioned racial and ethnic groups have eventually found acceptance once they were integrated into mainstream America, but this goal has not yet been fully achieved by the black skinned population of our country. In contrast to everybody else who had come voluntarily the Negroes were brought here in chains, sold to the highest bidder and then put to work for the rest of their lives under, at times, atrocious conditions. Contemporary descriptions of the conditions on the slave transports such as the 1788 report by Alexander Falconbridge, The Slave ship’s Surgeon, and Life Inside a Slaver by James Arnold written in 1787 (Life Under Sail by Frank Snyder 1964; the Macmillan Company) are most valuable. These reports are truthful, not tainted by current propaganda from either side, and they explain the wounds which have failed to heal in some members of the black community.

These wounds run deep and it is difficult for the white population to comprehend the burdens which have been placed on the backs of the “Negroes.” Because the issue of black versus white is so highly emotionally charged and has been pushed to the fore in recent weeks it will be discussed further next month.







June 1, 2008

BLACK AND WHITE

            The previous installment documented America’s troubled racial history in regard to the Native American “Indians”, the Japanese, the Chinese, as well as with ethnic groups such as the Irish and Jews. But all of these difficulties are in the past and literally pale against the problems caused by the importation of black Africans to our shores. They are the only group of people who neither were here in the first place nor came voluntarily. The males were brought in chains, while the women were allowed to move around to a certain degree on board the slave ships and some served the sexual needs of the ships’ captains. Once sold on the slave markets, males and females became property, with no human rights; some women were raped while others sought to make their lot easier by ingratiating themselves with the master. This led to the creation of the “American Negro” with varying shades of skin color. 

            White America prospered from the human trade with Africa via what was called “the rum triangle.” The North, especially Rhode Island, built the ships and supplied the crews that sailed to Africa’s West Coast where they picked up the human cargo. It was delivered to the West Indies and the ships were then loaded with sugar and molasses to return to New England. Back home the cargo was refined to rum which in turn was then sold to the African traders. The triangle had originally started in European ports and went from there to Africa, then the West Indies and back to Europe. But as America began to flourish the European leg of the journey declined and the American increased. From the West Indies the slaves were sent mainly to the cotton and tobacco plantations in the South while some ended up in the North for a variety of manual labor jobs. It is no secret that America’s prosperity did not result only from Yankee ingenuity but from the hard labor of Africans which has never been officially acknowledged.

            White America intermittently made gestures of good will. Slaves were freed first in the North and with the help of churches the Underground Railroad was established to bring slaves up from the South. Eventually Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. But although the Civil War officially ended slavery, the ex-slaves were still not accorded full human rights until the Johnson administration in the 1960s. Although while we are all equal now on paper true equality, which consists of mutual respect, is still in the distant future for a great many of us. Racism is officially banned and hate crimes prosecuted but laws are unevenly enforced and prejudice persists on both sides.

            Why should this be so?  It is truly a case of black and white. For a white person in white society, be it Europe or America, the color black has an ominous ring to it. Death is depicted in a black robe, the Black Death i.e. the plague ravaged Europe, the devil is black, black mass is satanic, a scoundrel is a black-guard, we are being blackmailed, we are being blackballed, and last not least there is the black sheep of the family. These concepts are ingrained in our culture and actually go beyond it all the way to the Himalayas. In Tibet, Yama, the Lord of Death is likewise black. Among Hindus the three gunas, namely the forces governing nature are also depicted in colors. White is given to Sattvas which denote: purity, steadiness, goodness, wisdom. Red is the color of Rajas: activity, energy, and power; while black is assigned to the Tamas which represent: inertia, dullness, restraint of activity and sloth.

            These are the obstacles the American Negro was and still is confronted with. Apart from these cultural prejudices, which are no longer on the conscious level, there is the additional problem that blacks and whites are if not outright afraid of each other, at least not quite comfortable when in the minority. I have discussed this aspect previously in the October 1, 2005 installment (The Dark Side) and need not repeat it now. Let me instead relate how our ex-slaves have coped with the problem because this aspect eludes white America to a large extent. This is exemplified on a daily basis by some of our cable TV pundits who act out racism while verbally protesting against it.  

            The race issue came to a head with the Obama campaign for the presidency and showed the raw wounds as they still exist. It started with Barack Obama’s search for identity. As a genuine African American he was confronted with the problem of belonging. He clearly is not white and therefore suffered all the indignities that are showered on “people of color;” but for our blacks he wasn’t black enough. He lacked the slavery background and, therefore, the associated accumulated anger. To his credit he decided enough is enough, there needed to be an end to this division and he would set out to breach this gulf for which his genes would make him eminently suitable. Inasmuch as he had grown up with white grandparents he was comfortable in white society and during his college years he was mainly in a black environment. He thought he knew both sides of the divide. Full of good will and imbued with his mother’s social conscience, he set out to work with the poorest of the poor as a community organizer in Chicago’s South Side. It may not be irrelevant that his boss who gave him the job was a Jew because the relationship between the Afro-American community and the Jewish power structure is somewhat tenuous.

            To bring better living conditions to the poor was not quite as easy as young Barack had thought and he was told that if he really wanted to get something done he needed the help of the black churches and that the most influential person to see in the area was the Reverend Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ. The Reverend, who has now become a symbol for everything that is wrong with America was the son of a Baptist minister who had grown up in Philadelphia, then joined the marines and according to Dreams From My Father (Obama’s first book) was “dabbling with liquor, Islam, and black nationalism in the sixties.” But he subsequently went to Howard University and “then the University of Chicago, where he spent six years studying for a Ph.D. in the history of religion. He learned Hebrew and Greek, read the literature of Tillich and Niebuhr and the black liberation theologians.” Wright had taken over as pastor of the church in 1972. By creating a variety of social programs he united black middle and upper class with the poor members of his church, which also included some white people who still lived in the area. His efforts had been successful and the previously decaying membership had shown healthy growth.

The biggest challenge for the church, as the Reverend explained to Barack, was to attract intelligent young people. “’ They worry about looking soft. They worry about what their buddies are gonna say about ‘em. They tell themselves church is a woman’s thing - that it’s a sign of weakness for a man to admit that he’s got spiritual needs.’” Since Obama was one of the people so described he became rather uncomfortable and diverted the conversation to what he wanted to accomplish through his community work. Whereupon the Reverend uttered these prophetic words; “I’ll try to help you if I can. But you should know that having us involved in your efforts isn’t necessarily a feather in your cap.”

            Obama had not been raised in a church-attending environment. His mother who was interested in all religions had tried to pick the best from each one and had stressed the spirit over dogma. He had, therefore, never felt the need to belong to any specific denomination. But “if you want to work with churches you better belong to one” he was told; so he attended a Sunday morning service. That was the day when Reverend Wright gave a sermon on “The Audacity of Hope.” Using biblical analogies he talked about the hardships the congregation faced in their daily lives, the callousness of policy makers in the White House and State House as well as the personal problems of even well to do people regardless of race. But in spite of all that there was still the hope to make this a better world with and through Jesus, whom the congregation thanked with dancing and shouting. It was a deeply moving emotional experience for Barack who on that day became a Christian and a member of Trinity. He had now experienced belonging and was grateful for the next 20 years. The Audacity of Hope became the title of Obama’s second book and the hallmark of his run for office, first in Illinois, then Washington and now the presidency. 

            But something happened in March of this year Obama had not foreseen and the Reverend had warned him about. To understand the dilemma Obama found and still finds himself in we now have to go back to his success in Mississippi on March 11 of this year; a day which became a watershed day for his campaign. After Super Tuesday, which was supposed to have clinched Hillary’s bid for the nomination; Obama was on “a roll.” He had won votes from whites and blacks and the goal of bridging the gap between the races seemed in sight.  But when the exit polls of that Tuesday primary showed that Afro-Americans had voted as a block with over 90% for Obama hurricane warning flags went up in certain quarters. The next primary, in Pennsylvania, was six weeks away and if he were to win in that state the race would have, for all practical purposes, been finished for Hillary. I don’t know who did what but that a well oiled propaganda machine went into high gear of that there is no doubt. By the evening of March 12, while all the other networks registered surprise at Obama’s unexpected vote margins, the Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity of the Hannity and Colmes program had gotten the word: Stop Obama! I don’t know who issued the order, or if it was an order, but what happened thereafter was such a classic piece of Goebbels propaganda that the subsequent events could hardly have been due to happenstance.

            For my European friends I now need to explain that the Hannity and Colmes program which discusses current political affairs on a nightly basis, has the largest number of all news channel viewers at that particular time slot. The “fair and balanced” reporting, which is the Fox channel’s logo, requires that the Catholic conservative Republican Sean Hannity be paired with the Jewish liberal Democrat Alan Colmes. While the latter is polite to the guests on the program, Hannity never learned in catechism class that humility is one of the Christian virtues and mea culpas are also foreign to him. He is the ideal attack dog and when he has a bone in his mouth he will not let go. The Reverend Wright, his successor the Reverend Moss and other acquaintances of Obama are now endlessly evoked in the attempt to paint Obama as a black supremacist and to make matter worse an “elitist,” whom low and middle class white Americans will never vote for in November.

            The Reverend Wright had actually been interviewed on that show on March 2, 2007 after Obama had declared his intention to run for the presidency and the transcript is available on the Internet. This interview is important for what followed in March of this year and explained what the Reverend and his church is all about. When Hannity accused the pastor of racism the pastor asked him whether or not he had ever read the books which discussed black liberation theology. Hannity obviously had not; so he dodged the issue and kept hammering on the racism charge. When Colmes took his turn he told Wright that his church is regarded as “separatist” and Obama is, therefore, “accused by default of being a black separatist. Can you straighten us out please?” I shall condense now the pastor’s reply: “The African-centered point of view does not assume superiority, nor does it assume separatism. It assumes Africans speaking for themselves as subjects in history not objects in history.”  The principles are self-determination but “not saying we are superior to anybody.” “When you are saying an African-centered way of thinking, African-centered philosophy, African-centered theology, you’re talking about one center [in contrast to the dominant European-centered culture]. We’re talking about something that’s different. And different doesn’t mean deficient . . .  nor does it mean superior or inferior.” When Colmes suggested that other black churches are pretty much saying the same thing and that his church is singled out merely because of Obama’s run for the presidency the Reverend heartily agreed.

Hannity then broke in and suggested that we should “talk about the American community, instead of black, the American family, instead of black . . . “ Wright interrupted him and said: “Let me suggest that you do some reading before you come and talk to me about my field. I’m not trying to talk to you about – no, no no.” Hannity continued “that would bring us together.” The rest of the interview was foreshortened with a snippet quote and ended with Hannity saying “I’ve got to run. Thank you for being with us.” Whereupon the Reverend replied: “Why don’t you quote everything? Thank you for having me, sir.”

It needs to be known now that the Reverend is no “shrinking violet.” He is imbued with the spirit of the biblical prophets and has taken it upon himself to live up to his illustrious namesake. Official misconduct in high places is not to be condoned but condemned in no uncertain terms. Just as the Jeremiah of old had not minced words when confronting the ruling circles and false prophets of his day, so does the current one who is cut from the same cloth. In addition one needs to know that Sunday services in this country’s African community are considerably livelier and emotional with jumping and shouting than we are used to in normative Christianity. They resemble “holy rollers” of revival meetings as they are held in the South rather than what happens in the staid North. One is tempted to compare it with Nietzsche’s difference between Apollonian and Dionysian conduct, where the latter evokes either fear or ridicule from onlookers. Furthermore, at the pastor’s retirement earlier this year his church had prepared DVDs of his previous sermons which could be purchased on the Internet. These provided unintended grist for the propaganda mill. From hundreds of thousands of words the juiciest morsels were then skillfully extracted and 30 second sound bites are now being drummed over and over again into the viewer’s mind, not only on the major news channels but also on You Tube.

 

After having read the March 2007 transcript I heeded the Reverend’s advice. Although I had been working with people of African descent for the major portion of my professional life we knew and respected each other only as individuals. But I, like many others, had never bothered to find out the reasons why after so many years after the abolition of slavery there was still so much anger in the black community.

From the Internet I learned that the drive for separation from the white community had started not only with Marcus Garvey’s “back to Africa” campaign, which I have discussed partly in War&Mayhem, but also in the city of Detroit where I had spent a major portion of my professional life. A stranger of mixed racial ancestry had appeared there out of nowhere some time prior to 1930 whose name is just as much a mystery as his background is. He is referred to as W.D. Fard, on other occasions as Wallace Fard Muhammad, or F. Mohammed Ali among other similar variations. His main concern was the well-being of Detroit’s Negro population and in 1930 he founded the “Nation of Islam (NOI)” for his constituency. The religion he taught was rather unusual and since the NOI is still with us and directly relates to the Obama campaign I shall summarize it here as obtained from Wikipedia.

The overriding message was that Armageddon was around the corner and it was the duty of the black people to discover their origin and purpose. The American Negroes were the only people on earth who had been deprived of their history, their names and their religion.  Christianity was imposed upon them, just as their names, including that of Negro, by the white slave-masters and oppressors. The original people on earth had been created by Allah from the dark substance of space, they were by nature good and their religion was Islam. But an evil scientist by name of Yacub started advanced gene manipulation on the island of Patmos by grafting “black sperm” to “white sperm”(other sources say brown sperm) and over a period of hundreds of years he and his descendants succeeded in creating a bleached subgroup, the white race. These “white devils” would rule the earth for 6000 years but their demise had begun in 1914 and they will be completely annihilated in the near future by means of the Mother Wheel which circles in space and was first described in Ezekiel’s vision (Ez. 1). To prepare the Afro-Americans for this event they had to separate themselves from the white devils; they had to become independent in regard to economics, religion, and nationhood. They had to lead moral lives and there was to be no drinking, gambling, or physical abuse of black women. To protect one's family from attacks by violent white America the young males, the “Fruit of Islam,” were trained in the martial arts but only for defensive rather than offensive purposes.

Mr. Fard had obviously used Old and New Testament sources in fashioning his theory. Patmos and Armageddon come from the Revelation of St. John the Divine who wrote his terrifying visions while exiled to that island during the persecutions under Domitian and Yakub reminds one, of course, of the biblical Jacob. It is small wonder that Jews, especially, would take exception to this characterization of their ancestor. What is less well known is that apart from the biblical Jacob there was a historic Yakeb-Baal (also referred to as Yak-Baal) who was a ruler of the Hyksos Dynasty in Egypt. His Semitic name was transcribed to Yakubher and he is listed as Meruserre in the Egyptian records. I have previously referred to this person in The Moses Legacy because he may have been the source for the biblical story.

In 1931 Mr. Fard, who was regarded as the Representative of God if not God Himself in human form, was expelled from Detroit but he had already found his successor and Supreme Minister in Elijah Poole, whose family had moved up North from Georgia, and as part of his conversion to Islam had received the name Elijah Muhammad. The minister who reportedly had witnessed three lynchings in Georgia expounded on Fard’s teachings and the NOI charter demanded, "Full and complete freedom, equal justice under the law applied equally to all, regardless of race or class or color and equal membership in society with the best in civilized society." The alternative, "justifies our demand for complete separation in a state or territory of our own.” Elijah Muhammad left Detroit at some point and moved to Chicago’s South Side which became his major base.

While imprisoned in Massachussets for armed robbery Malcolm Little learned about the Nation of Islam from one of his brothers who lived in Detroit and started a correspondence with the Chicago prophet. This proved exceedingly important for Mr. Little because it led him to leave his life of crime in the ghettoes of Harlem and Boston and become a follower of Mr. Muhammad under the name of Malcolm X. The X was adopted to sginify his break with white slavery and he started a highly effective recruiting drive for the NOI in the prophet’s name. Malcolm X was a very unusual person and his autobiography, as dictated to Alex Haley, should be read by everyone to understand America’s racial problem.

Malcolm was truly devoted to the prophet but when he learned of his idol’s human frailty, having sired illegitiamte children from some of his secretaries, he experienced a massive disenchantment. Nevertheless, he contiuned to toe the line but in November of 1963 came the break. In answering a reporter’s question what he had thought about President Kennedy’s assassination he made a remark which is now held against Reverend Wright when the latter talked about 9/11, “the chickens have come to roost.” What Malcolm meant was that you cannot condone murder in form of Medgar Evers (Mississippi Civil Rights leader), Patrice Lumumba and Vietnam’s Ngo Nieh Diem and not expect retaliation. Malcolm told Haley that Americans were saying anyway “that America’s climate of hate had ben responsible for the President’s death. But when Malcolm X said the same thing, it was ominous.”  The remark was used by Mr. Muhammad as an excuse to silence him “’for ninety days -  so that the Muslims everywhere can be disassociated from the blunder.’” The real reason was, probably, that Malcolm had become too powerful and his image had begun to overshadow that of the prophet. Malcolm was desperate; having lost his ideals, he decided to study the real Islam and asked his half-sister in Boston for plane fare to go on the Hajj to Mecca. She obliged and his report makes fascinating reading. When confronted with the true Islam it was a reformative event. He saw that the “white devil” theory was wrong and he experienced the brotherhood of all races and all skin colors. When he tried to explain the situation of the American Negro to local potentates he was told that the term should be abandoned because his people were African Americans rather than negroes. Malcolm not only followed the advice but also broke formally with the NOI upon his return to America. When he then tried to set up his own organization on Islamic principles he failed and was murdered by unknown assassins in February of 1965.

The NOI was blamed but nothing was ever proven. During Malcolm’s “fishing” expeditions in search of black souls who could be converted to Islam he had also come across a young gifted violonist, Louis Walcott, who became brother Louis X. The prophet forbade him to play his violin and at some point Louis X became the Louis Farrakhan most of us know and who is likewise a flashpoint in this year’s presidential election campaign. After the prophet’s death in 1975 Minister Farrakhan took over the leadership of NOI and he holds this post to this day. The Nation of Islam had made considerable inroads in Chicago’s black community and this is where the lives of the Reverend Wright and Louis Farrakhan intersect. Wright had remianed Christian and the Trinity church he had taken over had as its motto: “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian.” A Sean Hannity, who has not read what is summarized here would never understand what is meant by this statement. The Unashamedly Black comes from NOI and the Unapologetically Christian is the answer to Islam.

Louis Farrkhan is currently one of the most hated persons by the American mainstream media although they have probably never read his short book, A Torchlight for America. He pleaded for true equality of all races (no more white devils), and if this is not achievable in America then there should be separation. Afro-Americans should  receive a piece of land somewhere in Africa where those who wanted to develop their own nation could do so. Those who wanted to stay here could likewise do so but they would have dual citizenship. The model was the Jewish people who have a state but may not want to live there. He ignored that Lincoln had already proposed that idea and that some American ex-slaves had established Liberia which was, however, not an unadulterated success as it is recent history shows. But Farrakhan was not entirely consistent in his view about the Jewish state. He felt, and still feels, that Zionism was wrong because it was a colonial enterprise forced upon the local population by treachery and deceit. This has earned him the epithet of anti-Semite although he has not only good relations with individual Jews but also with  Neturei Karta. This is a group of orthodox Jews who opposed the establishment of the State of Israel in the beginning and continue to so. They believe that the redemption of Israel cannot be achieved by man, this is blasphemy, but will occur only when the Messiah arrives. This, by the way, is also the position of the Iranian mullahs and when they talk that Israel will have to disappear from the map they mean the state rather then blowing the population to bits as current propaganda has it. Instead of the State of Israel, there should be a State of Palestine where the members of all the three major religions enjoy equal rights as citizens.

            The name Farrakhan has become identified with that of Hitler in today’s America In official circles he is regarded as personified hate and evil although one finds nothing of this kind when one takes the time to read what he said and wrote. Under those circumstances a different picture emerges and one can understand why the Reverend Wright’s church gave him a lifetime achievement award for the positive changes he has brought about in regard to the betterment of the people and crime reduction in the ghettoes of urban America.  After the Elijah Muhammad’s death, Farrakhan took up his beloved violin again and in 1993 made his concert debut with a performance of the Mendelsohn Violin Concerto in E Minor. “Farrakhan said that in part, his performance of a concerto by a Jewish composer was an effort to heal a rift between himself and the Jewish community.” Even The New York Times was impressed and reported that "Mr. Farrakhan's sound is that of the authentic player, full of the energy that makes the violin gleam” He subsequently gave other concerts playing Beethoven and other classical composers.

            This brings us back to the present. Reverend Wright is now regarded as Farrakhan’s twin brother: a thoroughly un-American racist, hate-monger; which is not true. The Reverend  did say in a sermon on the Sunday after 9/11 that “America’s chickens have come to roost” but a similar sentiment had been expressed by Jerry Falwell and retribution had been predicted in the 2000 book Blowback by Chalmers Johnson. He pointed out that America cannot pursue an imperial policy by supporting state terrorism in a variety of countries, including Israel, and engage in secret CIA activities around the world without eventually being taken to task.

Reverend Wright is also accused of believing that the AIDS virus did not evolve naturally but was created in our labs here for population control. This sounds so fantastic that I didn’t believe it.  But the good Reverend challenged us to read the book Emerging Viruses. AIDS & Ebola. Nature, Accident or Intentional? by Leonard Horowitz which I did. The book, which is extensively referenced, is too important to be dealt with in a few sentences and will therefore be discussed in the next installment. For now let us just ask a simple question: what do Minister Farrakhan and Reverend Wright really want? The equally simple answer is: respect! They want to be talked with as equals, rather than talked to as inferiors.

Obama’s candidacy, which was intended to heal the wounds of racial division in our country, has instead re-opened them. The unity between Republicans and Democrats to which he aspired and which could lead to a more constructive internal and foreign policy is nowhere nearer. On the contrary the Democrats are at this time engaged in hara-kiri where Feminism is played against Racism. Under the current rules of the game it is impossible for Hillary to win the necessary number of delegates for the nomination (see March 1, 2008 Voting in America). How they will be bent to seat Michigan and Florida delegates is being decided right now and by next Tuesday the last Primaries will have been held. Regardless of their outcome, Senator Clinton cannot get the needed pledged delegates to win the nomination, she is too far behind. She is now confronted with a question of character. Will she accept defeat gracefully and return to the Senate or will she continue to fight for the nomination up to and including the Convention, thereby mortally wounding the Demorats in the fall election. This is what is at stake now and by the time of the next installment we will know who Hillary Clinton really is. 







July 1, 2008

BARACK OBAMA’S PROBLEMS

            The first week of last month ended the primary campaign and morphed seamlessly into the race for the presidency. Obama had reached the required delegate count and Hillary, although still defiant on that Tuesday night, had to “suspend” her campaign by the following Saturday. Her concession speech was gracious and she pledged to campaign with Obama to put the Democrats in the White House on January 21 of next year. The reason why she quit for the time being is simple; she had run out of money. The campaign was in debt for over $20 million in spite of her having loaned it $11 million and the super delegates were switching to Obama. The strategy changed, therefore, to Plan B; the vice presidency. This “dream ticket” which would unite the party was immediately floated by the media and there was a veritable stampede to push Obama to make that announcement right then and there. To his credit he resisted these efforts because it is difficult to see how this ménage á trois would work in the White House. Hillary obviously comes with Bill in tow and he is not the type to sit by quietly and let others play first violin. Nevertheless, the idea is not dead and is bound to resurface before or during the convention unless Obama comes up with a vice presidential candidate who is clearly above reproach and brings strength to the ticket in the areas were Obama is weak. These are, as the primaries have shown, white elderly women who relish the gains of feminism and white blue collar workers whose livelihood is at stake in an economy that continues to deteriorate.

            Although the adjective white in the sentence above is a taboo subject because we live supposedly in a color-blind society it corresponds to the facts. As mentioned in last month’s installment white fear of black people and vice versa is a fact of life and has to be taken into account. We live, however, in a rather strange society. It supposedly values the truth but cannot stand to hear it. I was reminded of Schiller’s Don Carlos where the young Marquis Posa on his knees implores Philip II: Majestaet, gebt Gedankenfreiheit (majesty, allow freedom of thought). Well, freedom of thought has always existed; freedom of speech was and is the problem even in our “liberal, secular democracy.” It is this freedom of speech which, when used to speak truth to power, that put the first speed bump on Obama’s drive to the presidency in form of his pastor, the Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright. I have already discussed him to some extent last month but the issue is too important to mention only in passing. The reason is not only the substantive content, but also what it tells us about the methods used by the American media to make and break candidates for political office, as well as Obama’s character.

            The media’s method is simple. It consists of diligently searching not only for a given candidate’s past utterances, but also those of his acquaintances, picking one or two of the most inflammatory statements and playing them endlessly on cable TV. This eventually seeps into the regular broadcast networks and magazines. A label is then attached to the person that defines him/her for ever more. Austrians will remember how this game was played with the former UN Secretary General and subsequent President of the Republic, Kurt Waldheim. On flimsy grounds he was declared a war criminal and anti-Semitic Nazi.  This landed him on the watch list and he could no longer visit the U.S. He was made “radioactive” and nobody dared to speak up for him any more. Waldheim is dead now and Austria has weathered the storm, but the same tactic is being used at this time with equal success in regard to Reverend Wright, Louis Farrakhan and most recently the catholic Reverend Father Michael Pfleger. All of them are currently radioactive and any kind word or attempt to understand their views puts one automatically beyond the pale of polite society. But understand we must if we value the truth and are not satisfied with stereotypes.

            Reverend Wright and his Trinity United Church of Christ was turned into a millstone around Obama’s neck and he felt the need to sever his contacts with the church completely after Father Pfleger gave a sermon there earlier last month in which he played a little skit on the pulpit ridiculing Hillary. It is now necessary to look at context and what this particular church and Father Pfleger’s St. Sabina are all about.

            I have already mentioned last month how Obama came to know the Reverend Wright and then join Trinity more than 20 years ago, but “black liberation theology” which is the underpinning of the Reverend’s work was not in my vocabulary. Since I was completely ignorant in this matter, I did what the Reverend had asked Sean Hannity to do, in the interview which was discussed last month, and bought the most relevant books by Cone and Hopkins. 

            We must now go back to the middle sixties, the Civil Rights movement and the mindset of the African-American community of those years, which was only partly covered in last month’s installment. While Martin Luther King preached the gospel of non-violence and the gradual easing of the burdens of the black people there was also the younger more militant “black power” group. They were not waiting for a dream to come to fruition; they wanted action now and inner cities began to go up in flames. King’s Christianity was challenged by the “black Muslims” under Malcolm X who subscribed at that time to the “white devils” theory from whom separation must be obtained by any and all means. For Malcolm “all options were on the table,” a phrase which did not exist at the time but is currently used to bully Iran. After Malcolm had been expelled from the black Muslims, had gone to Mecca and given up on the white devils idea, he had become more ecumenical in his political outlook. Nevertheless, he insisted on the right to self-defense. His speeches were regarded as inflammatory, he was assassinated and so was King a few years later when he spoke out against the Vietnam War.

James H Cone (born in 1938) was a seminary student during those times and had received his Ph.D. in 1965 from Northwestern University in Chicago. He realized that the black power struggle of the Malcolm X variety needed some spiritual underpinning, but since black Americans were Christians they were not likely to change their faith in large numbers to that of Islam. But by the same token they could also not identify with the white Christian Church which preached love, tolerance and forgiveness while at the same time its members treated African-Americans as an underclass and engaged not only in blatant discrimination but intermittent killings and burning of churches in the South. This clearly made him angry and he looked for an alternative. The inspiration came from the Exodus story in the Bible and the sayings of Jesus. Cone was struck with the observation that the major function of the God of the Hebrews was to lead the slaves from Egypt into freedom and that His overriding concern was social justice for the poor and under-privileged as proclaimed by the Hebrew prophets. The same theme was then taken up by Jesus who likewise worked for the poor and outcasts of his day.

Thus, Cone reasoned, there was no need to change one’s Christian faith, all one had to do was realize that God is black because blacks are also created in His image. The picture of the blond blue-eyed Jesus is not the authentic one; he is likewise black because blackness was for Cone the color of poverty and misery. Jesus’ birth in a stable with animals, having to be put in a feeding trough instead of a crib, his subsequent fight against the Jewish power structure, which ended with his crucifixion, likewise mirrored the black experience. His resurrection is not only a promise of freedom to come after death, but his living spirit animates the black community in the here and now to throw off the shackles of oppression and leads them to their rightful place in the sun.

Cone wrote his first book, Black Theology and Black Power, in 1969 while teaching at Adrian College near Detroit in Michigan. He followed it up with a systematic exploration of the topic in 1970 under the title A Black Theology of Liberation which was a major success and became the seminal work for the next generation of black theologians. A second edition was printed in 1986, which reflected somewhat less anger and included a second part which consisted of chapters written by others who had followed in his footsteps. The Twentieth Anniversary Edition of this book, on which the above presented synopsis was based, was by October 2007 in its eighteenth printing.

In the Preface to the 1986 edition he wrote,

 

The task of explicating the gospel of God’s liberating presence with oppressed blacks was too urgent to be sidetracked into an academic debate with white scholars about the nature of theology. It was clear to me that what was needed was a fresh start [italics in the original] in theology, a new way of doing it that would arise out of the black struggle for justice and in no way would be dependent upon be [sic] approval of white academics in religion. Again I thought of Malcolm: ‘don’t let anybody who is oppressing us ever lay the ground rules. Don’t go by their games, don’t play the game by their rules. Let them know now that this is a new game, and we’ve got some new rules. . . .’”            

 

I have quoted this paragraph because the advice of not letting your adversary define who you are is highly relevant for the Obama campaign. Some years later Cone became the faculty advisor for Dwight Hopkins who received his Ph.D. in 1988 from the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Hopkins’ book, Introducing Black Theology of Liberation, published in 1999, was in its seventh printing in 2006 and represents a more recent summation. The book also describes how Liberation Theology had spread around the world and the initial difficulties in other regions especially Latin America where the parishioners felt that the emphasis should not be on race but in Marxist terms on class distinctions. These differences reflected local concerns. For the Americans race was more important because it conformed to their daily experiences. Malcolm had once said: “What is the name of a black Ph.D. walking at night in a white neighborhood? Nigger!”  Or as Reverend Wright, who also has a Ph.D. had put it to Obama on their first meeting: “We don’t buy into these [class] divisions here. It’s not about income, Barack, Cops don’t check my bank account when they pull me over and make me spread-eagle against the car.”

In contrast to what the media tell us, black liberation theology, as practiced by Trinity and other black churches, is not preaching hate and division but encourages its members through a variety of social outreach programs to become fully self-reliant individuals. When one reads these books and the actual transcripts of some of the controversial sermons and press conference statements by Pastor Wright, one does not find anything particularly objectionable. He speaks truth to power and when he does so with prophetic fervor in his soul, accompanied by bodily gyrations, he is not speaking to us but to his congregation that is not only used to, but expects passion. The black church differs also from conventional white churches, especially in poor neighborhoods, in the sense that the gospel of Christ is taken literally and as an obligation. It is not to be quietly listened to but is regarded as a social action program. Church does not end when everybody goes home on Sunday but service to the needy, the sick and imprisoned starts on Monday and goes on throughout the week. The key passage of scripture is Matthew 25:35-36:

 

“For when  I was hungry you gave me food; when thirsty you gave me drink; when I was a stranger you took me to your home, when naked you clothed me; when I was ill you came to my help, when in prison you visited me.”

 

This is the kingdom of God in action and surely nothing to be ashamed of. Since the Protestant Wright, the Muslim Farrakhan and the white Catholic priest Michael Pfleger serve the same largely under-privileged community they find common ground in this passage and also come to each other’s aid when attacked by outsiders. But this is clearly not in keeping with the current Zeitgeist and political correctness. They are labeled as left liberal extremist racists and as such dangerous. But let’s face it if we leave “racist” out, because it didn’t exist at that time, Jesus would also fit that categorization. This is also the reason why Hopkins said that, "To caricature and attack Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. is to attack the Black church in America," and "Attempts to muzzle him and Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago exemplify a bad omen for every African American preacher and every African American church in the country. And with the Black church censored, other Christian churches will be the next in line.”

With this background we can now look how Obama has handled the Wright and subsequent controversies because they give us an insight into who he is apart from what he says. The Reverend’s “rant” snippets, played ad nauseam on TV, had hit him clearly unawares and when first confronted with them he distanced himself from the comments and said that he had not heard them before. This was not quite believable and the media kept hammering on it. Up to that point Obama had not found the Reverend’s sermons objectionable because, they are common fare in the black church. When he was confronted with the soundbytes in the debate and asked how he felt about them he said that he rejected them and when pressed with, “but do you denounce” them he gave in and said “ok; I reject and denounce them.”

This was his first mistake because he had disregarded Malcolm’s advice, “don’t let your adversary define you or your friends!” “This is a new game; you make the rules and you explain why you do so.” Obama is running on a platform of “change” and he could have defined the new rules. He could have told the questioner during the debate, “Look, the black church differs from the white church because it comes from a completely different background and serves different constituencies. Pastor Wright’s first name is Jeremiah and just as the prophet Jeremiah two and a half thousand years ago he is holding government accountable for what it is doing. This is not un-American or un-patriotic but on the contrary he upholds the principles this country should stand for. I’ll put a full explanation on my website why the pastor talks the way he does, and now let’s have another question on matters that directly affect the welfare of the American people.”

This is the core of Obama’s problem; he was caught unprepared and could not come to the defense of his church. At that moment he needed to please a white audience that sees him as a black man and at the same time he could not afford to offend the black community more than necessary. He wants to win the presidency after all and this cannot be accomplished without the white as well as the black vote. But it was obvious that his adversaries now had an “in” and they kept at it relentlessly. Every time you turned on a news channel there was Reverend Wright gyrating and expostulating the same “hate” remarks. 

In response Obama felt obliged to give on March 18 the speech on race in Philadelphia. Is was a rhetorical masterpiece in which he tried to make a distinction between the political views of the pastor, which he didn’t agree with, and the man. 

 

As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. . . . I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

 

But the media would not let the matter rest and kept harping on the Reverend until the latter decided no more turning the other cheek and went on the offensive with three speeches. On April 25 came an interview on the PBS program Bill Moyer’s Journal, where he explained the situation in rational terms. We watched it and were impressed because the man came across as a reasonable human being without engaging in antics. In regard to the question about how Obama’s reaction to the attacks on Wright had affected him he said: “It went down very simply. He's a politician, I'm a pastor. We speak to two different audiences. And he says what he has to say as a politician. I say what I have to say as a pastor. Those are two different worlds. I do what I do. He does what politicians do. So that what happened in Philadelphia where he had to respond to the sound bytes, he responded as a politician. But he did not disown me because I'm a pastor.”

That was it, simple and straightforward but not good enough for the press because they added “he’s just a politician.” The following Sunday Wright gave a speech before the NAACP (National Association for Colored People) in Detroit, which we likewise watched and since he was talking largely to black folks he did engage in some levity but his main theme was that although blacks are “different” from whites that does not make them “deficient.” In his talk before the National Press club on Monday the Reverend went over the same ground and when asked in the discussion period how he had felt about Obama’s response to have been characterized as a politician, he said:

“What I mean is what several of my white friends and several of my white Jewish friends have written me and said to me. They’ve said, ‘You’re a Christian. You understand forgiveness. We both know that, if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never be elected.’ Politicians say what they say and what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls . . . . Preachers say what they say because they’re pastors.  They have a different person to whom they’re accountable. As I said, whether he gets elected or not, I’m still going to have to be answerable to God November 5th and January 21st.  That’s what I mean.  I do what pastors do.” 

 But he also had this choice morsel for Obama: “And I said to Barack Obama, last year, ‘If you get elected, November the 5th, I’m coming after you, because you’ll be representing a government whose policies grind under people. All right?  It’s about policy, not the American people.’”

This was the straw that broke the camel’s back and Obama now found himself in the role of Henry II who needed to get rid of “this meddlesome priest.”  A few days later he called Wright's remarks "divisive and destructive" and warned that they "end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate. . . . I gave [Wright] the benefit of the doubt in my speech in Philadelphia, explaining that he has done enormous good in the church, but when Wright stands behind such ridiculous propositions then there are no excuses. They offend me, they rightly offend all Americans. And they should be denounced,"

Yet, as his critics immediately pointed out the Reverend hadn’t said anything new in these conferences, these views had been known to Obama all along and that Obama now acted from political expediency. He had thereby proved the Reverend’s point that his response was that of a politician. Although this storm has abated somewhat, it will re-emerge in the fall because it does go to the questions of character and judgment. It is already said that one cannot go to a church for more than 20 years, renounce it when it becomes politically inconvenient, and still claim authenticity.

In the relative campaign news lull prior to the Pennsylvania primary Mayhill Fowler, a self-styled reporter for the Huffington Post website, who follows Obama on the campaign trail came to the rescue. She had attended a private fundraiser for Obama in San Francisco and taped his presentation which included a comment about Pennsylvania voters, “they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” This was the soundbyte some pundits had been waiting for because they could now paint Obama in addition to his troubles with Wright, as an “elitist” who is out of touch with the working class which he is supposed to represent. This statement was now repeated in a mantra like manner but no context was ever given. When I went to the Huffington Post website, where not only the transcript but also part of the voice recording was available, it was obvious that the sound was so garbled that it was difficult to make out the complete sentence. Nevertheless, even when one accepts the transcript, it was clear that the statement had been made in the context of a question by volunteers from the audience who were about to visit Pennsylviana to drum up support for Obama. He had given a long answer which included,

 

“But -- so the questions you're most likely to get about me, 'Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What's the concrete thing?' What they wanna hear is -- so, we'll give you talking points about what we're proposing -- close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama's gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we're gonna provide health care for every American. So we'll go down a series of talking points.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you'll find is, is that people of every background -- there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you'll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I'd be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you're doing what you're doing.”

 

            There was nothing offensive in these words and they could readily be defended. But that is not what Obama did in the debate when questioned about the soundbyte. He said that he misspoke and apologized. He had again accepted the adversary’s position rather than sticking to his guns. The next flap came over the American flag lapel pin. Ever since 9/11 our super patriots from George W on down wear a little U.S. flag in their lapel to demonstrate American pride, I guess. It was de rigeur for Republicans and some TV pundits, but the Democrats largely did not participate in this ritual. When Obama was asked by George Stephanopoulos in a debate why he was not wearing one, Obama gave a convoluted answer instead of simply looking down at him and saying: “Oh George, where is yours?” And pointing to the other moderator, who likewise did not wear one, “did you forget yours too?” These are trifles but they reminded me of Vienna after March 12, 1938 when everybody was showing up with a little swastika in his lapel and when one of my older school mates noticed that he hadn’t put it on had said: “Oh I forgot my Gesinnung” (loyalty declaration).

As I said these are trifles but again Obama caved in and he now wears a pin when even Sean Hannity has largely given up on his. The latest reversal of positions came late last month when Obama declared that he would not accept federal funding for the fall campaign but use money raised directly from the public. Previously he had said that if he were to be nominated he would accpt the $85 million as stipulated by law and he would also negotiate with McCain on how to curtail spending. This is no longer the case. There are good reasons for not limiting one’s fundraising ability because the law is actually full of loopholes and Obama cannot afford to be outspent in the fall campaign. But it shows again that he had not thought the matter through when he made the promise in the first place. It is clear that he is a man in a hurry who had called himself “restless” in his second book, and who can speak rashly to please his audience. When he told the AIPAC meeting not only that he is one hundred percent for Israel but also that Jerusalem has to remain forever undivided, i.e. under complete Israeli control, the Arabs were aghast because he had just sold out the Palestinians who will never agree to it.

These and other aspects which are not yet public knowledge will come to haunt him in the fall. Let’s face it, his meteoric rise from a two term Illinois state senator to a U.S. senator who announces in the beginning of the third year of his first  term that he is now running for the presidency, is rather unusual to say the least. Questions will be asked to whom he owes this phenomenal succes and the book by Webster GriffinTarpley, Obama. the Postmodern Coup, will provide grist for the rumor mill. My personal opinion is that Obama was actually running in 2007 for the vice presidency and he was probably as surprised as everybody else by his success. But he has now become the standard bearer and will have to show his mettle. Will he really be able to effect change in Washington if he were elected? One may wonder, although it is unlikely that he would get us into another war, which would be the main advantage of his election.

But it is too early to speculate on what might happen because at present he is only the presumptive rather than actual nominee and from Denver in August it’s a long time till November. Although the economy, the costs of the war and the general popular disgust favor the Democrats in November we don’t know what the Bush administration and/or Israel are going to do in the meantime in regard to Iran. The war drums are being beaten again and both Hillary as well as Obama have missed a critical opportunity in the second half of last month. After the tête a tête at Senator Feinstein’s home where the two of them hammered out her surrender terms they should have announced not only that Hillary would now work with and for him but also that for the rest of this session of Congress they would not continue to campaign. Instead they would work in the Senate to produce a bipartisan resolution that will require congressional approval prior to any military action against Iran during the rest of President Bush’s term. Furthermore, they would introduce legislation to ask the UN for a one year extension of its Iraq mandate so that no “status of forces agreement” will be signed until the new administration has had an opportunity to reassess the situation in 2009. In addition a resolution could have been passed that tells the Israeli government that if it were to engage in air strikes against Iran during the upcoming months this would be condemned and financial aid would be stopped. Such declarations would have been acts of statesmenship rather than campaign promises of which we have heard enough already.

The country is in serious difficulties and by January 21 of next year it may be too late to fix them. The media are full of excuses why oil and gas prices are so high. They need look no further than the instability of the Middle East and the threat of a war with Iran which nobody but a few deluded souls really wants. If one were a speculator in the oil price futures and money were all one was interested in, wouldn’t one bet that the price will inexorably go up as long as the oil fields are threatened by war? Those are some of the problems we face right now and the question is whether or not either one of the candidates is capable of meeting them.      







August 1, 2008

THE NATIONAL SECURITY SCAM


            The use of the slang term scam, which stands for “swindle” or “fraud,” in relation to national security may strike some readers not only as irreverent but as downright unpatriotic. But, unfortunately, we live in the age of scam, and confidence games where hucksters pray on their gullible fellow citizens to extract money under false premises are daily occurrences. As will be shown here the area of national security is no exception but it is rare indeed that its perpetrators become known, let alone brought to justice. The topic is urgent because national security is the hallmark of the McCain campaign, especially in regard to Iran. In the name of national security pre-emptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities are advocated which might take place prior to the November elections, if it began to look that Obama is likely to win.

            For a democracy to properly function it needs an educated citizenry, which in turn depends on independent journalists who provide the nation with unbiased information. In addition it requires a government which gives, on request, critical information to Congress for the needed oversight of the executive branch of government. This is not the case at this time and as will be shown has not been for a long time, although the present scandals are far worse than what Nixon ever did. When congressional subpoenas are routinely ignored by the White House, invoking either “executive privilege” or “national security,” the intent of the Constitution is subverted. The most egregious recent example is, perhaps that of Karl Rove who attended a conference in Yalta on the day he was supposed to give testimony before Congress. He finds time several days a week to present his views on Fox News but testifying under oath is not to his liking. “We the People” are being scammed because we pay in blood and treasure for the conduct of a few, who make policies in secret and invent pretexts to justify them. When criminal conduct is accidentally exposed, blame is assigned to lower level underlings, For instance in the Abu Ghraib scandal a few soldiers went to prison and the commandant was relieved of her job. But the people who gave the orders and provided the legal “justification” in the White House and the Pentagon were never disciplined. In order to ensure that secrecy is maintained for all the wrongdoings of the Bush administration presidential papers have been sealed by the present White House occupant all the way back to the first Reagan administration of 1980. The reason seems obvious; some unpleasant facts about his dad’s vice presidential tenure might come to light especially in regard to the Iran-Contra affair. This is not “old history” because some of the key players are again in position of power today. 

            Since even professional historians are deprived of crucial information and our mainstream media have abrogated their duty to provide us with it, we have to depend on independent journalists whose sources they frequently cannot reveal because the latter’s jobs are on the line. With this caveat we can now proceed to discuss some of the material which has recently been published in books and on the Internet.

            The defining event of the first decade of this century was, of course, the 9/11 tragedy which has never been properly explained to the public. As mentioned in “The 9/11 Cover-up” (October1,2006) the Bush administration has not only not been forthcoming about the events of that day but has diligently tried to fix blame first on Osama bin Laden and thereafter, in addition, on  Saddam Hussein. It is, however, obvious that Osama’s role cannot explain all the events of that day and that Saddam had absolutely nothing to do with them. Yet, it is known to the administration, and some members of Congress, that something else happened on 9/11. This is withheld from the American people in spite of the fact that we have gone to war on a false pretext and are ruining our economy as part of it.

   Webster G Tarpley whom I have mentioned in the last installment in regard to Barack Obama’s candidacy, published in 2006 a book 9/11 Synthetic Terror. Made in USA in which he discusses the impossibilities of the official 9/11 scenarios. He provides two other theories which are summarized by the acronyms LIHOP and MIHOP. These stand for “let it happen on purpose” and “make it happen on purpose.” Tarpley clearly has an agenda and the book has to be read with some grains of salt. Nevertheless, there are verifiable aspects, which are no longer mentioned because they contradict the official version.

The information which is presented below comes not only from Tarpley but also from James Bamford’s A Pretext for War. 9/11. Iraq and the abuse of America’s intelligence agencies; and Paul Thompson’s, The Terror Timeline. Year by Year, day by day, Minute by Minute; as well as other sources which are referenced later. The Bamford and Thompson books do not engage in speculations but merely recount the events prior to, during, and after that fateful day. The following bare-bone time sequence of President Bush’s conduct on that day is abstracted from Thompson’s book.

 “On the morning of September 11 George Bush was at the Colony Beach and Tennis Resort at Longboat Florida, near Sarasota, where he had spent the night in order to attend a photo-op next morning which was to highlight his focus on the education of America’s children. He got up, as usual, at 6 a.m. for his morning jog but a “van occupied by men of Middle Eastern descent arrives . . . stating they have a ‘poolside’ interview with the president. They do not have an appointment and are turned away. Some question whether this was an assassination attempt modeled on the one used on the Afghani leader Ahmed Massoud two days earlier.”

6:31 Bush went jogging.

Between 8 and 8:20 he received his daily intelligence briefing but apparently it contained “nothing serious enough which would have necessitated a call to National Security Advisor Rice.”

8:35 Bush leaves for the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota.

8:40 AA flight 11 crashes into the WTC North Tower.

Between 8:46 and 8:56 members of Bush motorcade hear about crash including Press Secretary Ari Fleischer but supposedly don’t inform Bush. Congressman Dan Miller who is waiting to meet Bush at the school, as well as the reporters at the scene also knew about the event.

8:46 Emergency CONPLAN (Interagency Domestic Terrorism Concept of Operations Plan) is activated but not by Bush.

8:55 Captain Deborah Loewer director of the White House Situation room runs to Bush’s limousine after arrival at the school and tells him about the crash. Bush maintains he didn’t know about it until later.

8:55-9:00 Bush is told about the crash by Karl Rove and believes it to be an accident.

Bush claims later to have seen the plane crash into the building on TV at 9:01. This is impossible because the film by the French journalists was not broadcast until the evening.

9:03 Enters class room while UA 175 crashes into South Tower.

9:06 Bush is told about it from Andy Carr (White House Chief of Staff) while listening to the children read the My Pet Goat story.

9:06-9:16 Remains in classroom with children.

9:16 Leaves classroom and starts working with staff on a brief speech till 9:29. Talks with Condoleezza Rice and Governor Pataki on the phone but makes no decisions.

9:29 Makes brief speech at the school about an “apparent terrorist attack.”

9:34 Leaves the school for Sarasota airport amid potential threat to Air Force 1 while it was still on the ground.

9:37 AA 77 crashes into Pentagon

9:43 Bush hears about attack as he arrives at the airport.

9:56 Air Force One takes off without fighter escort and without a destination.

9:56-10:40 Bush and Cheney argue about what to do and where to go. Bush wants to return to Washington, Cheney say it’s not safe to do so. Air Force One simply circles during that time at 44,000 feet.

9:59 South Tower collapses.

10:06 UA flight 93 crashes in Pennsylvania.

10:10 US military is placed on world-wide maximal alert.

After 10:06 Bush is informed about UA 93 and wonders if it has been shot down.

10:26 North Tower collapses.

10:32 Cheney tells Bush of threat against Air Force One and that it will take 40-90 minutes to get escort fighter protection. This item is doubted by some.

10:55 Air Force One takes evasive action because of a perceived threat from another oncoming plane.

10:55-11:41 Escort fighters reach Air Force One some time during this interval.

11:45 Bush lands under tight security at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

12 noon He remains there for somewhat over an hour records a brief message to the country which is broadcast at 12:36. The rest of the time argues with Cheney about where to go next.

13:04 Bush announces the state of world-wide high military alert.

13:30 Leaves Barksdale for Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska.

14:50 Arrives at Offutt.

15:00 Video teleconference with White House top officials from underground bunker at Offut. Bush declares he will return to Washington as soon as refueling is completed.

15:55 White House advisor Karen Hughes tells reporters that Bush is “at an undisclosed location taking part in a video conference.

16:33 Bush leaves for Washington.

18:54 Arrives at White House.

20:30 Speaks again to the nation and states that, “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”

21:00 Meets with advisors who have already decided that bin-Laden was behind the attacks and tells Tenet to inform the “Taliban we’ve finished with them.”

 

            This unusual conduct of the Commander in Chief when the country appeared to be under attack has obviously raised a number of questions. Among them were: why did the Secret Service not get him immediately out of Sarasota but allowed him to go through with the photo-op? Why were members of his motorcade informed about the attacks, rather than Bush himself who had all the needed communication equipment in his limousine? Why did Bush not leave the school immediately after he had been told of the second plane crashing in to the South Tower? Why did he go to Barksdale and Offut instead of Washington? Why did it take so long to get fighter escort for Air Force One? Why did he allow Cheney to make the major decisions on that day?

            For the answers to some of these questions we have to take recourse to the mentioned books by Bamford, and Tarpley. Since Tarpley relies to some extent on Bamford I shall deal with that book first and concentrate only on the Barksdale, Offutt leg of the return trip to Washington. The decision to divert the plane to Barksdale was made on the assumption that Washington was still unsafe, but more of that later. For now a comment from page 83 is of relevance. “At the White House, presidential advisor Karen Hughes attempted to place a call to Bush. ‘The military operator came back to me and in – in a voice that, to me sounded very shaken, said ‘Ma’am, I’m sorry. We can’t reach Air Force One.’”  This piece of information needs to be combined with another one on subsequent pages where the president’s pilot was concerned that even Air Force One communications could be overheard. Bush also experienced trouble with the elaborate communication equipment on his plane because transmission “broke off in midsentence” while he was speaking to Cheney. This was later explained as having been due to encryption problems which take time when a plane is flying at 44,000 feet at 500-600 miles per hour. Further conversations were supposedly conducted on open cell phones.

            These were the circumstances which led to the decision to fly to Barksdale. We must now know that this not some ordinary air force base but “was home to the U.S. Strategic Command’s alternate underground command post, a bunker from which Bush could run a war if necessary.”

           

“It was also a place where the President could rendezvous with ‘Night Watch,’ the ‘doomsday plane.’ Once a specially outfitted Boeing 707 known as the National Emergency Airborne Command Post, by 2001 it had become a heavily modified military version of the Boeing 747-200 similar to Air Force One. Renamed the National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC), the aircraft was designed to be used by the President to direct a war in case of nuclear attack.”

 

            Once they landed in Barksdale “signs on the base were displaying DEFCON DELTA in large black type, the highest state of alert.” Why Bush did not stay at Barksdale but instead moved on to Offutt is not explained by Bamford. But in this connection it is of interest to remember a news item of earlier this year. A B52 with fully armed nuclear missiles had flown across the country from North Dakota to Barksdale. This created quite a stir at the time but was soon explained as a simple mistake by the ground crew in North Dakota which had failed to recognize that the missiles carried warheads. We were, however, not told that Barksdale is also the staging area for attacks on Middle Eastern countries. Instead of a simple mistake by ground personnel the plan, by a rogue faction within the government, may have been to attack Iran’s nuclear program. That such a “rogue faction” may actually exist will be explored later.  

            Bamford continues telling us about Bush’s arrival at Offutt near Omaha, Nebraska, which is, likewise, no ordinary air force base but “the home of the United States Strategic Command – STRATCOM – the successor of the Cold War Strategic Air Command, SAC. Its deep bunker is the principal location from which the United States would direct World War III.” Bamford wrote,

 

“It was like a scene from Dr. Strangelove, or Seven Days in May. Never before had all the pieces been in place for the instant launch of World War III. The military alert level was at its highest level in thirty years. The Vice President was in the White House bunker, senior administration officials were at site R [Pennsylvania underground bunker in accordance with the continuity of government plan], congressional officials had been flown to Mount Weather [additional underground facility in Virginia], the Secretary of Defense and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were in the Pentagon War room, and the president of the United States was in the nuclear command bunker at STRATCOM.

Only a few feet away from Bush was the fire-engine-red double-locked ‘clanker box’ containing the authentication codes to send America’s nuclear arsenal skywards.

 

That nuclear war did not take place on that day is partly due to Richard Clarke, the national counter terrorism “tsar,” who informed Richard Armitage at the State Department that the military had gone to DEFCON DELTA status. Armitage immediately called his counterpart in Moscow that the preparations were not intended to harm Russia. As it turned out the call was vital because the Russians were about to start an exercise of all their nuclear forces and Armitage was successful in persuading them to postpone it. Putin talked to Bush later that day but apart from having offered his condolences we are not told what else they talked about.

            In addition to DEFCON DELTA the COG (continuity of government) plan was put into operation. Bamford does not tell us why all these elaborate precautions had been taken and for those details we have to consult Tarpley who presents numerous excerpts from the foreign press and government officials why the official 9/11 explanation cannot be accepted at face value. One of the key elements was the message to the Secret Service “Angel is next.”  Since “Angel” was the code word for Air Force One it was obvious that the terrorists also had access to the highest security codes of the government and this was the reason for the diversion of the flight first to Barksdale and then to Offutt. Tarpley excerpted a column written by William Safire for the New York Times, and published on September 13 under the headline, “Inside the Bunker. The source for the story was presidential advisor Karl Rove. Key aspects are:

 

“ . . . when Bush stubbornly insisted that he was going back to Washington ‘ the Secret Service informed him that the threat contained language that was evidence that the terrorists had knowledge of his procedures and whereabouts. . .  . ‘That knowledge . . . indicates that the terrorists may have a mole in the White House – that, or informants in the Secret Service, FBI, FAA, or CIA.’”

 

            There is additional information. “At the September 12 White House briefing, Ari Fleischer told reporters, ‘We have specific and credible information that the White House and Air Force One were also intended targets of these attacks.” In an interview with the recently deceased Tony Snow, Condoleezza Rice was asked,

 

“Snow: Sept. 11 there was a report that there was a coded message that said, ‘We’re going to strike Air Force One’ that was using specific coded language and made the threat credible. Is that true?’”

Rice: That is true.

Snow: So we have a mole somewhere?

Rice: It’s not clear how this coded name was gotten. We’re a very open society and I don’t think it’s any surprise to anyone that leaks happen. So, I don’t know -  it’s possible the code name leaked a long time ago and was just used.

Snow: How on earth would that happen?

Rice: I don’t know. I don’t know. We’re obviously looking very hard at the situation. But I will tell you that it was plenty of evidence from our point of view to have special measures taken at that moment to make sure that the president was safe.”

 

            By September 16 the story began to change. On Meet the Press Dick Cheney told Tim Russert: “The president was on Air Force One. We received a threat to Air Force One – came through the Secret Service . . . Russert: A credible threat to Air Force One. You’re convinced of that.” Cheney: “I’m convinced of that. Now you know it may have been phoned in by a crank, but in the midst of what was going on, there was no way of way knowing that. I think it was a credible threat, enough for the Secret Service to bring it to me.” The “specific coded language” has now been dropped and this paved the way for the subsequent dismissal of the entire story because it would obviously conflict with the “Al Qaeda only” official version. The 9/11 Commission Report simply states that the message was a “misunderstood communication in the hectic White House Situation Room that morning.” In the accompanying footnote we are told first that “the Secret Service Intelligence Division had tracked it down to a misunderstanding of the watch officer.” This became the official version. The next sentence has, however, been relegated to oblivion. It states, “The director of the White House Situation Room that day disputes this account.” One would surely expect the government to have been more forthcoming in such a vital matter.

            But there is more as Tarpley reports. Debka an Israeli Internet journal with sources close to Mossad showed the extent of penetration of the US government by foreign agents. Excerpts from the Debka story are as follows:

 

“…the terrorists had obtained the White House code and a whole set of top-secret signals. … In fact, the hijackers were picking up and deciphering the presidential plane’s incoming and outgoing transmissions.” Furthermore, Tarpley wrote, “According to Debka’s information, the U.S. Intelligence community also believed ‘that terrorists are in possession of all or part of the codes used by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the National Security Administration, the National Reconnaissance Office, Air Force Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, Marine Corps Intelligences and the Intelligence offices of the State Department and Department of Energy.’” Since this, obviously, could not be done by Osama alone, the article goes on to state, ‘U.S. experts do not believe bin Laden was capable of infiltrating double agents into the heart of the US administration on a large scale. They are looking, instead, at a country with a very well oiled- intelligence apparatus-Iraq.’”

 

            When one considers the Israeli source, Iraq being fingered as the culprit fits with the events which followed 9/11. Nevertheless, it makes no sense whatsoever and under these circumstances one is inclined to write off the entire article as fantasy. Unfortunately this cannot be done because our intelligence agencies know how this feat could have been accomplished. They are not allowed to present it in public because the information is highly classified. Nevertheless, it is known that security breaches have occurred in various government agencies and were first discovered in1997. The following information comes from a Four Part Fox News Series, which disappeared from the Fox website but is recoverable from http://www.rense.com/general31/fnews.htm.

The Introduction to the Fourth part of the series stated,

 

Los Angeles 1997, a major local, state and federal drug investigation sours. The suspects: Israeli organized crime with operations in New York, Miami, Las Vegas, Canada, Israel and Egypt soured. The allegations: cocaine and ecstasy trafficking and sophisticated white-collar credit card and computer fraud.

The problem: according to classified law enforcement documents obtained by Fox News, the bad guys had the cops’ beepers, cell phones, even home phones under surveillance. Some who did get caught admitted to having hundreds of numbers and using them to avoid arrest. . . . The organization discovered communications between organized crime, intelligence division detectives, the FBI and the Secret Service. Shock spread from the DEA to the FBI in Washington, and then the CIA . . . . The organization has apparent extensive access to database systems to identify personal and biographical information.

How could this be done? [The investigators] looked at Amdocs [Israeli company which] generates billing data for virtually every call in America, and they do credit checks.  . . . When investigators checked their own wiretapping system for leaks, they grew concerned about potential vulnerabilities in the computers that intercept, record and store the wiretapped calls. A main contractor is Comverse Infosys, which works closely with the Israeli government, and under a special grant program, is reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its research and developments costs by Israel’s Ministry of Industry and Trade. Asked this week about another sprawling investigation and the detention of 60 Israeli since Sept. 11, the Bush administration treated the questions like a hot potato.”

 

In the subsequent interview of Carl Cameron by Tony Snow, Cameron revealed that “Beyond 60 apprehended  or detained [Israelis], and many deported since Sept. 11, another group of 140 individuals have been arrested  and detained in this year in what government documents describe as ‘an organized intelligence gathering operation,’ designed to ‘penetrate government facilities. . . . most of them [had] intelligence experience and either worked for Amdocs or other companies in Israel that specialize in wiretapping.’”   

It is also stated in part 3 of the series that “investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying through Comverse is considered career suicide.”

Further information on the extent and potential danger to our nation from the rather extensive Israeli intelligence operations in this country can be found in Thompson’s Terror Timeline, Tarpley’s book and Richard Curtiss’ article at http://www.wrmea.com/archives/June_2000/0006006.html. These data also shed light on President Clinton’s warning to Monica Lewinsky on March 29, 1997 (during the hunt for wiretaps) that, “he suspected that a foreign embassy (he did not specify which one) was tapping his telephones, and he proposed cover stories[Starr Report]”

 The real problem in this regard is not that spying exists but that it cannot be prosecuted because of the special status Israel enjoys in decision making circles. It has been known ever sine the Pollard spy trial that he did not randomly procure documents but his handler had precise orders as to what Pollard needed to steal. These came from a person who is referred to as “Mr. X” by Victor Ostrovsky (By Way of Deception also discussed in The Niger Forgery, August 1, 2003)  or “Mega” by Gordon Tomas in Gideon’s Spies (partially discussed in the same article), as well as by Tarpley. His identity has never been discovered and he may still operate in the highest government circles.

There is no evidence that Israel was involved in the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks but there is evidence that the Israeli government had known of the impending attacks and had not fully shared all their information. It was LIHOP because it would obviously stoke American furor against Arabs.           

In the absence of official data the following 9/11theory seems likely. The Neocon faction within our government needed a new “Pearl Harbor” in order to realize the goal of the “Project for the New American Century” (The Neocons’ Leviathan; April 1, 2003), which called for a forceful military oriented pro-active foreign policy. Since Bush could initially not be trusted to pursue this strategy he was sidelined, and only after Cheney had agreed that the 9/11 attack would be used as a pretext for war against Iraq and other enemies of Israel did Bush endorse the Neocon agenda. He has been faithful to it ever since, and it will be continued by Senator McCain if he were to win the election.

As will be explained further later this month there were two major factions in our government: Oil men under Cheney who wanted to invade Afghanistan for the sake of a pipeline from the Caspian to the Indian Ocean, bypassing Iran; and chauvinistic Zionists (some of whom hold dual citizenship with Israel) who wanted to eliminate any potential threat to Israel by toppling unfriendly regimes in the Middle East. Neither the National Security Advisor, Rice, nor the Foreign Secretary, Powell, proved themselves strong enough to stand up against these forces and the result is known.

We are not in immediate danger from any foreign country, including Iran; the present national security danger resides within our borders and in the excessive secrecy. It impedes criminal investigations, thereby allowing official misconduct to persist with the resulting damage to the country. This will be documented further next week.







August 8, 2008

ABUSE OF SECRECY

In the previous installment I demonstrated that the Bush administration is using the cover of “national security” in order to avoid revealing what really happened on 9/11 and the reasons for the policies that were adopted thereafter. One might want to believe that this is an aberration in the American political system but, unfortunately, this is not the case as will be documented here.

In 1995 President Clinton did the country a favor when he ordered the declassification of hitherto secret documents that pertained to government actions conducted prior to 1970. This opened a treasure trove of information for historians which has been brought to the attention of the public in several books. When one combines this with “leaked” data that are available in books and on the Internet a rather unsettling picture emerges. For the pre-1970 data, which are presented here, I have relied mainly on Bay of Pigs Declassified edited by Peter Kornbluh, and Body of Secrets. Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency by James Bamford. The late Senator Patrick Moynihan’s Secrecy will be dealt with in more detail in the next installment. In this issue I shall cover only the Truman, Eisenhower and Johnson administration.

When one reads these books one is immediately cured of the false assumption that there is one government in Washington which “calls the shots” and that the various agencies simply carry out the president’s wishes and/or orders. Instead one finds a multiplicity of agencies all of which fight their own turf wars for funding and where communications between them and the White House can be tenuous. The most egregious example, where even the president was not informed about some results of our spying on the Soviet Union, is in regard to the Venona Project.

During WWII we had succeeded in breaking the code of the Soviet Union’s secret transmissions and were regularly reading their mail. This practice persisted and was expanded after the War by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the CIA. These organizations were fully informed about Soviet spying, which included atomic secrets, but as Moynihan wrote nobody informed Truman about it. All the president knew about Communist infiltration was what he heard and saw on Television during the McCarthy ruckus. The decision to keep Truman “out of the loop” was initially made by General Omar Bradley. Thereafter it acquired a life of its own, when apparently nobody thought that the president really needed to know the facts. While the McCarthy hearings were a charade, the senator was not far from the truth and had Truman known the true extent of Soviet spying, history might have taken a different course.

On the other hand President Eisenhower was a “hands on person.” Every single covert action, which also involved previously unknown RB-47 bomber reconnaissance flights over Soviet territory, as well as the better known U-2 flights, had to be discussed with him and required his imprimatur. Project Homerun in 1956 involved 156 missions over a 3500-mile stretch of the Soviet Arctic region from the Bering Strait to Murmansk. Since the route across the North Pole was the best one for the Soviets to attack us and vice versa it was deemed important to know the Russian’s state of preparedness. Since the Soviets did not know whether these bombers, flying in formation, were simply spying or had worse intentions it is a wonder that nothing untoward happened.

Nevertheless, the Russians knew, at least in part, what we were doing and on May 1, 1960 they were prepared. At twenty minutes past six in the morning a U-2 took off from Peshawar (obviously our presence in Pakistan long predated the support for the mujahadeen from there during the Afghan war against the Soviet Union in the 70s) with Gary Powers at the helm. This was not the first of Powers’ missions over the Soviet Union but the last of twenty four. The Soviets had been aware of these flights, but in view of the U-2’s altitude, at 13 miles above ground, they were unable to do anything about them apart from issuing repeated protests. But May 1 was different; it was May Day, the Holy of Holies in the Communist world, and Khrushchev could not let this affront go unpunished. The order to, “shoot down the plane by whatever means,” was issued. Powers knew that he was being tracked from the ground but felt relatively safe until a missile hit his plane. U2 pilots were not supposed to eject from the falling wreck but Powers managed to free himself and landed deep inside the Soviet Union.

When Washington heard about the downing of the plane there was consternation and the question arose whether the previously prepared cover story for such an event,“U-2 aircraft was on weather mission originating Adana, Turkey, pilot reported he had oxygen difficulties. . . “, was to be issued or a different one. Eisenhower decided, on May 5, that since all the Russians had was “a dead pilot and a bunch of scrap metal” to go with the pre-approved version. But the wily Nikita had not told his comrades and the world everything he knew. He had kept an ace up his sleeve in order to catch the Americans in a lie. On May 7 he informed the Politburo that he had deliberately withheld the information that “we have the remains of the plane – and we also have the pilot who is quite alive and kicking [italics in Bamford’s book].”

For Eisenhower this was a disaster of the first magnitude and his role of having authorized the mission was not allowed to become public. The order went out that “[The] president wants no specific tie to him of this particular event.” But it was not as simple as that, because Congress had started to hold hearings on the affair and testimony had to be given under oath by senior administration officials. The Cabinet was instructed to hide the president’s involvement even under oath. This amounted to suborning perjury, a criminal offense. The Secretary of State, Christian Herter, did perjure himself when he answered the direct question: whether there was “’ever a time’ that the president approved each U-2 flight,’” with “‘It has never come up to the president.’” This scenario obviously resembles the Iran-Contra arms deal of which President Reagan had supposedly been unaware.

The Paris Summit Conference which had long been planned did take place on May 16 in spite of the scandal. All Khrushchev wanted from Eisenhower at that time was an apology and a statement that such overflights would no longer occur in the future. Ike refused, the Conference broke down and instead of producing a better climate the Cold War continued in full swing. When one looks at the situation from the Soviets’ point of view one must admit that they had a legitimate grievance. What would we have done had they repeatedly violated our airspace? Chances are that we might have bombed them and started WWIII if they ignored our protests.

Fidel Castro’s successful revolution in January 1, 1959, which removed Fulgencio Batista from power, was another serious blow to our government’s attempt to keep unbridled capitalism in power throughout the hemisphere. It was no secret that Batista was being paid off by American Mafiosos who not only controlled the gambling casinos but also banking and other immensely lucrative businesses. Within a relatively short period of time Castro closed the casinos in Havana and thereafter started to nationalize various American held companies. The mob bosses among whom were: Meyer Lansky, Santos Trafficante and Sam Giancana, swore revenge.  The latter two names are important in the subsequent events.

Eisenhower was determined to prevent the Soviets from capitalizing on Cuba’s revolution and immediate “regime change” became the order of the day. The CIA was empowered to not only start an anti-Castro radio propaganda campaign but also to land a guerilla force which would overthrow the government. The details are now available in the previously mentioned Bay of Pigs Declassified documents.

Disaffected Cubans were trained in Guatemala rather than on American soil in order to maintain “strict deniability” on which Eisenhower insisted. Guatemala was chosen because the Arbenz government had, in 1954, been overthrown in a coup d’êtat organized by the CIA’s Richard Bissell. It had been remarkably easy to install a client regime which no longer threatened the interests of the United Fruit Company and Bissell was, therefore, rewarded with the task to organize the Cuban counter-revolution. The two persons who worked directly under Bissell and were responsible for the planning and execution of the effort to topple the Castro regime were Jacob Esterline, who had also served under Bissell during the Guatemala operation, and Col. Jack Hawkins who had been deputized from the Marine Corps to oversee the military planning.

The initial intent was to gradually infiltrate small groups of Cubans into the Trinidad area of the island which was close to the Escambray Mountains from which larger operations could then be launched. Once some part of the island had come into their hands an American sponsored government would be installed which would appeal for help from the US. Eisenhower approved the essentials of the program in October of 1959 but, as mentioned, insisted on strict deniability. This became the fatal flaw of the operation. During 1960 the original plan was modified, in spite of Hawkins’ and Esterline’s protests, and an invasion at the Bay of Pigs was chosen instead, because of a nearby airstrip from which further operations could be launched. Nevertheless, it was a bad idea because if the operation failed there were no retreat options apart from the open sea.

But the plan was also predicated on the prior assassination of Castro. In an interview in October of 1996 Esterline said, “All of a sudden I started getting requests to authorize big payments, $60,000, $100,000 and I refused them.” Word came down from CIA headquarters that he had to sign the checks with no questions asked because he lacked the necessary security clearance. When Esterline remonstrated that somebody else who had clearance ought to sign these checks he was told “Oh no, we can’t do that.” A few days later he was briefed and here is his reaction to what he was told,

 

“I couldn’t believe they were telling me! This plan that they had laid out with Sam Giancana, their gambling interests – Trafficante was another name that comes back to my mind. They [the Mafia] were being threatened, their interests were being threatened in Cuba, and therefore they decided they were going to do something about Castro. So all of a sudden the agency gets sucked into being a part of it, which I never could understand how this made any sense, how this added up, but in point of fact, had this relationship with Giancana and he needed half a million dollars to perform his part of this.”

 

When Esterline then asked what he was supposed to tell Bissell, his immediate boss, he was told that he should say nothing because Bissell was “not cleared.” “It wasn’t till years later [Esterline said] that I found out that Bissell was the guy behind it. . . . I was saddled with this, I never told Jack [Hawkins].”

The project continued in fits and starts; the Guatemala training camps became known but denial persisted. The fact that the Republicans had lost the November elections made no difference. For Eisenhower it was full speed ahead and on January 3, 1961 he told his advisors that “he would move against Castro before January 20 if he were provided a really good excuse by the Cubans. Failing that, he says, perhaps the United States ‘could think of manufacturing something that would be generally acceptable.’”

The relevance of these revelations to today’s events is obvious. Eisenhower wanted a MIHOP (make it happen on purpose) to invade Cuba in the same manner as our current administration wants to engineer “regime change” in Tehran. But there wasn’t time enough in 1961. Kennedy was fully briefed and he signed on for the Bay of Pigs plan although the State Department and members of his cabinet had serious misgivings about the feasibility of the project. So did Esterline and Hawkins. On Sunday April 8 they went to Bissell’s home to tell him that the operation as planned had practically no chance of succeeding and that they were resigning from the project. Bissell told them that there would be sufficient air support and that the operation would continue regardless whether or not they stayed on. But from the information available one must conclude that Bissell was less than honest in his dealings with his underlings as well as his superiors. He assured Esterline and Hawkins that there would be air-support while knowing fully well that Kennedy was against it because it would interfere with deniability. At the same time he promised Kennedy success even if air support was withheld. 

The invasion proceeded during the night of April 17 and resulted in dismal failure. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson had tried his level best to maintain the fiction at the UN on April 16 that the US had nothing to do with any potential invasion but that only made matters worse and Kennedy stood exposed as an incompetent liar and bungler. World opinion which had regarded him as a charismatic departure from past Cold War tactics immediately plunged and Barack Obama, who is now largely seen as his successor, might learn something from that if he were to be elected in November.

There was a dark side to Camelot which has only gradually come into the open. Although Kennedy immediately accepted responsibility for the disaster he had not learned the lesson that invading a country whose leadership one dislikes, but which has a degree of support by its people, is not a good idea. He blamed the CIA for having misled him and dismissed its Director, Allen Dulles, as well as, after a suitable interval, Bissell but not before rewarding the latter with the National Security Medal. The practice of rewarding failure has been continued by our current president who awarded Tenet as well as Rumsfeld the Congressional Medal of Honor for having paved the way to the Iraq invasion. That there was a Nuremberg trial which made planning the invasion of other countries a criminal offense has not yet reached the minds of our leadership.

The rank and file of the CIA as well as the exile Cuban community were obviously disgruntled because they blamed Kennedy for having folded at a time of crisis by not providing the air-support they had been promised. They didn’t know, however, that Bissell had lied to Kennedy by assuring him of success even without planes and he had also lied to Hawkins-Esterline that they would be forthcoming. But the CIA and the Cubans were not alone in their grievances against Kennedy, so was the Mob and several names are worth recalling: the Chicago branch under Sam Giancana and John Roselli, and the Cuban Cosa Nostra under Tampa’s Santos Trafficante. They will figure later in the event surrounding November 22, 1963.

Invasion of Cuba and Castro’s removal remained the top priority of the Kennedy administration but its execution was now shifted from the CIA to the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff under General Lyman L. Lemnitzer. Various invasion and assassination plans were hatched under the code name Operation Mongoose which achieved its official seal of approval by the Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, on November 30, 1961. As Kornbluh informs us Bobby Kennedy told CIA and Pentagon officials in January of 1962, that a “solution” [should we add “final”?] of the Cuba problem “was now ‘the top priority in the United States Government – all else is secondary – no time, money, effort, or manpower is to be spared.’ The president, he said, had indicated that ‘the final chapter on Cuba has not been written.’” That was indeed prescient but not in the manner intended. Castro’s regime has shown remarkable resilience and is still with us nearly fifty years later.

While Mongoose has to some extent become known in the meantime, Operation Northwoods has remained in the shadows. On March 13, 1962 the Joint Chiefs sent a memorandum to the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, that listed a variety of clandestine operations which could be carried out to provide a pretext for the invasion of Castro’s island. Bamford reports on it in detail and the original declassified file is available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf.  This is a rather amazing document because it advocates a terror scenario, which would sufficiently frighten the American public to demand a war against Cuba.

Among the various options were: “dressing ‘friendly’ Cubans in Cuban military uniforms and then have them ‘start riots near the main gate of the base. Others would pretend to be saboteurs inside the base. Ammunition would be blown up, fires started, aircraft sabotaged, mortars fired at the base, with damage to installations.’” The WWII generation will readily remember that the model for the plan was the fake attack on the German radio broadcasting station Gleiwitz, near the Polish border, which was Hitler’s pretext for the invasion of Poland.

But this was only one of Lemnitzer’s fantasies among other options were: blowing up a ship in Guantanamo bay and blaming the Cubans [analogous to “Remember the Maine” which was used as the pretext for the Spanish American War in 1898]; develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in Miami, other US cities and even Washington; “sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated);” “hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft could appear to continue as harassing measures condoned by the Government of Cuba.” 

To his credit McNamara was appalled and did not authorize the enactment of any of these suggestions. Nevertheless the drumbeat for war against Castro was kept up, which led Khrushchev to put missiles into Cuba and the October crisis of that year. We have been told that Khrushchev had been reckless in so doing but, as he is reported having said, the idea came to him when he was vacationing on the Black Sea and looked across to Turkey where our missiles were stationed. Two can play this game he thought and ships with missiles began to be dispatched. We are also told that Khrushchev “blinked” when threatened with atomic war, but in fact it was a tit for tat because we removed ours from Turkey and in addition Khrushchev had left a secret listening post behind which could intercept our diplomatic messages. Our current intention of putting a “defensive missile shield” into the Czech Republic and Poland shows that for some of our planners the Cold War has really never ended and Russia ought to share the fate the Romans had dished out to Carthage.

But even after October 1962, when the US had formally committed itself to abstain from invading Cuba, Lemnitzer and his cohorts continued to scheme behind the administration’s back, which was regarded as showing insufficient zeal to deal with the Communist threat. It also needs to be remembered that in parallel with the Cuban efforts the attempt to save South Vietnam from Communism was vigorously pursued. By the fall of 1963 the Ngo Dinh Diem regime, which the CIA had helped install in 1954, had proven corrupt, hated by the people and was, furthermore, suspected of trying to make a deal with the North. A coup by a military junta was, therefore, approved by our government and took place on November 1-2, 1963. Although the murder of Diem and his brother, which occurred as part of the coup, was not necessarily in the American plan, Ambassador Lodge wrote to Kennedy after the coup, “The prospects now are for a shorter war.” So much for prescience.

The mystique of Camelot, which has grown up since JFK’s murder did not exist in November of 1963 and his re-election chances in 1964 were regarded as doubtful. The “military-industrial complex” was upset because after the Bay of Pigs disaster Kennedy had arrived at a modus vivendi with Khrushchev and had even sent some surplus grain to the Soviet Union during the summer when they asked for it because of a bad harvest. There were rumors that he would pull out of Vietnam altogether after the 1964 elections and he was clearly seen as having become “soft” on Communism. The Mafia was upset with the president’s administration not only because of the botched Cuban operation but, Sam Giancana, especially, felt that after having delivered Chicago’s and West Virginia’s votes to Kennedy in a close election he ought to be left in peace. Instead he was hounded by Bobby Kennedy’s quest to destroy organized crime. The CIA, with known ties to the Mob, likewise wanted no part of Kennedy. Yet we are supposed to believe that an incompetent Oswald was the deranged “lone gunman” who had no other help. Although this was the Warren Commission’s conclusion it was just as unbelievable as that of the 9/11 Commission’s theory of bin-Laden having been the only culprit (The National Security Scam, August 1, 2008).

In 1975 Senator Frank Church of Idaho started hearings on CIA activities, which included investigations into the events surrounding President Kennedy’s murder. These documents are generally referred to as the Church Committee reports. In regard to Kennedy, the senators did not accept the conclusions of the Warren Commission but stated that there had indeed been a conspiracy to kill the president and that a shot was fired from the “grassy knoll.” Nevertheless, the Church Committee shied away from fingering suspects. In the meantime a mobster, James Files, who worked for Sam Giancana and John Roselli, who is currently incarcerated for an unrelated crime at Joliet prison in Illinois, has admitted to having fired the fatal “grassy knoll” shot. Further information is available in the book JFK and Sam, co-written by one of my colleagues John Hughes MD, with Thomas Jobe MD and Giancana’s daughter Antoinette. Dr. Hughes explains in detail why the “magic bullet” theory, is medically impossible and so is the idea that the fatal wound, which shattered the president’s skull, had come from the Book Depository Building. The book also describes the murder of Sam Giancana just prior to his being taken to Washington to give sworn testimony before the Church Committee in 1975. The URL  http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/index.htm provides additional information, although not all of it is reliable.

With the declassification of government documents Congress took up the Kennedy assassination again in 1992 but still ordered some relevant documents to remain sealed to at least 2017, http://www.fas.org/sgp/advisory/arrb98/part03.htm.  It is truly extraordinary that the cover-up of the circumstances surrounding JFK’s murder is still allowed to persist and that those who question the untenable government conclusions are derided as “conspiracy theorists.”

During Lyndon Johnson’s administration the Vietnam War took precedence over Cuba. The pretext for expanding the American military commitment, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, has already been covered in, “When Presidents Lie” (January 1, 2006) but another event also took place under LBJ’s leadership which likewise has not been allowed to become widespread public knowledge.

The National Security Agency, which specializes in code breaking and listening to other peoples’ conversations, also has some “spy ships” which are routinely dispatched to the coasts of various countries. They are ordered to get as close as possible to shore but to remain in international waters. This was the mission of the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin and among others that of the USS Pueblo (captured by the North Koreans in January of 1968) and the USS Liberty. The latter had been stationed off Africa’s west coast but when tensions in the Middle East were heating up in May of 1956 she was ordered to proceed into the Mediterranean. On June 5 of 1956 the Six Day War erupted and NSA immediately dispatched a spy plane to listen to what was going on while the Liberty was steaming for the Sinai shore. By June 8 she had arrived off the coast of El-Arish where unbeknownst to everybody, except the participants and a few Arab witnesses, a major war crime was talking place. The Israeli army (IDF) had captured a large number of Egyptians and was busy executing the prisoners. The Israeli military historian, Aryeh Yitzhaki, said that up to a 1000 Egyptian POWs had been killed including 400 in the El-Arish area.

The Liberty sat within earshot and Bamford speculated that the Israelis became concerned that word of the massacre might leak. Another theory is that the Israelis were concerned that we might learn about their impending invasion of Syria to capture the Golan Heights. Regardless of reasons, what followed on the afternoon of June 8 is not speculation but fact. The Liberty was first strafed and bombed by Israeli planes, which included the use of napalm, and subsequently torpedoed by Israeli torpedo boats. Four torpedoes were launched in the attempt to sink her but only one hit the mark.

Nevertheless, it crippled the ship and when the crew tried to abandon the Liberty, the life rafts were deliberately riddled with machine gun bullets by the Israelis. As Lieutenant Lloyd Painter who was in charge of the evacuation said, “No survivors were planned for this day!”  “Jumping overboard to escape the sinking ship was also not an option. ‘If you don’t [want to] go down with the ship’ said Seaman Don Pageler, ‘you’re going to jump overboard. If you jump overboard, the way these people were attacking us, we knew they would shoot us in the water. We did firmly believe that there was no way they intended to capture anybody.’”

The Israelis later said that it was a case of mistaken identity but that was a lie.    The Liberty’s ID letters GTR-5 (NSA’s code name: General Technical Research, for the spy ships), as well her name USS Liberty, painted in huge black letters, were clearly visible and so was Old Glory fluttering high in the breeze. The deliberate attack on the ship and the intention not to leave survivors to tell the tale was clearly a war crime and should have been treated as such. But as the French used to say c’est la guerre or the Russians nitshevo voina (never mind it’s war) and all soldiers know that bad things happen in war. The real scandal was the government’s behavior in Washington. When President Johnson was informed he “’came on with a comment he didn’t care if the ship sunk, he would not embarrass his allies.’ Admiral Geis told Lieutenant Commander David Lewis, the head of the NSA group on the Liberty, about the comment but asked him to keep it secret until after Geis died. It was a promise that Lewis kept.”

Although wounded, Captain McGonagle managed to bring the crippled ship to Malta on June 14 where, “A total news blackout was imposed. Crewmembers were threatened with courts-martial and jail time if they ever breathed a word of the episode to anyone-including family members and fellow crewmembers. ‘If you ever repeat this to anyone else ever again you will be put in prison and forgotten about’ Larry Weaver [Liberty crewmember] said he was warned.”

Although this was the biggest disaster the navy had experienced since WWII with 34 servicemen killed and 171 more wounded “Congress held no public hearing. With an election campaign coming up, no on in the week-kneed House and Senate wanted to offend powerful pro-Israel groups and lose their fat campaign contributions.”

Commander McGonagle eventually did receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroic efforts to save the ship and as many of his crew as was possible, but the ceremony was not held, as usual, in the White House with the president bestowing it. Instead there was “a low profile, hastily arranged gathering at the Washington Navy Yard” with the Secretary of the Navy performing the honors. In addition Washington had felt it necessary to previously ask the Israelis if they had any objections. The full story and its aftermath, including the haggling over Israeli reparations can be found in Bamford’s Body of Secrets from which the quotes were taken as well as Paul Findley’s They Dare to Speak Out. People and Institutions confront Israel’s lobby. Findley’s book has further details on the various Israeli excuses and the deliberate suppression of genuine information by our government. The Israeli Historian Benny Morris devoted one brief paragraph to the affair in his book Righteous Victims. “On June 8, off Al-Arish, Israeli torpedo boats and aircraft attacked and mauled the American spy ship Liberty, which they apparently mistook for an Egyptian vessel. Thirty-four American servicemen died and seventy-five [sic] were injured.” There is no mention of the massacre involving Egyptian POWs.

When one reads information of this type one wonders who is our government really protecting and for what purpose? This question will be taken up in the next installment on August 15.









August 15, 2008

ABUSE OF SECRECY - PART II


            In the August 1 issue I discussed how “national security” is being used as the excuse to cover up the full truth in regard to the 9/11 catastrophe and in the August 8 issue it was shown that this is a long standing pattern, which goes back to at least WWII. Yet it was WWI and the Wilson administration which first initiated the spy apparatus that reached full bloom in 1947with the creation of the NSA (National Security Agency) and the CIA.

While the NSA is mainly concerned with SIGINT which consists of listening to conversations and decoding their content; the CIA has, in addition to its spying activities, a covert action program that is busy with toppling foreign governments which  are disliked by the US at any given moment. This includes attempted or completed assassinations of foreign leaders. Its activities and budget are closely held secrets for which we have to pay with our taxes but are not allowed to know anything about.

In 1987 PBS presented a documentary on “The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis,” which highlighted some of these nefarious activities. The full version of the program can be viewed on

 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3505348655137118430. A partial transcript is available on http://www.wanttoknow.info/050423secretgovernment. The appendix lists 72 different operations in 18 countries as diverse as: Greece, Portugal, Australia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Iran, the Seychelles, and Caribbean as well as Latin American nations. Thirty-eight of these were regarded as “successful.” But these successes included the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in Iran (1953), from which we now suffer the consequences, and the murder of President Diem in Vietnam which led to our full fledged involvement in that country’s civil war. Chou en Lai of China was also on the list to be murdered, but that effort failed. 

Occasionally, as in the case of Cuba, an unholy alliance is forged with civilian crime syndicates but since, as mentioned, all of this is carried out under “top secret” labels the American public is kept in the dark about what is really done with our tax money and when a disaster such as 9/11 happens the question arises: Why do they hate us so much? To which our president answers: They hate us because of our freedom! The true answer would have been: Because we impose our will on smaller nations regardless of their whishes.

            While the NSA and CIA are supposed to limit their activities to foreign countries, the FBI provides domestic surveillance. Sometimes the lines blur, especially in the age of terrorism where foreign nationals slip into the US, as was the case leading up to 9/11, and then fall between the cracks because the agencies don’t talk to each other. There are, as mentioned in last week’s installment turf wars. Secrets are traded or bartered for favors between the agencies rather than transmitted as a matter of course. The evidence for this statement can be found in the late Senator Moynihan’s book Secrecy which was mentioned last week. The post 9/11 “Director of National Intelligence” position was supposed to remedy this situation but all it did was to create another huge bureaucracy. The left hand still doesn’t know what the right hand does because loyalty extends only to the immediate supervisor and sometimes not even that far.

            Moynihan wrote, “Secrecy is a form of regulation” and pointed out that although there are many forms of regulations there are two categories which apply in this instance. One is where “the government prescribes what the citizen may do”, and the other where “the government prescribes what the citizen may know.” He also stated that “Secrecy is for losers.” This statement is perhaps best exemplified by the events that led to President Nixon’s resignation.

             The Watergate break-in and attempted cover-up was, however, only the end of a long series of other illegal activities and the remarkable fact is that Nixon may not have even known about most of them. Since this affair is a classic example of how secrecy can backfire and new information has only recently become available let me summarize the essential elements and its context: the Vietnam War, which Nixon was trying to end with a “victory.” The parallels to the Bush-Cheney-McCain position towards Iraq are obvious.

            On the morning of June 13, 1971 the New York Times started the publication of a series of articles which became known as “The Pentagon Papers.” This was a study on the origins of the Vietnam War that had been commissioned by then Defense Secretary McNamara and showed a) how the ever progressive US involvement in Vietnam came about and b) that Pentagon officials had voiced increasing doubts that the war could be won militarily. The documents carried the top secret label and Daniel Ellsberg was one of the principals who had helped putting together the report. Ellsberg, a friend of Henry Kissinger, had originally been a supporter of the war but had become disillusioned and then tried to bring the documents to public attention. After initial doubts about the legality of publishing classified material the New York Times chief- editor gave permission and the avalanche which brought Nixon down got started. A detailed account based on handwritten notes by Nixon’s chief of staff H.R. Halderman about Nixon’s phone conversations on the topic, was presented by law professor David Rudenstine in The Day the Presses stopped: A history of the Pentagon Papers Case, (published in 1996).

            Since the publication of this book the actual audio-tapes have been released from the Nixon library in 2001 and these shed, in part, a different light on the affair. The tapes and their transcripts are now available on the Internet under http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB48/nixon.html. These tapes are of great interest because they provide an inside view of how political decisions are made.

President Nixon was in the White House on that Sunday and had not yet read the New York Times when he received a call from Alexander Haig at 12:18 pm (Henry Kissinger’s National Security assistant at that time). After some chit-chat about daily casualty rates in Vietnam, Nixon asked, “Nothing else of interest in the world today?” to which Haig replied, “goddam New York Times expose . . . .” He regarded it as a “devastating security breach” and “greatest magnitude of anything I’ve known.” But when Nixon was told that the documents only dealt with the Kennedy and Johnson administration he became quite gleeful because the information could be turned against the Democrats. It wasn’t Nixon’s war after all that he was trying to end. 

            The same mood prevailed in the next call which came from Secretary of State William Rogers at 1:28 p.m. The wedding of Nixon’s daughter Tricia that had occurred on the previous day was actually more on Nixon’s mind and when the conversation turned to the Pentagon papers he still enjoyed the idea that this would hurt the Democrats rather than the Republican administration. But by the time Kissinger called from California at 3:09 p.m. the conversation was not so light hearted any more. First some personal information was exchanged, and then came the lower Vietnam daily casualty figures where Kissinger upped the previous count of 20 to 23, but Nixon thought that this wasn’t worth quibbling over. The numbers were down and that’s what mattered. The conversation then shifted to the impending Kissinger Le Duc Tho secret conversations which were about to start in Paris, on achieving an end to the war. It was in this context that Nixon brought up the Pentagon security breach. Although the tape has a great many ums, uh-huhs and is partially inaudible it is quite obvious that Nixon and Kissinger mutually reinforced each other toward a more vigorous approach to this leak.

Initially Kissinger was also of the opinion that this was bad for the Democrats rather than Republicans but then the conversation shifted to the people who leaked the report which Nixon regarded as, “just unconscionable – this is treasonable action on the part of the bastards that put it out.”  Whereupon Kissinger chimed in with, “Exactly Mr. President.” Having noticed Nixon’s beginning anger he then stoked it with, “It’s treasonable, there’s no question-it’s actionable. I’m absolutely certain that this violates all sorts of security laws.” In regard as to what do next it was decided that Nixon would talk to the Attorney General, John Mitchell, to find out what he knew about the situation. Later on Kissinger again reinforced the idea that the Democrats were the ones that would be damaged but he also mentioned that, “It hurt us with Hanoi, because it just shows how far our demoralization has gone.” To which Nixon replied, “Good God.” Kissinger then reassured him, that he would simply inform the North Vietnamese that this was a new administration and Nixon intended to stand firm, to which Nixon agreed. The conversation then shifted to the past and Foster Dulles, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, who had said that, “he had to operate alone because he couldn’t trust his own bureaucracy.” Nixon and Kissinger then started laughing because their foreign policy initiatives in regard to Vietnam, and China were likewise kept hidden from the State Department. Eventually the conversation came back to the New York Times and concerns that current White House operations might also be leaked. Kissinger put him at ease with “But Mr. President, all the big things you’ve done in the White House and those files will leave with you.” This was, however, clearly wishful thinking.

From Monday June 14 four transcripts are available. The first one was an Oval Office meeting with Haldeman at 3:09 p.m. in which Nixon declined to take immediate legal action. The immortal part of that conversation is, however, Halderman’s comment,

 

“But out of the gobbledygook, comes a very clear thing: [unclear] you can’t trust the government; you can’t believe what they say; and you can’t rely on their judgment; and the – implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the President wants to do even though it’s wrong, and the President can be wrong.”

 

If this morsel of truth was meant as a warning it fell on deaf ears as subsequent events proved.

            In a subsequent phone conversation between Nixon and Mitchell it becomes apparent that the latter wanted to go after the Times while Nixon was more concerned about “the goddam pricks that gave it to ‘em.” Nevertheless, he acceded to Mitchell’s wish to call the Times and tell them to abstain from further publications. The phone call was to be  followed up with a warning telegram. On the next day the Justice Department presented their case to Judge Gurfein who issued a temporary restraining order to the Times, prohibiting further publications. But he reversed this ruling on Friday the 18th when he had more facts. The judge noted that,

 

            “A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, an ubiquitous press, must be suffered by those in authority to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know. These are troubled times. There is no greater safety valve for discontent and cynicism about the affairs of government than freedom of expression in any form. . . . No cogent reasons were advanced as to why these documents except in the general framework of embarrassment . . .   would vitally affect the security of the nation.”

 

 

One could only wish that this were the case today when not only the press, but all public media have abrogated their duty to keep us fully informed about government malfeasance and we are reduced to relying on private Internet information.

            Since Nixon and Kissinger were clearly upset over this turn of events they commissioned an in-house security apparatus which was to prevent White House leaks. These were dubbed “the plumbers” and they were recruited from ex-FBI and ex-CIA operatives. Soon they were off on some tangents which had nothing to do with official White House secrecy and it ended with the Watergate Hotel break-in. To what extent Nixon was informed on any of their activities, apart from a general order to prevent leaks, is still unknown. But judging from the extant phone conversations he was actually only minimally involved. He comes across as a person who had mainly reacted to suggestions made by staff rather than, like Eisenhower, having been in involved in the details of the operations. To use a term the current president has arrogated to himself, he was “a decider.” What underlings did with the decision did not particularly interest him. To avoid impeachment Nixon resigned in August 1974 and the Church Committee hearings, which were mentioned last week, began in 1976.  

One might have thought that this would put a damper on illegal government activities but far from it as the “Iran-Contra,” scandal showed a few years later. This affair is important because several of the key players hold either government posts today or are in a position to influence government decisions. A complete timeline of the events of those days can be found on http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE3DB173EF93AA25752C1A961948260.

            The brief official version of the scandal is as follows. The Sandinista government in Nicaragua was regarded as a Moscow-Havana satellite which would foment unrest in all of Latin America and had to be removed. Since an overt act of war was not deemed feasible arms and auxiliaries had to be provided in a clandestine manner. In 1982 Congress decided that the American people should not pay for this endeavor and the first Boland amendment which forbade financing of the effort by the CIA was passed. Since it was regarded as too vague another more specific one was issued in 1984. CIA director William Casey as well as President Reagan felt that the cutting of funds was not only a serious mistake in regard to the pursuit of the Cold War but also a challenge. Ways had to be devised how to bypass Congress to keep the Sandinistas afloat, although the military and CIA, including then deputy director Bill Gates (our current Secretary of Defense),  had advised that the Contras would never be able to achieve their goal without overt military action by the US.

            To understand the events surrounding this scandal from which Reagan escaped unscathed because he could credibly testify to loss of memory, one needs to know again the complex context and the players. In 1979 the Shah had been overthrown and the Ayatollah Khomeini had assumed full power. When President Carter had allowed the terminally ill Shah to come to the US for medical treatment the American embassy in Tehran was taken over by “students” and the personnel taken hostage. During the next year Carter tried the unsuccessful rescue operation and since the hostage crisis impeded his re-election chances he tried negotiations with the mullahs. These may have included promises to deliver some arms, which was in contravention of the embargo that had been issued after the embassy take-over. There are at present no firm data on what really happened in order to avoid an October surprise in 1980, namely release of hostages by the Iranians, which would have significantly bolstered Carter’s chances for success in the November election.  Webster Tarpley, who was mentioned previously in relation to 9/11, published in 1992 a book George Bush. The Unauthorized Biography, in which he expressed his belief that the Republicans simply outbid Carter by offering the mullahs a better deal. This would explain why the hostages were released on January 20, 1981 within minutes after Reagan had been sworn in.

            We now have to realize that on September 22, 1980 the Iran-Iraq war had started and Iran was in dire need of arms. The Israelis who had long been suppliers of this commodity during the Shah’s regime had no compunctions about continuing business as usual with the new administration in Tehran, in spite of the US arms embargo. If anybody were to win in this war it would have been preferable from their point of view that it was Iran because the real threat was Saddam Hussein. If Iraq had won, Saddam might have sent his tanks through Syria to Israel and that would have created a serious problem. On the other hand the US, under the leadership of Reagan and Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of Defense in those days, preferred the secular Iraqis over the fanatic mullahs and sold them not only regular military equipment but also the poison gas that was used to deal with the rebellious Kurds on the Iran Iraq border who had sided with Iran. While it did not raise eyebrows here at the time this was, of course used in the current decade to show Saddam’s brutality by “gassing even his own people.” The Israelis didn’t mind our supplying the Iraqis because the longer the war lasted the better for them.

            But the US had an additional problem in the Middle East. Lebanon was engaged in a civil war and as part of it various factions had taken Westerners as hostages. The CIA station chief of Beirut was kidnapped on March 16, 1984 and so were a host of other civilians from various nations between 1985 and 1987. The predicament for President Reagan was how to get the hostages back without violating the principle that “we don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

At this point the narrative becomes murky because we don’t know for certain who initiated what and when because accounts differ. We do know that Michael Ledeen, of whom more will be said later, went to Israel on May 3, 1985 and met with Prime Minister Shimon Peres to discuss the arms for hostages deal. To protect the Israeli government from inquiries Peres deputized his “terrorism” advisor Amiram Nir (former Mossad operative) as liaison to Col. Oliver North who was essentially the project manager under Admiral Poindexter within the National Security Council. The Iranian go-between was Manucher Ghorbanifar, who had promised that the weapons would be delivered to “moderate Iranians” who would not only be able to secure the release of five American hostages but also effect a regime change in Tehran. Ghorbanifar was and still is Ledeen’s favorite Iranian but the CIA, for whom Ghorbanifar had previously worked, had come to thoroughly distrust him. Casey warned Col. North that Ghorbanifar “was almost certainly an Israeli agent” and that he was referred to as “the fabricator.” Apparently he served the same role as Ahmed Chalabi did for initiating the Iraq war with equally unsatisfactory results.

            Thus, when it comes to dealing with Israel our government would be well advised to heed Laoocon’s advice to the Trojans when they saw the horse the Greeks had left them, “Timeo Danaos sed donas presentes [I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts]. Not only was his well-founded counsel ignored but Laoocoon and his sons came to a bad end which is immortalized in the famous statue that can be viewed in the Vatican museum. I am saying this, knowing fully well that statements of this type might be regarded by some as anti-Semitic but the information is based on Victor Ostrovsky’s book By Way of Deception. The making of a MOSSAD officer. I have previously mentioned some aspects relevant to the current topic in The Niger Forgery (August 2003) and Albert Wohlstetter’s Disciples (December 1, 2005). Suffice it to say that the Israelis had not fully cooperated in the lead-up to the bombing of the marine barracks in Beirut and in the Iran-Contra affair. In Beirut they sent only a vaguely worded warning, although they had considerably more information, a fact which reminds one of 9/11 where a similar scenario played out. During Iran-Contra the release of five American hostages had been promised but only two were freed in a time frame consistent with the weapons delivery. Others were either killed or had to wait till the 1990s. Details are in Ostrovsky’s book as well as that by Gordon Thomas: Gideon’s Spies.

The whole affair became public knowledge when a Lebanese newspaper reported that a CIA plane with supplies to the Contras had been shot down over Nicaragua on October 5, 1986. A crew member, Eugene Hasenfus, who had worn a parachute, supposedly in violation of orders, survived and was taken prisoner by the Sandinistas. The no parachute order reminds one of the U-2 flights where the pilots were not supposed to survive a crash - the planes had no ejection seats. Congress became incensed, hearings started and an Independent Counsel, Lawrence Walsh, was appointed. The major responsibility clearly lay with President Reagan and Casey. But Reagan was already suffering from Alzheimer’s disease at the time, the onset of which may have been hastened by the blood loss and prolonged anesthesia due to the surgery after his near fatal gun-shot wound in 1981. Casey had died of a brain tumor and prior to death was aphasic so that coherent testimony could not be given. For still unexplained reasons Vice President Bush escaped scrutiny, although he had participated in the illegal activities (Ostrovsky p. 328).

Amiram Nir had been slated to testify on behalf of Col. North at his trial but became unavailable when the Israelis reported that he had died in a plane crash in Mexico. Since this was a very convenient death, Ostrovsky suspected that Nir may simply have undergone some reconstructive facial surgery and has continued to live under a different name somewhere.

Fourteen persons were charged with criminal offenses, eleven were convicted but two of the convictions were overturned on appeal and one case was dismissed. Among the convicted individuals were: Elliott Abrams, Oliver North, John Poindexter and Caspar Weinberger. Abrams and Weinberger were pardoned by President GHW Bush and Abrams found a new lease on political life in the current Bush administration. He is deputy assistant to President Bush and deputy national security advisor “for global democracy strategy.” Some of his activities were discussed in Annapolis Déjà Vu (December 1, 2007). Suffice it to say that he is not only unrepentant but pursues the Neocon Zionist policy with great vigor and tries his level best to torpedo State Department efforts which may lead to an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord.

Although not indicted by Counsel Walsh, there were a number of other individuals involved in the Iran-contra scandal who also are again prominent today. David Addington is currently Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff; John Bolton served as ambassador to the UN but was not confirmed by the Senate. Vice President Cheney was a member of the joint congressional Iran-Contra inquiry in 1986 and held the view that the affair was the fault of Congress which had imposed its will on presidential power. Robert Gates is currently Secretary of Defense. Manucher Ghorbanifar again became an important source for the Pentagon on Iranian affairs in 2006 in spite of objections by the CIA. John Negroponte became ambassador to Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and serves currently in he State Department.

In addition there is Michael Ledeen the eminence grise. As mentioned he had gone to Israel as consultant to the National Security Council to facilitate the arms for hostages deal. He was also the person who vouched for the bona fides of Ghorbanifar as the prime intermediary with the Iranians and seems to be incapable of learning from past mistakes. Although Ghorbanifar was thoroughly discredited by the “arms for hostages” debacle, Ledeen continues his attempts to bring him to prominence. In addition Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counter-terrorism officer, suggested in a 2005 radio interview that Ledeen was likely to have been behind the forged Niger document, but this was denied by Ledeen. Since he has powerful friends a formal investigation is not likely to come to pass in the near future. Nevertheless, it is important to know that he is one of the most ardent supporters of air strikes against Iran as well as other measures to overthrow its current government. In his book The War Against the Terror Masters he insisted that the purpose of intelligence gathering is to support a policy which has already been decided on and this idea was obviously enacted in the run-up to the Iraq war with the known consequences. Ledeen believes that the end justifies the means and he does not realize that this was the road that led to Auschwitz. Thus, the mentality that gave rise to the Iran-Contra scandal lives on in the highest decision making circles and we can expect a recurrence of these illegalities at any time.

What can we learn from all of this information? The most important aspect is that our government does not function as a unit. There exist various factions which vie for power and may subvert or even usurp official government functions at certain moments. There is no agreement as to the constitutional limits of the President’s executive power in relation to the Judiciary and Congress. We are not, as frequently stated “a country of Laws,” but a “country of lawyers” and each branch of government uses its lawyers to interpret the Constitution to their liking. We see this played out currently where the president and vice president assert ever more privileges. In addition the president can bypass Congress by signing “Findings” which are executive orders that can be kept secret. Furthermore, the Judiciary is not neutral but has become a tool of the executive branch, because only those justices are appointed by a given administration whose principles are likely to be in accord with those of the ruling party.  

We also see that the notions of “good and evil” or “even “right and wrong” do not apply to our government. President Nixon was convinced that everything he did was for the good of the country. When he said that “If the president does it, it’s legal,” he believed that he was correct and this why he could tell the country with conviction, “I am not a crook.” The same applies to the current administration. But from a common sense point of view one must object because this stance behooves an absolute monarch rather than a Republic which was designed to protect us from such abuses of power.

The same applies also to other individuals who are either in government or act as advisors. They have a viewpoint to which they firmly adhere and will pursue with any and all means because they believe that this is the right way to serve the country. This pertains also to those of our citizens who have come to believe that the interests of the United States are identical with those of the State of Israel. Under those circumstances they do not regard themselves as disloyal when they push for policies that favor Israeli positions and when they hand secret information to that country. They are not spying because when interests are presumed to be identical the concept simply no longer applies. The Israelis on the other hand have no such compunctions and pursue their interests, and only those, regardless what country they deal with, which is only natural.

Furthermore, the Constitution is indeed in peril and the Bush-Cheney administration should have been impeached as, among others, Representative John Conyers of Michigan has suggested. His book: The Constitution in Crisis. The High Crimes of the Bush Administration and a Blueprint for Impeachment provides the details in regard to: deception, manipulation, torture, retribution, illegal surveillance and cover-ups. Impeachment could not be pursued because not enough Republicans had the strength of character to vote for it. We are now facing the prospect that no one of substance will be held responsible for the disasters this administration has caused and if Senator McCain were to win in November the policy of strengthening the Presidency vis á vis Congress would persist. So would covert operations and they are likely to even increase.

Under these circumstances we may be only on “Finding” away from the suspension of the Constitution altogether. The so-called PATRIOT Act which permits spying on US citizens, for no reason, is the herald of things to come. Its official name is: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act. A similar but considerably more precise euphemism was used by Hitler after the Reichstagsbrand on February 27, 1933, five days before parliamentary elections. It was called Verordnung zum Schutz von Volk und Staat (decree to protect the people and the state), which gave him dictatorial powers. A scenario how this could come about in the US is sketched out by Jesse Ventura, former governor of Minnesota, in his recent book: Don’t Start the Revolution Without Me. Although written tongue in cheek he is dead serious and can prove his points. Suspension of the Constitution not only can happen here but will happen unless the citizens of our country begin to pay more attention to what our government does in our name and demand accountability.

What should be done? What Senator Moynihan had called the “culture of secrecy” should be replaced by one which stresses “openness.” The overall rule in regard to secrecy ought to be that of the prudent physician in regard to medications: use the minimum effective dose, only at time of need and stop it when it no longer serves this purpose. Covert operations which are not supposed to see the light of day should no longer be undertaken. The guiding principle should be: don’t do anything that you don’t want the media to broadcast. When perpetrators are caught they should tell the truth, the whole truth, as it was available to them at the time and refrain from making excuses and lying.

There should not be two sets of morality; one for private citizens and the other for government officials. A crime is a crime regardless of motive and the perpetrators need to be held accountable.

Israel should be treated as a foreign country. Although some of its interests coincide with ours others do not and the automatic excuse for wrong-doing by emphasizing our friendship should no longer be condoned. Dual citizenship, regardless of what other country is involved, should not be allowed.

The invoking of “national security” for domestic political gain, as is so obvious in the current presidential campaign, needs to be denounced. “Crying wolf” all the time leads to inappropriate responses and is harmful to the country.

I realize that these suggestions have no chance for implementation in the existing political climate. Nevertheless, for the sake of our children and grandchildren they need to be presented because unless the past and current abuses are addressed they will not only persist but grow exponentially.

 

In view of the upcoming Democratic and Republican Conventions the next installment will appear on September 7.







September 7, 2008

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            A Chinese proverb says that one picture is worth a thousand words and this ancient wisdom was again proven correct during the past few weeks. First there was the spectacle of the Beijing Olympics which, fortunately, went off without a major hitch. Every Utahn’s heart beat higher when one saw our Andrei Kirilenko as flag bearer for his native Russia thereby overcoming the politics that cloud the relationships between the two countries. Unfortunately, he didn’t do all that well in the games and we were deprived of seeing him play against his usual basketball teammates of the Utah Jazz. On the other hand our other players including the star with the engaging name of Carlos Boozer did exceptionally well and brought home a Gold Medal.

            Apart from the athletic achievements the highlight was clearly the opening ceremony with its cast of thousands and possibly tens of thousands. It was superbly choreographed and the message to the rest of the world was loud and clear: We are an ancient culture, we have the people, we have the technology, we are resilient so please don’t fuss with us and don’t lecture us! All of this was conveyed in a subtle rather than communist hammer and sickle way. The most touching scene demonstrating courage and resilience was perhaps little nine year old Lin Hao who had survived the collapse of his school in Sichuan province’s devastating earthquake and then went back to help injured classmates. He walked hand in hand with the giant basket ball star Yao Ming smiling happily and waving his little flag. This was humankind at its best.

            By the time the closing ceremony rolled around NBC, which was our only available news outlet and which had essentially concentrated on US athletes, to the exclusion of most of the rest of the world, had apparently enough of pageantry and kept interrupting it with commercials and pictures of our athletic triumphs. At any rate, the opening ceremony clearly received an A+ and could not be topped. The Brits will have a problem in 2012, if it were to come to pass, because this type of performance can hardly be matched.

            My concerns about the future were based on another picture: Russian tanks rolling into the former Soviet Union’s Georgia and the attendant propaganda in the US. That “our man in Tbilisi” Mikheil Saakashvili had overplayed his hand by sending his US trained fledgling army into South Ossetia, and in the process killing an unknown number of Russians, was downplayed here. So was the timing of the event and one cannot fault Putin for suggesting that our election campaign may have played a role because it immediately strengthened the hand of one of the pretenders to the presidential throne. John McCain immediately fired a rhetorical salvo over Putin-Mevdevev’s bow with all sorts of dire warnings. Obama was initially more realistic but soon felt obliged to chime in, to keep his candidacy viable.

            Let us now take a quick look back at the previous century. The scenario which is unfolding does not reflect 1938, as our Likudniks are trying to convince us, with Ahmadinejad in the role of Adolf the not so great, but instead the decade before WWI where 1908 was the prelude. I have discussed the disastrous September 1908 meeting between the Austrian Foreign Secretary Baron Aerenthal and his Russian counterpart Alexander Izvolsky in the January 1, 2008 issue (2008 Outlook), but the essentials bear repeating.

            The “young Turks” had taken over power in Constantinople and demanded representative government. Austria held a mandate over Bosnia-Herzegovina and Vienna was intensely concerned that this desire for political representation might spread to that area because it was officially still part of the Ottoman Empire. This had to be prevented and the best way seemed to be a deal with Russia. Austria would annex these provinces outright and the Russians in turn were promised free access through the Dardanelles to the Mediterranean, a long desired goal. Let us remember, furthermore, that all of this happened only three years after Russia’s dramatic loss to Japan and she blamed the defeat in part on not having been able to send her Black Sea fleet through the Turkish held sea-lanes.

There were two problems with this plan. One was that it required absolute secrecy and the announcement was to be made simultaneously in Vienna and St. Petersburg. The other was, of course, that Aerenthal had no way of making good on his rash promise. He then compounded his mistake whith what he thought would be a favor to his Emperor Franz Josef by announcing the annexation prematurely at the time of Franz Josef’s sixtieth anniversary of his ascension to the throne on October 6, 1908. Needless to say Izvolsky was furious because he was portrayed as having acceded to abandoning Russia’s traditional friends the Serbs, who wanted a greater rather than lesser role in World affairs. He was forced to resign and swore revenge. The Western powers were also miffed because Austria had by its unilateral action violated the Berlin agreement of 1878 which was intended to establish a certain degree of peace in the Balkans. This left Austria isolated as far the West was concerned, with Germany as its only partner. But since the Russian government had barely survived revolution in 1905 the country could not go to war at the time. Instead Russia pursued an intense arms build-up so as not to be caught unprepared the next time. This in turn alarmed the Germans and it was felt that by 1915 Russia’s massive army would be unbeatable on the continent. Ergo, what do politicians do regardless of the country they are in charge of? They plan a preventive war. The “Russian Steam Roller” served the same propaganda purpose then as a nuclear armed Iran does now.  The British were not directly involved but they were worried about Cousin Willie’s naval ambitions and for having had the temerity to build a railroad to Iraq’s Baghdad which they regarded as their front yard. Obviously the French hated the Germans because they wanted Alsace-Lorraine back which they had lost in 1871. Thus the powder keg was in place and only the fuse needed to be lit.

The First World War was not, as it has been portrayed here, a fight of good versus evil but due to fear, commercial greed and stupidity. Unfortunately we can see the same factors operative today. Russia was seriously weakened in the 90s and is now in the process of re-establishing its role as a world power, which we are unwilling to grant. We again provoked her by recognizing Kosovo (which has for a long time been part of Serbia) as an independent country and we obviously don’t mind that Kosovo is run by the PKA whose members have previously been denounced by us as “narco-terrorsts.” In addition we are doing our level best to annoy the Russians further by trying to extend NATO into the provinces of the former Soviet Union under the guise of bringing them the blessings of democracy. The real purpose is, of course, access to Central Asia’s oil, gas and mineral resources as well as a pipeline from the Caspian to a Turkish Mediterranean port thereby bypassing Russia. Since NATO on its doorstep is not only regarded as a security threat, but there is also a considerable loss of revenue involved if the “near abroad” were to be solidly integrated into the West, we can expect serious troubles arising from the area. How far they will escalate will depend, to a considerable extent, upon the choice Americans will make in November.

Before going to the next spectacles, the Democratic and Republican Conventions, there was one more image which attracted my attention. When Georgia’s President Saakishvili delivered his thunderous declaration of Russian villainy one could see to his right the Georgian flag, which was appropriate but on the left stood that of the EU. Anybody is, of course, entitled to fly any flag one likes as a private citizen, but it was inappropriate for Georgia’s president to use it at an official function. Georgia is not a member of the EU and its member states might now think twice before they make it happen.

Immediately prior to the Democratic convention the weekly issue of Time magazine was devoted to the Democrats and its presumed standard bearer. The major article was on “The five faces of Barack Obama” and concluded in essence that we don’t know enough about him. We should not be swept away by “Obamania” but look very carefully at the seamy side of his life and rise to fame through the rough and tumble Chicago politics. The article was a brief summation of the book Obama Nation by Jerome Corsi Ph.D. which is an exquisitely drafted hatchet job and will be discussed in the October 1 issue in relation to the personality depictions of all the candidates. For now there are only two aspects that are relevant. The first one is the point Corsi made stating that the words “Obama Nation” should be read very fast which would result in “abomination.” The second is Obama’s face as it appeared on the cover of Time. We were confronted with a gaunt brown face glaring at us from a black background and the facial expression could only be called sinister. When I first saw the picture I immediately had the impression that they wanted to show us Lucifer emerging from hell and didn’t need to put horns on him. The message was clear: whatever happens in Denver at the Convention this black guy is a menace and must not be elected in November.

I had just finished reading Corsi’s book, which painted Obama as a ruthless, social climber who puts expediency above conscience, the evening prior to his expected announcement of his running mate and told Martha that if Corsi is right Hillary will be nominated as VP, because that would be the most expedient course to win in November. Next morning Martha, who is an early riser and no fan of Hillary, greeted me with a sad face. I immediately said, “It’s Hillary!” Then she laughed at having fooled me and said, “No it’s Biden.” Mind you she has always been a staunch Republican but a third Bush term in form of McCain is too much even for her. By forsaking immediate gain and thereby potentially risking the election, Obama had shown statesmanship over winning at all costs. He knew, and so did most rational thinking individuals, that the election is only the first step; the hard part comes in the Oval Office. As Bill Clinton told us in 1992 we would “get two for one” if we elected him, we would again get two for one if we now elected Hillary for the vice-presidency. To have a president and two co-presidents could not possibly have worked. By picking Senator Biden, Obama showed that he is fully aware of his own meager foreign affairs credentials and is willing to listen to the best possible advice. Furthermore, it is clear that the country would be in good hands if Biden had to assume the presidency in case of unforeseen circumstances. The thousand(s) who came to hear the announcement from the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield and lined the streets as far as the eye could see were obviously of the same opinion.

The forces which are bent on Obama’s destruction banked on the Clintons to throw the Convention into turmoil but, to their credit, they refused to do so. Hillary as well as Bill gave good speeches praising Obama’s readiness to lead the country to a better future and the picture on the TV screen, after Hillary moved that Obama be elected by acclamation without further roll call of the states, was unforgettable. There was an apparently genuinely smiling Hillary holding the microphone while all around her broke out in cheers with tears rolling down some black and brown faces.

This scene was repeated on the next day in Denver’s football stadium which was packed with more than 84,000 people from all walks of life who had come to hear Obama accept the nomination. It was truly a historic event in America’s history because it showed that racial barriers, especially against those of our citizens who are to a varying degree of African descent, have indeed been overcome by one of our major parties. Regardless what happens in November, the country has taken a giant step forward to finally fully enfranchise African-Americans who up until 1865 were “property” and legally regarded as three-fifths of a person. Even when they were emancipated by Lincoln they were left destitute and racial equality was still “a dream” for Martin Luther King on August 28, 1963. He paid with his life for that dream and it is not far fetched to think that this fate may also befall Obama. But even if this tragedy were come to pass only a major catastrophe, which would transform America into a Hitler-Stalin type dictatorship, can undo what happened on August 28, 2008 in Denver. Blacks and Whites spontaneously embraced each other and for one brief moment there was a unity of joy rather than one of shared grief which had resulted from disaster on 9/11.

The Democrats created powerful pictures and this presented McCain with a major challenge. In order to counteract the boost which the Democrats were expected to get from the Convention, he had withheld the name of his vice presidential pick until after the Democrats had their day in the sun. He kept the media guessing for weeks and my personal opinion is that he himself had not made up his mind until the week of the Democratic Convention.  He then allowed the Democrats one night of grace to enjoy their celebrations and on the morning of the 29th he announced that Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska was his choice for vice president. This was a brilliant tactical move because it left all of us stunned. Nobody outside of Alaska had ever heard of her before and if McCain wanted to momentarily steal the Democrats’ thunder he had fully succeeded because the media were now scrambling to find out who this woman is.

The moment Martha and I got over our surprise of the totally unexpected I headed for the Internet and lo and behold there was already on Wikipedia a full exposé. She was born 44 years ago in Sandpoint Idaho (a beautiful little lakeside community) and during her infancy the parents moved to Alaska where she has resided ever since. She is married and has five children. She was a runner-up in the Miss Alaska pageant, also earned the title of Miss Congeniality, has a BS degree in journalism from the University of Idaho, served as mayor of Wasilla (population estimated 7,000 - 8,500) and became governor of the state in 2006. Governor Palin is an outdoors woman and started hunting with her father in childhood; she worked briefly as sports newscaster on local TV and for some time with her husband as commercial fishermen. She is held in high regard as incorruptible by her constituents and is ardently against abortions. It may have been this point which convinced McCain to pick her because she demonstrated the courage of her convictions by not aborting her youngest child whom she knew to have Down syndrome (previously called Mongolism). These are all admirable traits but does this résumé qualify her to be president of the country if the 72 year old McCain were to be incapacitated?

Although McCain and Palin gave brief rousing speeches, interrupted by frequent applause and cheers, the cameras stayed focused mainly on the platform and the speakers rather than occasionally panning to the crowd, as they did in Springfield when Obama had introduced Senator Biden as his running mate. There had been rumors prior to the 29th that the enthusiasm of the Republicans did not match that of the Democrats and people had to be bussed in from various states to swell the crowd. Be that as it may. The substance of the speeches was that the Alaskan governor is fiscally responsible, has high ethical standards, battles special interests (oil industry) and corruption, even in regard to her own party. In McCain’s words “She's exactly who I need. She's exactly who this country needs to help me fight the same old Washington politics of me first and country second.” On the stage was also the Palin family including 17 year old daughter Bristol who had been designated to hold 5 months old baby Trig. A picture perfect quintessential made for TV wholesome American family.

But there was something wrong with this family idyll which made the news only on the following day. Bristol was not just a good sibling but the baby she was holding served an additional purpose. It shielded the view of Bristol’s expanding lower abdomen which harbors a baby of its own. This pregnancy had not been planned but in view of Palin’s national prominence it was announced that the wedding bells will ring at an as yet undisclosed time. Although this is strictly a family matter it is not entirely irrelevant in a political campaign which stresses fundamental Christian morality and family values. In addition we learned that the governor is currently under investigation in Alaska for potential abuse of power in a case that can be regarded as inverse nepotism. An independent prosecutor has been appointed to investigate the matter and the verdict is supposed to be announced on October 10.  A more detailed report on these as well as other problems Governor Palin faces will be presented in the next installment. The media and the Democrats will have a field day in the coming weeks and months.

Sarah Palin’s family problems and potential improprieties in her official conduct are, however, not the main issues at this time. The important aspect is Senator McCain’s judgment and decision making process. He had met Mrs. Palin only once in February of this year at a governors conference in Washington and had subsequently spoken to her only once on the phone during the week of the Democratic Convention to invite her for a visit to his Arizona ranch. According to newspaper reports his first face to face substantive meeting with her was on Thursday August 28 when he offered Mrs. Palin the job and the announcement came the following day. The entire process had been shrouded with deep secrecy and it is doubtful that a careful investigation of the governor’s background had preceded the nomination.

One wonders if McCain would really have taken Palin as his vice-presidential candidate had he had even the limited information which is available at this time. As such the selection appears to have been made hastily and on purely political grounds. Apparently Senator McCain thought he might appease his evangelical base by selecting a woman who has strong anti-abortion credentials and this might also swing disaffected democrats, who had voted for Hillary, to his side. The choice of a completely unknown governor from a sparsely inhabited state was a gamble and demonstrated his “maverick” nature. But in so doing he forfeited two of his strongest campaign points. He had promised us that his vice-president would be the most qualified person who could step up to the presidency at a moment’s notice and that he would always put the needs of the country above those of political expediency. Alaskans, who know most about Sarah Palin reacted to “the most qualified person” statement with “oh, really?” and this was echoed across the country, apart from Republicans who dutifully toed the party line. If Senator McCain had been true to his promise and had wanted to put a woman on the ticket to lure disenchanted followers of Hillary he could have picked one of several well known governors and/or senators whose credentials are above board.

But McCain’s problem was that he wanted not only a woman but also to please the evangelical anti-abortion base and in this situation there were slim pickings. Governor Palin’s, impeccable anti-abortion stance, even in case of rape or incest, was probably the decisive factor. This leads us to the remarkable conclusion that the fate of the world may be decided in November on the issue of abortion. Since there will be, in all probability, vacancies on the Supreme Court, the Republican base fears that unless McCain is elected judges will be nominated who may favor overturning the 1973 landmark Roe vs. Wade decision which legalized abortion in this country. The right to an abortion is a significant and highly emotionally charged subject but we must ask ourselves: Is this really the most important problem the country faces now and in the next four years?

The Republican Convention festivities were initially muted because of hurricane Gustav which required evacuation of New Orleans and the cable news channels were transfixed, to the exclusion of everything else, with moment to moment updates. There was actually not much to report apart from the fact that in contrast to hurricane Katrina local, state and federal agencies now worked in concert to see that the evacuation proceeded in an orderly manner. This was achieved successfully and the hurricane which had, already been downgraded prior to landfall skirted the city. We saw impressive pictures of waiting buses ready to evacuate people, long lines of cars leaving New Orleans and an empty Bourbon Street. We also saw water sloshing over the levies and were told that they had been reinforced since Katrina but the work was only 25% finished. The reason was, “inadequate funding.” This raises a serious question. We have the money for building a wall, on the Israeli example, to keep Mexicans out of our country but we don’t have it to protect one of our major cities. Since hurricanes are going to keep visiting the area on a regular basis, are the people of New Orleans supposed to pack up ever so often and leave their homes and businesses? There seems to be something drastically wrong with our priorities.

But the hurricane proved to be a blessing for the party faithful. The Monday festivities had to be scrubbed and only the absolute minimum of business was conducted. By Tuesday, when it was apparent that damage had been limited, partying was again in full swing with one exception. President Bush as nominal leader of the party was expected to give a speech but his duties, to oversee that the storm stricken people get all the help they need kept him in Washington and his appearance was limited to an eight minute Video-link address. The vice-president was also unavailable because of pressing business in ex-Soviet Georgia where he presented its President Saakishvili with a $1 billion check. Again one wonders what priorities this administration has in regard to financial largesse.

The Republicans were delighted not to see either the president or vice-president in person because the theme of the Convention was, “Change.” Since they had been the party in charge of the White House for the past nearly eight years this use of Obama’s key mantra might seem strange.  But they did not want Obama’s change with: higher taxes, more government spending, all-intrusive liberal extremism, and an absence of an energy policy; instead it will consist of: making the Bush tax-cuts permanent, cutting government spending and “drill, drill, drill” for more domestic oil and gas plus investing in alternative means of energy and strong national security. If this did not sound like a great deal of change from the Bush years it went unnoticed.

When Governor Palin gave her acceptance speech she roused the audience by describing herself as a “hockey-mom” and explained that the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull was “lipstick.” One may ask now if the country’s needs are best served by a pit bull at this time but this was not on the minds of the delegates. She portrayed herself as just an ordinary person who had always fiercely striven to uphold the common good, had lowered taxes, had held government accountable even when it involved members of her own party, had been fiscally responsible and that her work as mayor of Wasilla and now governor of Alaska had provided her with more executive experience than Obama ever had. The entire presentation was geared to portray her just as much of a “maverick” as her hoped for boss and the audience was ecstatic. We were told that “a star was born.”

On Thursday Governor Huckabee, the unsuccessful presidential aspirant, told us that Palin had received more votes from her constituents during her political life than Senator Biden ever had, which delighted the audience, notwithstanding that the math doesn’t add up. Not to be outdone, our Utah governor, Jon Huntsman, declared in his Palin nominating speech hat she did have foreign policy credentials, which had been previously doubted, because her state borders on Russia and Canada. “Oh, really?” comes to mind again.

While “Sarah Barracuda,” her nickname from high school basketball games, gave no hint of “reaching across the aisle” to achieve mutually agreeable solutions, Senator McCain in his acceptance speech struck a somewhat conciliatory note. After sharing with the audience his, by now well known, experiences as POW in Vietnam he emphasized his love of country, unstinting devotion to duty, always placing the country and honor above all considerations. After a relatively mild swipe at Obama’s inexperience and lack of a coherent political program he promised to work in a bipartisan manner for peace, security and prosperity. Although I gave the speech only a C, the audience was ecstatic. After every second sentence or so they rose, clapped wildly, held up heir banners and shouts of “USA, USA, USA,” filled the air, which brought memories of the fervent Sieg Heils of bygone days to mind.

 In all of these images there was one event that failed to make the news and is known only to a handful of people who care about the imprisoned 1.5 million Gazans whose borders have been sealed ever since Hamas took over last year. I have discussed this situation previously in “Saving the Bush Legacy” (July 1, 2007). But earlier this year a heterogeneous group of intrepid people decided to see whether or not the Gaza blockade could be broken. They bought two rickety fishing vessels in Crete which were made, to some extent, sea-worthy and sailed under the Greek flag to Cyprus where they picked up a few more passengers with destination: Gaza. These hardy sailors, on their SS Free Gaza and SS Liberty, were from all walks of life, various nations including Israel, and featured even an 81 year old Catholic nun as well as Tony Blair’s sister in-law.  It was a demonstration of people to people power and had nothing to do with any government. Although Israel issued a warning that the boats may be shot at upon entering Gaza waters, the government reconsidered because the little two boat flotilla had attracted international attention and there were a number of reporters on board. They entered Gaza harbor to a cheering crowd of thousands but as mentioned Americans were not allowed to see these pictures on their TV screens.

One of the participants, Israeli citizen Jeff Halper, placed his experiences on the Internet and I only became aware of the story as a member of Utahns for a Just Peace in the Holy Land.  Halper wrote that they had been joyously welcomed by about 40,000 Gazans and when he tried to enter Israel via the Erez checkpoint, waving his Israeli passport, he was promptly arrested and sent to prison in nearby Ashkelon. His crime was that he had violated a military order which prohibited Israelis from being in Gaza. I shall now let him speak for himself,

 

“All night I was physically threatened by right-wing Israelis - - and I was sure I wouldn’t make it till the morning. Ironically, there were three Palestinians in my cell who kind of protected me, so the danger was from Israelis, not Palestinians in Gaza as well as in Israel. (One Palestinian from Hebron was in jail for being illegally in Israel; I was in jail for being illegally in Palestine.) As it stands, I’m out on bail. The state will probably press charges in the next few weeks, and I could be jailed for two or so months.”  

 

Halper’s entire story is available on http://www.ICAHD.org and news about Gaza on http://www.FreeGaza.org. Our treatment of the Palestinians, leaving them to the not so tender mercies of Israel, is shameful but is not likely to change especially if McCain were to win in November. In order to extend Sarah Palin’s foreign policy grasp she has been assigned a tutor in form of McCain’s good friend Joe Lieberman who immediately presented her to AIPAC for instruction. One wonders under these circumstances what “putting country first” means under these circumstances. What country are we talking about?

In November Americans will be faced with a choice which goes beyond Democrat versus Republican. We will have to choose between very different personalities for president as well as vice-president. This will be the topic of the October 1 installment.    


October 1, 2008

SIFTING FACTS FROM PROPAGANDA


            The seemingly interminable election process for our next presidential team is mercifully nearing its end by the beginning of next month. The presidential contenders have been going at each other for at least one and a half years with allegations, rumors and innuendos frequently trumping the facts. Money has been raised in prodigious amounts and the election circus – the only reasonable term to describe these events – has taken time and attention away from the nation’s real business. The current financial Wall Street debacle could have been foreseen and acted upon but the media’s and, therefore, the public’s attention was diverted to the candidates’ numerous debates and views on a variety of subjects. The game was “gotcha” where the moderators, or the candidates themselves, tried to catch the unwary in a gaffe. Quick thinking and coming up with a succinct sound bite was desired rather than reasoned debate of the pros and cons of a given proposition.

            The Republicans were ready to declare their winner in March, while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had to slug it out to the nearly bitter end on June 7. But since Hillary’s loss was deeply resented by her 18 million supporters there was danger that they would create a furor at the Democratic Convention and demand a recount of the votes. It was alleged that Hillary had been treated unfairly because the Michigan and Florida votes had not been properly counted, notwithstanding that these states had defied party rules and had held their primaries at unauthorized dates. It is true that voters should not be punished for the stupidity of their state leadership; but since when are leaders held accountable rather than the public? The country was held in suspense and the Republicans could enjoy the Democrats tearing themselves apart. This would then provide grist for the propaganda machine in the final battle leading up to November 4.

Once it had been clear that Obama was a serious contender for the presidency a number of books appeared which presented him in the most unfavorable light. I have mentioned them briefly on a previous occasion but since Obama is now the Democratic standard bearer and they are being taken seriously I have to address them in some more detail. I shall limit myself only to those I have personally read namely: Webster Griffin Tarpley’s Obama the Postmodern Coup. Making of a Manchurian Candidate and that by Jerome R. Corsi Ph.D. The Obama Nation. Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality.

Tarpley’s book was written in March of this year and precipitated by Obama’s stunning successes in the Iowa caucus. Tarpley stated, “The need for this book became evident to me between Sunday January 6 and Monday January 7, 2008 , that is to say, during the interval between this year’s January 3 Iowa caucus and the January 8 New Hampshire primaries.” Tarpley’s goal was to prevent an Obama presidency because it would lead, in his opinion, to a fascist state. The picture on the book’s cover shows on the left side a serious, somewhat grim looking Duce greeting throngs of supporters with upraised right hand; while we see on the right a smiling Obama addressing an unseen crowd with raised left hand.

Tarpley’s thesis is that Obama’s rise to fame was no accident. He had been selected by Zbigniew Brzezinski, whose student he was at Columbia University in the early 1980s, and backed by the Trilateral Commission, a shadow government that supposedly runs the world. The purpose was to engineer a “CIA people Power Coup.” The original Fascist Movement by Mussolini, as well as Hitler’s National Socialist Movement (die Bewegung, of not so fond memories) stemmed from grass roots populist demagogy playing on the fear of communism and the inability of democratically elected governments to provide adequate living standards for the citizens of their countries. While these coups i.e. Mussolini’s March on Rome and Hitler’s rise had the backing from high finance and heavy industry, the postmodern coups have, in addition, the help of the CIA. As examples Tarpley lists the 2004 Orange revolution in Kiev; the so-called “bulldozer revolution” in Belgrade; Serbia in 2000 and the Roses revolution in Tiflis, Georgia.”  The 2006 Cedars Revolution in Lebanon failed only because of Hezbollah’s mass mobilization. The driving force of these revolutions, which are far from spontaneous, is what Tarpley calls a “rent a mob.” The money comes from “The National Endowment for Democracy [a supposedly private agency established in 1993], the various Soros foundations, Gene Sharp’s Albert Einstein Institute, and other entities that we may refer to for the sake of brevity and clarity as the privatized or quasi-governmental left wing of the US intelligence community or left CIA in the post 1982-era of President Reagan’s Executive Order 12333 [provides for the conduct of US intelligence activities and gives special authorities to the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA].”  I shall return to these quasi NGOs (non-governmental organizations) on a later occasion in another issue.

The purpose of these coups, according to Tarpley, is to draw the ex-Soviet Union Border States into the Western orbit and thereby further destabilize Russia. Brzezinski, as a native of Poland, instinctively hates Russia, regardless of its prevailing government, and will do everything to bring about its final demise. The common feature of all these coups is that they are “built around a ‘telegenic demagogue.’” When Tarpley saw an Obama rally on MSNBC (January 7), his reaction was: “My God!” I exclaimed. “It’s a color revolution in the US!” Tarpley then goes on to show that Obama will not only bomb Pakistan but also Russia; that he is supported by “rich Elitists” and eventually the country will be transformed into a “Totalitarian Fascist Corporate State.” 

For the near future Tarpley proved himself a poor prophet. He not only assumed a Hillary victory and a McCain-Lieberman ticket but also envisioned for the Denver convention, “a rent-a-mob/dupe-a- mob of swarming adolescents descending on the city to stage a made for television spectacle of ochlocracy [government by mob, intimidation of constitutional authorities] and mob rule in order to impose an Obama candidacy.” Although some of his long range views, which will be discussed on another occasion in relation to the current tectonic shift on Wall Street cannot be as readily dismissed. It is inappropriate, however, to lay these at Obama’s feet.

What are the facts in regard to Tarpley’s opinions? Brzezinski is indeed Obama’s main foreign policy advisor and members of the Brzezinski family work for his campaign. It is also true that Obama has recommended that if we knew where the Al Qaeda leadership was located in Pakistan and the Pakistanis were unwilling or unable to do something about it that we should “take them out.” This is, however, a far cry from indiscriminately showering missiles on suspected targets in the tribal areas of Pakistan as is now being done by the Bush administration, let alone bombing Pakistan’s interior. Furthermore, although Mr. B does not harbor a great deal of friendship for Russia and feels that the country is backsliding into autocracy there is no hint that this should be avoided by starting a war with that country. He does favor what he calls an Atlantic community that encompasses the US, Canada and Europe as a counterweight to Russia and China. But as he argued in his most recent book, Second Chance. Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower, America’s global leadership needs to be exerted through the force of its ideals by diplomacy rather than military power. The idea that “Obamania” was a CIA sponsored “rent-a-mob” phenomenon can also be laid to rest since at the end of August it was surpassed by an equally impressive “Palimania.”

While Tarpley predicts disaster in form of a leftist fascist autocracy the Corsi book tries to add fuel to the fire with sly innuendos and willful distortions of facts. Just as with Tarpley, the book was written to destroy a potential Obama presidency and the author prides himself of having derailed the Kerry campaign with his 2004 co-authored book, Unfit for Command. Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. Corsi was now trying to duplicate this feat in 2008 and the book has enjoyed a great deal of attention. In essence it is an attempt of lynching by association. One typical example is: In Indonesia Barack went for two years to public elementary school where, among regular subjects, the Koran was also taught. Since Indonesia is a Muslim country this ought not to be particularly surprising. But as a further indication that little Barry had Muslim leanings, Corsi points out that the stepfather had occasionally taken the boy to a mosque and that the youngster had worn a sarong. The fact that this was the local garb, just as much as Lederhosen were in Austria, remains unmentioned. On the other hand that Barack’s religion had supposedly been listed as Muslim is brought to attention. Well, the Kenyan father was indeed a lapsed Muslim and so was the stepfather, Lolo Soreto, while the mother was religiously unaffiliated. Since religion had to be put on a certificate when enrolled in public school, a practice common around most of the world, that was the appropriate answer. To jump from an eight to ten year old to the religious beliefs of a grown man is, however, a rather large one indeed.

Other examples are in a similar vein. Such as a friendship in adolescence with an African-American ex-communist; acquaintance with an ex-Weatherman bomb thrower who is now a respected professor at the University of Illinois; supposed profiteering from a Chicago housing developer; harboring Afro-centric rather than Amero-centric views as demonstrated by attending the Reverend Wright’s church; encouraging a cult of personality; holding domestic opinions that are to the extreme left of the spectrum. If this toxic brew were not enough let us not forget that he would immerse himself into Kenya’s problems ahead of ours and pursue an anti-Israel foreign policy.

While Obama has indeed had contacts with the people Corsi mentions there is no evidence that they, therefore, were the determining elements in his world view. By reading Hitler’s Mein Kampf and Karl Marx’s Das Kapital a person does not automatically become either a Nazi or Communist. Contact with a wide range of opinions is to be welcomed rather than condemned because it broadens one’s outlook and prevents dogmatism. One is likewise not anti-Israel, which tends to be equated nowadays with anti-Semitism, when one strives for a just and durable peace in the Holy Land. But this can only be accomplished when Israeli politicians and our local super-Likudniks see the necessity to take the genuine aspirations of the Palestinians into account. That peace in the larger Middle East can only be achieved with peace in that troubled country is obvious for everyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear but unfortunately not for Dr. Corsi and his fellow travelers.

If one wants to know what an Obama presidency might really look like one should read what he himself has outlined. The Audacity of Hope was published in 2006 and describes in considerable detail his views of how political bickering and rampant unbridled capitalism, which was running the country into the ground, could be channeled into constructive actions through government as well as private initiatives. What he asks for is good will and thoughtfulness rather than inflammatory rhetoric.

The Audacity of Hope was obviously written with the impending presidential campaign in mind. It shows an individual who is intelligent and well educated but also restless and ambitious. Another person might have served at least one full term in the Senate before reaching for the highest office in the land and he must have known that he would be running head on into the Clinton political machine. Under these circumstances he also must have known that he could not be a “uniter” of the Democratic Party but he would instead cause deep rifts. I don’t know why he did what he did but the official reason, given by his friends, is that: 2008 is a unique opportunity for the Democrats and if he were to let it slip by another one would not return until at least 2016 at which time Hillary’s two terms would be up and the country would be ready for the Republicans again. This may well have been the case but there could have been an additional calculation.

I always like to put myself into other people’s shoes and can imagine the following conversation having taken place between Barack and his wife Michelle one weekend over breakfast some time in 2006:

 

Barack (in a rather hesitant manner): You know that people have been talking to me about running for president. I think that I might want to do it.

Michelle (furious): Are you nuts?  You can’t possibly win against Hillary! Don’t we have enough trouble as is?

Barack (in a patient voice): I know that, but listen for a moment. If I make a good enough showing they have to give me the vice presidency. That’s nothing to sneeze at either and maybe 2016 will be our turn.

Michelle (somewhat conciliatory): I don’t know; you’re asking for a lot of grief for all of us. They might even kill you like they did Malcolm and Dr. King.

Barack (more insistent): I know that too, but will you help me if I do take the plunge?

Michelle (still doubtful):  Well, I’d have to think about that for quite some time.

 

I don’t know if this was the way how things really happened in the Obama family but I’m extrapolating from how important decisions are made in our house and the obvious fact that Barack and his wife are truly a team which respects the wishes of each other. Extrapolating further I believe that the Obamas were as surprised by the ensuing Obamania as the rest of the country and when it became clear that he had a good chance of being nominated they whole-heartedly threw themselves into the enterprise.

            This type of thinking does not necessarily hold for his counterpart, John McCain. It appears unlikely that he would have asked Cindy whether or not he should have entered the race in 1999 and again in 2007. His life’s trajectory and personality is totally different from the middle class America the Obama-Robinson family belonged to and yet the Clinton and subsequently McCain campaigns have managed to paint the Obamas as “elitists” while the multi-millionaire Clintons and McCains are supposed to be humble folks like us. It is true that most of the McCain money belongs to Cindy but John is able to enjoy all the perks that result from it.

            In order to get a clearer view of who Senator McCain is and what he really stands for I resorted to four books, checked facts on the Internet and watched his conduct during the campaign. In contrast to Obama who personally wrote his books, all of McCain’s are co-authored. Since the first book is usually the most important to get a feel for an individual I read only Faith of My Fathers which appeared during his first presidential run in 1999. It is co-authored by Mark Salter, a long standing friend, alter-ego and his speech writer. I couldn’t help noticing that the title sounded eerily familiar to Obama’s Dreams from My Father (discussed in Hillary versus Obama; April 1, 2008), which had been published 4 years earlier. There are other parallels. Both books stay on a personal note and eschew political aspects. Unlikely as it may seem McCain and Obama also had actually to deal with similar personal problems. Both had largely absent fathers who intermittently indulged in alcohol abuse. Yet in both instances the image of a high achiever father was something the boys had been instructed to live up to and had subsequently thoroughly internalized.

            McCain’s grandfather was an admiral who stood with MacArthur on the deck of the Missouri during Japan’s surrender ceremony and his father was Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of the US Pacific Command while John was languishing in a Hanoi prison. A navy career was genetically ordained for John and he rebelled against it with vigor. In Annapolis he repeatedly provoked his superiors, was at times on the verge of being expelled and graduated fifth from the bottom of his class. As he describes himself he was: “chronically late for class”; had “reservations about my destiny;” had a “long history of transgressions and improprieties;” “Whatever the cause I instantly lost my temper and what little self-respect I possessed in those days;” “I did not enjoy the reputation of a serious pilot or an up-and-coming junior officer;” “I crashed a plane in Corpus Christy Bay one Saturday morning;” “contemplated joining the French Foreign Legion.”

            These quotes were taken from the first 173 pages of the book and to which one more incident needs to be added to round out the picture of the young McCain prior to his deployment to Vietnam. “My reputation was certainly not enhanced when I knocked down some power lines while flying too low over southern Spain. My daredevil clowning had cut off electricity to a great many Spanish homes and created a small international incident.” We, therefore, see a person of remarkable candor who relished adventure wherever he might find it, had no use for authority, made sure that others knew it, lost his temper to his own detriment and engaged in unacceptable risks.

            The rest of the book deals with his near fatal accident during a fire on the carrier Forestall, which had not been his fault, his subsequent volunteering for another carrier assignment, the ill-fated bombing run over Hanoi, five years imprisonment and final release. It is stated that the years as POW were the transformative experience of his life which is undoubtedly the case and the fact that he refused to be repatriated prior to his buddies, because of his prominent status, is definitely to his credit. It showed strength of character in face of certain massive physical and mental abuse. Toward the end of the book he wrote,

 

                        “Surviving my imprisonment strengthened my self-confidence and my refusal of early release taught me to trust my own judgment. I am grateful to Vietnam for those discoveries, as they have made a great difference in my life. I gained a seriousness of purpose that observers of my early life had found difficult to detect. I had made more than my shares of mistakes in my life. In the years ahead I would make many more. But I would no longer err out of self-doubt or to alter a fate I felt had been imposed on me [italics added]. I know my life is blessed, and always has been.”  

 

I have added italics to one sentence of the foregoing paragraph because this is precisely the governing style of George W Bush who “answer[s] to a higher father” and brought us to the current brink of disaster. Senator McCain has abandoned some of the foibles of his youth but still relishes the role of a “maverick,” by doing the unexpected. The term maverick, which is derived from a lawyer by name of Samuel Maverick who did not brand his cattle in the 1800s, is actually only partly correct. A better description for the Senator’s conduct is impulsive and erratic.

For information on McCain’s Senate years and how he changed from the 2000 to the 2008 campaign a number of books are available but I have read only three which provide all the information one needs. The first one, published in 2002, is by Elizabeth Drew. Although she is “a much honored previous author” the book is quite limited in scope and the 171 pages deal exclusively with the efforts to get the Senator’s claim to fame, the McCain-Feingold Election Reform bill, passed. It is not clear what the purpose of this book was except possibly for the reader to admire McCain’s tenacity and ability to “reach across the aisle.”  The bill was supposed to limit campaign spending, but it was riddled with such extensive loopholes that it was useless. The current election cycle has raised, as of the end of August, $454 millions for Obama and $230 millions for McCain. These are obscene sums of money which surely could have been better spent but are necessary for success in today’s climate. The McCain-Feingold bill was, therefore a dismal failure.

The other two books: McCain. The Myth of a Maverick by Matt Welch which appeared in 2007 and The Real McCain. Why Conservatives Don’t Trust Him and Why Independents Shouldn’t by Cliff Schecter, published in 2008, are more substantive. In both instances an attempt is made to look behind the façade of the populist, good natured, self-deprecating joke-telling elder statesman. The emerging picture is far less appealing and reveals an individual whose words and actions rarely mesh. They demonstrate, furthermore, that Mc Cain is infinitely more comfortable in the upper class circles of Washington than with the Arizona common folks he is supposed to represent. Inasmuch as his navy career was cut short by the injuries suffered as a result of having been shot down over Hanoi he sought to fulfill the obligation imposed upon him by the Faith of his Fathers through the life of a politician. 

The marriage McCain had entered into prior to service in Vietnam did not appeal to him upon return and when he met by chance Cindy Lou Hensley, a very attractive unattached young lady who also had the millions to match her looks, it was love at first sight. After an uncontested divorce Cindy and John were married in 1980. Immediately upon his father’s death in 1981 he resigned from the navy and moved to Phoenix where he began to work as vice-president for public relations of the father-in law’s beer distributorship. In 1982 an opening for the House of Representatives occurred in Arizona’s First Congressional District and Cindy immediately bought a house there to establish residence. John engaged in a vigorous campaign for the seat but was confronted with the label of carpetbagger because he clearly had no ties to the community. Eventually he got angry about it and dressed down the impudent accuser with “Listen pal!” followed by some choice words dealing with his naval service which had prevented him from living in such a nice place as Arizona’s First District. He ended with, “As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi.” Well, he stretched the truth then because the family had lived mainly in the area around Washington DC and when he still repeats the statement now on occasion, it loses all credibility. I am mentioning this only because it shows that John McCain has the gift for catchy sound-bites notwithstanding their truth.

In contrast to the Obamas, the marriage seems to be one of convenience rather than a partnership. Cindy had to live mainly alone in Arizona while John remained in Washington and when she came back one day from a trip to Bangladesh with a child she had adopted from an orphanage there, she simply confronted him with the fact without prior consultation. But more importantly, McCain’s tenure in the House, and after Barry Goldwater’s retirement in the Senate, was marred by disputes and a reprimand by the Ethics Committee for having used “poor judgment” when he used his office to help one of his major friends and campaign contributors who had been involved in the Savings and Loan debacle of the 1980s.

Since he values his sense of honor above everything else he subsequently led the mentioned campaign finance reform drive. This did not prevent him, however, from establishing political action committees (PACs) through which the law could be bypassed and from which his campaigns could be bankrolled.  His reputation for honesty and transparency was built by providing reporters unlimited access early on, especially on the “Straight Talk Express” during the 2000 campaign, at which time the press succumbed to his charm. This changed in 2007/8 when he became considerably more taciturn with the press, especially after initial campaign setbacks, and had, in part, become outright rude to interviewers. One must remember now that, although he seems to be in reasonably good health, apart from his bouts with facial melanoma, he is eight years older but not necessarily wiser.

Matt Welch quoted the views of an erstwhile friend of McCain, the former publisher of the Arizona Republic Pat Murphy, on the senator’s character. Here is a brief excerpt: “He cannot endure criticism; threatens; controls by fear; he’s consumed with self-importance; shifts blame; is a man obsessed with political ambitions but plagued by self-destructive petty impulses.”  

But we don’t need books to wonder about the Senator’s character because we received direct insights during the past six weeks. On August 16 Pastor Rick Warren, of the evangelical Saddleback mega church in Lake Forest California, held an Open Forum. For the first hour Obama was given a set of questions and during the second hour the same question were presented to McCain who had not been present during the previous hour and was, therefore, unaware of what he would be asked. This provided us with a unique opportunity to assess the personality structure and thought processes of these two persons. I shall cite only a few key aspects from three questions but the entire session is available on http://trevinwax.com/2008/08/17/obama-mccain-with-rick-warren-at-saddleback-forum-video / 

 

Q: Who are the three wisest people you know in your life and who are you going to rely on heavily in your administration?

 

Obama: “Michelle, my wife, who is not only wise but she’s honest. And one of the things you need – I think any leader needs is somebody who can get up in your face and say, boy, you really screwed that one up. You really blew that . . . another person is my grandmother . . . very common sense no fuss no frill kind of a person.” In regard to his administration he listed: Senators Sam Nunn, Richard Lugar, Ted Kennedy and others.

 

McCain:  “First one I think would be General David Petraeus, one of great military leaders in American History who took us from defeat to victory in Iraq . . .  John Lewis [African-American civil rights leader and member of Congress from Georgia] . . .  had his skull fractured continues to serve. . . . Meg Whitman the CEO of e-Bay 12 years ago there were five employees and today there are one and a half million people that make a living off e-mail in America, in the world.” Actually, she joined the company of 30 employees in March 1998 and stepped down in March 2008 to join the McCain campaign as national co-chair.

 

Q: Does evil exist and if it does do we ignore it, do we negotiate with it, do we contain it or do we defeat it?

 

Obama: “Evil does exist. I mean we see evil in Darfur. We see evil daily on the streets of our cities . . . . It has to be confronted squarely and one of the things that I strongly believe is that, you know, we are not going to, as individuals, be able to erase evil from the world. That is God’s task. But we can be soldiers in that process and we can confront it when we see it.”

 

McCain:  “Defeat it! One, if I’m president of the United States, my friends, if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. I will do that and I know how to do that and get that done. Of course evil must be defeated. My friends, we are facing the transcendent challenge of the 21st century, radical Islamist extremists.  Not long ago in Baghdad Al-Qaeda took two young women who were mentally disabled and put suicide vests on them, sent them into the marketplace and by remote control detonated those suicide vests  .  . . and we are going to defeat this evil and the central battleground  according to David Petraeus and Osama bin Laden is the battles – is Baghdad, Mosul and Iraq and we are winning and we are succeeding and our troops will come home with honor and victory and not in defeat and that’s what’s happening.”

 

Q:  Why do you want to be president?

 

Obama: “I feel like the American dream is slipping away. I think we are at a critical juncture economically, I think we are at a critical juncture internationally. We’ve got to make some big decisions not just for us but for the next generation and we keep putting it off and unfortunately our politics is broken and Washington is so broken that we can’t seem to bring together people of good will to solve these common problems. I think I have the ability to build bridges across partisan lines, racial, regional lines to get people to work on some common sense solutions to critical issues and I hope that I have the opportunity.”

 

McCain:  I want to inspire a generation Americans to serve a cause greater than their self-interest. I believe that America’s best days are ahead of us, But I also believe that we face enormous challenges both national security and domestic as we have found out in the last few days in the case of Georgia. . . . Throughout my life  . . . I put my country first. . . .And I believe as I said it’s time for us to put our country first . . . I want every American to know that  . . . I know that my job is to tell them [African-Americans in Alabama who won’t vote for him] that I’ll be president of every American and I’ll always put my country first.

 

It seems to me that the differences are quite obvious. McCain has a military mind that is obsessed with the lost Vietnam War and he will do everything in his power to rectify this defeat, be it in Iraq, Afghanistan or wherever else in the world. He will erase evil, which he sees only in others, from the face of the earth. The how is left unanswered. Furthermore, if he really knew where Osama is it would be his duty to tell the Bush administration rather than keep the secret to himself.

Obama is clearly more nuanced and humble. He will consult with family on personal matters and important leaders of the Senate, regardless of party affiliation, when it comes to national affairs. He sees evil in the everyday lives of individuals and intends to help wherever help is possible. While Obama wants to use his presidency to build bridges between different factions on the national and international level, McCain is the representative of what is called American exceptionalism. America can do no wrong; it’s Ronald Reagan’s: “Morning in America.” That the world has profoundly changed in the intervening 28 years has not come to his attention. For him the only difference seems to be the name of the enemy by substituting Islamic extremism for Communism.

Mc Cain also demonstrated his impulsivity during the recent Georgia crisis. He immediately demanded Russia’s expulsion from the G8 and proclaimed that, “We are all Georgians.”  Georgia’s President, Mikheil Sakaashvili, is a personal friend and this may well have contributed to this outburst. In addition McCain’s chief foreign policy affairs advisor, Ronald Scheunemann a dyed-in-the-wool neoconservative, was a lobbyist for the Republic of Georgia. He had to give up this lucrative job on May 15, when the McCain campaign imposed an anti-lobbyist policy. But his firm, Orion Strategies, is still fulfilling its $200,000 contract which it had received from Saakishvilli on April 17 of this year.

McCain’s erratic behavior was also demonstrated again last week when he suddenly declared on Tuesday that he would suspend his campaign in order to fly to Washington and bring the financial bailout negotiations to a successful conclusion. The dire state of the country required the suspension of political activities and the debate with Obama which had been scheduled for Friday night should be postponed. Obama on the other hand said that precisely because the country is in trouble its citizens deserve to know where the nominees stand on the issues and that the debate should proceed on schedule. Although nothing was accomplished on Wednesday and Thursday in spite of McCain’s roaming the White House and Halls of Congress he did show up at the debate and politicking continued on its merry way.

McCain’s major campaign slogan is “country above politics” but he violated this precept by naming the unknown governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, as his running mate. It is not clear whether or not she had told him that she is currently under investigation in Juneau. On July 28 the Legislative Council, a bipartisan group of 12 state lawmakers, voted unanimously to launch an abuse-of-power investigation into Palin's firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan and appointed an Independent Counsel, Steven Branchflower. Governor Palin stated in July that she would fully cooperate because she had “nothing to hide,” but that was before August 29. The report of the Independent Counsel was supposed to have been delivered by the end of October but with her nomination for the vice presidency this was deemed to be too close to the November election and the date was advanced to October 10. Nevertheless, the McCain campaign wasn’t taking any chances. Via the Alaska Republican party they declared the inquest as invalid and supported instead an investigation by the State Personnel Committee. The Independent Counsel, had subpoenaed witnesses, including Palin’s husband, but they did not show up. Inasmuch as the Legislature does not meet until January the question whether or not the witnesses will be cited for criminal contempt remains open.

It is clear, however, that a McCain-Palin administration will be business as usual, in the Bush-Rove-Cheney style, because the Personnel Board investigation meets in secrecy and its report can be delayed for two years. The Palin affair, which can best be followed in the Anchorage Daily News, http://www.adn.com, clearly showed that McCain had acted on impulse for immediate political gain and thereby put the country at risk. In view of the importance of next month’s election the candidates will be discussed further after the last presidential debate.







October 18, 2008

A MATTER OF TRUST

            The debates are finally over and November 4 is getting close. As expected, acrimony and insults have soared and the McCain campaign is following the script as outlined by Jerome Corsi and discussed in the October 1 issue. Obama has been accused by Sarah Palin of “palling around with terrorists,” and supposedly a shout “kill him,” arose from the audience. The “pit bull with lipstick” continued in this vein for several days until McCain had to step in and come to the defense of Obama’s character. It may well have been too late, however, because the atmosphere is currently thoroughly poisoned and a few soothing words by Mc Cain in presence of continued attack ads may not be sufficient to quench the hatred which has been aroused.

            The media, with FOX News in the lead, have also done their job to stoke anger which, in part at least, can be laid at the feet of the financial collapse that had significantly worsened during the past weeks. The polls currently show Obama in the lead but they cannot be trusted. A significant percentage of Americans actually says that they would not vote for Obama because of his race but a considerably larger number may not admit to it, yet may act in this manner. George Packer’s article, “The Hardest Vote (The New Yorker; October 13, 2008) reveals how people really feel in underprivileged rural America.

            Towards the end of August the McCain campaign was in trouble and his appointment of Sarah Palin as running mate was dictated by falling numbers in the polls. It was a brilliant tactical move at the time because it did energize his “base” but many of us know that it would be a disaster for the country if a McCain-Palin administration were to take over in January. There are several reasons for holding this opinion but the most important one is the character of the candidates. Although the issues of: the economy, health-care, abortion, and the Iraq/Afghanistan wars take the headlines the real question is which candidate will be better able to deal with them. This is the choice we face and this why the personalities of the candidates are of such importance. Pre-election promises by either party are meaningless in the current economic crisis because what can be achieved by the next administration will entirely depend on the harsh realities the country faces on January 20.

            Although the Obama-Biden ticket has its faults, as mentioned in previous installments, these pale in comparison with those of its counterpart. While Obama has been pandering to pressure groups, especially in regard to foreign affairs, this can be understood as tactical moves without which he would not be electable. Campaign rhetoric will be followed by a more realistic appraisal of the international situation because that is what his character is all about. He is a consensus seeker rather than the Bush-Cheney “my way or no way” attitude. This can not be vouchsafed for the McCain-Palin ticket which prefers a decidedly confrontational approach along the lines of the current administration.

            I have discussed Senator McCain’s character in previous installments, suffice it to say that as the son and grandson of admirals he has military values stamped into his DNA. He will, therefore, prefer radical solutions over the tedious process of diplomacy which does not provide immediate gain. For this reason there is grave danger that he may initiate a war with Iran. The consequences would be disastrous in the political and economic arena. The issue of war and peace has been pushed to the side lines because of the current economic crisis but is bound to emerge again at any moment. In a foreign policy crisis a President McCain is likely to opt for war while a President Obama will try to defuse it. Those issues ought to be the prime consideration because all the others can only be pursued when the nation is at peace with other countries rather than during perpetual war.

            We should now ask ourselves why a 72 year old man would want to become the oldest president we have ever elected. He has a life-time sinecure in the Senate, a rich wife who can provide him with all the material comforts anyone could aspire to and the presidency is the most difficult job in the world, especially in the present circumstances. The official reason we are given is that he has always devoted his life to a cause greater than himself and that he has always put the needs of the country above his own wishes. Although he might believe this himself, having repeated the phrases often enough, they do not ring true. As Matt Welch has pointed out in McCain The Myth of a Maverick, he used them in 1998 during a eulogy at the funeral of Senator Barry Goldwater, whose seat he had taken over after the latter’s retirement.

            As a professional student of human behavior I believe that the actual motive which propels the senator toward the presidency is a battle with the ghosts of his father and grandfather. In his own mind he probably feels that he has never fully lived up to their expectations and dying as a “mere senator” might not fit the heroic image of war waging admirals. A successful naval career had been thwarted by his Vietnam injuries so politics, first in Congress, then the Senate with the ultimate prize of the Presidency, was supposed to have been the answer. In 2000 this goal seemed to be in reach but he was way-laid by vicious slanders of the Karl Rove-Bush campaign and as such 2008 is his last chance.

            But here comes the problem. At age 72 he is no longer the person he was at 66 and when one pursues the same goal under changed circumstances this is not necessarily appropriate. It is true that people tend to live longer and can lead productive lives in their senior years but it is equally true that work should be carried out on a volunteer basis and not involve executive functions; let alone those which involve the well-being of the entire world. A private company may place senior citizens on their Board of Directors but I wonder if they would appoint him as CEO as well as CFO (Chief Financial Officer). Yet, we are supposed make McCain the CEO and CFO of the United States as well as the Commander-in chief of the Armed Forces. To aspire to this post at this age does make one wonder about his judgment regardless of the lofty motives proclaimed in his rhetoric.

            We now must be aware that it is not only the body which undergoes decay but so does the brain and thereby the mind. The Wechsler Intelligence Quotient which is still widely used recognizes this fact and provides an age correction factor. But Americans, who are optimistic by nature, do not like limitations and point as role models to people in their 80s and 90s who are still employed in professional life. What these articles and pictures don’t tell us, however, is how well these people actually function in crisis situations.

The general population tends to ignore that ageing, just as youth, does not proceed in a linear fashion but is characterized by spurts which then level off for a time before the next one sets in. Most importantly these spurts, in the case of ageing, do not affect the entire brain at the same time but have predilections. The highest functions of: foresight, judgment, attention to detail, mature last and disappear first. The time and rate depend upon the individual and life circumstances but the fact that this is an inevitable accompaniment of the ageing process has to be taken into account.

These are not assumptions or opinions because a person’s mental abilities can be readily examined with neuropsychological tests, which go beyond the assessment of a person’s IQ. If we lived in a rational society, which is clearly not the case, neuropsychological testing would be obligatory for anyone who aspires to high office that can affect the lives of millions of others. These tests are objective and the results could be submitted to three different neuropsychologists who would be unaware of the person from whom they were obtained and the verdict should be made public. Unfortunately, a proposal of this type will not be enacted any time soon and the country may have to endure many a failed presidency before reason will triumph over emotion.

For now it is already obvious that Senator McCain would not pass neuropsychological testing with flying colors and one can also point to the Reagan presidency in this connection. Although President Reagan has achieved iconic status in the eyes of Republicans, the country has never been told the full truth of how he really functioned, especially during his second term. His Alzheimer disease did not start when he announced it in 1994 but had only become more and more symptomatic over the years until it could no longer be hid. This is not merely my opinion but is documented by Robert Graves, our current Secretary of Defense. In his book From the Shadows he wrote,

 

“I believe Regan began to fade bit by bit beginning in late 1985 - early 1986. In the first five years or so, I would watch Reagan in the Situation Room, see him listen to complex options or problems and then tell a story that would transform those complicated ideas into something the ordinary citizen could understand. His stories were Lincolnesque and often would capture the point of the discussion with precision. It was an amazing thing to observe. However, as the second term wore on, we would hear a story told over and over, often told with no point at all. I thought he was still on top of issues, at least the major ones, but a quality I believed to be fairly magical was waning day by day. Both when he offered me the job of  DCI [Director Central Intelligence] in 1987 and when I later told him I was withdrawing, I had the sense he could not have recalled my name five minutes later.”

 

When I read these lines I felt a sense of reassurance in my clinical judgment which was based strictly on what I had seen on Television. At the end of the last debate in October of 1984 Reagan was supposed to sum up in a precise manner why he wanted to be re-elected. But he trailed off into irrelevancies describing the beauty of the sunset over the Pacific Ocean. When I heard this I said to Martha, “Oh my God he’s lost it,” referring not to the election but his mental functions. Reagan’s near fatal bullet wound from the assassination attempt in March of 1981, leading to considerable blood loss and prolonged anesthesia, may well have contributed to an earlier onset of the disease. But we now must also remember that McCain has undergone more physical and emotional stress during his imprisonment in Hanoi than anyone can readily imagine. He has recovered, but it must have left a mark. We need to remember, furthermore, that the presidency is an extremely stressful job for anyone and even Clinton as well as Bush turned prematurely grey. Mental ageing is insidious and by the time it becomes apparent to others it is already reasonably advanced and will inevitably progress. These are unpalatable facts but wishing them away will only make the situation worse.

That Senator McCain’s mental powers are no longer at their prime became obvious when he selected Governor Palin as his running mate. The choice surprised even members of his staff who had not been given the time to properly vet the candidate and this was a strategic blunder of the first magnitude. If McCain thought that he would attract disillusioned Hillary supporters by choosing a woman who is fiercely anti-abortion and in this, as well as other views, the antithesis of Hillary, it reinforces the belief that he was not thinking straight. Naming the vice president is the first crucial test of a candidate for the presidency and McCain flunked it. He must, or at least should have, considered that in view of his age he may become incapacitated even during the first term in office and to hand the country over to Sarah Palin can only be regarded as extreme recklessness.

But it is not only mental health that counts. Although the senator’s malignant melanoma is currently in remission it may flare up at any time and we have not been shown recent medical records. In the spring of 2008 a file of about 1200 pages was provided for inspection to the media, which had been collected as part of a research project on the health of Vietnam POW survivors.  Dr. Sanja Gupta, the medical consultant for CNN, wrote that they were given one hour to look at these data, but the pages were not numbered so no one knew what might have been missing. Prior to November 4 we should be told what the senator’s current state of health really is; what medications he is taking and in what doses. The right to privacy does not apply when one wants to be president of the country.

On August 29 of this year all of us asked in surprise, “Who is Sarah Palin?” and I presented a skeleton outline in the September 7 issue. Since then a great many facts have come to light which ought to disqualify her for the office of vice president let alone president. For clarifying my own opinion I have relied mainly on residents from Alaska who know their governor best. The most reliable information comes from the Anchorage Daily News (www.adn.com). In addition there are several Alaska blogs (e.g. www.andrewhalcro.com) and Anne Kilkenny’s warning letter. Although they represent a definite viewpoint they have also valuable information from people who have known Sarah Palin for a long time. In addition I read Kaylene Johnson’s book, Sarah. How a Hockey Mom Turned the Political Establishment Upside Down, which has been endorsed by the McCain campaign.

Under these circumstances a different picture from that of the “role model” which is touted by Senator McCain emerges. Sarah Heath’s educational career was quite checkered. She attended four different colleges and one university, over a period of five years, before she graduated from the University of Idaho in the spring of 1987 with a BS degree in journalism and communication. Intellectual pursuits were apparently not a priority and there is no evidence that she participated in the student newspaper. Her major interests were in sports.

After returning to Alaska she obtained a job at a local TV station as sportscaster for a brief time in 1988, but then “eloped” to marry her long standing boy friend Todd. This event was also somewhat unusual for the “family values” and devout Christian principles she professes. Husband Todd explained that they had a bad fishing season and wanted to spare the family the expense of “a white wedding,” which is not entirely believable. Wedding expenses are the responsibility of the bride’s father rather than of the groom’s and Papa Heath was a high school teacher rather than fisherman. Kaylene Johnson explained the situation as follows,

 

“On August 29, 1988 Sarah and Todd were supposed to meet Heather [Sarah’s older sister] and her friends at the [State] fair, but they never showed. They had decided to elope.

The magistrate at the Palmer courthouse informed the young couple that they would need witnesses for the marriage ceremony, so they walked across the street to the Pioneer Home, a state-run nursing home for seniors. Two volunteers, one of them in a wheelchair and the other supported by a walker, looked on as Sarah Heath officially became Sarah Palin.”

 

To elope is one thing but to be unaware that witnesses are needed for a marriage ceremony shows a considerable lack of general information. One also wonders why her parents, with whom she was supposedly close, were apparently not informed. For some time the young couple lived with Heather but by April of 1989 their first child, Track, had arrived and they moved into an apartment with Todd taking a job for British Petroleum (BP) on Alaska’s North Slope in addition to his summer fishing business. It has been suggested that Track might not have been born premature but on schedule and this might have been the real reason for the hasty marriage. As we know a similar scenario is playing out with daughter Bristol at this time.

As far as religion is concerned, Sarah had been baptized in the Catholic faith as a baby but her mother, Sally, had needed “a more compassionate God” and the family joined the Wasilla Assembly of God. As a result Sarah “began to feel connected in a soulful way, to a deep river within her, one that was fed by a power completely outside and beyond her,” according to Kaylene Johnson. We are told, furthermore, that at age 12 while “attending Bible camp, she asked to be baptized. She wanted to make a public statement of faith, one that showed she had committed her life to Christ.” This was accomplished by the pastor immersing her in the chilly waters of Beaver Lake, and Sarah’s mother and siblings followed suit.

I am mentioning these tidbits because we are talking about the character of a person who might become president of the United States. Her father, a strict disciplinarian and rugged out-doors individual with hobbies of hunting and fishing, was, nevertheless, unable to curb Sarah’s “unbending, unapologetic, streak of stubbornness.” “The rest of the kids, I could force them to do something, but with Sarah, there was no way. From a young age she had a mind of her own. Once she made up her mind, she didn’t change it;” Chuck Heath supposedly said about his daughter. This may have been so but Ms. Johnson also says that Sarah was an avid reader who analyzed every word in the newspapers and preferred non-fiction over Nancy Drew books. In view of her uneven college career and the knowledge she displayed in her interviews with Katie Couric she seems to have dropped this habit in adolescence.

With husband Todd away at his work for the oil company, Sarah raised the children and eventually became the hockey mom. But she also attended aerobics classes at a local gym in which the mayor of Wasilla, John Stein, and its police chief, Irl Stambaugh, participated. This planted the seed in Sarah’s mind that she might want to run for city council. The city of Wasilla was incorporated in 1974 and consisted of 400 hundred inhabitants at the time. By 1992, when Sarah launched her political career it had grown to about 5,600 and the little city served mainly as a bedroom community for nearby Anchorage.

Her aerobics partners supported her application and she served from 1992-1996 on the city council. But her sponsors soon became disenchanted with her. She did not go along with the wishes of her elders and by 1994 she agitated for term limits on the mayor’s tenure. With the battle cry of “three terms are enough” and “the need for new leadership” she ran for the mayor’s position. The town was still growing to some extent, and the Alaska Republican Party had been looking for “fresh faces.” Sarah, who could be quite charming, fit the bill and for the first time national issues, such as abortion and gun control, were introduced into the race, rather than the usual local concerns about infrastructure.

She won the contest in 1996 and immediately dismissed most, if not all of the incumbents including the police chief. They were replaced with less experienced Palin friends and loyalists, including a deputy administrator who did most of the actual work. This did not sit right with some of the locals and a recall petition was being discussed. In addition, the police chief sued Palin for wrongful termination. Legal proceedings lasted seven years, costing the city a pretty penny, and at the end it was decided that she had been within her legal right because city functionaries serve at the mayor’s pleasure.

Her “fiscally conservative” stance is a fiction. She took over a city free of debt in 1996 but by 2002, when her two terms were up, Wasillians found themselves saddled with a debt of $22 million, which has not yet been fully paid off. It was mainly due to a sports complex which was built on land the city didn’t own and this also led to litigation. Foresight and checking facts before signing contracts are apparently also not part of Sarah Palin’s make-up, because she repeated the pattern as governor.

In the last year of her second term as mayor she ran for Lt. Governor of the state but was defeated. Nevertheless, the Governor, Frank Murkowski, rewarded her with a choice appointment as Ethics Supervisor of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. It was a plum job with an annual salary of $122,400 but required residence in Juneau, a fact that was not to Palin’s liking. Inasmuch as the ethics violations she discovered were not addressed to her satisfaction she resigned a year later in 2004. But her stand against her own Republican party colleagues brought her to state-wide attention and is the reason for her much touted image of a maverick who stands up for what is right regardless of consequences.

This proved highly beneficial in her run for governor in 2006 because her lack of genuine executive experience could be masked by crusading for ethics in government, which had become a hot topic. It needs to be pointed out that there was indeed an “old-boys network” in Alaska, where one hand washed the other, and investigations are currently under way on the state and federal level.

Once in office she repeated what she had done in Wasilla and fired incumbents. In at least one instance that of the Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, personal reasons were involved. This led to the “Troopergate” investigation in July of this year which was mentioned in the October 1, issue. Although the McCain campaign tried to thwart the release of the report prior to the national election and went all the way to Alaska’s Supreme Court, the effort failed. The report, made public last week, stated that the governor had abused her power (a violation of an Alaska Executive Ethics Act statute) but found, similar to the Wasilla situation, that no laws were broken.

This affair showed that Palin is not truthful because she still claims to have been vindicated. Telling a half-truth is not an isolated incident in her career, but a pattern. In her acceptance speech of the vice presidential nomination, which she read with great aplomb, but had been written by Bush speech writer Mathew Scully, she said at least two things which stretched the truth. One had to do with Senator McCain’s recently discovered dislike of congressional earmarks. Governor Palin did not have such scruples and had lobbied the federal legislators for earmarks even as mayor, which had been unheard of before. This is where the famous “Bridge to Nowhere” comes in.  

The airport for the city of Ketchikan is located on Gravina Island and the good people of Ketchikan thought that it might be appropriate to have a bridge connecting it to the mainland, rather than have the ferry service, especially when one considers Alaska’s long and hard winters. But the island has only about 50 residents and it was this fact which the media harped on. Initially Congress was willing to pay for the bridge but with McCain’s crusade against earmarks the project was cancelled. Palin had been for the bridge when the money was coming in, but when it dried up she said in the mentioned speech, that she had told Washington “Thanks, but no thanks” and that she had given the allocated money back. This was untrue because she had kept the money and used it for other purposes. The sale of the governor’s jet on e-Bay, which she announced at the same time, also didn’t stand up to scrutiny. She did put it up on e-Bay but nobody bought it and it was finally sold elsewhere at a loss.

Her Wasilla fiscal profligacy has already been mentioned but there is still one aspect from her mayoral days which shows her budget priorities. Among other items, she cut the budget for: the library book purchasing fund, animal control fund, summer recreation programs, early intervention services, police department public relations fund, and children’s shelter. She added funds for: defending against wrongful termination lawsuit, the mentioned land grab for the sports complex, redecorating the City Hall, the lease of an SUV and improvements for the Wasilla airport. The latter item is especially glaring because the Anchorage International Airport is only an hour’s drive distant and connects to all the major cities of Alaska as well as the mainland. The Wasilla airport had a total of 479 passenger boardings during the past 8 years, with 384 in 2006 when Sarah was campaigning for governor.

Mrs. Palin also stretched the truth considerably when she repeatedly stated that “We’re building a nearly 40 billion natural gas pipeline;” a claim McCain echoed in Wednesday’s debate. It is true that she has signed a contract to build it, but the oil companies which are supposed to provide the gas have not yet signed off on it. In addition the pipeline goes through Canadian First Nations’ land. There have as yet not been any negotiations with the Indians, and these can take years, before a settlement is reached. When the actual construction will start and what the final cost will be is anybody’s guess. The only certainty is that it will be vastly more expensive than is currently projected.

Although the Palins would qualify for Obama’s promised income tax cut they have done very well and have accumulated assets estimated at $1.2 millions. These include their home on Lake Lucille with the floatplane moored on the dock, as well as several land parcels. Todd Palin is not sure whether snowmobiling is his hobby or a business because he has taken expenses off from their income tax. The couple has also claimed tax deductions for their travel with the children, and Sarah received a per diem while working at home rather than at the official residence in Juneau. In view of her national exposure the tax returns are currently examined by attorneys and the Palins will probably have to pay back taxes with interest. But as mentioned above they can afford it.

Finally Alaskans have another problem with Todd. He acts as “shadow governor,” and has been the main agent in the firing of the Police Commissioner, which led to the mentioned “Troopergate” investigation. But this is just the beginning. This particular saga continues in Alaska at this time and an additional investigation may be starting which deals with the firing of another state employee who had run afoul of Todd. Relevant e-mails have been demanded to be made public but the governor claimed “executive privilege” which would allow her to withhold the information. But since Todd was routinely copied in on these messages, and he is a private citizen rather than a government employee, this excuse will not work. The story is currently unfolding but the promised “transparency in government” has obviously gone out of the window. All of this has led to a decrease of her popularity even in Alaska.

The picture of Sarah Palin which has emerged is far from reassuring. Her Christian values seem to be mainly limited to concerns for the unborn but the principles of Charis (A favor done without expectation of return. Unmerited, unearned favor and the joy which results therefrom), Aletheia (truth as opposed to falsehood) and Agape (brotherly rather than sexual love), as expressed in the Gospel of John, seem to be Greek to her even in English translation. Mercy and forgiveness also seem to be in short supply. She comes across as a driven, restless, opinionated, stubborn, power hungry woman of savvy intelligence but little learning who can also be vindictive and who hides her ignorance on matters of national importance by folksy charming mannerisms. In addition, just as our current president, she believes that she has a direct line to the Lord. When one combines these traits with what we know about Senator McCain we have every right to be seriously concerned about a possible McCain-Palin administration.

 Although Obama is currently ahead in the polls these number can, as has been mentioned, not be trusted. The race factor does play a role and irregularities in voter registrations, which largely benefit the Democrats, have come to light in a number of states. When one adds to this the allegation that the Obama campaign has received illegal financial contributions from abroad, we can be assured that the next two and a half weeks on the campaign trail will be lively indeed. To make matters worse, a late October surprise in form of some external event, which might benefit the national security credentials of McCain, can also not be ruled out. To top it off there will be massive problems with electronic voting machines on November 4. If an Obama-Biden victory were to be close, voter fraud will be alleged and the election result may again be tied up in the courts as in 2000.

The question now is: to whom will Americans entrust their and their children’s future? There are only two choices and the election outcome will tell us a great deal about the American people. This will be discussed in the November 8 issue.







November 8, 2008

AUDACITY OF HOPE

In the past six weeks we have witnessed not only one but two tectonic shifts of world plates. In September came the stock market collapse with the attendant ripple effect of a world-wide recession and in this week the stunning victory of Barack Obama over John McCain. To call the Obama victory historic is actually an understatement of his achievement. Let us remember: when he wanted to attend the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles eight years ago he couldn’t get a floor pass because he was not a delegate; four years ago he gave the keynote speech at the Convention and this year he was not only nominated for the Presidency but as of Tuesday he is President-elect of the United States. 

While this trajectory is by itself highly unusual, the fact that the election of a mulatto to America’s highest office was hoped for not only by Americans of African descent but by a wide swath of the American people of all ethnic, religious and other factions which make up our country, is unheard of. What Obama has done was to permanently bury racial stereotypes. Hitler’s malignant ideology of Aryan intellectual superiority was once more proven wrong; not by wishful thinking or propaganda but by example. Obama actually demonstrated the biologic principle of “hybrid vigor,” which I learned in High School during the Nazi era. The point was made, however, at the time that this did not apply to human beings. Nevertheless, as a Mischling in Nazi eyes, I drew comfort from it and felt that when fate had decided to create one human being from two different racial backgrounds one needed not to have to love the one and despise the other but one could take up the challenge and build a bridge between the two. For those who know the Hitler years only from hear-say let me state unequivocally that having a Jewish grandfather in Nazi Germany was just as unfortunate as having a Negro grandfather during the 1930s in America’s South. One’s physical appearance might allow one to “pass” but the knowledge and shame were deeply felt. Because of this personal history I have always felt a certain mental kinship with those who were despised for no fault of their own but merely on basis of social prejudice.

This attitude towards accepting and utilizing both aspects of one’s genetic background does not necessarily come easy but requires study and good will. Malcolm X, one of whose grandfathers had been white, wrote in his autobiography, “I learned to hate every drop of that white rapist’s blood that is in me.” It was understandable and drove him to join Elijah Muhammad’s Black Muslims who advocated the “white devil” theory (Black and White; June 1, 2008). But even Malcolm changed his view during his jihad to Mecca where he was confronted with genuine Muslim theology and saw that the Muslim faith encompassed people of all races.

Obama was more fortunate by having been a child during the violent phase of the civil rights struggle and he had reaped some of the benefits of its outcome in form of the affirmative action program which paved the way towards higher education for African- American students. While the program allowed entry it did not ensure success and this achievement was entirely due to his character and hard work. Many books will be written about how Barack Obama became President-elect, and hopefully on January 20 President. The demographics of the electorate as well as the other factors which contributed to his success will be analyzed in infinite detail and contradictory opinions will be published, initially by journalists and subsequently historians. It is too early to gauge the impact an Obama presidency is likely to have on this country and the world but certain outlines of the major contributing factors to the November 4 outcome are apparent.

Immediately after Obama had reached the magic number of 270 electoral votes and Brit Hume on Fox News had recovered slightly from the shock, he stated that we still don’t know who Barack Obama really is. Well, no one fully “knows” another person, we don’t even completely understand ourselves, but an attempt can be made. Those who say that they don’t know Obama have not taken the trouble to read his books because they do reveal major aspects of his personality and what he would like to accomplish. Furthermore, they were not ghostwritten by Bill Ayres, as was proclaimed by a former Utah Congressman a few days before the election. His books and most important speeches are authentic because he has shown himself to be very eloquent, as for instance in the Democratic Keynote address in 2004, and in his speech on race on March 18, 2008 in Philadelphia.

We now have to look at the election results from two points of view. First, what did Obama do right and second, what was McCain’s fatal flaw. Obama clearly has a superior intellect and an affable personality. This allowed him to attract, Gentile as well as Jewish, Chicago community leaders who provided the base for his campaign. He then proceeded to develop a superb organization; he remained cool and deliberate under fire and had the ability to collect previously unimaginable sums of money for the campaign. But there remains an additional major unsung hero, whose contribution is not likely to be acknowledged. This is the Reverend Jeremiah Wright whom I have already discussed in the mentioned June 1, as well as the July1 article (Barack Obama’s Problems). But the relevant points bear repeating because without having experienced the emotional impact of the Black Church, Obama’s turn from a basically intellectual Deist outlook to one of genuine Christianity might not have taken place. I emphasize genuine Christianity because this trait is unfortunately rare in some evangelical circles who call themselves “born again Christians.”  I shall return to this point later in the discussion of the reasons for Senator McCain’s defeat.

During Obama’s days as community organizer on Chicago’s South Side he was told that if he wanted church support for his efforts he really ought to belong to one. The marked emotionalism of black lower and middle class churches may well have clashed with his white middle class upbringing but it was different in Pastor Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ. This was a microcosm of American society where blacks of all social classes met with some white folks and where emotions were shared by both races. Obama had found a home for his soul. He disregarded some of the more egregious outbursts by the pastor and wrote them off in the same way as “rhetorical flourishes” as those of his running mate, Joe Biden, during the later stages of the campaign.

The snippets of the pastor’s performance which we were treated to endlessly on TV were obviously a caricature of the man. What has been labeled as anti-Americanism was a condemnation of American policies. This was justifiable unless one holds the “right or wrong my country” view which has brought us the unnecessary wars we are currently saddled with. Likewise his “hate speech” is also in the eye of the beholder. When he held American policies co-responsible for the events of 9-11 he had plenty of company from academia as well as of the Republican icon the Reverend Jerry Falwell. Furthermore, by the same token our “Christian” denouncers do not take the pastor’s role models, the biblical prophets, into account. They did not mince words either when they condemned the Jewish power structure of their day and neither did Jesus in regard to scribes and Pharisees. But speaking truth to power was dangerous then and still is. Obama had to divorce himself from Trinity Church because otherwise the media would have destroyed his candidacy.

Obama described what attracted him to Trinity in Dreams from My Father, “it was this capacious talent of his [Wright’s] – this ability to hold together, if not reconcile, the conflicting strains of black experience – upon which Trinity’s success had ultimately been built.”  It is probably not too far fetched to think that this became the goal for Obama’s political life without limiting it to the “black experience.” Furthermore, the motto of the church, “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian,” which was the answer to Chicago’s Black Muslim community, would also have appealed to a spirit searching for an identity that was difficult to come by in racially and religiously divided America.

As Obama tells it, the first service he attended at Trinity in the 1980s featured the pastor’s “Audacity of Hope” sermon. It not only brought tears to his eyes but led him to be baptized into the Christian faith. It may not have happened exactly the way he described it in his book but here is an excerpt of the sermon how Obama remembered it. After having reminded the congregation of the biblical Hannah, from the book of Samuel, who had been barren but never lost her faith in the Lord, the Reverend talked about a picture another pastor friend of his had seen in a museum and which was called Hope. Obama wrote,

 

“The painting depicts a harpist, ‘Reverend Wright explained,’ a woman who at first glance appears to be sitting atop a great mountain. Until you take a closer look and see that the woman is bruised and bloodied, dressed in tattered rags, the harp reduced to a single frayed string. Your eye is then drawn to the scene below, down in the valley below, where everywhere are the ravages of famine, the drumbeat of war, a world groaning under strife and deprivation.

It is this world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere . . . That’s the world! On which hope sits!”

 

Obama had seen and felt this type of world in Indonesia as well as America. Then the Reverend pointed to the picture again, “Hope! Like Hannah that harpist is looking upwards, a few faint notes floating upwards towards the heavens. She dares to hope.  . . .  She has the audacity . . .  to make music . . . and praise God . . . on the one string . . . she has left!” This was America’s black experience articulated and the Audacity of Hope became not only the title of Obama’s second book, which laid out his political program, but also the obligation for his future life’s work. A run for the highest office in the land, while still being only a first term senator, must be regarded as either foolhardy or truly an audacity of hope.

            He needed every ounce of it not only during the primaries against the overwhelming favorite, Hillary Clinton, but especially in the run against a war hero whose level of experience he could not match. The campaign got increasingly ugly and especially in the final weeks, when it became apparent that Sarah Palin’s sheen had worn off, the wildest accusations were hurled against him. He was denounced as a “baby killer” for his stance on abortions, anti-American because of past associations with Pastor Wright and ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers, and ultimately as a socialist who “will take your money and give it to others.”

Credit for this particular development goes to Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, who became the poster child of the McCain campaign and a darling of the Republican media. After a campaign rally in early October, Obama had taken a stroll shaking hands in Wurzelbacher’s neighborhood. The latter introduced himself as a plumber who was thinking about starting his own business but wondered how he would fare under Obama’s tax plan which would raise taxes on individuals and businesses. Obama explained that if Wurzelbacher made less than $250,000 he would get a tax break but if he made more, his taxes would be raised somewhat because, “I think when you spread the wealth it’s good for everybody.” The words “spread the wealth” ignited a wildfire on the Internet; they were then used by McCain in the last debate, and subsequently became the mantra to frighten the unwary American public away from this “socialist.” In a telephone TV interview a news-lady confronted Joe Biden with Karl Marx’s, “from each according to his means to each according to his needs” and asked why this did not equate with Obama’s “spreading the wealth.” All Biden could answer was, “you must be kidding;” but “no” she insisted, this was a serious question. Biden tried to explain Obama’s tax plan but the damage was done and the interviewer became another darling of Republicans.

As usual the facts got lost in favor of polemic. Mr. Wurzelbacher does not have a plumber’s license, is in debt, in no position to start a business of his own and would actually get a tax break under Obama’s plan. Furthermore, the fact that we already have a progressive tax system which exacts higher taxes from the well to-do, than from those in lower income brackets, and that the Obama tax plan would only bring the top bracket to the level of what it was under Clinton (39.6%) was not mentioned. Neither was the fact that under the Republican’s patron saint, Ronald Reagan, it was 50% and that the most progressive income redistribution occurred during the Eisenhower as well as Kennedy years when the top tax bracket was at 91%. Anyone with good will and accesses to the Internet can readily check these figures at http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/federalindividualratehistory-20080107.pdf

Although the polls favored Obama many of us were still very concerned about the election outcome because we did not know to what extent it be would influenced by the race factor. As mentioned in previous installments, people may tell the pollster that they would vote for Obama to show that they are not prejudiced but elect someone else when the chips are down. This has been called the Bradley effect. The African-American Tom Bradley who ran for governor of California in 1982 had been leading in the polls by a comfortable margin but lost the election.

On Monday the 3rd of this month, all the polls predicted an Obama victory with an average of 6 points but there was considerable scatter and his margin had narrowed in the last few days. The Huffington Post then alerted me to another website which is not widely known at this time but is likely to figure prominently in the future. http://www.fivethirtyeight.com predicted on Monday evening Obama’s victory chances as 98.9%. The projection for electoral votes was: 348.6 vs. 189.4 in favor of Obama and for the popular vote 52.3% vs. 46.2%. The final results are not yet available but as of Thursday they were: 364 electoral votes for Obama and 173 for McCain; the popular vote was 53% vs. 46%.

The person behind this feat of prognostication is Nate Silver a 30 year old Chicago resident who made his fame and fortune by predicting the success of baseball teams and players. His website explains the method for projecting political campaign results. 

 

“Firstly, we assign each poll a weighting based on that pollster's historical track record, the poll's sample size, and the recentness of the poll. More reliable polls are weighted more heavily in our averages.

Secondly, we include a regression estimate based on the demographics in each state among our 'polls', which helps to account for outlier polls and to keep the polling in its proper context.

Thirdly, we use an inferential process to compute a rolling trendline that allows us to adjust results in states that have not been polled recently and make them ‘current’.

Fourthly, we simulate the election 10,000 times for each site update in order to provide a probabilistic assessment of electoral outcomes based on a historical analysis of polling data since 1952. The simulation further accounts for the fact that similar states are likely to move together, e.g. future polling movement in states like Michigan and Ohio, or North and South Carolina, is likely to be in the same direction.”

 

He updates this process on a daily basis and thus comes up with the most reliable results. It is obvious that Mr. Silver is going to be in high demand around the world from now on and he will be able to name his price.

There are several reasons why McCain lost. Republicans blame the economic disaster which befell us during September but this is an excuse. The major reason was that in contrast to Obama’s campaign, which was highly organized and unflappable, that of McCain was characterized by lacking an overriding theme until Joe the Plumber came to the rescue. The major problem resided in Senator McCain’s character. As mentioned in the previous installment, he is impulsive and shoots from the hip. This made him dash from one campaign theme to another, suspend his campaign to rush to Washington to fix a financial crisis which was not in his power to fix, and most of all, in the choice of the inexperienced Sarah Palin as his running mate. This alienated even prominent Republicans who came out publicly in favor of Obama. Palin was the albatross around McCain’s neck and he can blame his campaign staff for it.

I have discussed Governor Palin in the previous installment but some aspects are worth repeating because they deal with the future of the Republican Party. McCain was reported to have wanted either Senator Lieberman, Governor Pawlenty of Minnesota or former Governor Ridge from Pennsylvania as his running mate. But the Republican base, as crafted under Bush advisor Karl Rove, demanded an evangelical anti-abortion candidate. Neither, Senator Lieberman, a progressive Jew, nor the pro-choice Catholic Ridge, fit this bill. Governor Pawlenty was also pro-choice and as such ineligible. Since the campaign wanted to attract disaffected Hillary voters the choice of a suitable woman candidate became limited to Sarah Palin who had endeared herself to conservative Republicans in 2007. While they were on an Alaska cruise they visited Juneau, were feted by the governor and were overcome by her charm. Instead of sticking to his own choices McCain allowed himself to be persuaded to pick Palin, especially since time was getting short. The initial enthusiasm which greeted the newcomer from Alaska soon wore off and towards the end of October even McCain campaign insiders were complaining about her.

It is true that in view of President Bush’s unpopularity and the dissatisfaction with Republicans in general, Senator McCain had a very difficult job on his hands and he may have lost the election even without Palin’s help. Nevertheless, his public image might have been less tarnished than what he has allowed it to become during the last weeks of October.

The Republican Party is now confronted with an identity crisis. The Bush administration, which relied on neoconservatives and evangelical “born-again” Christians, has lost the support of independents and even some Republicans. If the party decides to tie its future to Sarah Palin, as is currently hinted, it is bound to go down in defeat again because the assumptions underlying her candidacy are fundamentally flawed. A Christianity that is limited to church going, not allowing abortions under any circumstances, and showing intolerance of people it doesn’t like for whatever reason, does not meet Jesus’ standards. The Palin supporters should take John 13:35 to heart and not just mouth but practice it: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” But to those who quote this rule in order to justify sexual desires it needs to be pointed out that the word used for love is Agape, brotherly love, rather than Eros.

Senator McCain has redeemed himself in his concession speech where he came across as a gracious person who promised to help the Obama administration in any way he could. When I watched him giving the speech I got the sense that in his heart of hearts he was quietly relieved at the result for not having to assume the burden of office in a country so deeply troubled and divided by the campaign. A McCain-Palin administration could not possibly have found acceptance by Democrats. We would have seen angry confrontations between the legislators of the two parties which would have stalled all efforts towards reasonable solutions of our massive internal and foreign problems.

While McCain looked composed, resigned, and possibly relieved, during his speech, Obama was far from gleeful. The audience in Chicago’s Grant Park, the scene of the 1968 Convention riot, was literally jumping with joy and tears were running down even of Jesse Jackson’s face, who had not been one of Obama’s friends. But the President-elect’s demeanor was utterly serious, with hardly a smile. I got the feeling that he may have actually felt stunned by the magnitude of the event that had just transpired and he had suddenly become aware of the weight of the world that had descended on his shoulders. The speech itself was grateful and sober. He acknowledged the difficulties the country will be facing in the next years; that everybody will need to put their shoulder to the wheel and will have to sacrifice something in order for us to emerge from the current difficulties. In regard to foreign affairs, and in the concluding sentence, he said,

 

“And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

To those -- to those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope. . . .

This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.”

 

People in most countries around the world rejoiced, but Mevdevev-Putin felt obliged to send a warning shot across the bow of an Obama administration in spite of the fact that he hasn’t even been sworn in yet. They should be grateful for the election outcome because a McCain administration with revived neoconservatives, an impulsive president, and an incompetent vice-president would have been a nightmare.

This leaves us with the question: how will President Obama govern? Using past performance as a guide he is likely to model himself after Lincoln whose image he evoked when he announced his candidacy on February 10, 2007 in front of the Old State Capitol Building in Springfield Illinois. This was the place where Lincoln had delivered his famous “House Divided” speech 149 years earlier. If Obama follows the pattern, his cabinet will include the most experienced people regardless of party affiliation and he will make every effort to “reach across the aisle” in order to achieve bipartisan support for his major pieces of legislation. We have to hope and pray that he will be successful in this effort and that he will not have to share the fate of his illustrious predecessor. Regardless of current good-feeling among the majority there are also some misguided haters and there are too many guns in irresponsible hands. Lincoln was cut down in the hour of his triumph. Had John Wilkes Booth not murdered him, the South would have been spared its humiliation, there would not have been a need for the Ku Klux Klan, and instead reconciliation between the races might have begun. If some individual lunatic or organization were to follow the example set by Booth the country and the world would be in dire trouble. For this not to happen we truly need the Audacity of Hope that our country has permanently changed for the better on November 4.







December 1, 2008

BUSH AND OBAMA
A STUDY IN CONTRASTS

            As the Bush presidency is winding down and Obama’s is about to start we already see that there is a stark difference between these two individuals in the way they approach their job. Let us look first at our current president and then try to discern the forces that shaped the next one.

Although President Bush’s history is abundantly known by now, it is worth while to point out that he seems to have been drafted into the presidency rather than really having desired it for specific reasons. He had sort of drifted into his political life, first as governor of Texas and then into the White House, without a clear plan of what he wanted to accomplish. Having been born into a family of political high achievers it was his birthright and he conducted himself accordingly. Strenuous effort never seems to have been his forte. Even during military service he didn’t exert himself in the Air National Guard and was, for practical purposes, AWOL for a significant period of time. His subsequent studies at Yale earned him an MBA degree, but they apparently did not provide him significant information about how business really runs because he was unsuccessful in all his ventures and had to be bailed out by friends and family.

Although alcohol abuse was in part responsible, there was a deeper characterologic problem which became apparent during his years in office when this was no longer the case. He simply was not interested in the onerous daily work grind all of us have to endure but preferred the perks of office rather than its duties. As such his time in the Oval Office, especially during the first six years, was rather limited and he preferred the fresh air of Crawford or Camp David. This had the disastrous consequences for the country which we are currently confronted with.

His guru, Karl Rove, persuaded the public that Bush is a strong leader and commander-in chief who kept the country safe from attack after 9/11. This led to victory at the polls in 2004 but was far from the truth. The attacks of 9/11, which are still the major reason for our current dilemma, may well have been avoidable had we had a president who had regarded his job as a sacred trust rather than as a means to better enjoy life. The August 6, 2001 national security brief which told him that Osama bin-Laden intended to attack the continental US did not in the least interfere with the vacation in Crawford. There is no evidence that our president contacted the heads of the CIA and FBI to find out what they really knew about the situation and had asked them to be kept up-to date on suspicious activities inside the country. Instead he devoted himself to the life of a rancher and brush-cutter. This amounted to criminal negligence.

The response to the 9/11 disaster was also totally inappropriate. Instead of launching a comprehensive investigation into the causes of the tragedy and establishing a strategy to destroy al Qaeda, he allowed himself to be persuaded to use the occasion to enact the utopian neoconservative agenda. First Afghanistan, then Iraq and thereafter the rest of the Middle East would be democratized by means of our superb military forces; cheap oil would flow in unlimited quantities, and “The Only Superpower” would rule the world for the rest of the century. Bush would be hailed as the Augustus of the new Rome and his place in history would be firmly established. This was the fantasy he was presented with by his “advisors” and to which he whole-heartedly subscribed.

That this was utter lunacy, as has become apparent since, is not just hindsight but was predictable by anyone with a sense of history and an understanding of human behavior. My articles written on this site in October 2001 (September 11th), December 1, 2001 (War on Terrorism) December 1, 2002 (Wanted: Good Judgment) and January 1, 2003 (Deconstructing America) are evidence that it was only sloth and mental blindness by President Bush which led us into our current difficulties. The country at large did not see it and the people succumbed to propaganda until hurricane Katrina, which flooded New Orleans, became a wake-up call. The president was again on vacation, the federal response was totally inadequate and when Bush did visit the scene several days later he congratulated the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with the famous words, “Good job Brownie!” The country became finally aroused and the 2006 elections brought a narrow Democratic majority to the Congress. Nevertheless, the margin was too slim for Congress to be able to work effectively and the presidential pen could veto any proposed legislation. But towards the middle of 2007 Mr. Bush did begin to take his office somewhat more seriously because the end of the line and the verdict of history began to loom.

He finally agreed to a belated effort towards a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and promised a solution before leaving office. That this promise could not be kept was likewise obvious to anyone who has followed the situation in that part of the world (December 1, 2007 Annapolis Déjà vu) but it was at least a recognition of an unacceptable situation. The timing was, however, such that even a more energetic follow-up effort by our president would not have had much impact because neither Ehud Olmert nor Mahmoud Abbas had enough of their respective people on their side to make the necessary compromises.

During this year our president seems to have spent somewhat more time at his desk but he again proved himself clueless when the financial crisis hit in September. Senator McCain attempted to rally him into action by having the meeting in the White House on the 25th but that degenerated into pandemonium with Bush unable to assert control. In sum and substance George W Bush is from all appearances a likeable person but he should never have been elected to the presidency of this country for which he was characterologically unfit. He did not necessarily lack the intelligence but his fundamental weakness was a lack of interest in the requirements of his job. He made no effort to read important first-hand material but relied on predigested opinions which were presented orally and then made his decisions on a “gut level,” which at certain times was regarded as the voice of the Lord, and he subsequently obstinately adhered to them even in the face of obvious failure.

Barack Obama is cut from completely different cloth as his campaign and the current effort toward creating his administration show. While Bush is intellectually lazy Obama reads voraciously, carefully investigates all sides of a given problem and learns from experience. This may be the most important difference between these two individuals. President Bush has left his successor an unmitigated mess that could not have been foreseen eight years ago. From a budget surplus and a world at relative peace Obama is now confronted with two wars, which are difficult to end, an unheard of budget deficit, and an economy in serious recession bordering on depression. The financial crisis and associated economic stagnation is far from over. As yet we do not know how far unemployment will really rise and the specter of the great depression of the 1930s haunts decision makers.

This brings us to the question: What makes Barack Obama tick? He is hailed as the Messiah by some, condemned as the Anti-Christ by others, while the most commonly applied label by his detractors who are of the secular variety is: left liberal extremist. I don’t believe that any of these labels apply and they reveal only the mindset of the admirers and accusers rather than telling us something about Barry Obama, Barry Oseto and now Barack Obama. Our names and what we do with them identify us. At birth his father gave the newborn his own name which would be appropriate if he had been born in Africa but it immediately presented a problem to his mother and her parents. Obama is bad enough in America but whoever heard of a little kid called Barack. So Barry was the appropriate solution and he grew up with that name. When the mother married the Indonesian Lolo Oseto, he adopted the boy who was then enrolled in school as Barry Oseto. But that marriage didn’t last either and when Barry was returned to his grandparents he became Obama again.

I don’t know at what point Barry decided to become Barack again and assume the full responsibility that goes with it, but that it was a conscious decision with an eye to the future of that I have no doubt. The desire to become president had grown at some point from being a fantasy, to a wish and then a goal and in this transition there was no room for a cuddly Barry. James Earl Carter Jr. had become the 39th president of the republic and had insisted to be known by the folksy Jimmy, but this was a bad precedent because the office of the presidency should not be brought down to that level. The office demands respect and neither a Jimmy nor a Barry, especially when one’s last name is Obama, would do. With his birth name of Barack Obama he could craft an identity that is truthful and recognizes the African component of his being.

After graduating from Columbia the question arose how this identity would fit into the American mainstream. Information on how he arrived at the decision to become a community organizer is sketchy at this time. In Dreams from my Father he merely said on page 133, “In 1983, I decided to become a community organizer.” This statement immediately brought to mind one written in 1925, “Ich aber beschloss Politiker zu werden (But I decided to become a politician. Mein Kampf p.225). In Hitler’s case the decision resulted from not having learned a profession, therefore, no job prospects and the bitter resentment over the lost war with the subsequent economic disaster. For many Germans, including Hitler, the fault lay with the Marxists who had sabotaged the war effort and thereby had stabbed the undefeated army in the back. He would raise Germany by sheer dint of will, from her defeat to glory which could only be done by ruthlessly eliminating Jewish-Bolshevism. Ausrotten (extirpate at the roots) was required and this could only be accomplished by a strong leader with autocratic powers. He would become that leader.

How does Obama fit into this scenario and what was his professed intention? I now shall let him talk for himself. After he stated his decision he wrote,

 

“There wasn’t much detail to the idea; I didn’t know anyone making a living that way. When classmates in college asked me just what a community organizer did, I couldn’t answer them directly. Instead I’d pronounce on the need for change. Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds. Change in the Congress, compliant and corrupt. Change in the mood of the country, manic and self-absorbed. Change won’t come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.

That’s what I’ll do, I’ll organize black folks. At the grass roots. For change.”

 

Corsi’s book The Obama Nation, which I have referred to in previous articles, shows that Mr. Obama had allowed himself some poetic license because there was a history to “community organizing” and its Godfather was Saul Alinsky. This is a fascinating story, albeit not widely known, except for internet aficionados who love to peek behind the scenes. When TV pundits profess surprise and amazement that Obama would offer the job of Secretary of State to his rival Hillary Clinton they don’t know what Obama really is and that the two of them have a common denominator who happens to be the above mentioned Saul Alinsky. Hillary Rodham’s senior honors thesis in political science was entitled "‘There Is Only the Fight...’: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model."

She had met Alinsky at a school outing to a Methodist church where Alinsky was giving a talk and became intrigued with his work. He offered her a job after graduation in his organization but she decided instead to go first to Yale. “’His offer of a place in the new institute was tempting,’ she wrote in the end notes to the thesis, “’but after spending a year trying to make sense out of his inconsistency, I need three years of legal rigor.’” http://www.gopublius.com/HCT/HillaryClintonThesis.html provides the major outline of the thesis that had become somewhat embarrassing to the Clintons’ at their run for the White House in 1992 and was kept sealed at Wellesley. At Yale she met the handsome, charming Bill Clinton and community organizing was shelved.

In 1969 when Hillary rejected Alinsky’s offer Barry Oseto was still in elementary school in Jakarta and he never met Alinsky because the latter died in 1972. It is, however, extremely likely that Obama had read at least one of Alinsky’s books by 1983 because the language used in his decision paragraph which is quoted above comes straight out of Alinsky. Saul Alinsky is no longer a household name but he was widely loved, feared and hated from the 1930s to his death. Apart from his books Reveille for Radicals (1946) and Rules for Radicals (1971) I found the 1972 Playboy interview, which can be found on http://www.progress.org/archive/alinsky.htm, most informative. To understand the man and, therefore, the concept of community organizing it is essential to read this interview because the books are in part redundant. Although the narrative was probably at least in part self-serving, it imparts a picture of a soul on fire with the ideal of bringing truth, justice and brotherhood to the people regardless of the means, provided they did not result in useless bloodshed. 

Saul Alinsky, born 1909, was the son of pious Jewish parents who had emigrated from Russia’s Lithuania late in the 1890s. The father, who regularly beat little Saul for various misdemeanors, tried to eke out a meager living as a tailor in the “slum of slums” of Chicago and taught him the first valuable lesson for life. After his beatings he always said, "You ever do that again and you know what's going to happen to you." Usually the boy just skulked away in tears but one day he got his courage up and said, "No, what's going to happen?" The father’s jaw dropped in surprise and he was nonplussed. The boy realized at that moment that, “Power is not what the enemy has but what you think he has.” It may not have happened in quite that way but whenever the insight came, it proved to be the cornerstone for his future life of rebellion against authority.

Life in the poverty of the slum was tough but Saul became resilient. The parents divorced when he was 18, the father moved away and never again provided even the rudiments of support for the family. But Alinsky used his street-smarts to get by. After having finished college he received a social science fellowship in criminology which he used to write a dissertation on Al Capone’s mob. He spent about two years living with the mob and learning its ways but he never finished the dissertation. Instead he got a job at the Illinois State Division of Criminology, where he worked with juvenile delinquents and thereafter as a criminologist at the State Prison in Joliet.

These were the experiences which provided the foundation for his future work with the underprivileged. He came to disdain academia because the professors, who hailed from a different social stratum, didn’t really know what they were talking about and he compared the efforts of sociologists with, “giving an enema to someone with diarrhea.” After criminology had become unattractive, he gravitated to the labor movement and began to work with the leader of the C.I.O. (Congress of Industrial Organizations), John L Lewis, who provided him with further insights into how to organize the downtrodden. But he soon found that the goals of labor were too limited by focusing only on better working conditions and he saw that these were only one part of improving a rotten system. For genuine help, housing had to be improved also and most of all the spirit of the disheartened people had to be lifted. They had to be shown that they could do something by themselves for themselves. From these ideas the concept of the “community organizer” was born.

To see the world as it is rather than as it should be, became the start towards making a better one. Alinsky realized that people lived in isolation with everyone nurturing their private grievances. The unions worked for better wages, the churches provided resignation to fate with hope for the afterlife, while the political parties were corrupt and fought each other to a standstill. It was this fragmentation which bothered Alinsky and he worked to overcome it by creating a “grassroots democracy.” His first major effort when he struck out on his own was to organize the people living in Chicago’s Back of the Yards area slums whose condition had not improved from those described in 1906 by Upton Sinclair in his novel The Jungle, which deals with America’s meat-packing industry. Alinsky being Jewish and the slum dwellers Catholic obviously created a problem because for any effort to succeed it had to have the blessing of the local churches. By deftly working on the individual interests of the various parishes and initially playing one against the other he succeeded to win them all and life began to improve for the people.

The same model was then applied to working against segregation of the Negro people who were even excluded from joining the unions in those days. He achieved major successes but also became persona non grata for authorities and when he arrived in Kansas City for instance he was promptly jailed. This did not bother him because it enhanced his stature among the people he was working for and gave him the time to organize his thoughts. He started writing his first book Reveille for Radicals while imprisoned. As he mentioned in the Playboy interview he refused release at one point because he was in the middle of a chapter and wanted to have the time to finish it.

His political outlook was thoroughly antifascist and he helped raise funds for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight in the Spanish Civil War. His type of work obviously brought him together with communists and other Reds but he never joined a political party because he hated dogma of any kind. If one wanted to put the difference between Alinsky’s concept of community organization and socialist- communistic or fascist party principles in a nutshell, one might say that the latter create a power structure from the top down, which orders people what they are supposed to do. The community organizer, on the other hand, first listens to people’s concerns in a given neighborhood and then brings them together regardless of who they are as to race, creed, political affiliation or type of work, in order to form a common front to address a specific issue. Once that particular issue has been satisfactorily resolved, communities move on to other problems. While the mentioned political systems are authoritarian top down, Alinsky’s model is democratic from the bottom up.

He saw three groups of people: the Have-Nots, the Have-a-Little-and-Want-Mores, and the Haves. The morality of these groups was one of rationalization. The Haves want to keep what they regard as theirs and will obstruct change by all the power at their disposal. The Have-Nots are powerless but do have the numbers on their side. Using these numbers with unorthodox tactics but remaining, barely, within the limits of the law, but at times outside the rules of what is called common decency will get them into the Have-a-Little-and-Want-More group until they can eventually join the Haves. The key aspect was tactics because to confront the power structure head-on with guns, as was attempted in the late 1960s, is suicidal. Other means would have to be devised for which only general rules could be given because success depended on the situation that was encountered. The most important aspect was the intelligence and flexibility of the organizer to find another approach when the first one didn’t work. For Alinsky there was no overarching plan, he went with the flow and let events dictate his next moves. This exasperated conventional thinkers because they couldn’t pigeonhole him.

Alinsky had no use for the way the youngsters in the 60’s wanted to make their revolution. The middle-class youths who rebelled against their elders with non-conformist conduct were, in his eyes, misguided. He, therefore, intended to show them the proper way to channel their energies towards a successful outcome of their desires. By the time the country’s cities were burning in the late 1960s he had decided to devote the next decade of his life to “organize the middle-class.” He saw this large majority of the population, who lived in Thoreau’s words, “lives of quiet desperation,” stuck in materialism without spiritual sustenance, as the key to America’s restoration. The country was mired in Vietnam’s unwinnable war but Nixon’s “silent majority” was not Republican and conservative as was implied at the time. It was silent only out of frustration and an inability to effectively change the system. Alinsky intended to show them how, but the project could never get off the ground because he died in 1972.

One may now feel that he was a crackpot who had failed to bring genuine change to the country but that is not how he was seen at the time. The governor of Illinois and two-time presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson, said that Alinsky's aims "most faithfully reflect our ideals of brotherhood, tolerance, charity and the dignity of the individual." Perhaps his greatest success was having obtained a grant from liberal millionaire Marshall Field III, who provided funds to establish the “Industrial Areas Foundation.” This Foundation became Alinsky's primary base of operation and a training facility for young people in the art of community organization. The Foundation survived Alinsky’s death and in due course of time led to November 4, 2008 when America elected as its future president a person who had come through Alinsky’s school.

As mentioned earlier Obama had decided to become a community organizer but didn’t know how to go about it. He answered newspaper ads and Jerry Kellman (called Marty Kaufman in Obama’s Dreams from my Fathers) came from Chicago to New York to interview Obama for the job. Kellman had been trained by Alinsky with Foundation money and he now wanted to organize Chicago’s South Side black slum area. Although Jewish, like Alinsky, he didn’t have the latter’s charisma and realized that in order to be successful in the black environment he needed an intelligent, vigorous, young black male who sincerely wanted to do good and was willing to work for the pittance the Foundation could provide. Obama clearly was his man but he doubted that he would take the job. Nevertheless, to Kellman’s surprise he accepted and as they say, “the rest is history.”  

We can now see why many people have such a difficult time categorizing Obama into one of the conventional slots and the best way to understand his actions up to now is when we view him as a community organizer. He internalized Alinsky’s principles that: 1) Power is not what the establishment has but what you think it has; and 2) do not meet your opponent head on but outflank and eventually co-opt him. The first principle gave him the courage to enter the presidential race as a first term senator, which one might have regarded as arrogance, foolishness or hubris. But he had learned how to deal with the power structure, which was in the first phase of the campaign the formidable Clinton machine. He knew that his chances in Primaries were less than Hillary’s because they were relatively easy to control by the Democratic Party. This why his initial efforts were aimed at those states where direct people to people contact existed as in Caucus voting. His stunning success in Iowa proved the point and so did his immediate subsequent loss in New Hampshire. When he was about to win the nomination the pundits and commentators as well as some Democratic Party members wanted “red meat” in his speeches to annihilate the enemy, but that is not how a community organizer proceeds. He knows that after victory he has to work with his opponents and this can only be done if he has earned their respect rather than by poisoning the water.

Obama has now entered another phase which consists of organizing his cabinet and it is apparent that he places experience and a wide variety of views above party ideology. He thereby conducts himself in agreement with Alinsky’s qualifications for a successful organizer. They are: “Curiosity,” which leads to a continuous search for meaning; “Irreverence,” which shuns dogma and rebels against any repression of free speech; “Imagination,” which seeks new solutions to old problems; “A sense of humor,” which allows him to laugh even about his own foibles; “A bit of a blurred vision of a better world,” which means that although he works only on a small piece of the great mosaic that makes up our world, he sees a vague outline of it and that keeps him going; “An organized personality,” which keeps him rational in a sea of irrationality; “A well integrated political schizoid,” by which is meant that although for political purposes an issue has to be framed in polarizing 100% black and white  terms, the organizer also knows that when it comes to negotiations the difference frequently amounts to only 10% and these can be successfully bridged. The last item is: “Ego.” It must not be confused with egotism but consists of “unreserved confidence in one’s ability to do what must be done.” The organizer has found his identity. He, therefore, does not need to take refuge in ideologies and can bring the different viewpoints of opposing groups of people to bear on a given problem.

When we now compare how President Bush and President-elect Obama fare on these principles, it is obvious that Obama passes while Bush would fail most of them. But this also gives us a perspective of the future. The president-elect is currently organizing his administration. In his first term he will devote himself with the same energy to organizing the country and if he were to be granted the opportunity to finish it and be re-elected for a second one he would then try to organize the world on pragmatic principles. All we can do now is to wish him good luck and hope that he will be able to bring at least some of the needed reforms to fruition.







January 1, 2009

BARACK OBAMA’S CHALLENGE

            When one considers the massive problems the Bush administration is leaving in its wake the word “challenges” might be regarded as more appropriate for the title. But there is an overriding one which dwarfs all the others and will be discussed later. For now let us look at the world Obama inherits.

            The catastrophic failures of the Bush-Cheney co-presidency are, with the exception of his staunchest supporters, apparent to all. That Laura Bush would defend her husband’s legacy is honorable and can be expected but why Condoleezza Rice should believe that history will vindicate what is clearly the worst performance in office of any president in recent history is less clear. As a matter of fact I cannot think of a single president in American history who was confronted with greater problems upon taking office.

            It is customary today to compare the country’s difficulties with those FDR found thrust upon him in March of 1931, but this is only partially true. When Roosevelt took over, the economy was in shambles but America had a manufacturing industry, no appreciable foreign debt, and there was no external threat. The rest of the world was at relative peace. The British Empire, albeit tottering, was still intact and although Hitler had taken over Germany in January of that year, he needed 7 years to consolidate his power. Under these circumstances Roosevelt could work out his problems in peace, but let us also remember, that the great depression was ended only when the country engaged in a massive arms buildup, in anticipation of WWII, and that the stock market did not return to its pre-October 1929 level until 1940.

            Even Abraham Lincoln, although confronted with the likelihood of a Civil War, had a strong manufacturing base in the North and no foreign enemies. We have to go all the way back to George Washington and Valley Forge for an analogy when the emerging country had no internal financial resources, its militia was confronted with a superior professional army, and only about a third of its citizens supported the cause. Another third, the Loyalists, rooted for the British and the rest hedged their bets to go with the eventual winner, rather than risking life, limb and property. If France had not come to the rescue the American experiment would have been stillborn in those days.

            So let us look objectively at where America stands at the beginning of this New Year, which will be far from happy for most of us. On the domestic scene the most important aspect is that apart from the manufacture of weapons and planes we hardly have any heavy industry which is competitive on the world market. We have outsourced manufacturing for cheap labor, which in turn produced cheaper consumer goods for which we pay with money that again goes abroad. Our “service economy” does not produce goods but lives on borrowing. This has led to a staggering internal and foreign debt and now we have to rely on the sanity and good will of former enemies and future rivals, such as Japan and China that they will continue to accept dollars and to keep lending, rather than to start collecting on their debt. From creditor status we have been reduced to begging.

            We cannot blame others for this state of affairs because it strictly bears the stamp “made in U.S.A.” under the title of globalism. During the Reagan administration we were told that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” But tides don’t keep rising, they crest and what happens when the ebb comes nobody seems to have been interested in. The father of our current president did have an inkling that the rising tide theory wouldn’t work in the long run. While still a contender for the presidency against Reagan he called it “voodoo economics” but when offered the vice presidency he gladly accepted it, forgot about his qualms, and deficit spending went through the roof.

While it can be argued that this was for a good purpose because the arms race ruined the Soviet economy and led to the collapse of that system, we must also recognize that it laid the foundation for our current problems. It initiated decades of greed and concomitant market speculations, the fruits of which we are now confronted with on the domestic and international scene. During the 1980s defeating communism, by any and all means was the overriding international goal. These included arming and supporting Islamic fundamentalists, the Mujihadeen, in Afghanistan. They were hailed as freedom fighters then but have now to be defeated as “the Taliban” although they still have the same goal, which is to get foreigners and their ideas out of their country. For them it doesn’t make any differences if the foreigner is the godless Soviet Union or the “Judeo-Christian” Capitalist. They owe allegiance to neither because both of them bring a modernity which profoundly conflicts with ancient customs. The idea of raising and supporting enemies of your enemies sounds simple but does not take the long term consequences into account.

Before more fully confronting America’s foreign political problems we have to discuss an internal problem that is most lasting and most difficult to remedy. This is not necessarily the inadequate health-care system which will require a great deal of money and effort but the terrible state of our educational system. I have dealt with the problem in the February 2008 issue (Is America Fixable?) and it has been regarded as one of overriding importance by the incoming administration. But from what one reads one gets the feeling that the sorry state of our school system can be fixed by gaining concessions from teacher unions and allocating more money. Unfortunately the problem goes much deeper. It is rooted in a philosophy which sees the child from its beginning in the cradle not as a trust parents have been endowed with and an obligation to develop its intellectual and spiritual capabilities by discipline but as an individual whose whims are to be indulged.

The notion that children, when left to their own devices, will by nature be inclined to study and improve their minds is fundamentally wrong. By nature children are pleasure driven and in regard to academics lazy. Their attention span is short and what is not of immediate gratification is abhorred. This is not fantasy but life experience and parents who do not realize this are likely to raise children who may become decent persons but will be unable to compete in the school of life. Barack Obama knows this and he remembers fully well that had his mother not made him read early in the morning, before she had to go to work, he would never even have dreamt of high achievement let alone worked towards it.  He hated it at the time but is grateful now and the same applies to others, including myself, who were subjected to “tough love.”

Thus, for educational reforms to succeed parental attitudes would need to change and the school curriculum, especially that of Middle and High School would have to be revamped. Our teenagers are not being challenged intellectually and apart from sports activities they tend to be bored, which in turn leads to the inordinate number of High School dropouts. But even many of our children who do finish High School are inadequately prepared for College and are likely to pursue courses which are the least demanding. The broad foundation which their European and Asian contemporaries still receive is missing. These young defenders of “Western Civilization” will have, after enormous financial sacrifice by their parents, a bachelor’s or master’s degree but will have no idea what Western civilization really is, apart from its incentive to make money. The “usefulness” of an MBA degree is perhaps best exemplified in our current president, the number of people who are being turned out of jobs at present, and the still greater number in the future. As mentioned Obama knows this but what he can do about it is another matter because this problem cannot be solved by money. It requires engaged parents and a public which demands appropriate changes.

Obama is inheriting a country in crisis and whatever he wants to accomplish domestically will require a sane foreign policy. As long as the wars continue so will the financial drain, which in turn will hamper needed domestic spending. Unfortunately, world events are not his to control, they are sprung on him as the example of Israel’s conduct at the time of this writing shows. The Iraq war may be winding down but at the same time Afghanistan is heating up. Obama intends to send more troops and it is projected that by the end of the year the total number, including those from allied countries, will be about 70,000. In this connection it is useful to remember that in 1983-1984 the Soviets had 85,000 in the country and an additional 30,000 were stationed across the Amu River on their side of the border. Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bob Gates should read or re-read the book by Yousaf and Adkin, The battle for Afghanistan. The Soviets versus the Mujahideen during the 1980s. It was first published in 1992 and re-issued in paperback in 2007.

Brigadier General Mohammad Yousaf was the Afghan Bureau’s Head of Pakistan’s Inter-Service-Intelligence (ISI) and as such in charge of all the Mujahideen operations in Afghanistan. He was also the link to the CIA which provided funds, weapons and satellite pictures of the deployment of Soviet forces. This put him in a delicate position because a too overt role of Pakistan in the war would have led to Soviet reprisals which the country clearly could not afford. In the book he details the deployment of Soviet forces down to the regiment level and it is fascinating to see that our current troop positions mimic those of the Soviets, with forces concentrated mainly in the Kabul area, the Bagram Air-Base and along the North-South Salang Highway. As far as the rest of the country is concerned there were only two divisions on the western border and a token presence in the Kandahar area. To drive home the point that this force level was totally inadequate for pacifying the country, Yousaf mentions that the Soviets employed 250,000 troops in 20 divisions to occupy Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Just as with our troops, the Soviets remained mainly at their bases. There were intermittent forays to root out some Mujahideen stronghold, they killed some of the rebels, returned to their bases and other Mujahideen fighters re-occupied the land. This scenario is, of course, familiar to every Viet Nam veteran. The main goal of the Soviet strategy was to hold Kabul and this is now also our aim. In essence the war was a stalemate until the CIA delivered stinger missiles to Yousaf which ended Soviet air superiority because their helicopters could then be shot down. The war was estimated to have cost $12 million per day and by 1987 Gorbachev decided that his country could no longer afford this bleeding and started withdrawing troops. The last Soviet soldiers left in February of 1989 and American support for Afghanistan also disappeared.

Thereafter chaos reigned until the Taliban took over and established their type of Law and Order. In the late 1990s American interest was rekindled because a pipeline was planned to run from the newly liberated states in the Caucasus through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India. The construction required, however, an agreement by the Taliban and when they gave their final “no” in the summer of 2001 they had sealed their fate as far as the Bush-Cheney administration was concerned. The refusal to hand over bin-Laden after the 9/11 attacks was a convenient excuse since removal of the Taliban regime had been planned anyway. In 2002 “our man” in Kabul, Hamid Karzai, approved of the plan but construction still cannot proceed because with Taliban fighters roaming the countryside the required security is lacking.

This excursion into recent history leaves us with the question why do our planners believe that we can do better than the Soviets in the 1980s and the Brits in the late 1830s and again in the late 1870s? We cannot occupy the entire country; the Kabul government is corrupt and has no credibility; the pipeline will not become operational in the foreseeable future and since energy independence is now the goal it may never come to pass. As of yore the Afghans are again supported by some of their Pakistani brethren and this leaves us with few options. Air-power does not win wars and a ground invasion of Pakistan would likely trigger WWIII. Those are the realities Obama faces and he will have to come to grips with them. The American imperial dream of being able to dictate to other countries what they are supposed to do, and with whom to trade, is over. The sooner our country realizes this, the better off we and the world will be.

Thus, on the international scene Obama’s major and immediate problem will not be Bush’s “axis of evil,” China or Russia, but the larger Middle East. In order to achieve reasonable solutions to these festering problems a fundamental shift in thinking will be required. Obama would need to abandon the Bush-Cheney-Likud formula that lumps all national liberation movements under the convenient label of terrorists, because of the methods they employ. Yet the goals of the various groups differ. The Taliban don’t want to invade or even bomb us, they want us out of their country. The same goes for Hezbollah whose goal is Lebanon; Hamas as well as Fatah want a Palestinian state and all of them will fight us as long as we stand in their way with our unconditional support of Israeli policies. Moderates in these parts of the world will not gain immediate ascendance, as we hope, unless and until their national goals have been achieved.

I find it amazing that Israeli governments don’t realize this because their state was built on the principle of terrorism which forced the British out and they are now upset when the same methods are applied against them by some members of the indigenous population. It is also hard to understand why Israeli politicians have not learned as yet that they cannot win wars by air power alone and that their tanks can readily be blown to bits by youngsters with a bazooka. Ehud Barack’s boast of this week that he will crush Hamas with his current offensive in Gaza is just that. You cannot destroy an ideology by military means unless you are willing to physically occupy a country and accept the daily casualties from snipers and suicide bombers. These are the lessons history taught us in my lifetime and it is truly amazing that Israeli as well as some of our politicians are incapable of learning them.

The Middle East conflict has, apart from oil, as its nucleus: the human rights of Palestinians. These have never been taken seriously by previous administrations because of domestic political considerations. The shift from America’s position as an “honest broker” to one of unconditional support of the Israeli side has been gradual and the last genuine attempt to achieve a solution which respects the rights of both parties was in the fall of 1991. This was the time when President Bush’s father correctly saw that in order for his vision of a New World Order to succeed there had to be an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord. 

Let us remember the events of that momentous year. The Soviet Union had collapsed, Saddam Hussein had been successfully evicted from Kuwait and there was no counterweight to American power. Bush reasoned that the Arabs, who had lost their main sponsor, would make peace with Israel provided the Israeli government would give up claims to the land conquered in the 1967 war and live within internationally recognized pre June 1967 borders. It sounded all so reasonable but the then Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, rejected any idea of a land swap outright and had to be dragged to the Madrid Conference in November which was intended to open a dialogue between the warring parties. This former freedom fighter, aka terrorist in British eyes, not only sabotaged any possible hopes for peace but in addition wanted a $10 billion loan guarantee, over a five year period, to settle the ever increasing flood of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. For Bush it was first things first: let’s get a peace agreement and the money would come later. It was not about the principle of extending the guarantee but the time was wrong especially since Bush didn’t know where those people would be settled: in Israel proper or the conquered territories? If the latter were to be the case any hope for peace would obviously be lost.

What followed has been recounted by J.J. Goldberg in his book Jewish Power and has been chronicled here in the May 1, 2003 installment (Power Politics or Statesmanship?). Bush ran into a furious protest storm from the organized Jewish community. Although he gave in, the damage was done and he lost his re-election bid. Jewish dissatisfaction was not the only factor in his loss but it was an important one. All subsequent efforts by succeeding presidents to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict were half-hearted ones and in the main consisted of attempts to dictate terms to the Palestinians. Camp David II in the fall of 2000 was ill-conceived because it fell into the last quarter of President Clinton’s presidency and no one knew if the next administration would enforce whatever agreement might have been reached. Furthermore, Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Barack, had little support at home and faced an election within a few months. But the most important aspect was that Arafat did not want to come to this conference because Barack had not honored previous agreements. It, therefore, was unlikely that a final-status agreement could be reached on such thorny issues as Jerusalem, Palestinians right of return and permanent borders when the essential element – trust – was missing.  For Barack it was a political ploy to be used in the upcoming Israeli elections and for Arafat it was a no win situation. His constituency had gotten restive because the Oslo Peace process had not led to tangible benefits and settlement constructions, in violation of international law, had continued unabated. Bill Clinton who was recovering from the Lewinsky impeachment scandal hoped to establish his legacy by achieving a final peace agreement. He didn’t seem to have realized that this was out of the question because it would have required a forceful stance not only towards Arafat but especially with Barack. This he could not do because Hillary was running for the Senate in New York and any “leaning on the Jews” would immediately have doomed her election chances. Arafat, before agreeing to come, had extracted a promise from Clinton that if the conference were to fail he would not be made to bear exclusive blame. But this promise was sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. Sharon then helped to provide the spark for Intifada II, and the end of the Oslo accord, with his provocative walk on the Temple Mount. Details of this peace-making failure were presented here in the March 2007 installment (Barack in Salt Lake City).

The current President Bush completed the tilt towards Israel and away from Palestinian concerns by not only giving Sharon a free hand in the re-occupation of the West Bank and Gaza but for good measure he also praised him as a man of peace. This was especially egregious because efforts were under way to have Sharon indicted as a war criminal for his complicity in the 1982 Lebanese Sabra and Shatila massacre. Although Bush later endorsed the “two-state solution” he did nothing towards its implementation and last year’s Annapolis conference was, to put it bluntly, eye-wash (Annapolis. Déjà Vu. December 1, 2007). The end of January and beginning of February 2001 would have been the time for a breakthrough in the Middle East stalemate if Bush had acted decisively and this is why I wrote Whither Zionism? and sent it to him, all the members of his Cabinet as well as key members of the Senate and House. No action was taken which amounted to an agreement with Israeli policies and all of the resultant disasters. Eight years later all of us are clearly worse off then ever before but no one can say that there has not been ample warning from numerous well meaning sources.

Yet, there seems to have arisen a faint stirring of recognition that the Arab-Israeli problem is indeed the cornerstone of our relations with the Muslim world and can no longer be ignored. President Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, published in 2007 a book, Second Chance. Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower in which he grades the actions of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W Bush.  Bush 41 received a “Solid: B” for his tactical skill of how he had handled world affairs but he was chided for having “missed strategic opportunities.” The latter referred to the president’s inability of achieving a breakthrough in the Middle East problem but it seems that Brzezinski may not have given sufficient weight to Goldberg’s book, which explains the reasons for the failure. At any rate President Bush might have thought that he would be able to solve the problem in his second term but that was not to be. President Clinton received an “Uneven: C” because there was a “Major gap between potential and performance.” One might add that this resulted from a characterologic flaw which allowed his libido to interfere with official business. Our current President got a “Failed: F” with the comment: “A simplistic dogmatic worldview prompts self-destructive unilateralism.” 

Brzezinski’s opinions should not be taken lightly because he was one of Barack Obama’s teachers at Columbia and now one of his foreign policy campaign advisors. In short, Brzezinski states that the days of empire, where a given nation can force its will on others, are over. There has been a global awakening and emerging countries want to be treated with dignity. In practical terms this means that diplomacy without preconditions has to take center stage. For America to prosper, close cooperation with Europe is essential. Russia and China should not be provoked unnecessarily but engaged in peace-making efforts and Iran’s nuclear ambitions are also best addressed by direct unconditional negotiations conducted with good will and supported by the rest of the world. These efforts would gain credence if at the same time Muslim states saw that America is serious in its attempts to solve the long festering Palestinian problem and returns to the “honest broker” stance.

The idea that nothing can be accomplished with Iran unless definitive steps are taken towards a viable Palestinian state has also gained some traction in the January/February 2009 issue of Foreign Affairs. Richard N. Haass and Martin Indyk pointed out in their article: “Beyond Iraq. A New Strategy for the Middle East,” that reduction of force levels in Iraq should lead to a “grand bargain with Iran, forging peace between Jerusalem and Damascus, and promoting a final-status Israeli-Palestinian agreement.” Indyk, who is Jewish, used to be ambassador to Israel and was also a prominent member of the U.S. delegation during the Camp David II sessions. He is a fair minded person and so is Dr. Haass who is President of the Council on Foreign Relations.

 A second article in the same issue by Walter Russell Mead, who is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, entitled “Change They Can Believe In. To Make Israel Safe, Give Palestinians Their Due,” makes a similar point. Mead wrote, “Much like Copernicus, who put the sun at the center of the universe, the Obama administration must put Palestine politics and Palestine public opinion at the center of its efforts to bring peace to the Middle East. But this need not mean turning away from Israel: such a refocusing would in fact offer Israel substantial long-term benefits.” Articles of this nature are encouraging but raise two questions. One: is the current Israeli offensive in Gaza designed to undermine this impending effort? Two: is the incoming Obama administration serious about solving the Palestine problem or will it again be a matter of lip service?

This brings me to the ultimate challenge Barack Obama faces. It is one of character and he has alluded to it in his Audacity of Hope. He wrote that after public appearances “sometimes someone will grab my hand and tell me that they have great hopes for me, but that they are worried that Washington is going to change me and that I will end up just like all the rest of the people in power. Please stay who you are, they will say to me. Please don’t disappoint us.” Yes indeed! Now it is not only his constituents whose hopes ride on him but those of most of the world. Senator Biden told us that Obama will be tested by a foreign policy peril within the first few months after taking office. Obama’s namesake didn’t want to wait that long. As Defense Minister, who hopes to become Prime Minister again in February, Barack launched the Gaza attack which is under way at this time and thereby may force the President-elect to take a stand. Although President Bush is still nominally in charge of the country for the next nineteen days a glimpse into the heart of Obama, the politician, may become available in the next few days. Will he do the politically correct thing and join the chorus which puts exclusive blame for the ongoing human tragedy on Hamas, or will he be more nuanced in his response?

At present we don’t know what his feelings towards the Palestinians are but we are likely to know by the time of the next installment on February 1. Not only is he going to reveal himself by what he says in his Inaugural Address on January 20, but more importantly by what he does up to then. In spite of his generally excellent choices for his cabinet and advisors a warning flag has gone up. Obama’s entire meteoric rise was due to charisma and a projection of honesty. My concern, therefore, is twofold. He promised us an administration where cooperation rather than confrontation will be the hallmark, yet he appointed as his Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel who is known and feared for his abrasive behavior. Thus, the gate keeper to the Oval Office is not only a very competent person but one who comes with some baggage which will be presented below. Furthermore, Obama told AIPAC that in his eyes an undivided Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Israel. For Jews the latter can only mean that he has already sold out the Palestinians and they may hold him to it. Therefore the question arises: will Obama be able to live up to his promises and the expectations the world has for him? People will forgive him some inevitable mistakes and rash statements made during a campaign but if he were to cover up some potential malfeasance within his trusted band of advisors his fall from grace would be even more rapid than his rise.

The Emanuel appointment was greeted with dismay in the Arab world. Not only is he a devout Jew but he takes the Zionist cause seriously and had served as a civilian volunteer for the Israeli army during the first Gulf War. His father was born in Jerusalem, served in the Irgun, which was branded by the British as a terrorist organization during the fight for Israeli independence, and he still has little use for Palestinians. Although Emanuel was in charge of the arrangements during the famous Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House lawn, his current sentiments in regard to Palestinian rights are unknown.

His biography attests to phenomenal fund raising abilities and in between political appointments he was also able to amass a considerable personal fortune. After he resigned as a Clinton advisor in 1998 he joined an investment firm and during two and a half years acquired $16.2 million. In 2000 he was named by Bill Clinton to the Board of Directors of the now infamous Freddie Mac where he received an initial salary of $31,060 which was upped to $231,655 in 2001. During his tenure the organisation was plagued by scandals involving campaign contributions and accounting irregularities. Emanuel resigned in 2001 to run for Congress. After a rather nasty primary fight he won the seat for the 5th Illinois District, vacated by Rod Blagojevitch whom he helped in his run for governor of Illinois. In contrast to Obama who had kept aloof from the governor, and potential shady deals, Emanuel seems not to have had such scruples and had probably engaged in some typical Chicago type politics which brought him bad press by The Chicago Tribune’s columnist John Kass.

While serving in Congress he became Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (CDCCC). He was able to  raise a phenomenal amount of money and has been credited with the Democrat’s success in the 2006 elections. For his own latest re-election it was reported that he "was the top House recipient in the 2008 election cycle of contributions from hedge funds, private equity firms and the larger securities/investment industry.” To what extent he was involved in the massive campaign contributions Obama received is as yet unknown.

Apart from any possible involvement in the current Blagojevitch scandal (trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder), a question has also been raised in regard to Emanuel’s past veracity. Just prior to the 2006 elections a sex scandal involving a Florida Republican Congressman surfaced. Since some of the allegations had been known for more than a year the Republicans questioned the timing of the publicity and branded it as one of the Democrats “dirty tricks.” In an ABC interview after the election George Stephanopoulos specifically asked Emanuel as CDCCC whether or not he had been aware of the allegations in 2005 which Emanuel denied. Yet it became known thereafter that the DCCC had indeed had some prior knowledge of the affair. 

These are some of the questions, which are currently raised only on the Internet but will undoubtedly be disussed by the major media as soon as Obama falters a bit. President Eisenhower had promised during his election campaign an administration that would be “clean as a hound’s tooth” and when questions arose about the gift of a Vicuna coat his friend and Chief of Staff, Sherman Adams, had received, he discharged him. What will Obama do when questions will be raised over Emanuel’s conduct? The latter surely has made sufficient enemies so it seems to be only a matter of time before Obama is confronted with some nastiness on that score. Will the promised transparency triumph or will it be politics as usual? Thus, his biggest challenge will be in regard to honesty when the chips are down, as they inevitably will be. There is no doubt that he means well but whether or not he has the strength of character to stand up for what is right, even at the expense of political capital and potential damage to re-election, only time will tell.







February 1, 2009

EIGHT YEARS LATER – NO EXIT

            This issue is an anniversary of sorts, because the first “Hot Topic” appeared in February 2001. The initial intent was to raise awareness of my non-medical books, and possibly sell a few copies, but this goal was not achieved to any appreciable extent. Instead something else and possibly more valuable happened which I could not have foreseen in that halcyon month of the incoming Bush administration. The articles describe the mistakes the Bush administration has made from 2001 on while they were implemented, and discuss the expected results that would accrue therefrom. As such they represent history as it happened, rather than as viewed retrospectively.

            Appalled by the sleaze, lying and even perjury of President Clinton I welcomed a president who would bring dignity to the office and I regarded his “seasoned team” of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Condoleezza Rice, as I called it in Whither Zionism? a harbinger of a better foreign policy, which would not be dominated by bombs, rockets and other military ventures. This state of happy delusion persisted until October of that year when the truth of the goals of the Bush regime started to take shape. The essays, therefore, show how a citizen, imbued with good will towards his chosen country, had to change his views when it became apparent that the new administration was even worse than the old one.

As of January 20 we have again a new administration, which in contrast to that of Bush in 2001 did not result from one vote of the Supreme Court but was indeed an expression of popular will. Barack Obama assumed the office with an unprecedented outpouring of good will and equally unprecedented high expectations. He is supposed to end not only the country’s economic woes but also the rush to war which the Bush-Cheney administration under relentless prodding of the neoconservatives had been engaged in.

The question now is: can he deliver what he has promised?  Obviously it is very early to try to assess his chances, but his first few days in office do give us a hint as to how he will proceed. There is little doubt that, in contrast to his predecessor, he will continue to be a “hands on” person. He will take his duties seriously and remain for the most part at his desk in the Oval Office rather than vacationing on a ranch, which he doesn’t have anyway. There is also no doubt in my mind that he means well and will try to do what he regards as best for the country. Had I not written these essays for the past eight years, which forced me to look behind the headlines, it is likely that I might also have succumbed to what has been called Obamania by his detractors. Whatever doubts I have in regard to his future success are only in part related to what I have called in the January installment “Barack Obama’s Challenge” but are mainly due to the powerful forces which are arraigned against him and the old axiom that the past predicts the future.

In regard to the economy one can only say that “all bets are off” because not even Nobel Prize winners agree on what could and should be done. Economics is not a science. It relies on models and the human emotions of fear and greed. Models depend on assumptions, which may be wrong, and while we know that emotions are active we don’t know the circumstances under which they will become most dominant, leading to panic and a subsequent governmental crackdown on its rebellious citizens. In difficult times the cry for “strong leadership” has always arisen and, when coupled with a perceived or manufactured external threat, the step from democracy to an authoritarian regime is indeed a small one.

In foreign affairs it seems that the old French saying, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, is still correct. This was driven home by the fact that a drone was dispatched to Pakistan, which killed not only some militants but also innocent civilians. That this attack prior to Ambassador Holbrook’s mission was a duplicate of Bush’s rocket attack on Iraq before General Powell’s Middle East trip in 2001 shows that we are still dealing with la même chose. Obama is determined to beef up US troop strength in Afghanistan and thereby enmesh us further in the unwinnable war. He does realize that the Afghan problem cannot be solved without Pakistan’s active help, but since that country is likewise about to sink into chaos Ambassador Holbrook has a monumental job ahead of him. When one realizes, furthermore, that Afghanistan’s western neighbor, Iran, also has a vital interest in a stable regime which does not derive its income from growing poppies on its border it is obvious that our policy toward that country would also need to change. The February 12, 2009 issue of The New York Review of Books contains a valuable article on, “How to Deal with Iran” by Bill Luers, Tom Pickering and Jim Walsh which should be taken to heart by the new administration. But the Iranian situation will be very difficult to address because it involves our relationship to the State of Israel and especially its domestic lobby AIPAC.

While the above cited French saying emphasizes the “sameness” accompanying change there exists another one from the even more distant past: idem sed aliter, the same but different, which allows for hope. It seems that President Obama might follow that path in small incremental steps. In regard to the Middle East he has so far taken two steps which differentiate him from his predecessors. The envoy he had appointed was not the expected Dennis Ross of the Clinton era, who is Jewish and has lost credibility in Arab states, but former Senator George Mitchell whose mother hailed from Lebanon and who thereby has ties to the Arab world. In addition the first formal interview Obama granted any news organization was with Al Arabiya. This sent a powerful signal to the Arab and Muslim world that their concerns will be listened to. It is also noteworthy that he had chosen Al Arabiya. This network presents a more moderate position than Al Jazeera which, although more widely viewed, tends to be more strident in its Arabic programs.

These signals have not gone unnoticed in Israel and Uri Avnery, who is currently regarded as that country’s conscience, published on January 28 of this year an article (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12074)  in which he declared that the Zionist regime is ”on the wrong side of history.” He endorsed Obama’s vision for solving problems diplomatically rather than by military means and so did the noted historian Avi Shlaim, who wrote an article for The Guardian on January 7 on, “How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine).  

He outlined the course of events that had led to this tragedy and also stated, “The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash.” These articles deserve to be read on the mentioend sites because as yet information of this type does not appear in our mainstream media.

There are, however, some faint stirrings even here because last Sunday CBS’ 60 Minutes aired a segment which showed the suffering Israel has inflicted on innocent civilians in the recent Gaza war. Other articles critical of Israel’s behavior in the Gaza war appear occasionally in The Christian Science Monitor, and “Eyeless in Gaza” by Roger Cohen in the mentioned New York Review of Books attracted my attention to Avi Shlaim’s article. There even some “voices in the wilderness” of Congress. Former presidential candidates Dennis Kucinich (Democrat) and Ron Paul (Republican) are trying to break AIPACs stranglehold on that instituion. To what extent they will be successful is unknown but they deserve our full support.

As mentioned, Senator Mitchell is currently on his “listening tour” in the Middle East. Although he has apparently not been allowed to put Gaza on his itinerary, because that would be tantamount to “talking with terrorists” in Israeli-Bush terminology, he will bring back the view that without taking the concerns of Hamas into consideration peace in that area will not be achievable.

While preparing this essay I looked at some of my previus writings and was startled to find that in the June 2001 issue (Metaphysical Guilt) I had written,

 

The Middle East continues to drift into chaos and the Mitchell Commission recommendations - although well meant - have predictably been rejected by both sides. Youngsters who aspire to heaven via martyrdom cannot be restrained by anybody and to make their disappearance the precondition for negotiations is a lame excuse. So is the necessity for continuing to expand the settlements.”

 

  For Senator Mitchell his current fact finding trip must, therefore, be a déjà vu because the situation is basically not only the same but considerably worse. So let us go back to November 7, 2000 when President Clinton established what was called the Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee. It was chaired by Senator Mitchell and the other committee members were: Former Senator Warren B Rudman; Saleyman Demirel former president of the Republic of Turkey; Norway’s foreign minister Thorbjoern Jagland; and Javier Solana as representative of the EU. The report, which was issued on May 6, 2001, contained, among others, these major recommendations:

 

The GOI [Government of Israel] and the PA [Palestinian Authority] must act swiftly and decisively to halt the violence. Their immediate objectives then should be to rebuild confidence and resume negotiations.

The PA should make clear through concrete action to Palestinians and Israelis alike that terrorism is reprehensible and unacceptable, and that the PA will make a 100 percent effort to prevent terrorist operations and to punish perpetrators. This effort should include immediate steps to apprehend and incarcerate terrorists operating within the PA's jurisdiction.

The GOI should freeze all settlement activity, including the "natural growth" of existing settlements. The kind of security cooperation desired by the GOI cannot for long co-exist with settlement activity.

The GOI should give careful consideration to whether settlements which are focal points for substantial friction are valuable bargaining chips for future negotiations or provocations likely to preclude the onset of productive talks.

The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] should consider withdrawing to positions held before September 28, 2000 which will reduce the number of friction points and the potential for violent confrontations.

The GOI should ensure that the IDF adopt and enforce policies and procedures encouraging non-lethal responses to unarmed demonstrators, with a view to minimizing casualties and friction between the two communities.

The GOI should lift closures, transfer to the PA all tax revenues owed, and permit Palestinians who had been employed in Israel to return to their jobs; and should ensure that security forces and settlers refrain from the destruction of homes and roads, as well as trees and other agricultural property in Palestinian areas.

           

 

These were reasonable recommendations but, as mentioned rejected by both sides. The essential elements needed for a peaceful settlement – good will and trust – were missing. Prime Minister Sharon declared that there could not be negotiations with the PA because Yasser Arafat is a terrorist. Arafat on the other hand did not have the power to reign in militant members of his people, because their memories of insults were re-enforced on a daily basis. Thus the policy of Israel’s massive retaliation continued. When Mahmoud Abbas became president of the PA negotiations were re-started but the Israelis not only kept dragging their feet they also continued to build and expand settlements on Palestinian soil in the West Bank as well as in Gaza. Eventually the Gaza situation became untenable for its 8000 Jewish settlers who required the IDF for security and Sharon decided on a unilateral withdrawal from that strip of land.

This step was hailed in our media as a great peace gesture and a downpayment for future withdrawals from West Bank settlements, but the reality was quite different. The purpose according to Prime Minster Sharon’s friend, lawyer and confidante, Dov Weisglass, was to place the entire peace process into “formaldehyde,” where it would sit for decades to come. Information of this type is not conveyed to the American public by our media but readily available from Haaretz.com where the transcript of the August 10, 2004   interview can be found (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=485929).

It is highly informative and also shows the degree of political intimacy Mr. Weisglass had achieved with Condi Rice. Here are key excerpts of what Weisglass said at that time,

 

"The concern was the fact that President Bush's formula [the road map] was stuck and this would lead to its ruin. That the international community would say: You wanted the president's formula and you got it; you wanted to try Abu Mazen and you tried. It didn't work. And when a formula doesn't work in reality, you don't change reality, you change the formula. Therefore, Arik's [Sharon] realistic viewpoint said that it was possible that the principle that was our historic policy achievement would be annulled - the principle that eradication of terrorism precedes a political process. And with the annulment of that principle, Israel would find itself negotiating with terrorism. And because once such negotiations start it's very difficult to stop them, the result would be a Palestinian state with terrorism. And all this within quite a short time. Not decades or even years, but a few months."

"The disengagement plan is the preservative of the sequence principle. It is the bottle of formaldehyde within which you place the president's formula so that it will be preserved for a very lengthy period. The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians."

“The American term is to park conveniently. The disengagement plan makes it possible for Israel to park conveniently in an interim situation that distances us as far as possible from political pressure. It legitimizes our contention that there is no negotiating with the Palestinians. There is a decision here to do the minimum possible in order to maintain our political situation. The decision is proving itself. It is making it possible for the Americans to go to the seething and simmering international community and say to them, `What do you want.' It also transfers the initiative to our hands. It compels the world to deal with our idea, with the scenario we wrote. It places the Palestinians under tremendous pressure. It forces them into a corner that they hate to be in. It thrusts them into a situation in which they have to prove their seriousness. There are no more excuses. There are no more Israeli soldiers spoiling their day. And for the first time they have a slice of land with total continuity on which they can race from one end to the other in their Ferrari. And the whole world is watching them - them, not us. The whole world is asking what they intend to do with this slice of land."

 

            I have quoted so extensively because it shows the mindset of the Israeli political establishment, which has not changed, regardless of the political party which happens to be in power. It will not change after Israel’s February 2009 elections and this is what the Obama administration will have to confront if it wants to make headway in its peace efforts. The interview shows how the situation was presented to the Israeli public at that time so that the Knesset would sign off on the removal of the settlers from Gaza and their protectors, the IDF. The withdrawal did take place in August of 2005 over violent protests of the settler party.

But at that time Sharon saw no strategic value in Gaza and retrenchment to the West Bank allowed him to continue settling Judea and Samaria, as it is called in Israeli parlance, to his heart’s content. To make sure that the Gazans don’t get big ideas the “security fence” was reinforced, entry to Israel and Egypt was restricted, sea and air space controlled, which effectively prevented economic development. The situation worsened even more under Bush’s plan to “democratize” the Middle East. The Palestinians made the mistake that they voted in greater numbers for Hamas than “our guys,” Fatah, because even the people on the West Bank had been submitted to increasing hardships while Abbas held fruitless talks with the Israelis. On the basis of the “Sharon-Bush doctrine” that you don’t talk to terrorists the legally elected Palestinian government was boycotted and a civil war between Fatah and Hamas instigated (July 1, 2007, Saving the Bush Legacy; December 1, 2007, Annapolis Déjà Vu). When Hamas won militarily in Gaza, the fate of its inhabitants was literally sealed in the full sense of the word. There was to be no commerce with the outside world and I have reported here last year on the little Gaza flotilla which intended to show some solidarity of the outside world with the suffering of the locals (Images, September 7, 2008). What do prisoners do, especially when they are young and angry? They build tunnels to break out, ship in some arms with which to annoy their tormentors and thereby attract attention. The current Gaza war was the result.

But again there is more to Gaza than we have been told because Israel now has a commercial interest there. In contrast to the West Bank it is not the land they want but its offshore natural gas field. Michel Chossudovsky, who is by profession a Professor of Economics and also heads the Canadian Global Research organization, published an article on the topic on January 8 of this year (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11680).

The article states, in essence, that extensive gas reserves had been discovered off the Gaza coast and a 25 year agreement was signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority to grant British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) owned by Lebanon’s Sabbagh and Koury families, oil and gas exploration rights. Although the gas field legally belongs to the Palestinians this right was challenged after Sharon came to power in 2001. He declared unequivocally that “Israel would never buy gas from Palestine,” and in 2003 vetoed an initial deal for British Gas to supply Israel with natural gas from Gaza’s offshore wells. The Hamas victory at the polls and subsequently militarily in Gaza obviously made the situation worse. Chossudovsky quoted an article published by Haaretz on December 27, 2008 which stated that the invasion of Gaza, “Operation Cast Lead,” had been planned for more than six months earlier, “even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.” The object of that operation was to remove Hamas from power in Gaza so that the more pliable Fatah would then make the required concessions.

It will be interesting to see whether or not this information reaches American mainstream media and what the Obama administration will do about it. Theoretically, Gaza could rebuild itself with revenue from its gas field provided Israel was to assent to it. Right now there is no such indication and the “security” blockade persists. It does not even allow the import of cement, which is needed for rebuilding destroyed homes and infrastructure facilities, because it could be used for tunnel building. Tunnels would obviously be unnecessary if orderly border traffic were allowed but this is not in Israel’s interest because it does not want a prosperous Palestinian state to be established, even in rudimentary form.

But there is further rather remarkable information available when one types the keywords “Israel Pipeline” into Google. Realists in our country couldn’t help but see the connection beween Saddam’s oil, rather than his supposed WMDs, as the rationale for the American invasion, but we thought that the US would be the main beneficiary. As it turns out there was a parallel process with the Israeli’s in place. “Our man Chalabi” was supposed to take over the government in Baghdad; immediately make peace with Israel and re-establish the Mosul-Haifa pipeline which would bring Iraq’s oil directly to the Mediterranean. It had been built by the British and was in use prior to 1948 but with the proclamation of Israel’s statehood it was shut down by Iraq and has since fallen into a serious state of disrepair. The Israeli desire for the project was reported first by Asia Times on April 4, 2003 under the title, “In the pipeline: More regime change.”
by Hooman Peimani (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=SUNA,SUNA:2006-23,SUNA:en&q=In+the+pipeline%3a+More+regime+change+By+Hooman+Peimani+).

The content of the article was subsequently confirmed by several other reports. It is noteworthy that the last shots, which signaled “Mission Accomplished,” were fired in Baghdad on April 12, a week after the Asia Times report. This information is still withheld from the American public and we should insist that the Cheney energy discussions in the early spring of 2001 be made public because they explain not only the Iraq but also the Afghanistan war. 

The quest for a pipeline from the Caspian basin via Afghanistan to Pakistan, thereby bypassing Iran as well as the potentially problematic Strait of Hormuz was, as has been mentioned in previous installments, a paramount reason for toppling the Taliban regime. The pipeline has remained a pipedream because the necessary security is non-existent. Nevertheless the dream is still vigorously pursued with the Afghan war as its consequence. http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHI203A.html, provides the details under the title “Unocal and the Afghanistan Pipeline.         

When Obama stated during one of the debates that if there was reliable intelligence which pinpointed the location of the Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan he would “take them out,” I thought that he meant it in that restricted sense. It has now become obvious that he didn’t mean just that but he does want to widen the Afghan war against the Taliban into neighboring Pakistan. This is counterproductive. With every rocket fired by a drone we create more mujahadeen and destabilize Pakistan even further. In October 2001 (September 11) I warned against invasion of a Muslim country because that is precisely what bin-Laden had tried to achieve with the 9/11 attack. Afghanistan has always been regarded as “the graveyard of empires,” and we are now disregarding the failure of the British in the 19th and that of the Soviets in the 20th century. In November of 2001 I wrote,

 

 

Deny it as we might the current war against “terrorism” is indeed a religious war of ideas and, as mentioned repeatedly cannot be won by bombs or even ground troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, or other places around the world. Even if the Taliban were to be defeated and a pro-Western government installed in Kabul, fundamentalist-nationalists would simply melt into the mountains and guerilla warfare accompanied by terror tactics, would continue ad infinitum. It pains me to say so but Osama bin-Laden has so far succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. A $200.000 investment in martyrs (which was recouped by selling assets on the stock market before its crash) has produced and continues to produce, billions of dollars of losses to the American economy, fear is being spread by the media and if we are to believe our politicians we engaged in an Afghan war with a projected duration of several years. Even if we kill bin-Laden now he will be a martyr (which is want he wants anyway) who goes to paradise and his image will spur other fanatics to continue with his work of creating hatred for America in the Islamic world.

 

 

The American public was hoodwinked in 2001 and President Obama has apparently decided to continue the deception. The war is not about human rights or America’s defense but our access to and domination of Central Asian energy riches. Secretary Gates testified in Congress last week that we will be in Afghanistan-Pakistan at least till 2014. The fact that our country is broke and cannot afford these wars does not enter into the equation. The situation actually reminded me of a purported discussion between Hitler and his finance minister Hjalmar Schacht. When Schacht confronted Hitler with the fact that the German economy was unable to sustain the costs of building Autobahnen, homes and cruise ships for workers in addition to re-armament, Hitler replied: we’ll have a war and when we win the war we’ll have plenty of money; if we lose we are all dead anyway. Faultless logic except not everybody dies and the survivors have to live with the devastation this logic causes. Sad to say we are now on the same road except that the big war which looms as a result of these misguided policies will leave America even poorer than she is now.

President Obama will need to change course not only in the Middle East and Iran but also in the Afghanistan-Pakistan Theater of war. He is an intelligent person and should read Ahmed Rashid’s recent book, “Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia” (reviewed by William Dalrymple in the mentioned New York Review of Books). The lessons contained therein ought to be taken to heart.

In sum and substance the Obama presidency seems to be shaping up as more idem than aliter. The Middle East is again on the verge of explosion and according to Haaretz a renewed attack on Lebanon in addition to Gaza is being considered (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11800). The previously mentioned Michel Chossudovsky has also published a paper on January 11, on that site, which states that two ships loaded with an extraordinary amount of “ammunition” (not further specified) are currently on their way from Greece to Israel. These are our weapons and may include more “bunker busters” (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11743).

We elected Obama on his promise of “Change!” Now is the time to redeem it. Real change would be if he were to issue a public statement which informs the Israeli leadership that we will not condone any further “defensive” massive retaliation against Gaza, Lebanon, Syria or Iran. If they chose to ignore this warning we will no longer replenish their arsenal and will support a Security Council’s vote of censure. This would get the attention of the ruling circles in Israel as well as their US supporters and under those circumstances genuine peace negotiations could take place not only with Palestinians, but on a regional basis. Short of a declaration of this type there will be no peace there or in Central Asia. I realize that Obama’s first priority has to be the global economic crisis, but the danger is that Israel will engage in some other major military action within the next few weeks or months. The purpose would be to force Obama’s hand and re-emphasize his unchanging solidarity with Israel, regardless of its deleterious effect on us and the world. But in so doing he would lose credibility around the world and all peace efforts would be doomed.

Because of these uncertainties I have added to the headline, as a warning, “No Exit.” It refers not only to the interminable wars we will continue to be engaged in but obviously also to Sartre’s one act play of 1944 with the original title Huis-clos (closed door). It depicts three people, one man and two women, locked into a room where there is nothing else to do but to listen for eternity to each others woes. It contained the memorable sentence, “l’enfer c’est les autres.” It has been translated as “hell is other people” but literally it says, “hell is the others.” This is also the philosophy which dominates our thinking and that of Israelis. It is always “the others” who have to change their behavior before we change ours and that is how we are paving the way to hell. Israel’s stated policy: not to engage in peace talks before terrorism has stopped, is a very convenient way of avoiding meaningful negotiations in the belief that the status quo can maintained indefinitely because time is on their side. This is a fallacy and as some perceptive Israelis have pointed out it may already be too late for a genuine Two State solution to emerge. The recent Gaza massacre has increased Palestinian hatred and it is difficult to see how Senator Mitchell can accomplish anything under these circumstances.

There is an additional sentence in Sartre’s play which bears pondering. The more aggressive of the two women says at one point, when roughly translated, “I’m really quite wicked, that is to say, I need the suffering of others in order to exist.” Unfortunately she is not alone, there are a great many of us who either consciously, or more commonly unconsciously, love to inflict suffering upon others, which is one additional reason why mankind cannot find peace. The play ends with: “oh well; let’s just go on;” which also seems to encapsulate our current state of affairs. Therefore, the question for President Obama is: can he open the doors which the Bush policies have closed or are we really stuck for good?







March 1, 2009

WHITHER ZIONISM? REVISITED

            By Ash Wednesday, February 28 of 2001, I had finished Whither Zionism? and the book went to the publisher thereafter. It was born of the naïve hope that if the history of Zionism could be presented to the leaders of our country in a concise “Reader’s Digest” format they might recognize the dangers chauvinistic Zionism poses not only to the Middle East but also our country. The book was the work of a citizen who thought that living in a democracy, as opposed to the previous authoritarian governments the author had lived under, the leaders of the country might be accessible to well meant advice. This was not to be and I learned that individuals are just as powerless here as they are in the countries we are fighting wars against for their ostensible lack of freedom. We have the freedom to express our opinions on certain matters but the powers which rule our country have the freedom to ignore it.

            The failure of reaching responsible people was not due to lack of trying. I did indeed not only put my money where my mouth was but could not even get an audience with either one of our senators. My congressman, who at that time was in his first term, graciously did consent to see me, listened impassively, never asked a question, thanked me for coming and subsequently probably left the book, which I had placed into his hands, with his secretaries, without ever reading it.

Due to the fundamental ignorance of our policy makers about the true causes of the Israeli-Palestinian war the situation has been allowed to deteriorate further by aiding and abetting only Israel’s side while paying lip service to the necessity of creating a separate Palestinian state. The Bush administration, by deliberately pursuing a neoconservative, and one might also call it neo-colonial, approach, had tried to solve philosophical problems militarily which has led us and the Middle East into the terrible difficulties we are currently facing in the domestic as well as international arena. The completely inappropriate response to the 9/11 tragedy which was used to impose our will on others by force of arms, has ruined our standing in the world, bankrupted us and did not increase Israel’s security, which was one of the goals of this policy.

We now have again a new administration upon which America and to a large extent the rest of the world, pins its hopes. This is the reason why it is appropriate to review the failures of the past because unless this is done they will be repeated. The Obama presidency might be our last chance before the Middle East sinks into final chaos and we will not remain unscathed.

Had I known in the beginning of 2001 what has been published since on the failed “peace process” I might have abstained from the effort, although everything that was written in 2001 has remained true. The reason for my being considerably less optimistic today lies not only in the subsequent developments on the ground in Israel, but in four major books, which explain the failure of the US effort to achieve a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. They are in sequence of appearance: Shattered Dreams - The failure of the Peace process in the Middle East 1995-2002 by Charles Enderlin; The Missing Peace - The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace by Dennis Ross; The Truth about Camp David; The Untold Story about the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process by Clayton E. Swisher; and The Much Too Promised Land; America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace by David Aaron Miller.  Enderlin was the Jerusalem based Bureau Chief for the France 2 network since 1990 and had direct access to the events as they unfolded. Swisher is a former marine reservist and federal criminal investigator and since 2005 Director of Programs for the Middle East Institute, a Washington based think tank which also publishes the Middle East Journal on a monthly basis. Dennis Ross as well as Aaron David Miller worked for our State Department and were as such actively involved in the negotiations, including Camp David II. Apart from Miller’s book, which was published in late 2008, I have discussed these books previously to some extent but they can now be taken in total context and seen in the light Miller has shed on the scene.

The reasons for the failure of the peace process can obviously not be laid at the feet of one person from one country. Israelis, Palestinians and Americans had their share but some more so than others, as will be shown later. On the last pages of his book Enderlin recounts that a final attempt to organize a summit between Ehud Barak and Yasir Arafat took place in the office of France 2 just prior to Sharon’s election victory. Enderlin quoted a conversation between Israel’s Gilead Sher (Chairman for the Palestinian track negotiating team) and his Palestinian counterpart Saeb Erekat. The last sentences in regard to the impending Sharon election, before Enderlin was ordered to leave were as follows:

 

Sher: You wrecked it [Israel’s peace camp] with these four months of violence.

 

Erekat: I told you that, if Sharon went up to the Haram [Temple Mount visit which many regard as the spark that ignited Intifada II], one man would be smiling after that visit and the rest of us would be weeping.

 

Sher: It’s been four months now. You could have stopped (all that). You didn’t want to.

 

Erekat: All Barak is now is a chapter in a Greek tragedy.

 

Yes indeed; and all the actors of that tragedy are again in leading roles. Swisher reported that Arafat had tried to intervene with President Clinton to pressure Barak to veto Sharon’s request for the Temple Mount visit because it was a propaganda election ploy and would inevitably inflame Palestinian anger even further. Swisher’s report differs slightly from that of Dennis Ross but the essence is the same. Swisher stated that Arafat had wanted to speak with Clinton personally on the phone but he was directed instead to Ross who felt that American interference was not possible. In his book Ross stated that on the day prior to Sharon’s walk-about on the Temple Mount, Erekat had asked him in person if he (Ross) could intervene to prevent this occurrence. Ross replied that he could not because “We won’t dissuade him, but we might incite him.”  Nevertheless, Ross promised that he would try to persuade Shlomo ben-Amin (Israel’s Foreign Minister and Minister of Internal Security) to limit or block the visit. Ross then stated that he did talk to ben-Amin but the latter only agreed that Sharon should not be allowed to enter the mosques.

September 28, 2000 was a fateful day and it was preventable. At this time we don’t know if President Clinton was ever informed of the impending Sharon Temple Mount visit but after reading Miller’s book I believe that he was not and he had to see, like the rest of us, the results on CNN. Ross, in all probability, had acted on his personal authority and, therefore, needs to share a burden of guilt for the subsequent events. If President Clinton had been told and he had called Barak not to issue permission for this visit or else American aid to Israel would be put on hold, it is highly likely that this fateful visit and its disastrous consequences might have been avoided.

At the end of his book Enderlin recounts a subsequent conversation with Ross about the failure of the peace process and quoted Ross as saying,

 

            “I think our biggest mistake was letting a huge gap develop between the reality on the ground and the reality around the negotiating table. The Palestinians have to stop inciting violence. They have to bring up [their children] differently. The Israelis have to stop  . . . constructing settlements. I don’t care if they stop within existing locations, but no extensions.”

 

The square brackets and ellipsis are in the original text. The quote shows Ross’ mindset: the Palestinians are wrong for objecting violently to having been deprived of their homes and they have to educate their children to accept Israeli demands. All that is required of Israelis is that they not take any further land from Palestinians and “change their attitudes at the checkpoints.” If this is the basis for our negotiating efforts they will remain doomed. Ross’ final words as quoted by Enderlin were, “We never did anything to prepare public opinion [for peace]. Holding negotiations what may, got us nowhere. If I could do it all over again, I’d do it differently.” Enderlin commented, “This mea culpa was late in coming,” and he concluded his book with the words that this was “a failure of politics, of diplomacy, and of a vision of the world.”

Has Dennis Ross really learned the lesson of the true reasons for his failure? Will he act differently now? These are the questions we will address later in this essay because he has again been put in a leadership position. In his own book Ross placed the blame for the failed peace process, including Camp David II, mainly on Arafat’s intransigence. He branded him as a liar with whom negotiations were impossible. But he also wrote,

 

“As much as I would like to see America act to promote Israeli-Syrian peace, we should never forget that the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict remains the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. There is no escaping the need to address it.

Ultimately, one reality that cannot be ignored is that Israelis and Palestinians are destined to be neighbors. History and geography leave them no choice. Neither can forge an outcome in which the other does not exist. The Israelis with all their military power cannot extinguish Palestinian aspirations. The Palestinians with all their anger and use of terror will not succeed in forcing the Israelis to submit through violence. . . . .

It may take a ‘divorce’ before there can be reconciliation. For the sake of all who have suffered, for all our sakes, it is essential to shrink the time it takes to move from theory to reality. Unfortunately in the case of the Middle East, time does not stand still, and too often it is measured in blood.”

In an Afterword to the paperback edition from which these quotes were taken Ross expressed the hope that the year 2005 “could be the year that confidence in peacemaking is restored and the timetable to peace is established. Unfortunately, if we miss the moment, miss this opportunity, Abu Mazen and the reformers will lose out to Hamas and it will be a long time before we once again have the chance to find the missing peace.”

As we all know not only was the opportunity missed, but American policy during the rest of the Bush administration was a disaster. We first insisted on Palestinian elections, and when Hamas won we denied the Palestinians the opportunity to form a unity government. We acceded to Israel’s “unilateral withdrawal” from Gaza, which turned that strip of land into a prison. When it was subsequently bombed to rubble we agreed with “Israel’s right to defend itself” and did not insist on an immediate halt. Now we, the taxpayers, are asked to dish out $900 million for the clean-up.

Miller’s book is in considerably greater agreement with Swisher’s than with that of Ross about the reasons for America’s failure at peacemaking. Miller and Ross served for more than twenty years together on Middle East problems and the most important aspect is that Ross regards himself as a Jewish-American while Miller is “an American who happens to be Jewish.” This self-identity is crucial because it flavors one’s conduct. Miller openly admitted the potential for bias and confronted it, while this was lacking in Ross. Miller wrote, “Concern for Israel’s well-being had become part of me, like some sort of ethnic DNA. Maybe the best we can do is to recognize those biases, make allowances for them, and set them aside in an effort to understand other’s perspectives and do what we believe is right. In my case, this meant trying to further the best interests of the United States in the pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace.”

This is obviously what we expect from our negotiators but do not necessarily get. Miller’s honesty is an exception. He pointed out that in all of the more than 800 pages of Ross’ exculpatory book there was no mention of AIPAC and the influence of the domestic Jewish lobby on our foreign policy conduct. When he asked Ross about it, the answer was, “that in his [Ross’] view the United States didn’t do things simply because of AIPAC or the Jewish community.” Although Miller agreed in part he subsequently spent several pages of his book to demonstrate the considerable influence Jewish pressure groups exert on the administration.

But it is not only Jewish groups which exert pressure, so does a segment of Evangelical Christians under the leadership of the recently deceased Reverend Jerry Falwell and a very active Pastor John Hagee of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, who is the leader of “Christians United for Israel.” Miller who was invited in 2006 to attend a “Night to Honor Israel” described this “two-hour largely musical tribute,” which offered “a veritable hit parade of Israeli and Jewish songs.” The atmosphere was highly emotional and tears were flowing. There were also congratulatory messages from Shimon Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu, but if any came from Sharon or Olmert they were not mentioned because Hagee was opposed to the Gaza withdrawal.

Miller went on to recount a conversation he had in 2006 with Zev Chafets who had directed Israel’s Government Press Office under Prime Minister Begin and who had also written a book, A Match made in Heaven which describes the ties between evangelical Christians and Israel. Instead of excerpting I shall now give the entire conversation because of its obvious relevance, Chafets said,

“’From an Israeli perspective the Elders of Zion couldn’t have cooked it up any better.’ He told me he had asked Reverend Falwell what would happen if Israel went after the Iranian reactor. ‘We’d stand up and cheer,’ Falwell replied. ‘That’s seventy million people.’ ‘And the truth is,’ Chafets concluded, about Republican aspirants to the presidency, ‘you really can’t get the nomination without the blessing of the evangelical wing of the party. That means a lot.’ Only half-jokingly he concluded that the pro-Israel community has quite a lock: ‘If a Democrat’s in, AIPAC owns the White House, and if it’s a Republican Falwell owns the White House.’

Chafets sensationalizes his point. But it does reflect an underlying political reality; it’s hard to compete and be successful in American politics without being good on Israel.”

 

These are the realties of American life and they have not yielded to Obama’s election mantra of “change.” Miller then discussed the failure of Camp David II and in agreement with Swisher pointed out how disorganized the entire process was. Ehud Barak was running the show and President Clinton, as well as Madeleine Albright, relied on Ross to work out formulas that would be agreeable to the Israelis. There was no genuine American proposal ever on the table because Ross had finessed it before it was ever presented to the Palestinians. Miller said,

 

“Had we gotten Barak’s comments, taken what we thought appropriate, argued about what was not, and pushed back when the Israelis went too far, we might have preserved our integrity as a mediator. But we caved to Israeli objections. We had a substantive approach, Dennis recalls, but ‘Barak says no, so we back off,’ The president to use one of his favorite words , was simply not prepared to ‘jam’ the Israelis. This wouldn’t have been jamming at all – it would simply have been smart negotiating.”

 

Miller’s final recommendations were that we have to keep negotiating towards a genuine two state solution but our stance has to be that of honest broker between the two sides and dish out  “tough love” whenever needed regardless whether it is towards Palestinians or Israelis. The Dennis Ross approach, who acted more as “Israel’s lawyer,” rather than an American arbitration judge, cannot lead to a lasting settlement of the conflict.

If anyone were to think that all of this is “ancient history” because we have a new administration, a president who has to some extent Muslim blood in his veins and who will now act in a truly impartial manner, should consider a few more facts which have emerged during the past month. It is obvious that President Obama walks a tightrope. His first priority is to get the domestic economy moving again and in order to achieve this goal he must not alienate the Jewish community. As such a tough love approach to Israel will be difficult to implement especially since his Chief of White House Staff, Rahm Emmanuel, may have other ideas. We don’t know as yet how Emmanuel feels about Palestinians but the views of his father are, and they are not encouraging.

That the president is not willing or able, to deal forthrightly with the problem Israel presents for our country was demonstrated in his first White House Press Conference on February 10. Helen Thomas, who at age 88 is the doyenne of the White House Press Corps and as such is, usually, accorded a seat in the first row. But she is also regarded as a potential “troublemaker” because she at times asks hard rhetorical questions. These have banished her in the past to back rows by some previous presidents, but here she was again in the front row, and President Obama was obligated to call on her. He postponed doing so until nearly the end of the conferences but then started out with, “All right, Helen. This is my inaugural moment here.” This was greeted by laughter from the audience. He continued, “I’m really excited.” Unflappable Helen rose and asked,

           

“Mr. President, do you think that Pakistanis are maintaining the safe haven in Afghanistan for these so-called terrorists, and also do you know of any place in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons?”

 

            This was obviously a loaded question, to which the president responded with a three minute answer which dealt with well known generalities. Ms. Thomas tried to interrupt a couple of times to get him back to the point everybody was waiting for: Israel’s nuclear arsenal. But he merely plowed on and dealt with that part of the question only with,

 

“I don’t want to speculate. What I know is this: that if we see a nuclear arms race in a region as volatile as the Middle East, everybody will be in danger. And one of my goals is to prevent nuclear proliferation generally . . .”

   

He then went on to explain that he would work with Russia to achieve a reduction in these weapons. This was a missed opportunity to come clean on a subject everybody knows the answer to, but nobody wants to talk about. He could have cleared the air by saying something like,

 

“With respect to nuclear weapons in the Middle East I am glad that you asked this question because everybody knows that you are referring to Israel. The time has come to discuss it openly and put it into its historical context. After the Suez war in 1956 when Israel was forced by President Eisenhower to return the captured Sinai Peninsula to Egypt the then Prime Minister Ben-Gurion vowed that never again would Israel be placed into a position where she has to rely on outside help for her security. With the help of France the Israelis built a nuclear reactor and have over the decades acquired a sizeable nuclear arsenal that acts as a deterrent against her several enemies. Since Israel has not signed the nuclear nonproliferation agreement she has not broken any international laws in this respect.  Israel is also determined that no other power in the Middle East should be allowed nuclear weapons because this would create a stand-off.

This brings me to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The Iranians, for reasons of their own, also feel threatened and have been engaging in nuclear research ever since the days of the Shah in the 1970’s. Although they say that they are working only towards peaceful use of nuclear energy we can’t be certain and the IAEA is closely monitoring the situation. This is what makes the Middle East so dangerous and my administration will spare no effort to defuse the situation. Let there be no doubt: we will not allow Israel to vanish in a cloud of radio-active dust, but let there also be no doubt that the same applies to Iran. I have, therefore, empowered Hillary to bring about a peaceful diplomatic resolution to this problem. I will closely monitor the progress and will keep the American people fully informed. I hope that this answers your question.”

 

A reply of this type would have made headlines around the world and put everyone on notice: America is here to help but will not allow herself to be blackmailed by friend or foe. It didn’t happen, but something else did which makes the president’s refusal to answer the question in a forthright manner even more ominous. On the 23rd of last month Reuters reported, “U.S. foreign policy team veteran, Dennis Ross, has been appointed special advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the Gulf region, including Iran, and southwest Asia, the State Department announced on Monday.” When the Press subsequently asked a State Department spokesman what role Ross would play the reporters could not elicit a straight-forward answer. Ross would not be formally an “envoy” but he is “going to be providing the Secretary with strategic advice.”

This appointment is a potential disaster and another report headlined the impending news with, “Reuter’s report how Ross could torpedo Iran!!!” Why should this be so? After having left government service with the incoming Bush administration Dennis Ross became “Counselor and Ziegler Distinguished Fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank which is regarded as having a decided pro-Israel tilt. He also became the first Chairman of the Board of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute which is based in Jerusalem, founded and funded by the Jewish Agency. The latter is a quasi governmental agency, receives its money from the State of Israel and is concerned with the well-being of Jews around the globe. While these aspects show that Ross is heavily involved in Jewish affairs his views on Iran were published in a 2008 report “Meeting the Challenge: U.S. Policy toward Iranian Nuclear Development.” (http://www.bipartisanpolicy.org/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/8448)

The report indicated that despite Iran’s assurances its nuclear program aims to develop nuclear weapons and is, therefore, “a threat to U.S. and global security, regional stability, and the international nonproliferation regime.” “Cold War deterrence” is not feasible because of the “Islamic Republic’s extremist ideology,” even a peaceful uranium enrichment program would place the entire Middle East region “under a cloud of ambiguity.” Even more important are the recommendations that were issued. Some of them are reprinted below,

 

“The report advises that the new U.S. president bolster the country’s military presence in the Middle East, which would include ‘pre-positioning additional U.S. and allied forces, deploying additional aircraft carrier battle groups and minesweepers, emplacing other war material in the region, including additional missile defense batteries, upgrading both regional facilities and allied militaries, and expanding strategic partnerships with countries such as Azerbaijan and Georgia in order to maintain operational pressure from all directions.’ In addition, the new administration should suspend bilateral cooperation with Russia on nuclear issues to pressure it to stop providing assistance to Iran’s nuclear, missile, and weapons programs. And, if the new administration agrees to hold direct talks with Tehran without insisting that the country first cease enrichment activities, it should set a pre-determined compliance deadline and be prepared to apply increasingly harsh repercussions if the deadlines are not met, leading ultimately to U.S. military strikes that would ‘have to target not only Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but also its conventional military infrastructure in order to suppress an Iranian response.’”

 

Jim Lobe, an Inter Press Service reporter, correctly called this document “a roadmap to war.” But it does reflect the views of Dennis Ross and this is the advice Hillary Clinton is now getting. One really wonders what has happened to sanity in Washington regardless of administration. We don’t know as yet how much of this proposal will be enacted by President Obama but we do know that last Thursday’s budget proposal called for an additional $75.5 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year, and $130 billion for the wars next year.

This brings us back to this essay’s title. Originally, I had placed a question mark in the title of the book because there was still hope in 2001 that reason might prevail. This hope is getting dimmer by the day and we can now make it two question marks. The Palestinians are split right down the middle, and so are the Israelis. Benjamin Netanyahu has been charged with forming a coalition government and he has vowed to continue with settlement building. The Israeli paper Haaretz reported that in 2008 approximately 290,000 Jews lived in the 120 official settlements and dozens of outposts established throughout the West Bank. That these settlements are illegal under the Geneva Convention does not faze either the Israeli or our government. We tell the Israelis that they really shouldn’t do that but they know that we have no intention of enforcing our view because they are protected by the previously mentioned,” Match Made in Heaven.”

But responsible Israelis as well as Americans, who happen to be Jewish as Aaron Miller put it, want reason to prevail against all odds. Dr. Carlo Strenger an Israeli philosopher and psychoanalyst wrote on February 26 in Haaretz, that although we don’t know what George Mitchell had told President Obama he should have told him that,

 

“[Israel] is indeed a country that thrives in certain respects, but politically it has reached complete paralysis. Never in my long experience have I seen a developed economy and seemingly functioning democracy in a state of such anxiety and hopelessness. . . . In this respect Israel is a mirror image of the Palestinian situation. .  .  .  Bilateral talks would at this time be doomed to failure. . . . We [the U.S.] should pressure Israel into engaging with the Arab peace initiative. We could do so if we provide Israel with the guarantee that we will use our might to prevent any attack from Iran, even if it goes nuclear, but that in return for this guarantee Israel will have to start dismantling the settlements in the West Bank. . . .   And please convince Bill Clinton to stand by my side in this process, because Mr. Clinton used to be loved and trusted in Israel, and he might help me generate trust in the possibility of peace that has evaporated.”

 

This is an authentic voice from Israel and our president would be well advised to add to his evening reading www.Haaretz.com in order to get the true Israeli perspective rather than what is filtered through domestic channels.

All of us, here and in Israel, will have to confront an unpalatable truth: secular Zionism was founded on a mistaken assumption! As has been mentioned previously in these pages (Israel the Fifty First State, November 1, 2002; For the Goyim they Sing, September 1, 2003), Herzl thought that if the Jews were to have their own country, they would move there en masse, the existence of the state would be guaranteed by one of the great powers and anti-Semitism would disappear, because there would be no Jews to hate any more. On the other hand he also wrote that “The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in considerable numbers.”  While the first assumption was wrong the second one was correct and one wonders why an intelligent person, as Herzl undoubtedly was, did not draw the obvious consequence; especially after Sultan Abdul Hamid II had told him that the Muslims would never give up their land willingly. The secular Zionist dream was pursued in disregard of the obvious consequences and anti-Jewish sentiments were exported into the Muslim world where they had previously not existed to any appreciable degree. In 1492 Muslims had shown themselves more tolerant than Christians.

The Jews have lost their country twice before. The reasons were: internal strife combined with pride and disregard of external realities. So far Jewish leadership circles, which are responsible for policy decisions, have not realized that “Chosenness” means to have been chosen to serve the Lord, rather than to dominate others. This is the reason why Israel’s adversaries would prefer to put into the title of my book and this essay an exclamation mark rather than a question mark. There is still a slender hope that insight into how the world really works will prevail but the clock is ticking. This may be the last warning for all of us and if we fail to heed it we may not have to worry about global warming because a nuclear winter might take its place.  







April 1, 2009

UNCHARTED WATERS

            The good ship USSS America found itself in the Sargasso Sea during the past month. Sails were flopping in the practically non-existent breeze and the crew i.e. Congress and the media were grumbling and complaining. It’s not an outright mutiny as yet but Republicans have closed ranks with a solid “njet” to any further “economic stimulus packages” and even the Democrats have second thoughts on what to do with the budget proposal which is before them. President Obama valiantly tries to rally the country behind his plans on how to get the Ship of State moving again, but the critical voices have been getting increasingly strident.

            The problem is that this generation has never been in a situation like this. Although the economic crisis is still called a “recession” it obviously does not much look like any of the previous recessions we have gone through since I came to this country in 1950. As popular wisdom has it the definition of a recession is when someone else loses his job but when you lose yours it’s a depression. The millions of unemployed and underemployed are likely to agree that recession is no longer the appropriate word to describe the current economic disaster. All of us are affected in some way or another and when even Warren Buffett loses massive amounts of money one has to conclude that there is a fundamental problem in the way America conducts its business.

            Captain Obama has a serious problem on his hands. He tries to do the right thing but nobody knows what the right thing is. Nobel Prize advisers have drastically different opinions on what should be done and since Obama is by profession a constitutional lawyer rather than economist he has to rely on the advice he is getting. But economic forecasting is not a science; it relies on computer models which in turn are based on assumptions which are just as likely to be wrong as having a chance to be correct. Even the past history of the depression of the 1930s and the attempted remedies, which are based on that experience, are no longer a guide for the future because the world has never been so interconnected.

Our treasury has never before been in debt to the tune of $3 trillion, with $739 billion owed to mainland China and another $634 billion to Japan. These numbers refer to Treasury bill holdings as of January 2009 and come from the US government. In February of 2008 that debt was 2.4 Trillion dollars. In September of last year China owned 20.5 % of these assets and for the first time surpassed Japan as chief lender. In the subsequent four months the figure rose to 23.6%. Under these circumstances one need not wonder why the Chinese are concerned about their exposure to the dollar; the value of which they have no control over. Their worries are legitimate because one of the true and tried methods of the past about solving financial problems has always been to print more money which in turn leads to inflation and depreciation of the value of the currency. The Chinese are thereby in danger of losing a bundle and are understandably not very happy about that prospect.

While annual budgets used to be reckoned in billions we passed that point just last year and the current proposal for fiscal 2010 amounts to $3.6 trillion. This is what Congress is currently chewing on and to sweeten the deal the administration stated that this is the first honest budget because it contains the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, which previously had been dealt with separately. If passed and signed into law the Federal Budget Office projects a deficit of $9.3 trillion over the next ten years, which sends shudders down everybody’s spines.

But when we look at past history these projections are utterly meaningless and can only serve political purposes. On December 28, 2000 President Clinton’s White House released a report which stated that, “The United States can be debt free this decade. . . .  The national debt is projected to be paid down by $237 billion this year . . . . The United States is on track to reduce the debt by $600 billion over four years.” When one considers that the country had a surplus of $236 billion in 2000 and a projected surplus of $256 billion for FY 2001 this forecast did not seem unrealistic at that time. The actual surplus was around $150 billion because of the totally inappropriate response to the 9/11 tragedy by the Bush-Cheney administration. Two wars were started and from a surplus, the country went into a massive deficit.

On June 3, 2004 Centrists.org projected that the annual federal deficit “is poised to hover around $400 billion through 2007,” For 2010 the deficit was projected at $600 billion and for 2015 $800 billion. Well, those numbers which frightened everybody would now be regarded as good news. The 2010 projection was reached in 2008 and in September of last year the fiscal deficit for 2009 was expected to be as high as “perhaps $1.2 trillion.” This estimate was revised on October 13 by a Morgan Stanley economist who wrote that “the US federal deficit for 2009 could go as high as $2 trillion.” These are obviously astronomical numbers which hardly anyone can comprehend but they show how projections are made on flimsy data and that even two year, let alone ten year, forecasts are totally meaningless.

All our projections, regardless whether they are related to economics or weather, which includes global warming, rely on models. These are in turn based on assumptions resulting from past experience. As such they cannot accommodate the unforeseen. We live in a volatile world which changes from moment to moment. If anyone had told my grandfather one June 27 1914 in Vienna that six weeks later there would be a world war and four years later the Austrian, German, Russian and Ottoman Empires would be past history, he would have laughed and said in so many words, “you are nuts.”  Yet it was true and those of us who have lived through the last three quarters of the 20th century have a healthy skepticism in regard to forecasts.

This skepticism, which I prefer to call realism, is also useful in evaluating other data and I shall now digress into the personal sphere. Apart from science and ancient as well as current history one of my hobbies was sailing. As such I read a fair amount of sailing lore including reports on Christopher Columbus’ four voyages to, what he regarded as, the Indies. We look with disdain today on the Spaniards unquenchable thirst for gold but we don’t realize that gold and spices were in the 15th century, what oil and gas are today. These were the commodities wars have been fought over in the past and are still fought over at this time.

One additional reason for the 15th century voyages of discovery was the fall of Constantinople to Turkish forces in 1453. This created panic throughout Christian Europe because the ancient sea routes from the Mediterranean to the Middle East and via the Bosporus and the Black Sea to the Silk Road were no longer available. All of a sudden gold and spices which had arrived in this manner were in short supply and alternative routes had to be found. Genoa was especially hard hit by the Constantinople disaster since some of its islands in the eastern Mediterranean were now also taken over by Muslim forces. In contrast to Venice, the Genoese only had a commercial fleet rather than a military navy and as such were in no position to defend their property.

This was the climate Columbus was born into and which shaped his life. He took to sailing early on but since he was restless and ambitious the Mediterranean, which was the exclusive Genoese trading area, was not big enough for his dreams especially since Prince Henry, “the Navigator,” of Portugal had already begun to explore the African coast. The Azores as well the Cape Verde islands became Portuguese property and for a young restless, ambitious sailor, Portugal was the country to go to. Columbus did so and went along on journeys which got him as far north as Iceland and as far south as Guinea. Rumors of islands in the Atlantic, “the Antilles,” had been around for centuries but they could not be verified and there had been no reason to mount an expedition. The need for gold and spices now provided the incentive.

Contrary to popular myth the scientific community of our forefathers had known long before the days of Ptolemy (90-168 AD) that the earth was round and that you could reach the east by going west was no secret. The only question was how long such a journey would take and thereby its commercial feasibility. Ptolemy’s contribution to cartography was that he had given a rather accurate estimate of the earth’s circumference. Although Columbus believed in the roundness of the globe he rejected Ptolemy’s math and started to create his own estimates of the distance to the Indies. These he tried to sell to King John II of Portugal but without success. A trip across the Atlantic was not regarded as feasible in view of Ptolemy’s widely accepted numbers. It was, furthermore, no longer needed for the Portuguese because they were already committed to the much better known route along the African shore line and eventually around the Cape of Good Hope to the Indian Ocean.

With his hopes dashed in Portugal Columbus turned to Spain where the situation was different. Since Portugal was now in charge of the eastern route a western one had become of interest. But Columbus had three strikes against him. One was that as a “foreigner” he evoked some distrust, the second was that Spain was still at war with the Moors which had drained the treasury, but most importantly his figures just didn’t sound right. Nevertheless, Isabella and Ferdinand humored him and appointed a commission to check on the feasibility of the proposal. The commission took its time from 1486 till 1491 until the members rendered their verdict. Although it was clearly negative because Columbus’ numbers didn’t match expected facts, it left a small loophole for Queen Isabella, who was Columbus main patron, not to close the door completely. The war was winding down and when the final Moorish stronghold, Granada, capitulated on January 2 of 1492, a victorious united Spain sent thanks to the Almighty and Isabella’s wish to convert souls from undiscovered lands to the true faith acquired new force.

After further persuasion of the Court by Columbus his exorbitant wishes, which included the hereditary title Admiral of the Ocean Sea, viceroy and governor general of the lands to be discovered, and a tenth of all the profits from the discoveries, were granted. Isabella did not have to hock her jewelry to finance the voyage. Outfitting of the three caravels at Palos was relatively cheap and the crown found a way to saddle the citizens of Palos with the cost.

Getting seasoned crew, which was willing to take a leap into the unknown, was another matter. Amnesty was granted to men who were imprisoned for various crimes but they didn’t necessarily make good sailors. Columbus’ luck held when the highly respected Martín Alonso Pinzón opted to join the voyage with his Pinta. Columbus needed Pinzón not only for his sailing expertise but also for crew procurement and in the end only three convicts were among the ninety people who set out on this voyage for the riches of Cipango (Japan), Cathay (China) and India. Apart from the Pinta, there was an even smaller caravel the Nina and the Admiral’s somewhat larger flagship the Santa Maria which was not regarded, strictly speaking, as a caravel but a “nao,” a ship.

These three vessels took off from Palos on August 3 heading for the Canary Islands, which were Spanish property, to take on final provisions and water. After they achieved that goal and repaired the Pinta’s damaged rudder they left on September 6 from Gomera on their voyage into history. They were frequently becalmed, found themselves in the Sargasso Sea, which was a totally new experience, and after threatened mutiny eventually made landfall on one of the islands in the Bahamas on October 12. Since Columbus’ log is missing various theories have arisen in regard to which island he had landed on, but Bishop Bartolomé de Las Casas published a book in 1550 on Columbus’ journeys which used excerpts of the log and these have subsequently been republished. For the information provided here I have relied on Christopher Columbus. The Four Voyages by J.M. Cohen, and Christopher Columbus by Gianni Granzotto.

The reason why I have spent considerable space on Columbus in this essay is because precisely 500 years later our lives intersected on parts of the same stretch of ocean. This allows me to not only appreciate why he had all the troubles on his first voyage but also encouraged me in the belief that Guanahani, where landfall was first made, was indeed probably today’s San Salvador rather than any of the other places which subsequently have been suggested. The following description of our adventure was excerpted from notes I had made at the time and is as such not subject to potential memory lapses in regard to events that had transpired 17 years ago.

I had retired from executive duties and seeing patients in 1990 in order to have time for my hobbies, among which was sailing, while health was still good. Although I had been sailing and racing one design boats for the previous 35 years this was mainly on inland lakes. Martha and I had started out sailing with the University of Michigan Sailing Club on 10 foot dinghies and Jet 14’s. The professional move to Detroit, motivated by better professional opportunities, was sweetened by the fact that Lake St. Clair is a significant body of water with a number of active sailing clubs and connects directly to the Great Lakes. The choice of Grosse Pointe for raising the family was dictated by a 25 minute commute to work and walking distance to the boat. Buying a boat was an immediate necessity and we started out with a 16 foot Rebel which was later traded in for a 22 foot Ensign and eventually a Cal 25. When we were not racing I was mostly single-handing the various boats because a modest degree of affluence had allowed Martha to follow her dreams which centered on horses,

Single-handing has the tremendous advantage that you are not dependent on crew availability and in addition you get to know yourself much better because there is no one to blame when you screw up. Sailing and especially one design racing, teaches you that there are numerous ways to do things wrong but only one to do it best. With the Ensign and the Cal 25 I went down to Lake Erie, which provided some Great Lakes sailing experience and the lake has a reputation for being “a nasty cat that swallows a lot of boats.” I also participated in several Port Huron to Mackinac races on 30 footers owned by friends and the longest voyage up to that time had been a Chicago-Mackinac race which covers 256 nautical miles, as the crow flies.

I mention these aspects only to point ut that I truly loved sailing, was reasonably competent on small boats propelled mainly by the wind and used the outboard only when getting in or out of the marina under adverse circumstances. The wind was my friend, noisy motors were to be shunned and happiness was a bow wave after having been becalmed for some time. These aspects were to become important as will later become apparent. Relatively early retirement at age 65 was, therefore, also due to my wish to expand sailing life to Blue Water and after a brief excursion with our son Eric and his wife on a 40 footer, where we journeyed from Fajardo in Puerto Rico to St. Thomas and back, it was apparent that I had a lot to learn about bigger boats. I, therefore, took the Moorings bareboat charter course and got a captain’s license. Thus, I became ready for adventure, which consisted first of exploring mainly the British Virgin Islands on the boat of the course instructor who had become a good friend. Early in the spring of 1992 I had the opportunity to sail the Abacos (northern island chain of the Bahamas) on a friend’s catamaran and since I liked the area so much I chartered six weeks later a 30 footer, Pipedream, from Sunsail at Marsh Harbor and went with Eric to the northern islands rather than the southern ones I had visited previously.

To my surprise I received a call another six weeks later from Sunsail, if I would be interested in helping deliver one of their boats from their base in Tortola (British Virgin Islands) to Marsh Harbor in the Abacos. We would have use of the boat for 14 days and all I would have to pay was $1200 and the airfare. The roughly 1000 mile passage would be broken up at San Salvador from whence we were to proceed to the Abacos. Obviously I jumped at the idea of passage making and looked forward to it. Next thing I knew was a call from Chicago where one of the other crew members introduced himself and said that since I was a doctor he thought it might be good if I knew that he was in his middle fifties, had a coronary bypass a year or so ago, but was now in good health. In addition while originally only three crew members had been planned, a fourth one would also come along. That I was now regarded as the ship’s doctor was not particularly good news because my last experience with emergency medicine dated to 1950-51 and neurology is not much of a help with disasters on the sea. 

I, therefore, got the books out and also called Sunsail to inquire what type of medical supplies were on the boat. This was crucial because on the trip with Eric I had noted that the first aid kit had been totally inadequate. It didn’t matter at the time because we were always in sight of land but an ocean passage is a different matter. Although the Sunsail lady had assured me that supplies were adequate I wasn’t quite convinced and faxed her official recommendations from Cruising World, but never received an acknowledgement. As a precaution I got some Valium, Demerol and other emergency drugs from the hospital pharmacy (I was still interpreting EEGs at Primary Children’s Hospital twice a week) and then flew to Tortola. The boat was a 39 foot Oceanis, by the name of Moca, looked in good shape but as expected the first aid kit was no better than on the Seawolf Eric and I had sailed on earlier. The next surprise was that the captain was a Brit in his middle thirties who made up for soon to be apparent lack of experience with considerable arrogance. The other crew members were the mentioned Jack who had brought along his friend, Joyce, who was likewise in her fifties and another relative youngster in his thirties who hailed from Toronto. He didn’t own a boat because “Lake Ontario is too polluted.” What this had to do with sailing eluded me, but he was working on his British Ocean Certificate which required 5000 miles of sailing, of which he had by that time 1600. While Jack and companion had had limited sailing experience Louis was competent and had brought all sorts of nautical equipment, including a sextant. He had hoped that Tim, the captain, would be able to teach him how to use it, but that didn’t pan out. The first GPS models had just become available and Tim had a Magellan, Louis a Trimble. Since both of these instruments agreed on latitude and longitude we were in good shape in this respect. The next surprise came when Tim declared that instead of going straight to San Salvador and then to the Abacos we would be sailing to Great Inagua, which is the southernmost island of the Bahamas, and from there go island hopping to San Salvador. Initially I was a little disappointed because I had hoped for a 7 day passage out of sight of land but it turned out to be a good idea in regard to Columbus. The reason Tim gave was that we could duck into a harbor in case of bad weather. But that was an excuse because the chart on the boat was on the scale of 1: 1,500,00 which is good for plotting a course on open water to your destination but useless for everything else. The Cruising Guide was limited to the Bahamas and the graphs explicitly warned that they should not be used for navigation. It was obvious that he did not trust his nautical skills and he apparently had never captained a boat with a paying crew.

The passage to Great Inagua was literally a breeze, took about two and a half days with winds ranging between 17 and 25 knots and boat speed around 6-7 knots. Huge rollers from the southeast also helped to push the boat along on our northwesterly course. These led to a mishap. Louis’ shortwave radio got doused and we were not able to get weather information. Since the boat was intended to be sailed only in the Virgin Islands and the Abacos there were no other communication devices apart from hand held VHF communicators which had a relatively short range. There is no record that Columbus had visited Great Inagua but once we got to Long Island, which he had called Fernandina, we retraced his voyage up to San Salvador in the opposite direction. I had brought as reading material for the trip the mentioned Columbus book by Cohen and when we anchored in Little Harbor it seemed to correspond perfectly to what Columbus had described in his log. The entrance to the harbor matched and so did the spaciousness of the lagoon. The next day we proceeded to Rum Cay aka Santa Maria de la Concepción and thereafter to San Salvador. Our sailing experience agreed with Columbus’ log excerpts and I felt a certain thrill that history was being replayed.

We stayed a day at San Salvador and bad omens began to appear. The VHF worked only for less than a mile over water and Tim had run the boat aground on a sand bar in the San Salvador harbor. Instead of waiting for the tide to lift it he kept gunning the engine to get us off which eventually did happen, but I wondered in retrospect what that did to the engine. In addition I should mention that he had also had the habit of running the engine full blast at night on the passage to Great Inagua although the sails were up and we had all the wind we could handle.

We left San Salvador in the late afternoon and thought that we’d be at the Abacos, which were only about 200 miles to the north, within a couple of days. But soon after midnight there was an awful crashing noise from the engine. Tim, who had been on the helm, again had the engine running at full speed, in addition to the sails, although there was plenty of wind. When the engine was shut off, inspection revealed that the propeller shaft had separated from its stuffing box. For me this was a “so what;” I had always disdained engines anyway, we had plenty of wind and once we got to the Abacos they could tow us in. Ignorance may be bliss but it’s surely of no help when you have to get out of trouble. While I was in my element because being becalmed without an engine was no news, our captain was out of his inasmuch as engines were his delight. He should have been what we sailors derisively called a “stink boater.”  He insisted that the air would come up at any moment but I wasn’t so sure.

The rollers were gone, the water was placid as a sheet of glass with not a cat’s paw in sight and it was as if we had arrived at a totally different ocean. Jim did have the sailor’s friend, Hiscock’s Cruising under Sail, on board and there was the explanation: we had entered what is called the horse latitudes. I won’t go into the meteorological reasons but there is a relatively narrow zone between the prevailing northeasterlies in the lower latitudes and the southwesterlies in the higher ones. It is centered at 30 degrees north and extends to about five degrees in either direction. The use of the northeasterlies were the real way to go from the Canaries to the “Indies” while the southwesterlies would take Columbus and all subsequent generations of sailors back to Spain. But Columbus didn’t know that on his first voyage. The canaries, where he came from are on latitude 24 degrees and so is San Salvador. He thought that he had steered straight west but got too far north and that was why he ended up mostly becalmed in the Sargasso Sea. At one point he deliberately tried to find some wind by going further north but this would only aggravate the problem and if he had persisted in going north he would have been driven back towards Spain without having accomplished anything.

On October 6 Pinzón, the more experienced mariner, and as such more familiar with the flight patterns of sea birds, advised him to go west-southwest instead of west-northwest but Columbus didn’t heed this suggestion until later that night. Even on October 8 the log excerpt still stated that “They found the sea as smooth as the river at Seville.”  But by October 11 the air had freshened and “They ran into rougher seas than any they had met with on the voyage . . . and up to two hours before midnight they had gone ninety miles.”  Two hours after midnight, i.e. October 12, land was sighted and they had arrived at Guanahani. By going south he had entered the trade winds zone and by learning this fact Columbus was able to cross the Atlantic in three weeks on his second voyage, rather than the five he had needed for the first one.

On July 29, 1992 we were in a somewhat similar position in which Columbus had found himself 500 years earlier; becalmed without engine, a less than competent skipper who had never seen conditions like these, a grumbling crew with hardly any supplies of potable fluids, and canned food was also running out. Tim tried to raise someone on the VHF but there was only silence; we had the ocean to ourselves.

The major difference was, of course, that we had a GPS and knew where we were but still had no way to get where we wanted to go. In addition it was hurricane season. We had no weather information and even if we did it might not have done us much good. We crawled along at a rate of 0.5-2.5 nautical miles per hour and after three days reached Cherokee Sound, the southernmost point of Great Abaco. Although we were in sight of the radio tower there was no response to our VHF call for help until we were less than a mile distant. A boat came out towed us through the reefs into the harbor and all was well that ended well, although we had missed our planes and had to reschedule departure for the States.

At that point we didn’t as yet know how lucky we had been because about three weeks later came Hurricane Andrew which completely devastated the Bahamas with winds of 160 miles per hour, and subsequently portions of Florida.  It was the third most intense category 5 storm of the twentieth century and has so far only been surpassed by Katrina in 2005.

We may now ask what all of this has to do with the current economic crisis. Well there were lessons to be learned. Among them were: all of life ought to be regarded as a learning experience how to cope with the unforeseen. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best, while using whatever resources you have at a given moment optimally. The wind will always come back up, it may not take you into the direction you want to go and if it’s a hurricane you’re in the hands of God; the ultimate teacher.

For Americans the 21st century will be a new learning experience. The idea of “exceptionalism” and its corollary “it can’t happen here” was shattered on 9/11. “Greed is good” had its comeuppance during the past few months. We are still told by some politicians that we are “the biggest and the best,” but it is no longer true. Genuine recovery will take place when we, the citizens, look at ourselves, and the society we have created over the past decades, truthfully and realistically in accord with the world’s changed circumstances.

We know where we are and we know where we want to go but have at present no means to get there. In the past when rulers found themselves in financial troubles they went to war in order to acquire booty. This will not work any more. The current wars make us poorer rather than richer and the sooner they can be ended the better. Printing more money will also no longer work because, as mentioned earlier, under those circumstances the world will abandon the dollar and create another currency for its financial reserves. It’s “sink or swim” for all of us. The current prescriptions for economic recovery are for more borrowing on the one hand and cutting taxes on the other. Either extreme is likely to be unworkable and President Obama tries to steer a middle course which he may or may not be able to hold.

The real problem, which is not yet addressed by our media, is that we can no longer afford our empire. Our foreign military bases no longer serve the purpose they were created for and neither does our massive arsenal. In the past our country has oscillated between hubris and paranoia, which can only make matters worse. If the public mindset were to shift from confrontation to cooperation with the rest of the world, defense expenditures could be reduced in a gradual manner and the money saved thereby could be utilized for peaceful purposes. Before we begin changing the world, as we will try to do later this week at the G20 summit, we ought to realize that change begins at home in the hearts and minds of our citizens. Americans are resilient and even our politicians will eventually be able to handle the truth when it is presented in a factual way. This will be the task of the media which are now faced with an enormous responsibility. Whether or not they will be up to it no one knows, but for the individual who is of sound mind and body and who takes the above mentioned lessons to heart the current crisis need not be a stumbling block but can be a stepping stone to a more insightful future conduct. 







May 1, 2009

LOOKING FOR ANSWERS

            Just as last month; the USS America is still floundering with sails luffing and a tide of red ink threatening to send it upon the rocks of a lee shore. The 2010 budget of $3.6 trillion, that I had previously mentioned, was initially revised to $3.9 trillion, and has currently been negotiated down to $3.5 trillion. These are figures which nobody can comprehend. According to current scientific wisdom the entire universe, after the “big bang”, is supposed to be 13.5-14 billion years old which might serve as a comparison. Republicans are up in arms against the “tax and spend Democrats” who will turn our capitalist country into one of Europe’s socialist democracies or worse and even some “blue dog” Democrats are worried.

            While comparisons with the great depression of the 1930s, which some of us have personally experienced, are en vogue it needed an article by Jill Lepore on Edgar Allen Poe to bring to our attention that a similar disaster had occurred in 1837. It appeared in the April 27 issue of The New Yorker under the title “The Humbug. Edgar Allan Poe and the economy of horror.”  But before dealing with this event a few words about Poe, who literally had a miserable life, are appropriate. Born in 1809, his mother was soon thereafter abandoned by her husband and died in 1911 of consumption, the term used for tuberculosis at the time. The orphans, he had a brother and sister, were separated and Poe ended up with the family of a wealthy Richmond merchant named John Allen. The stepparents apparently never liked the boy very much and did not adopt him. Nevertheless, Edgar at some point took the stepfather’s name and became known as Edgar Allen Poe. He never had what one might call a reasonably “normal” life. Whatever little money he was able to earn usually went on alcohol consumption but he did manage to write memorable poetry and short stories. Lenore’s “nevermore” raven is a classic and so is “The Murders on the Rue Morgue.” Inspector Dupin has become the model for Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes who in turn spawned numerous successors who fill the shelves of bookstores around he world. When the rich stepfather parted from this world he didn’t leave a penny to Edgar who eventually succumbed to alcoholism and died in abject poverty. For more on Poe’s miseries, which explain why he wrote the way he did, the interested reader can consult Ms. Lepore’s article.

The relevance at the moment is her depiction of the 1837 “Panic” and its aftermath. Since the causes were entirely similar to what has happened in September of 2008 I shall paraphrase her article and subsequently quote relevant sections here. The problem arose initially over the use of paper money which was not covered by gold reserves. There were two financial crises in Poe’s lifetime, “the Panic of 1819 and the Panic of 1837, the pit and the pendulum of the antebellum economy.” The economic depression which followed the 1837 bank collapse lasted seven years and the 1840s were known in Europe, as “The Hungry Forties.” After his 1829 inauguration President Andrew Jackson engaged in a battle with Nichols Biddle who was in charge of the Bank of the United States. Biddle insisted on federal regulation of the paper currency while some of Jackson’s supporters were against all paper money. In the absence of regulations speculators took over and between 1830 and 1837 three hundred and forty seven state-chartered banks were opened across the US. They printed their own money and by 1836 $140 million were in circulation. These were backed by nothing or as Hitler said, when he found himself in a similar situation 100 years later by “the work of the German people.” Let me now quote extensively from Lepore as to what happened in 1837 because of the similarity to last year’s events.

 

 “At the end of Jackson’s two terms American banks held six times as much paper money as gold. . . . With all that paper money, speculators had gone wild; in the West, there had been a land grab and in the East a housing bubble – in New York, real-estate values had risen a hundred and fifty percent. When the crash came, in the last weeks of Jackson’s presidency, bankruptcies swept the nation. In New York, riots erupted as the swelling ranks of the city’s poor broke into food shops. ‘Down with the panic makers,’ one newspaper warned, promising, ‘”A bright sun will soon dispel the remaining darkness.’ But the skies didn’t brighten. In April one New Yorker wrote in his diary, ‘Wall Street. The blackness of darkness still hangeth over it. Failure on failure.’ By the fall of 1837, nine of ten Eastern factories had closed. Five hundred desperate New Yorkers turned up to answer an ad for twenty day laborers, to be paid at the truly measly wage of four dollars a month.”

 

When one reads about the “bright sun” coming up, President Obama’s “glimmer of hope,” which he saw a couple of weeks ago sounds rather similar. The seven fat years and the seven lean years have been known from the Bible and the depression of the 1930’s didn’t end until the war came. We better prepare for the long haul and some Americans are doing just that now. They are arming themselves to the teeth to meet their neighbors with the barrel of a gun in order to protect their property if and when riots were to break out.

 But let us temporarily remain with the 1840’s. In Britain there were crop failures and the potato blight, which drove millions of Irish to America. Continental Europe also suffered from the consequences of the economic depression. The beginning industrialization and speculations had led to serious social dislocations. Poor harvests contributed to higher food prices and the general unhappiness finally expressed itself in the 1848 revolutions. Europe was “haunted by the specter of communism” as Marx and Engels had put it in their Communist Manifesto, which was written for the occasion. It took a World War and the fall of the Russian Empire for that dream to come true. Subsequently it needed another World War, as well as numerous proxy wars to demonstrate to the Russians that the communist model was an unworkable fantasy until they ditched it under Gorbachev.

Yet, there are two important lessons. One is that ideas take decades to come to fruition after they are first hatched and when they do, they won’t work in the way they were intended but have to be modified to meet human realities. The European socialists soon realized this and separated themselves from the communists who never forgave them this act of treason. On the other hand the socialists did manage to initially create stable political parties and subsequently stable democratic coalition governments.

But the propertied middle class, the bourgeoisie as it was derisively referred to, never made much of a distinction between socialists and communists. Both carried the red flag as their symbol, both celebrated May Day as the worker’s day of freedom, and Karl Marx, with his revolutionary, rather than evolutionary theories, was the patron saint of both parties. Educated people had read the Communist Manifesto where the “proletarian,” as the hero of the future was treated to exhortations such as, “You must, therefore, confess that by ‘individual’ you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way and made impossible.” Well, nobody wants to lose whatever little property one has.

 Marx could only write such nonsense because as the offspring of a long line of rabbis, who lived on the charity of the congregation, he expected to be treated in the same manner. Instead of bringing God to the people, he saw himself as the secular prophet of the earthly paradise and as such deserved that his needs were met by others. For his livelihood in London he depended mostly on the good will of his friend Friedrich Engels. The latter lived on his father’s money who was a prominent German industrialist. When dad was no longer willing to pay for his son’s revolutionary ideas Friedrich had to start working for him. He thereby joined the bourgeoisie, while still sending money to Karl.  It is clear that without Engels, Das Kapital, Marx’s main contribution to society, would never have been written. What the communists did not understand was that it takes leisure for a person to work creatively. But somebody has to pay for that leisure and “proletarian” bureaucrats are not trained to see this necessity. Karl Marx is the best example for the communist paradox.

Religious people and foremost the Catholic Church were concerned about the change in social mores which would flow from the principle of Marx’s atheism which the socialists, as the party of humanity, progress and reason, endorsed.   As part of Marx’s program the education of children was to no longer remain in the hands of the Church, but was to be transferred to the State. The property of the Church was to be taken over by the State. Marriage was a relic of the past, because wives are exploited by their husbands who see them as a “mere instrument of production.” The divided Protestant Churches, did not offer appreciable resistance but the Catholic one under Pius IX, of whom more will be said later, put up a stiff although loosing fight.

While America had its Civil War in 1861, ostensibly over slavery, Austria and Prussia followed suit in 1866. The purported reason was minor; the real cause was the question of who was to become in charge of a potentially unified country: Catholic Austria or Protestant Prussia? As in America it was North against South and in both instances the North won.

This ascendance of Protestant Prussia and its German allies under Bismarck was a grave threat to Catholicism and Pius IX tried to rescue the Church which found itself beleaguered on the political as well as societal level. The reunification of Italy, which he had opposed, cost him the Papal States. In 1871 the French, who had supported him up to then, had to put “first things first” when Bismarck invaded their country. This meant that the Pope’s, terrestrial kingdom had permanently shrunk to that of Vatican City as the smallest independent state.

Pius IX (1792-1878), or Pio Nono as he was referred to at the time, had been elected in 1846 and as such was intimately involved in the social upheavals of the times. He was a fighter and did not take these losses with Christian humility. In view of the rapid strides liberal ideas had made in Europe the pope issued a series of Encyclicals, the most important of which was Qunta Cura (1864) which listed in an appended syllabus 80 errors European thinkers were committing in relation to religion and its purpose in society. Among them were: the false belief in absolute reason; socialism; communism; secret societies; the Church and her rights; the relationship to civil society; the difference beween natural and Christian ethics; Christian marriage; sovereignty of the pontiff and modern liberalism. Inasmuch as these “errors” of European society are now being enacted in America I am providing the URL where the complete syllabus can be found http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9syll.htm. Thus, Pio Nono could also be called Pio No No!

In 1868 he convoked the First Vatican Council from which arose the papal infallibility dogma in 1870. The dogma regarding the Virgin Mary’s Immaculate Conception had already been proclaimed in 1846. The ideas behind the dogmas were not new only their dogmatic expression was. But the infallibility doctrine was too hard to stomach even for some Catholics which led to a split in the Church. Those members who refused to accept it became “Old Catholics” and its influence on my own life has been mentioned in War&Mayhem.

The pope also had an interesting medical history of epilepsy which has been ascribed to a near drowning accident in adolescence. This has led to speculations that he was of unsound mind which directly affected Church history and his penchant for issuing encyclicals as well as the two dogmas. The Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Sirven has recently published an article on the pope’s epilepsy in which he correctly rejects this view, although the likelihood exists that some of his documented erratic behavior in later years, as well as a facial rash, may have been a result of bromide intoxication. Bromide salts were the main treatment method ever since the accidental discovery of their anticonvulsant properties by Sir Charles Locock in 1857. This might have been another example where the cure may have been worse than the disease

 Although Pio Nono’s efforts were a failure in the short run, he did manage to keep the remainder of his flock in line and stem the advance of socialism in most Catholic European countries. For this and the fact that he was longest reigning pope in history he was raised to the status of Blessedness in 2000 and is now being considered to be elevated to Sainthood.

These historical facts are not “ancient history” but are directly influencing American culture. The current debate over the meaning and definition of marriage is a direct outcome of the battles that were fought in Europe more than a hundred and fifty years ago. A few weeks ago Newsweek had a lead article on “Post Christian America” which immediately reminded me of a book published in 1872 by David Friedrich Strauss entitled, “Der alte und der neue Glaube.” The first chapter had the headline, “Are we still Christians?” The book, although well received in some liberal German circles, led to a violent polemic against it by a young philologist Friedrich Nietzsche, who had previously admired and recommended Strauss’ first book, “Das Leben Jesu.” In that one Strauss had declared that the long held beliefs about the “historical” Jesus were nothing but fables and myths. Jesus had been a well meaning, exceptionally gifted human being but to ascribe divinity to him was a serious mistake. Needless to say this opinion created a furor not only in religious but also literary circles which is even more understandable when one considers the publication date of 1835.

Nietzsche’s problem with the 1872 book was not atheism, which he vigorously endorsed in his own later writings, but the “neue Glaube” – the new belief system. For him Strauss had become a “Bildungsphilister;” a highly educated person well versed in the classics, but a Philistine in the sense that he accepted and endorsed the political status quo. In concrete terms this meant support of the new Germany’s militarism and the belief that Science – with a capital S – was now to be the new god that would solve all the world’s ills.

The massive optimism which resulted from scientific discoveries during the 19th century which revolutionized travel, communications, as well the natural sciences and pervaded all of Europe at the time was regarded by Nietzsche as unfounded because he looked below the surface and saw the cracks in human nature. In addition he had no use for the militaristic type thinking which had swept Germany after the defeat of the French and the re-establishment of the German Empire. He realized that the fundamental problem the world faced was how to live without God, a problem that has not yet been solved and for which lives are lost in current wars. In blunt, sarcastic, polemical, albeit beautifully phrased language, he castigated his contemporaries with ever increasing virulence. I shall deal with Nietzsche and his influence on our time on another occasion because he did have a neurologic disease which had clearly influenced his later literary output and this is not taken into account by a number of his biographers.

For now we have to return to the America of the 21st century where Europe’s history of the 19th century is to some extent being re-enacted without most of the our countrymen knowing that this is the case. One sentence from Nietzsche’s polemic against Strauss struck me in particular, “A great victory is a great danger. Human nature can tolerate it less than a defeat; actually it seems to be easier to gain such a victory, than to follow it up in a manner that it will not result in an even greater defeat.” Nietzsche wrote these sentences in the full knowledge that the French would never forgive Germany the harsh financial reparations they had to pay after their defeat, as well as the humiliation they had to endure when the German Empire was proclaimed in their very own cherished Versailles, rather than on German soil. We know of the revenge Versailles dictate of 1919. We also know what happened after Hitler’s victories and Israel’s Blitzkrieg in 1967. The fruits of the latter are the cause of current and future tragedies. America escaped this fate in 1918 and 1945 but succumbed to it in 2001

But Americans are no longer trained to see world history in the total context and will remain ignorant of the causes of world affairs as long as our educational system continues to head for the lowest common denominator. When Nietzsche complained about the Bildungsphilister of his time, he would certainly have shuddered had he seen America’s current high school curricula and the grade inflations. This resulted largely from a philosophical view, contributed to by psychoanalysts and an assortment of child psychologists, that children have a tender psyche and must be raised in their self-esteem. Since life is only going to get progressively better they don’t need to be trained for the rigors the real world will actually confront them with. 

I have discussed the catastrophic state of America’s high school situation in a previous essay (February 1, 2008, Is America Fixable?) and as a result of the current economic crisis the education of our children is becoming a serious concern within the political establishment. This brings up the question: what are we educating or youngsters for? The answer seems to be: docile technocrats who are happy to spend their lives in the cubicles they are assigned to by their different employers, facing a computer screen and typing on keyboards. After work they are to go home to their anthills of high rise apartments and watch sports or soap operas on TV. Last week The Salt Lake Tribune reported on a new school program where four year old tykes are taught to learn the letter A of the alphabet by watching a video of an apple falling on a farmer’s head, which elicited giggles. I don’t think Sir Isaac was mentioned in that context. The debate was not about the educational merit, of getting pre-schoolers hooked to watching computer screens, but about the money that was to be spent on it. One can expect that these children will learn “computering” and “texting,” where grammar, spelling and rudimentary courtesy have become a relic of the past and by the age of 8 or 10 they will be busy visiting a variety of porno sites. But pre-schoolers are not made to sit in front of a video screen; they are supposed to be running around outside playing and learning from nature as it really exists rather than images consisting of cartoon characters.

The current generation of America’s high school and college youngsters has no idea what “Western civilization” really means. The history of religion and philosophy is unknown to the vast majority of them and their mental outlook on the world starts with the day when relatively permanent memories are beginning to get stored in their brains. This is the tragedy of America’s educational system which is not addressed and the only change which is envisioned is more emphasis on math and science. It would need a Nietzsche type polemic to shake up our education planners and bring about a change in direction. The humanities ought to receive the same attention as the natural sciences. This should already be done in high school rather than the students having to wait for college, which is becoming increasingly expensive. Furthermore, colleges can not build on a non-existent foundation that ought to have been laid years earlier. They cannot be expected to teach in two or four years what had been neglected between the ages of 10-18. We don’t want Nietzsche’s type of Űbermensch but we do need well informed – which includes knowledge of the past history of ideas that have shaped the world we live in – well rounded, well meaning citizens who are trained in critical rather than cynical thinking. 

The distinction is important. The well meaning critic says: I don’t believe it; but if you can show me that what you say or do leads to correct results, then I’ll either believe you or investigate to see whether or not you have your facts correct. The cynic on the other hand says, “Hogwash,” and is done with it while continuing to live in his own fantasy world. The ancient Cynics’ initial goal was noble, namely to live a life of virtue in accordance with nature rather than worldly pursuits and the best known example is, of course, Diogenes who supposedly lived in a vat. The original meaning of the name is obscure but since Cynics lived in the street and hurled insults at passing strangers the name was used derisively as kunikos, dog-like. Inasmuch as they also frequently disturbed public order they were intermittently expelled from major cities. The best way to deal with them was recounted by Suetonius in his The Twelve Caesars. When the Emperor Vespasian was accosted and harangued on the road by the banished Cynic philosopher Demetrius, he merely said, “Good dog.”

Currently Americans are bewildered. Some of them are still trying to hang on to the belief that, “we are the biggest and the best,” or Reagan’s, “It’s morning in America,” or the neocons’ “lone superpower,” which must use its military might to remain the top player. All of these slogans no longer apply. We are at present a nation at loose ends. Organized religion no longer suffices for a great many of our citizens, just as in the Europe of the late 1800s, and dreams of military glory with the goal of world domination are also beginning to fade. What is left is the belief in science and technology.

That Science when written with a capital S is likewise a false god was proven by Nazi Germany but this lesson has not yet sunk in. In the US Nazism has been reduced to the Holocaust – likewise written with a capital H to denote its political sacredness – which is a serious mistake. I have discussed the thoroughly “rational” decision making process of the Hitler regime in War&Mayhem but since those thoughts go against our Zeitgeist, they are not to be printed by a major publishing house. As such unpopular, but essentially correct views are relegated to obscurity. But inasmuch as they are correct in their essence they will likely receive a hearing in the future; unfortunately after a great deal more bloodshed and property destruction.

Everything in our personal and socio-political lives depends on Weltanschauung – namely how we see ourselves and the world around us. If we believe in a higher power, above and beyond the State, to which we are responsible different conduct can result than when we live under the assumption of, “what feels good is good.” This is not to say that a belief in God as exemplified by President Bush 43, or “Providence” as exemplified by Hitler, necessarily leads to good policies. Politicians can not only be mistaken, by listening to wrong advice as was the case with President Bush, they can also be dogmatic fanatics as was the case with Hitler. But we always have to remember that politicians are only the expression of their times and will act in accordance of that Zeitgeist. It would be the function of an educated public and the media to bring about a culture that is worthy of its name.

We do not have one at this time although it is to President Obama’s credit that he recognizes the problems and tries to do something about them. But the difficulties are so profound and have arisen over a period of decades that the quick fix, which is expected by the generally short attention span of our citizenry, is impossible. This week the media are preoccupied, apart from swine flu and other nuisances, with grading Obama’s first 100 days in office. All in all he tends to get an A- or B+ for how he has conducted himself so far but the warning signs for the next 100 days are also pointed out. The concerns are that Obama’s attempt to attack all domestic problems on a broad front is likely to misfire and if people do not begin to see an improvement in their lives his currently high approval rating will dwindle. The reforms Obama is trying to achieve in the tax structure, health care system and education are also attacked as an attempt to replace the capitalist system with a socialist type one. This debate relies on an obsolete conservative-liberal type dichotomy when in fact a middle ground between the two extremes must be found.

The rest of the world is also currently looking at Obama for leadership not only in regard to the economic crisis but critical foreign affairs. In the Middle East the situation is worse than it was in 2001 when President Bush took office. Events are threatening to spin out of control and the recent election of Benjamin Netanyahu, or “Bibi” as he is colloquially referred to, as Prime Minister of Israel is not good news. He is opposed to a Palestinian state and simply wants to grant “autonomy” to the Palestinians in certain areas, which would leave Israel free to build further settlements on expropriated Palestinian land. The model, although no one will admit it, clearly is Hitler’s “Reichsprotektorat Boehmen und Maehren,” which he established in March of 1939 from rump Czechoslovakia. I have discussed this aspect previously (April 1, 2002. Palestinian State or Israeli Protectorate?) and the situation has clearly gotten worse since then through Sharon’s misguided policies and the Bush administration’s tacit approval.

The immediate and most dangerous question before us is not even the economy but what will the American educated Netanyahu do, in regard to the Iranian nuclear program? Walter Rodgers published in the weekly April 26 edition of The Christian Science Monitor an article where he listed the dangers an Israeli air strike on one of Iran’s nuclear facilities would pose for the world. They include: closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil is shipped; Hezbollah which has enough rockets to do considerable damage to Haifa and Tel Aviv would be unleashed by Iran; a tsunami of anti-Semitism would be triggered around the world and not remain limited to Muslim countries; the US would be regarded as co-responsible and Islamist youngsters would respond en masse to the call for jihad especially in Iraq and Afghanistan to kill Americans.

Mr. Rodgers went on to say that Netanyahu is no fool and knows what is at stake but “What’s worrying is that Netanyahu had a record of bad judgment in his previous term as Prime Minister from 1996-1999. Not without cause did The Economist run a cover photo of ‘Bibi’ in October 1997 under the headline ’Israel’s Serial Bungler.’ It described his governance of the Jewish state as a ‘calamity’ for the peace process.” Rodgers then wrote, “Obama needs to do Netanyahu a favor and tell the Israelis: ‘No first strike.’ Keep the F-15s and F-16s at home.” A remarkably similar article was sent to me earlier this week by a friend from Austria which had been published in Die Presse. It was written by Dr. Albert Rohan, former general secretary in Austria’s equivalent of our State Department. Furthermore, this week’s Time magazine features an article by Joe Klein on Obama’s first 100 days in office which quotes Zbigniew Brzezinski (Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor) as saying, “The one thing Obama hasn’t done in the first 100 days is the big Middle East speech where he says, ‘this is the settlement. This is what we’re for.’ If he doesn’t do that soon Netanyahu is going to set the agenda not us – and that will be a disaster. If we don’t act now, any chance of a two-state solution will be gone. If he does act now, every government in the world will stand with him.

Rodgers, Rohan and Brzezinski are absolutely correct but unfortunately there are political realities which Obama has to consider. What is the balance between his domestic programs and the foreign threat? If he speaks out forcefully, as would be needed so that there remains no shadow of a doubt where America stands, he is bound to alienate the Israel lobby which can doom his domestic agenda. Furthermore, he is only one person. His powers are limited and when it comes to Jewish concerns his efforts can even be quietly sabotaged by members of his own administration. Yet speak he must even if it is limited to Secretary Clinton delivering a personal unmistakable letter to the Israelis.

This is President Obama’s challenge: steering the ship of State between partisan hatreds and fears, in the midst of a massive economic crisis, to a better future. Fortunately, he means well, is young, energetic, well educated and competent. Furthermore, and let us not underestimate this point, he has a loving and equally competent wife who can protect him from excess male vanity. As such he deserves all the help we can provide him with in his monumental task.







June 1, 2009

POLITICS OF FEAR

            President Obama surely has a tough row to hoe. After eight years of mistaken policies and unbridled laissez faire capitalism he is now expected not only to set the country on the right course for the future but the results must also be immediate and to everybody’s liking. Americans are an impatient people who, in contrast to Europeans and especially Asians, have not yet learned the virtue of patience. They are of the “instant” generation which started with instant coffee and fast food chains and culminated in instant Zen via drugs. You can have it all was the lure. Now that this house of cards has collapsed, instead of sober reflection of where we have gone wrong, the expectation is fostered that by the end of the year this “recession” will be over and we can go back to our merry old ways of spending ourselves out of debt.

            This is the hope and message of the true believers but since this would mean that the Democrats would retain their majority in the House and Senate in next year’s midterm elections these expectations must be dashed and the best way to do so is to spread fear. It is true that there are great dangers on the horizon, Obama is aware of them, but the way to meet them ought to differ from the policies of the Cheney-Bush administration. This fundamental insight is still lacking in a substantial portion of our politicians and the electorate. Instead of pulling together, as Obama hoped he might be able to achieve, we are being pulled apart through partisan politics, to the detriment of the country at large.

            Those of us who voted for Obama were a mixed lot. Surely there were some flaming liberals who thought he’d usher in a socialist paradise, but most of us had no such illusions. We merely wanted a competent, well educated Chief-executive who is capable of building bridges across divides on the domestic as well as international scene. The times had called for a pragmatist who faces facts rather than an ideologue who has a direct line to the Almighty, as was the case with President Bush and potential Vice-president Palin.

Let us remember the choice we had last year.  It was quite limited because our two party system has no room for Independents. The religious right, which controlled the Republican Party at the time, could not stomach a competent Mormon and defeated him in the primaries in favor of an ex-Baptist preacher. Political experience played no role because both had been governors of their respective states.  It was strictly religious fervor at play and, as I mentioned in these pages last year, when the choice is between a Mormon and a Baptist the outcome is a foregone conclusion. But since the country at large doesn’t consist only of Baptists, Senator McCain profited from this internecine battle. He was supposed to have been the unifier who, in addition, would keep the country safe. But the elderly, intemperate, military man whose immediate answer to some international nastiness would probably have been a new war, was an unlikely candidate for that role. “Keeping the country safe” was a successful mantra in 2004 and in spite of its failure in 2008 is again vigorously chanted as will be commented on later. 

On the other side there was the young and vigorous Obama, who had deftly defeated his most formidable opponents - by dint of glamour, charisma, smarts and money. Genuine change in the way Washington works seemed no longer “the impossible dream,” but within reach. Since our future and that of the world depends on how Obama will deal with the increasing pressure, domestic and international events are about to bring to bear on him, it is useful to once more assess what we know about his character.

The outstanding aspects seem to be ambitious and deliberative. His life experiences taught him compassion with the underprivileged and the desire to rectify obvious injustices. This is why he first became a community organizer. He soon saw that the effect he had was limited because all the good will was for naught unless he could drum up the money from the powers who controlled the city. The next step was, therefore, Law school and state government. But again, a state senator likewise has only limited influence especially if he belongs to the minority party. Real power was seen not in Springfield but the Senate in Washington. That the ultimate goal was the presidency, with the power it conferred to the officeholder, is, of course, obvious.

There is no doubt in my mind, that he intended and still intends to use the Presidency for the good of the country and the world but he is now confronted with powerful realities. The most important fundamental aspect which Americans have yet to confront is twofold. One is that results are independent of one’s intentions and the other that power, even presidential power, has its limits provided one wants to stay within the constraints imposed by the Constitution. President Obama now finds himself saddled with wars, which were not of his making but which cannot readily be terminated. He is too young to remember the Lyndon Johnson years who found himself in a somewhat similar situation. He didn’t want the Viet Nam war but there was no easy way to get out. I remember Johnson’s dilemma and his wistful statement, “They talk about the awful power of the president. All the power I have is nuclear and that I can’t use.” 

But Johnson said something else in his Texan drawl, which I also remember and which I believe he sincerely meant, “I want to be the President that is loved by all the people.” When I heard this I thought, “Oh my God, the fellow hasn’t read Machiavelli.” The chapter in The Prince, “Is it better to be loved than feared?” had immediately sprung to mind. As it turned out Machiavelli was right and the Johnson presidency ended in failure. The attempt to end the war was left to Nixon who failed for other reasons, which were likewise foreshadowed by Machiavelli.

Our “enlightened” era has given Machiavelli a bad press but he deserves to be studied because he knew human nature as it really is and this will always remain the crucial variable in every political equation. The mentioned chapter explains that being loved by one’s subjects is theoretically preferable over being feared but it is usually not achievable. A choice has to be made in most cases and under those circumstances “it is much safer to be feared than loved.”

 

“Because this is to be asserted in general of men; that they are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous and as long as you succeed they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life and children . . . when the need is far distant; but when it approaches they turn against you. And that prince who, relying entirely on their promises, has neglected other precautions is ruined;  because friendships that are obtained  by payments and not by greatness or nobility of mind, may indeed be earned, but they are not secured, and in time of need cannot be relied upon; and men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared, for love is preserved by the link of obligation, which owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”

 

One may decry this pessimistic view of humankind but Machiavelli knew what he was talking about. He had a distinguished diplomatic career for his city of Florence which brought him into contact with all the powers of his day. But when the Florentine government changed he was not only exiled but thrown in jail. After his release he never regained his formal stature and had to eke out a living for himself and his family by working a small farm. Those were the circumstances under which “The Prince” was written and published in 1513. His efforts to bring this book to the attention of the Medicis were unsuccessful but he did achieve renown for writing comedies and dramas. His political advice was then sought and given, although he favored a Republican form of government over an autocratic one. When the Republic was re-instituted he tried again to obtain the office of Florentine Secretary, which he had held prior to the Medicis, but was rejected. Although this was merely proof of what he had written about human nature he was devastated and died a few days later on June 20, 1527 at the age of 58 years. 

The information presented above comes from The Great Books of the Western World and it is only fitting that Nicolo Machiavelli shared this particular volume with Thomas Hobbes who held an equally unfavorable view about human nature. I have discussed Hobbes’ contribution to the history of mankind previously (April 1, 2003. The Neocons’ Leviathan) in relation to Robert Kagan’s 2002 article “Power and
Weakness”, which had considerably upset the Europeans. A sentence such as, It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world;” may read as rather strange today but was the leading philosophy which brought us to the current impasse. This April 2003 issue is well worth reading from today’s point of view because it is not 20/20 hindsight but pointed to the inevitable consequences of this type of thinking.

But let us stay with Machiavelli for another moment because he is a reliable teacher. While he gave fear precedence over love he also pointed out that it must not be used indiscriminately lest it engenders hatred, which is to be avoided. The ruler “ought to be slow to believe and to act, nor should he himself show fear, but proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence may not make him incautious and too much distrust render him intolerable.”  Since every human being also contains within himself an animal nature the ruler should make appropriate use of it. The two animals which are relevant in this respect are: the fox and the lion. The lion is powerful but may fall victim to snares, while the fox although relatively powerless is usually sufficiently astute to avoid them. Thus in combination with a character structure as outlined above these two qualities will ensure effective rule. President Nixon had the qualities of the fox and the lion which earned him the “tricky Dick” appellation but his relative lack of the necessary human qualities in regard to politics was his downfall.

Machiavelli’s chapter XIX deals precisely with this issue, “That one should avoid being despised and hated.” The prince becomes hated not so much when he kills people but when he violates other people’s property. In this connection the current outcry against Obama’s feared tax policies immediately come to mind. The phrase that he will “redistribute wealth” was one of the campaign slogans against him and will persist throughout his presidency. Since taxing the people is unavoidable in today’s day and age Obama will need to be circumspect about it, lest he comes to be regarded as “rapacious.” To quote Machiavelli,

 

“When neither their property nor honor are touched, the majority of men live content, and he [the Prince] has only to contend with the ambition of a few, whom he can curb with ease in many ways.

It makes him contemptible to be considered fickle, frivolous, effeminate, mean-spirited, irresolute from all of which a prince should guard himself as from a rock; and he should endeavor to show in his actions greatness, courage, gravity and fortitude; and in his private dealings with his subjects let him show that his judgments are irrevocable and maintain himself in such reputation that no one can hope either to deceive him or to get around him.”

 

When we look at our past Presidents from this point of view there are not many who measure up, but Lincoln would fit the bill and he is Obama’s role model. Unfortunately Lincoln had to pay with his life for it at the crucial time when he was needed to lead a national reconciliation effort. Our country is again at a crossroads where fear and hatred are being stoked.

The current efforts to derail Obama’s policies involve among others not only the mentioned tax problem but also the revived “national security” mantra. For reasons of his own Obama has muted the idea of having a commission appointed to investigate the various malfeasances of the Cheney-Bush administration and decided to look forward rather than backwards. By the way, the sequence Cheney-Bush is not a mistype but denotes the true power structure of at least the first 6 years of that administration. Obama’s decision not to open the books on the past eight years for public inspection is I believe a mistake. Unless a country comes to grips with its past history it will continue to pursue false goals when they are no longer applicable by changed circumstances. The true causes of WWI and WWII should serve as a warning how to avoid WWIII which seems inevitable unless a genuine change of heart were to occur within the American public, the media and Congress. But this can only happen when the recent past is dispassionately examined.

The urgency of this fact was underlined by the attempts of former Vice-president
Cheney to whitewash the dismal record of the past eight years and the positive reaction his comments have received from a still influential segment of the public. It was known that Mr. Cheney was to give a speech on “National Security” on May 21 before the American Enterprise Institute and inasmuch as his views, which have not changed for decades, were also known, the Obama administration decided to pre-empt the impact of Cheney’s speech by one given by the President a few hours earlier on the same day. The timing was dictated by Obama’s attempt to close the
Guantanamo detention facility and the venues of the speeches were symbolic. Obama delivered his in the National Archives where the Constitution is prominently displayed, while Cheney chose the American Enterprise Institute whose members were largely responsible for the failed assumptions which led to the inappropriate response to the 9/11 tragedy.

Obama laid out his plan on how to deal with the rest of the detainees who are still held in Guantanamo in a step by step manner which corresponds to US law as well as international norms. It requires adjudication on an individual case by case basis. He foresaw that some individuals whose detention was no longer required could be returned to their countries of origin or others that are willing to take them, including our own. Prisoners who are found guilty of crimes and represent a danger to society would be sentenced to life-long detention in maximum-security facilities within the U.S. This process makes sense to rational human beings but we are not dealing with this species. We are living in a society which is fear-driven and where fear continues to be stoked.

The irrationality of the public is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that we are willing to send Guantanamo inmates to other countries but completely unwilling to accept them within our own borders. Detractors of Obama’s plan now point out that other countries don’t want to take these prisoners, so why should we? The simple answer, which they don’t want to consider, is that we have put these people in a concentration camp off our soil precisely because we did not want to adhere to international legal norms. We created the problem ourselves and it is only reasonable for others to expect that we would solve it within our own jurisdiction rather than foisting it onto the good-will of the rest of the world. If we don’t show it why should they? For Obama the problem is acute because he has committed himself to closing Guantanamo by the end of this year but Congress has denied him the money he asked for to create viable alternatives.

This is the point where Mr. Cheney weighed in. He roundly condemned Obama’s efforts, praised those of his administration and insisted that unless the path of the past eight years in regard to the “War on Terrorism,” including “enhanced interrogations” is continued America will experience an even more disastrous 9/11 type attack. The problem for our country which arises from this dogma is that a substantial segment of our people believes it and this bodes ill for the future. It is quite possible that a terrorist attack may occur on our soil again, as it has happened in other countries around the world since 9/11, but everything will depend on how we as a country respond to it. It is a truism that it is not the crime which people can’t forgive, it’s the cover-up. The same applies to man-made disasters such as 9/11. Had it been regarded as a crime, rather than an incitement to war, numerous lives and an immense amount of property would have been saved.

When a tragedy is viewed as an opportunity to put preconceived plans into operation we compound it and the Obama administration is in danger of falling into the same trap. While Cheney and company used 9/11 to pursue imperialist hubris, Rahm Emmanuel declared after last year’s financial collapse that “an opportunity should never be allowed to go to waste.” What he meant was that the domestic agenda of the left could now be enacted with relatively little opposition. But the difference between 2001 and 2009 resides in the Chief-executive. While President Bush deferred to the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Neoconservative ideology, President Obama seems to be of a more pragmatic type. But whether or not he will be able to stand up to the increasing pressures only time will tell.

Since the former Vice-President is becoming the voice of the disenfranchised right wing of the Republican Party he must be taken seriously and his views, as expressed in the mentioned speech, examined. For anyone who reads the transcript and has a perceptive mind it is obvious that Mr. Cheney still harbors dangerous delusions about his term of office and America’s place in the world. The key aspect is the opinion that his administration’s policies have kept the country safe from another attack on the homeland since 9/11. Although this mantra, as mentioned above, is good for propaganda purposes it has little to do with the reasons why there was a 9/11 attack in the first place. This deliberate blindness is dangerous. The Cheney group, ex-President Bush is currently out of the picture, keeps fostering the illusion that they took office on the evening of September 11, 2001 rather than in the afternoon of January 20. These crucial eight months when the administration patently failed to keep America safe are deliberately swept under the rug.

Cheney’s speech is classic for unintended truth, ambiguities and outright falsehoods. Here is a key excerpt: 

 

“The point is not to look backward. Now and for years to come, a lot rides on our president’s understanding of the security policies that preceded him. And whatever choices he makes concerning the defense of the country, those choices should not be based on slogans and campaign rhetoric [closing Guantanamo], but on a truthful telling of history.”

 

The first sentence is self-serving and in direct contradiction to the ending of the second one. A truthful telling of history is indeed vital and is what most Americans want. But this is predicated on “looking backward” and the opening of archives which are jealously guarded for reasons, you guessed it, of “National Security.” We are to be made secure by ignorance of the past! Cheney then listed the attacks against Americans during the Clinton years and how they should have been responded to differently. He failed to mention that when his administration took over Richard Clark’s warnings were disregarded and that Al Qaeda simply wasn’t a priority.

For a discussion of the rest of the speech I shall use the device of an open letter to Mr. Cheney. Although I harbor no illusion that he’ll either see or read it, the information may be useful to the public at large.

 

Dear Mr. Vice-President,

 

In your speech of May 21, 2009 you made several points which deserve to be commented upon. Please be assured hat I harbor no ill-will against you in person but since your views and the attempts to influence current policies are potentially harmful to our republic they need to be aired.

With your professed devotion to America’s security we would like to know whether or not you were aware of the August 6, 2001  briefing which stated that Osama bin-Laden planned to attack the homeland. If not: why not? And if yes: why did you ignore it? What was your schedule during the months of February to the beginning of September? We know about your meetings on America’s energy needs but they are still secret. We request, therefore, that you allow the publication of all the relevant memos, e-mails etc. so that truthful history can be written.

Please also tell us why your administration immediately embraced war instead of first declaring the area of the WTC a crime scene. The latter course would have allowed a thorough investigation of the rubble for clues to the unprecedented collapse of three steel reinforced buildings, one of which wasn’t even hit by a plane. Mr. Vice-President, we who ask these questions are not conspiracy theorists, we simply want the God‘s honest truth, which you have so far failed to provide.

You also stated that “wars cannot be won on the defensive” and this why your administration “moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and sanctuaries and committed to using every asset to take down their networks.” Mr. Vice-president, more than seven years have passed and as a result of your decisions we now have more Taliban fighters not only in Afghanistan but also Pakistan, which may be on the brink of collapse. Do you not feel any sense of responsibility for that outcome, and why have you not brought Osama bin-Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to justice; instead of invading Iraq?  

You repeatedly mentioned that the interrogation methods of prisoners yielded actionable intelligence and have prevented further attacks on U.S. soil but you have not provided us with specific examples upon which to judge the veracity of this statement. Doubt is permissible because you also reiterated that Saddam Hussein had “known ties to Mideast terrorists,” which is misleading. The only tie we know of for certain is that he sent money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. While this showed bad judgment in our eyes it hardly qualifies for invading his country. Furthermore, by now you should know perfectly well that the “intelligence” you and the rest of the administration relied on for doing so was manufactured and/or willfully distorted.

As far as the methods of interrogations are concerned which are currently under investigation by Congress you emphasized that they were “legal, essential, justified, successful and the right thing to do.” But Mr. Vice-president they were legal only because your lawyers were under orders to write opinions that justified your wishes. The idea that “if the President does it, it’s legal” was President Nixon’s defense. It was not accepted then and it will not be accept now unless you are willing to depart from our republican form of government and espouse the autocracy of well known dictators from the past century.  

I believe that you are correct in stating that the Obama administration may have “carefully redacted [memos] to leave out references to what our government learned through the methods in question. . . . Other memos, laying out specific terrorist plots that were averted, apparently were not even considered for release. For reasons the administration has yet to explain, they believe the public has a right to know the method of the questions, but not the content of the answers.”

These are important points and you can rest assured that those of us who want to arrive at the full truth of the events which transpired during your administration will keep asking for it. But this is a two way street you also must personally be willing to release all the information you have and if need be under oath.

In regard to your categorical statement that “Torture was never permitted” I hope that neither you nor a member of your family will ever be subjected to the “enhanced interrogation methods” which you still support. If this were to be the case you would likely conclude that the difference is purely semantic rather than substantive.

We know that you are currently writing a book about your role in the Bush administration but if it is merely a reiteration of what you have told us on May 21 it will have no historical value. On the other hand, if you were to be totally honest with yourself and the American public and included accurate information, which is currently not available, you would provide a service for the country.  

 

Sincerely

 

Ernst Rodin

 

It is obvious that the wish expressed in the last sentence is not going to come to pass because I believe Mr. Cheney is honestly convinced that his course was the correct one; but so was Hitler. This is the current tragedy of our country: we have people in our midst who in their own minds firmly believe to be on the right track, but proceed with blinders which don’t allow them to consider the adversary’s point of view. On the international scene they are all lumped under the label of terrorists and their eradication by bombs and other fire power is the supposed answer. As long as people continue to believe this all the sacrifice in lives, limbs and property the past eight years have engendered will have been in vain.

In previous paragraphs I have referred to Machiavelli’s views about human nature, which unfortunately are quite correct in most instances. But there is another side to the human being which was incorporated in a contemporary of his, Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536). He is regarded as the Renaissance man par excellence. While he held no illusions about the inherent goodness of human beings, whom he did consider, similar to Machiavelli, thoroughly depraved, his message of how to overcome this condition was different. I shall have more to say about him in future installments, for now I would simply like to draw attention to his 1517 publication, “Querela Pacis” which has been translated as “The Complaint of Peace.” It is available in The Essential Erasmus, translated by John P. Dolan and ought to be read by everyone who is concerned about world affairs.

In this article Peace, speaking in its own name, is genuinely puzzled why people throughout the ages have always preferred war while professing love for peace. This in spite of the fact that war is so much more expensive, unleashes the worst qualities of human beings and once started is difficult to terminate. For Erasmus, as a devout Christian, albeit one who relentlessly criticized the conduct of ecclesiastic authorities, the way out from incessant wars was to heed the message of Jesus. This will strike the modern reader just as “quaint” as the Geneva Convention was for the followers of the neoconservative ideology. Yet, the concept of Jesus as the Christ provided the foundation of what we call Western civilization and needs to be taken seriously. I shall present the reasons why this is the case later this year in book form.

As a final note I would like to let readers know that the next Hot Issue will not appear on July 1 but during the last week of June because I intend to join my colleagues in the celebration of the 100 year anniversary of the International League against Epilepsy which will be held in the city of its birth, Budapest, June 28-July 3.







July 1, 2009

FAITH AND SCIENCE

            In last month’s installment I confidently predicted that I would be joining my colleagues in the celebration of the 100 year anniversary of the International League against Epilepsy but I should have added the Muslim’s Insha-Allah, God willing. The insignificance of our desires in the scheme of things was drastically driven home in one instant. From one moment to the next one can be reduced from a self-sufficient individual who looks forward to vacations and meeting with friends and relatives, to a helpless infant who has to scream for his mother.

            While getting dressed and putting on a sock one morning, the prosthetic hip spontaneously dislocated. There one sits, totally immobilized because the slightest movement produces inordinate pain. The phone which would allow one to call for emergency services is only ten paces away but it might as well be on the moon because it’s unreachable. Martha, who always gets up bright and early, is in the kitchen at the other end of the house and has the TV on. So, there one sits and yells at the top of one’s lungs hoping that she might hear. She did, the ambulance was called, and after due time the hip was replaced into its socket in the nearby hospital’s emergency room. By mid afternoon I was basically intact again, from the pelvis on up. Travel was now out of the question because it was the second spontaneous dislocation and what happens twice can recur at any time thereafter. An operative repair to limit the risk of further recurrences is essential and scheduled for the middle of the month.

            When even a simple task, such as putting on a sock, has all of a sudden become hazardous to one’s health this gives one pause to think. Ordinarily whenever something untoward happens we love to blame somebody else or even oneself. But there was no one to blame unless you say it was the will of God. Under those circumstances you can either vent useless fury against an unreachable Deity or think about what the message might be that you have been sent so unexpectedly. I did the latter and this article is part of the outcome.

            A few years ago, after having published The Moses Legacy, I prepared a book about Jesus. It placed the gospel writers and their mental pictures of Jesus in the socio-political-religious context of the First century and looked at the human being, Jesus of Nazareth, from a medical point of view. The manuscript was finished four years ago and then made its rounds to various publishing houses which I thought might be appropriate. It was an exercise in futility. It sat on editors’ desks and the one who appeared most interested finally rejected it after two years in spite of repeated changes which I made on his requests.

            I can’t blame the editors because this type of book simply does not fit into today’s compartmentalized thinking, where a physician has no business to stick his nose into an area that is the prerogative of theologians and historians. In addition, since I am unknown in the circles of literati, it won’t make money for the publisher. I, therefore, abandoned the project for the time being and concentrated on the scientific work that needed to get done and published. But the event in the beginning of last month was a wake-up call with the question: what are your priorities? Since it is obvious that Atropos, who stands poised with her scissors, can cut the feeble strand of life at any moment there is really no more important task than to finish unfinished affairs. The Jesus manuscript was, therefore, re-examined, a new Preface was written as well as a chapter on Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” and an up- to-date Conclusion. Under the working title: Understanding Jesus. A Physician’s Search for the Truth the manuscript is now making its rounds to some friends and colleagues for critique and possibly helpful suggestions. This essay is a somewhat expanded version of one aspect that is covered in the book.

            Before addressing the substantive issues it may be necessary for some readers who did not have the benefit of a classical education to explain the role of Atropos in Greek mythology. The Greeks firmly believed in Fate against which even Zeus was helpless. But Fate was a trinity. Clotho spun the thread of life; Lachesis measured it, while Atropos cut it.  Clotho and Lachesis have been relegated to oblivion while Atropos lives on as the name of a drug: Atropine. But only the names of these deities have disappeared, the essence of what they stood for is now regarded as our DNA and its “longevity gene,” for some of us. Since we didn’t order our DNA from the celestial menu prior to conception we are stuck with what we got and this is our personal fate.

            These considerations bring up not only the question of: Who and What are we; but also of “Free Will” and: “How can Science help us in solving these questions? I have capitalized the word Science because it has become a substitute for God in the minds of an influential segment of our society. On the one hand Science is looked at with awe by some while it also has been degraded to an extent that “Science” is a subject taught in elementary school. So let us be clear what we mean. Science is an abstract noun which in America tends to mainly cover the physical sciences; aspects of the material world which lend themselves to measurement. The word itself is derived from the Latin scientia and as such has no particular meaning, except that which is currently ascribed to it. In German speaking countries the word is Wissenschaft which is both meaningful and considerably broader in its connotation. Literally translated it is knowledge-creation. Ergo, anything that enhances human knowledge is subsumed under this term, which is then divided into Naturwissenschaft and Geisteswissenschafte. These correspond here to the natural sciences and the humanities. For the German word Geist there is no single equivalent in the English language because it can, apart from ghostly apparition, mean mind, spirit or soul depending on the context. I am mentioning these points because German words, and thereby thoughts, may not be directly translatable into English and when we think we are talking about the same thing we may not be.

            After considering the semantics we now need to realize that science with or without capital S does not exist in some vacuum. A common statement such as: “science has demonstrated,” is nonsense. Science is a mental concept which doesn’t demonstrate anything, only scientists do! But even if we clarify the sentence to, “scientists have demonstrated,” it is still not particularly meaningful because we are not told the details of what these scientists really did to achieve the result which they regarded as valid. The popular media jump on results, propagandize them as the latest truth only to find out a few years later that what they had believed in wasn’t really so. The various miracle cures we have been treated to during my lifetime are obvious examples.

            The inevitable next conclusion, which results from the non-existence of science per se, is that in regard to scientists we are not talking about gods but human beings who are fallible. Furthermore, the scientist acts scientifically only for a fraction of the day, namely when s/he is actually involved in the conduct and evaluation of a specific experiment. The rest of the time is spent on other duties which nowadays frequently involve grant writing. Our capitalist system has introduced during the past half century the quest for money into the halls of academia where search for truth should have been paramount. It is amazing to me, who fortunately could do most of his work unencumbered by financial considerations, how the situation has changed for the current generation.

The golden era of science for the sake of science ended around the nineteen seventies. Prior to that time one could pursue scientific work strictly because one wanted answers to questions which were not in the books or because one knew that the books were wrong and intended to correct those notions. One’s standing in the scientific community was measured by work one had personally performed, presented at scientific meetings and subsequently published. This is no longer the case nowadays, not only does everybody have to be mentioned under authors who had only the faintest contact with the work his name is associated, but when speakers are introduced at meetings the number of grants they have obtained as well as their amounts are now the hallmarks of their achievements. This intrusion of capitalism will have a profoundly deleterious influence on the quality of scientific work in America. Jesus’ statement about not being able to serve God and mammon is still correct.

I shall limit myself to describe the current situation in this country in regard medical research, where I have first hand knowledge. The mere fact that one has to apply for a grant which has to be approved by one’s “peers” who are appointed by one of the funding agencies, which as far as medical research is concerned involves mainly NIH or the pharmaceutical industry, is only the first problem. These “peers” who judge the applications are human beings with vested interests. They are wedded to a given conventional ideology and will, therefore, approve grants on topics they are familiar with and which are likely to confirm their currently held views. As a result more and more strictly routine work is produced because fundamental new insights occur mainly by serendipity and cannot be properly followed up on because brand new ideas cannot get funded.  

            In the 1970s when grants started to become de rigueur, a joke circulated. The Lord applied for a NIH grant but was turned down. The rejection letter stated: The committee is fully cognizant of the magnificent work the applicant has done in the past but is not aware of any recent achievements and he has never published in English. As money became increasingly scarce a new method was invented so as not to hurt the applicant’s feelings. The grant may be approved but not funded! Countless days and weeks are wasted merely in grant writing and since gifted investigators are not particularly good at flattering the funding agencies with pseudo sophisticated protocols, universities now employ, to some extent, professional grant writers for that purpose.  

            In addition, before a grant can even get submitted it has to pass the “Institutional Review Board (IRB) of one’s facility to immunize it against lawsuits which might be brought against it. The Nazi concentration camp experiments are held up as the example of what happens if physicians are not carefully supervised in regard to their ethical practices. That this aberration was an exception and part of an inherently criminal government during the conduct of a war is not taken into account.

IRBs are now mandated by law and have to decide whether a given proposal meets ethical guidelines and to what extent the proposed work might lead to risks for the patient/volunteer. This means that all of us have to take periodic, multiple choice, “ethics exams” to demonstrate that we are fully cognizant of past abuses and a certificate of having successfully passed must be presented. The Hippocratic Oath and “above all do no harm” no longer suffice. These tests are generic and have nothing to do with the work that is intended to be done. They and the IRBs are eyewash but will prevent important new discoveries from being made. Neither Pasteur or Jenner nor possibly even Salk, would nowadays have passed inspection by an IRB. There is, of course an obvious fallacy in all these “safeguards.” Ethical conduct cannot be vouchsafed by multiple choice tests because it is easy to cheat and if a given human being does not have inherent ethical standards they will not be achieved by the measures cited above. But as mentioned, it really has nothing to do with ethics per se. All of this results from the fear of lawsuits, which is another major limiting factor for innovative research.

While this situation is unfortunate for the physician who does not have to rely on his research to provide the daily bread, it is infinitely worse for the PhD who works in basic research. Grants are now the sine qua non and once a grant has been obtained the application for renewal has to be prepared. What happens in practice is that the investigator knows the essential result after a few experiments but is now forced to repeat them in a routine manner to meet the demands of the protocol which specified that a given number of tests will have to be carried out in a given manner. Since grants need to be renewed the investigator cannot strike out into the unknown with a hypothesis which might or might not pan out. For this reason before a particular grant is written the investigator already has to have a reasonably good idea of what will work because if the grant money doesn’t keep coming, the family can’t be supported. With other words, our brightest people, who are supposed to produce original thoughts, are reduced to the level of assembly line workers who have to keep to a rigid protocol.

Assume now that by sheer good luck the investigator has come up with a finding that has a significant impact on the field. Assume further that it invalidates previously held cherished views. Obviously the finding will need to be published in a first class scientific journal but now comes the next hurdle. Editors of journals have their pet views and whatever doesn’t fit is not allowed to exist. The situation in 2009 is really not much different from 1610 when Galileo’s “peers” refused to look through his telescope. They already knew the answer, because the Bible told them so, and, therefore, whatever Galileo told them must be wrong. One may doubt the veracity of this statement but it results from current personal experience. The Bible has simply been replaced by secular dogma which is held on to with the same religious fervor.  

            These are the facts, especially in the medical scientific establishment, of which the general public tends to be unaware. But there are wider questions that need to be addressed: Can the natural sciences lead us to objective truth about the world we live in and especially about ourselves? Are there limits to the information scientific work can achieve and if so where are they? These questions are not new but were raised by Emil du Bois Reymond in the 1870s. He is rightfully regarded as the father of electrophysiology having discovered among other aspects that the “nerve impulse” is an electric current which is now called the action potential. As such, Du Bois Reymond had impeccable scientific credentials but his interests were not limited and encompassed also history and philosophy. These were the foundation upon which rested his most remembered speeches that ended with “ignorabimus” and “dubitemus.”

            The first lecture “Über die Grenzen der Naturerkenntnis” - On the Limits of Natural Science, was given in Leipzig in 1872.  It is available on the Internet and well worth reading because the scientific optimism which pervaded Europe during the 19th century is still that of America’s in the 21st.  In the 1872 presentation Du Bois Reymond referred to a sentiment, expressed by Vogt in the 1850s that all mental activities are merely functions of the brain. “To put it crudely, thoughts stand in the same relationship to the brain as bile to the liver, or urine to the kidneys.” Du-Bois Reymond rejected this thesis as unwarranted because even in regard to some of the most essential aspects of the material body we have to admit to ignorance, “ignoramus.” While this statement would have been accepted by the audience his final conclusion created uproar and he was severely criticized by the powers of the era.  Because of its importance for our time I shall translate the last paragraph of his speech here.

           

“In the face of the riddles the physical world presents us with, the natural scientist has for quite some time been accustomed to state with stoic resignation [maennlicher Entsagung] his ‘ignoramus’. But looking back upon victorious past achievements he harbors the silent awareness, that what he does not know at present, he may under certain circumstances, perhaps come to know in the future. But in regard to the riddle of: what is matter and what is energy [Materie und Kraft] and how they are able to think he has to admit to himself the much more difficult truth: ‘Ignorabimus.’”

 

For this ignorabimus, by which he meant that we are inherently incapable of ever knowing the answer to this most fundamental question of our being, he was, as mentioned, severely criticized and subjected to ad hominem attacks. He, therefore, followed it up eight years later as part of a Leibniz celebration with, Die Sieben Welträthsel, The Seven Riddles of this World. In it he met his critics, who had not bothered to properly read his first speech, head on and explained why he said what he had said. Since these two presentations form a unit I shall now present their essence working backward from the second to the first.

He listed the Seven Riddles as: the essence (Wesen) of matter and energy; the origin of motion; the origin of life; the apparently intelligent plan in nature; the origin of sensation; the origin of rational thought and speech; and freedom of will. Three of these puzzles he thought were potentially eventually amenable to solution by the scientific method. For three others the answer was no and for one: “freedom of will” he hedged his bets because it depends on the three unsolvable ones: the essence of matter and energy, first motion and first sensation. Since the speech was given in honor of Leibniz who had thought that he solved all of these problems to his own satisfaction, Du Bois Reymond ended his presentation with the comment that if Leibniz could stand today on his own shoulders he would probably agree with what had been presented and conclude with him in “dubitemus,” we are not quite sure.

This is not the place to engage in a polemic to what extent the ignorabimus was justified but it is clear that we still have to say ignoramus for all the seven puzzles. For whether or not some of them are solvable by the scientific method, the dubitemus is also correct as will be shown. In former years, e.g. the era of Descartes and Leibniz, God was a reality and so was the dualism of body and mind/soul. One was a material entity upon which the immaterial one somehow exerted its influence. Under those circumstances free will for instance was understandable as a gift of the spirit while it must be denied, if one is intellectually honest, when only purely physical forces operate in a mechanistically determined universe. While chance events can occur, purpose which exerts its will towards an end can not. Because the question cannot be solved by scientific means it is shunted to the realm of philosophy but that is, to put it bluntly “a cop out,” for believers in science as the ultima ratio. As scientists we are also human beings and this fragmentation in regard to fundamental problems of human nature is not in the best interest of the species. Socrates reportedly said: the unexamined life is not worth living. It is, therefore, up to us to fulfill our human potential by truthfully examining all aspects of life and when we reach the limits of understanding accept them and fearlessly present them as Du Bois Reymond did.

The fundamental problem of awareness or consciousness was formulated by Du Bois Reymond as: a statement that awareness can be explained on basis of mechanics needs to be denied, but a statement that awareness depends upon mechanics is undoubtedly correct. With other words our brains, acting on mechanical electrochemical principles, are required for awareness and the content will be shaped by its state in health and disease but that does not mean that mechanical principles, therefore, explain the origin of awareness. He quoted Leibniz for further explanation:

 

“One is forced to admit that awareness (Wahrnehmung) and everything that depends upon it cannot be explained on a mechanical basis; that is through objects and movement. Let one imagine a machine which is so constructed that it produces thought, feeling and awareness. Let us now magnify it to an extent that one can enter into it like a mill. Under these circumstances one would find in its interior nothing else but parts, which push at each other but never anything from which one could explain awareness.”

 

While thinking about this problem other examples came to mind. We can scientifically examine Michelangelo’s Pietà in St. Peter’s Cathedral to the nth degree but this will never allow us to say anything about what the artist wanted to tell us. Or, imagine that a UFO from outer space abducts a car from a street and brings it back to its planet where such contraptions have never existed. The scientists and engineers of that planet would then take it apart piece by piece, examine the parts in detail put them together in various combinations but they still would not have the faintest idea what the purpose of that contraption was in the first place. Nevertheless, this is our scientific method and Goethe was already aware of its limitation. In Faust there is a scene where Mephisto impersonates the old scholar and explains the various branches of university study to a student who had come for advice. A pertinent quote is:

 

           „Wer will was Lebendiges erkennen und beschreiben,

                                    Sucht erst den Geist heraus zu treiben,

            Dann hat er Teile in der Hand,

            Fehlt leider! nur das geistige Band.

            Encheiresin natuare nennt’s die Chemie,

            Spottet ihrer selbst und weiss nicht wie.“

 

One might paraphrase this stanza as follows. Whoever wants to understand and describe a living entity attempts first of all to drive out its spirit. He then has the parts in his hand but alas what’s missing is the band which held it together in the first place. This lack is being excused by referring to nature’s handiwork (my approximate rendering of encheiresin naturae) thereby mocking ones efforts by not realizing what one has actually done.

This is the inherent limitation of the scientific method as currently used: we can only describe and analyze, which is essentially the same process. By describing a tree I separate it mentally into roots, trunk, branches and leaves. If I am an arborist I can go further, measure the various component parts, and conjecture how they might fit together to make the tree we behold. The latter process is called forming a theory/hypothesis. This theory is, however always incomplete and will be improved upon or invalidated by others in the future. As such science is an ongoing process and any conclusion that is currently accepted as true is entirely dependent on three aspects. These are: a) the instrumentation that was used for measurement; b) the conditions under which the measurement proceeded and c) the interpretation that was applied to the observed result. Since c) always involves deductions by the human mind, which can only put new information into some type of known framework, the presumed objectivity of scientific endeavors is unachievable, even under the best of circumstances. All we can hope to obtain is common consensus based on common experience but we are not justified to regard this as final reality.

This is not to deny or to diminish in any way the impressive scientific progress that has been achieved over time but it is necessary to recognize the limitations imposed by the scientific method because in so doing we become considerably more humble, especially in regard towards aspects of life which elude rational thought.

Up to know I have limited myself to the world as we experience it on a daily basis and upon which we have built our laws. In the popular mind they can be summarized as either-or. There are mountains and there are oceans, but if you were to declare one to be the other you would be regarded as either a liar or suffering from mental illness. Likewise in criminal law one is either guilty or innocent. There is no room for yes-but or may be. In the current context, one is largely regarded either as a scientist or as a religious person and the one is not supposed to trespass on the domain of the other. I was told so when the Jesus book was rejected by publishers. Our civilization assigns us slots to which we are supposed to conform and not move out from. But this attitude leads not only to false assumptions; it does not even reflect all aspects of our material world.

In our quest “to get at the bottom of things” we have split objects into ever smaller parts and did not stop at the level of the atom. It also was smashed to bits and the result of our handiwork – the bomb – now threatens to destroy us. But by splitting the atom we have entered the subatomic world of particle physics which behaves not at all the way we expected. Rather than as “either-or” this world seems to run on “as well as.” A subatomic particle may behave as a particle or as a wave and “what it really is” depends on the instrumentation used for observation. Particle physics has introduced the “uncertainty principle” and even worse the idea that two different states may co-exist at the same time. What is “real” is determined only when an observer enters into the picture.

 Erwin Schrödinger, a well known Austrian atomic physicist and 1933 Nobel Prize winner, performed a mental experiment which has become known as “Schrödinger’s cat” where the cat can be both dead and alive at the same time. These apparent absurdities are the problems atomic physicists struggle to make sense of and you may enjoy reading about it from the cat’s point of view by typing “Viennese Meow” into Google. Being “dead and alive” at the same time is obviously a fantasy and there are other explanations, but that particles once they have met are then wedded to each other and behave in relation to each other, regardless of the distance that separate them, is an observable phenomenon that has been called Verschränkung by Schrödinger and entanglement in English.  

Bernard d’Espagnat, a highly respected atomic physicist and Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Paris-Orsay, has recently published a book on Physics and Philosophy in which he discusses the puzzles which flew out of Pandora’s Box when we smashed the atom. In the Introduction he wrote, “Great philosophical riddles lie at the core of present-day physics and most people, by now, are aware of their existence even if but a few have a precise idea of their nature.” The book is not easy to read and must be carefully studied but what comes through loud and clear, even for the lay person which includes everyone who is not working in that particular field of science, is that even the material world is infinitely more complex than we have been willing to admit. Pride in human achievements has no room in quantum physics because even the experts admit that we don’t know what we are talking about when it comes to “reality.” While the experts are busy trying to detect even smaller particles at CERN by smashing them in a super collider, relatively few people have started to consider the implications of what we are doing and what we are trying to accomplish for what purpose. 

One of these implications ought to be obvious. Faith and Science are not mutually exclusive.  Even the scientist relies on faith that the work s/he is doing is going to be of some use. Just as Science does not exist in the abstract neither does Faith. It is always attached to something and the person who cannot muster faith in God will simply place it on some terrestrial object or idea. No one can live without faith in something and even Nietzsche would have killed himself, as he intimated in his letters, had he not held to the firm belief in posthumous fame. Faith is innate, we are born with it and how we use it is part of our free will. 

In view of the importance of the subject the discussion will be continued in the next installment on August 1; Insha-Allah.







August 1, 2009

KNOWLEDGE AND FAITH

            Inasmuch as the hip operation, which was mentioned in last month’s installment, went off without complications I can keep to the usual schedule and continue the discussion on aspects of life which, under ordinary circumstances, we tend not to consider. Yet they are fundamental to the question what we are as human beings and how we differ from the rest of the animal kingdom.

            The major difference is clearly that we think of ourselves as “rational” beings whose actions are regarded as voluntary and who exercise judgment as to likely outcomes.  Animals on the other hand go through their lives “instinctively.”  They know what’s good for them without weighing possibilities and whatever ruminating is done is limited to the digestive tract rather than the brain. Their vocalizations are mainly related to their needs of attracting a mate or warnings of danger while we have developed not only speech to communicate but also for abstract thoughts to ponder. In addition, we have set out with unbridled pride and optimism to fulfill the biblical injunction to “subdue” the earth “and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth [Gen 1:28].”  The world has become “our oyster” and we have only lately begun to realize that this ruthless exploitation of its resources is beginning to threaten our very survival.

            Our scientific and technologic advances bear no small responsibility for this state of affairs including the idea that we have evolved to our present state through the “law” of the “survival of the fittest.” According to Hobbes, and subsequently to some extent Darwin, the world is a jungle where the strong eat the weak and those who fail in that competition get eliminated. As such they can be regarded as fore-runners of Nietzsche who extended this notion to human beings and divided societies into those with master versus slave morality. These ideas were put in practice during the Nazi era and although the world was outraged it didn’t seem to realize that this outcome was unavoidable when one believes that man has the right to “subdue” his environment, which by extension, includes weaker nations (colonialism) and ethnic groups, for the benefit of the strong.

            The fundamental error, which started with biblical thought, is the non-recognition that nature is not only cruel, in the sense that big fish do eat little fish, but that there is also a tremendous amount of cooperation and interdependence. This applies not only within species but across species. What is bad for one is good for another as the simple example of respiration shows. Without trees we couldn’t live because they produce the oxygen we need and we give them our carbon dioxide in return. This is so rudimentary that it would hardly be worth talking about if the survival of the fittest idea and “subduing” were not so deeply ingrained in our behavior that we don’t think about it. This is, however, a direct result of city living where we no longer have an opportunity to watch how nature really unfolds and cooperates.

            Martha and I are very fortunate that our little property is not fenced in and the backyard is regularly visited by a variety of wildlife which taught me a number of lessons. Among our visitors there is respect for each other and each one knows its place. While the magpies feed first on Martha’s generosity, the blue jays sit and wait and when they are done the chickadees arrive. There is no fighting and even without Martha’s help there’s plenty for all because nature is extremely generous. While this clearly demonstrated the “pecking order” another example of tolerance could be observed between deer and magpies. At times one can see that a magpie descends on the back of a doe and begins picking whatever edibles it finds from its fur. The doe has absolutely no problem with that and only when the magpie gets pesky she flicks her tail and the bird takes off. There is peace among God’s creatures in our backyard and it is only people who create havoc with wrong ideas.

            So, how do we know what we think we know? As the title of this essay suggests we distinguish between what we regard as opposites; we discriminate; we parcel out; we multiply by dividing and we break into parts. This is the Western way of thinking –mechanistically. The world is a machine which has parts and from the parts we think we can learn how it functions. As mentioned in last month’s installment this is fantasy because the organic world differs fundamentally from the inorganic. Instead of creating a human being by taking its various organs e.g. bones, blood, muscle, brain etc. and putting it together, as we would for instance a car, nature always proceeds from an entity which gradually unfolds according to its potential. In the vegetable kingdom the seed makes roots, which gain strength from the moist earth and then raise a stem above it which, with the help of the sun, eventually turns into a trunk with branches and leaves as well as new seeds. But take that seed apart, put it under the most elaborate microscope and you’ll never find the tree in it.

            The same applies, of course, to the development of human beings. The sperm and its DNA is just that, an entity. It meets an egg with its DNA, which is another entity. The two mate, become a “fertilized egg,” a different entity with different potential than the single cells which were responsible for it. From it develops the embryo, the baby, the child and eventually the adult. But during any of these stages we are not dealing with parts which are added, instead there is a constant unfolding of latent potentialities which can be fostered, harmed or destroyed by the environment in which the developing organism finds itself. This is truly so “elementary my dear Watson,” that one wonders why this type of thinking is not in the mainstream of our society and especially its leadership of whatever party. Although lip service is paid to “consensus building,” the attempt by one faction to dominate the other persists.

Furthermore, the concept of unfolding makes, for instance, the abortion argument as to “when does life begin?” totally meaningless. But, of course, so has much of our language become. We don’t talk about people who are for abortions on demand in these terms, they are simply “pro choice,” while abortion foes are “pro life.” Obviously, everybody is for having a choice and everybody is fond of life but since abortion means destruction of a potential human being this unpleasantness has to be camouflaged by meaningless euphemisms and this is how we lie to each other and to ourselves. For the Catholic Church life begins at conception while for the secular segment of society various arbitrary time points are set. They are of course arbitrary and serve only to assuage our moral conscience because once you see a human form in the uterus it becomes increasingly more difficult to rationalize its killing. In fact “life” has neither a beginning nor an end. There are only transformations with inherent different potentialities at each stage. The sperm and the egg had separate lives and only their potential to development was changed by conception. Nevertheless they always were a human sperm and a human egg, rather than those of a pig or a bear, for instance. Therefore, even the question: when does human life begin? is meaningless.

If we then were to redefine the abortion issue as to “when does intelligent life begin?” we are in even deeper water because: what defines intelligence? Reason would answer: thinking for oneself and independent living. But we don’t want to go that way because we could then eliminate the old folks and the “useless ones” who can’t take care of themselves. This is precisely what was abhorred as amoral, utilitarian Nazi practices and now engenders the thoroughly hypocritical debate about “the right to die.” The US Constitution has been stretched in the famous Roe vs. Wade ruling, which made abortion legal in this country, by finding a guaranteed “Right to Privacy.” But assisted suicide, which is obviously also a private decision and should, therefore, enjoy the same guaranteed right, is shunned and for the most part outlawed. Yet, objectively in either case a physician is involved who terminates the existence of a human being, albeit at different stages of development. Is this rational? No; it’s simply a leftover struggle with religious faith which we don’t know how to properly handle.

I have been mentioning these examples only to demonstrate how intertwined what we regard as knowledge and as faith really are. Let us now examine them separately and ask again: How do we “know” what we think we know? In general, we accept something as knowledge because it fits with expectations and follows the cause and effect rule. In addition there is obvious habituation because I know that right now I am typing these letters on a keyboard rather than, for instance, playing tennis. This is what one might call instinctive knowledge which is accepted without question by our mind. But there are exceptions where we can have the same certainty of knowledge but the thought that accompanies this conviction is mistaken.

In the August 26, 2004 essay “Perceptions of Reality” I had already mentioned a life altering experience which brought me face to face with the questions whether knowledge always reflects reality and what is reality? In view of the media frenzy on Near Death Experiences (NDEs) during the late 1970s I had published my views in the medical literature in 1980 and am discussing them more fully in the Chapter: “What is Truth?” in the book on Jesus. It is of relevance there because Pilate’s question to Jesus, as reported in the Gospel of John, deserves a thoughtful answer.

Briefly; in 1953 I had to undergo surgery for a lesion in the right upper lobe of the lung which had been regarded by the radiologist as “probably metastatic” Prior to being lifted onto the operating table I quietly prayed that if the lesion were to be indeed a metastasis I’d be allowed to die on the table. A few more months of misery and burden for my young wife were not a fate to relish. This unique set of circumstances and mindset is important for what followed. At some point during objective unconsciousness from anesthesia I experienced a sensation of tremendous bliss and the knowledge, “It was a metastasis, I am dead, I am free.” It was the most profound experience of my entire life and the mentioned thought was not “belief” but absolute certainty; conviction. Imagine my surprise and dismay when I opened my eyes saw Martha leaning over the bedrail and all I could say was: “let me die, let me die.” This request was totally incomprehensible to her because she was happy to have her husband back even in such bad shape as he objectively was at that moment.

This experience taught me a fundamental lesson which has not yet been incorporated into mainstream thinking. There is a massive difference between subjective and objective knowledge and that we have no right to infer from what we see in another person at a given moment what that person experiences at the same time. What is the essence of human life? Consciousness of self! This consciousness is obviously preserved during sleep in dreams and can be present in a person who is “unconscious” for medical reasons. In medical practice we have what is called the Glasgow scale which provides for the distinction of different levels of unconsciousness and coma. The scale has prognostic value but we don’t appreciate that “level of consciousness” applies only to reactivity to the outside world. That the person can be fully conscious to his inner world, as in the above mentioned example, is not taken into consideration because we have no means to objectify subjective thought processes.

There are other important lessons in this example for our understanding of what we regard as knowledge. One is that emotions and accompanying thought content need not have the same validity. All of us know that dreams are real while we dream but are revealed as dreams only after we wake up. In the dream we can perform feats which we are unable to do in waking life and simply accept this as a fact at the time, while we know upon awakening that these were fantasies. This same sense of “reality” will pervade us in the process of dying and regardless of what the content of our thoughts will tells us, including that we are now dead, we are not dead to ourselves, even if we clearly appear so to others. Subjective consciousness, which is even more important to us than objective consciousness, i.e. measurable by others, can be retained for some time after the last expiration. We don’t know for how long but that is irrelevant because time has no meaning in these spheres. The sense of time which results from perceived changes is simply absent. Since there is no “waking up,” as in the dream, and we are unable to experience subjective unconsciousness, as exemplified by dreamless sleep, we are actually immortal to ourselves, albeit not to others. Therefore, regardless of what the content of subjective consciousness is: be it one’s vision of heaven, hell, limbo or whatever, accompanied by the conviction of having died, that conclusion is illusory because whenever there is consciousness there is life. True death, namely complete absence of awareness cannot be experienced; it is a contradiction in terms. When one knows this, and incorporates this knowledge into one’s life, death has truly lost its sting. Therefore, one can start working on ones daily conduct to keep it as much as possible free from fear, hate and greed, because these emotions may well come to the fore as our last conscious thoughts. But since we are mortal for and to others we can help our “loved ones” not to excessively grieve for us and we can also make arrangements that our physical absence will cause only a minimum of hardship on them.

All of these aspects flow from rational thought processes and do not require faith or belief in whatever kind of afterlife which may or may not exist. The important lesson is to keep the difference between subjective and objective knowledge in mind. Nevertheless, this difference bears further examination. In the previously mentioned article on NDEs I made a distinction between: subjective reality, shared subjective reality and objective reality. With other words: subjective reality is that knowledge only a given individual is privy to. Shared subjective reality is our common experience of this world which is based on the normal structure and functions of our brain, which allow us to agree that a mountain is not an ocean and a tree is not a rabbit. It can also be called “experiential reality.”  A person who would insist on the opposite would be either be regarded as a deliberate liar or mentally ill. Objective reality is measurable by an independent observer and its pursuit is the goal of science.

This was as far as my thinking in the late 1970s had led me to: There is knowledge which may or may not be spurious, depending on the occasion, and there is faith which the scientist stays away from because it can’t be objectified and is thereby relegated to the realm of metaphysic and religion. The unspoken assumption was that the one is valid, while the other is speculation and never “the twain shall meet.” The intervening thirty years have made it clear, however, that this simple dichotomy was an oversimplification because “objective science” also requires a subject – the observer. Whatever phenomena are recorded, even with the most sophisticated instruments, have to be “interpreted” by that observer. Even if the same result is obtained by different observers, who have used the same instrumentation, their interpretation will still be subjective because they are processed by human brains, which allow only certain conclusions which are based on past information. We are, therefore, still in the realm of “shared subjective reality” and as some physicists nowadays admit, true “objective reality” is unavailable to the human being.

This is where faith comes in. But before discussing this aspect further let me make one more distinction which will be helpful. There is not only subjective and shared subjective reality but the content of that reality can either deal with the material properties of this world – those which our sense organs allow us to perceive or, esoteric –what is apprehended directly by the mind, as for instance my “death” experience. With this as background we can now examine what is Faith? Its fundamental nature is unknown but its content can be either directed toward the material world or an existence which is not accessible to most of us but has been experienced by mystics, some of whom have gone on to found religions. Since the latter aspect is even more difficult to deal with it will be discussed in a separate article dealing with religion and the religious experience. This essay will limit itself to the secular aspects of faith because they cut across individual differences and can readily be verified.

In last month’s installment I made the apodictic statement that “Faith is innate, we are borne with it and how we use it is part of our free will.” Let me now illustrate from a personal example why I believe this statement to be true. I have used it, as well as another example, in the previously mentioned chapter on Truth of the Jesus book. In the beginning of December 1957 I took the Specialty Board Examination in Psychiatry and Neurology. In as much as it was held at New York’s Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital I thought we might use the occasion to stay for a few days with Martha’s mother and give her the opportunity to enjoy her grandchildren. Our daughter, Krista, was five years at the time while Peter was one month shy of his third birthday. After the exam Martha and I took the children on a tour of midtown Manhattan which included a visit to Macy’s Santa Claus. The line was short and when it was our turn little Peter ran up to that man hugged him and cried out “My Santa Claus!” It was an unforgettable demonstration of innate childhood faith and innocence of which his older more world-wise sister deprived him some time later on.

While faith has been given numerous definitions of a religious as well as secular variety I like to look at it ontogenetically and regard it as the “the firm unquestioned expectation that what is hoped for will come to pass.” In the young child doubt does not exist, it matures gradually under the influence of the environment. If the latter is benign, faith, or trust in the natural goodness and truthfulness of human beings, will be fostered. On the other hand if the environment is adverse, either through maltreatment by family members or others, faith will first fall victim to doubt and in adult life will turn into skepticism or cynicism. These terms are not synonymous, in spite of what the Microsoft Word Thesaurus states. The skeptic listens to a viewpoint he does not readily agree to but is willing to examine it for its potential value, while the cynic rejects it out of hand as nonsense. While the skeptic behaves rationally, the cynic shows not only his bias and ignorance but also his unwillingness to learn. While skepticism is to be welcomed there should be no room for cynicism.

Since, as has been mentioned, faith is innate it can never be lost. Those individuals who have “lost faith” in regard to religious matters have simply redirected it to secular aspects and then we see the adoration which is showered on human beings and political ideologies. There were “true believers” among Nazis as well as Communists whose faith was just as strong in Hitler, Lenin, or Stalin for instance, as other people place in religious figures.

What does “faith” mean? Basically it is simply placing our trust in another human being, society, or an ideal which will lead to a hoped for outcome. Without trust society cannot function. But because human beings are fallible our trust is, at times, misplaced and this is why some of us who recognize this fact place our trust, faith, in a “higher power.”  There is, however a hitch. This “higher power” has to go through our individual, biased, brains to reach us and actions based on the perceived advice may still be wrong. A perfect example of this fact is our immediate ex-President. When asked, whether or not he had discussed the planned Iraq invasion with his father, he replied that he was listening to a higher father. I don’t doubt that George W Bush meant well, even with this statement, but in fact he had listened to the wrong people. If he really had consulted with the Holy Spirit he would have been confronted with questions such as: How many people are you going to kill when you do this? How many people will be forever maimed? How much property will be destroyed? Mesopotamia, Iraq, is one of the cradles of our civilization, what treasures are going to be forever lost? Are you considering only what benefit or losses Americans will suffer or also those of the Iraqi people whom you supposedly want to free from tyranny? If ex-President Bush had really pondered these questions with a spiritual advisor, including his father, who surely had the best interest of his son at heart, the ill-advised invasion would never have been taken place. Instead we could have concentrated our efforts to build up Afghanistan’s society which was waiting for our help at that time and we would not be fighting a war there now eight years later, with an outcome that is still uncertain.

Human knowledge is and always will be partial and fallible; therefore faith, based on this knowledge, is not necessarily trustworthy either. This is a fact of life we have to recognize and live with. But mere recognition and slothful resignation is not the answer either. Neither is sloppy language which leads to sloppy thinking. Again the Iraq war is a perfect example. Our politicians who wanted the war relied on “intelligence,” which they now claim was in part faulty. But it wasn’t “intelligence” in the first place. It was “information,” a set of data; some of it was correct others faulty, which were presented by the misnamed CIA and other sources, to the leadership. It was their task to intelligently assess the information and to sift fact from fancy. Intelligence is not just data gathering; it is required for correct interpretation of the material. But here we are again at the intersection of faith and knowledge. Since we never have full information especially in regard to the outcome of a given decision we take a “leap of faith” and then hope for the best. This is how world politics proceeds.

On the other hand our secular faith in the continued onward and upward material progress had left some of us unfulfilled and has come under even greater question by America’s inappropriate response to the 9-11-2001 tragedy and its aftermath which we are currently chewing on. That this feeling of disenchantment with material life is actually quite prevalent in most of the “Western World” was driven home to me by a recent article in the Viennese Die Presse, written by Peter Henisch, and sent to me by my friend Professor Petsche.

The title of the article, which does not lend itself to direct translation, was: Was fehlt uns Doktor? When a patient sees a physician with some vague complaint he may ask: what’s wrong with me doctor? While this is an approximate translation it does not reflect the key word “fehlt” which means “missing” or “absent.” In other words: what is absent in our lives which makes us feel as miserable as some of us do? Henisch wrote: “Interest in religion: No thanks. Interest in religious topics: Yes please.” He continued with, that the hunger for spiritual sustenance was intended to be stilled by two recent books about who Jesus really was. These had quite divergent contents, which he discussed subsequently. I shall now translate some key excerpts from his introduction. This will not be entirely literal but reflect what Henisch would have said had he written for Americans.

 

“Religion is pretty much out; interest in religious topics is totally in. When one reads the newspapers of the past weeks one can find evidence for both of these statements. This is a correct diagnosis at least for the so-called Western World.  Diagnosis sounds a little like a visit to the physician, but perhaps this analogy is useful as a working hypothesis. Was feht uns Doktor? The physician sits behind his computer and doesn’t give us an answer. He puts in data; as is usual nowadays. We are devoid of meaning, of consolation. We are missing a perspective . . . .

There is something in the air, a need one feels unless one is totally insensitive. It is the need to concern oneself with questions, which although eternal, we have never adequately answered. This pertains to religion as well as literature which unites the two domains. We can probably never answer these questions to complete satisfaction but it is important to keep posing them. Where we are from, where are we going and what’s the point of it all? Is our life, our history only a bad joke, a half-way successful satire, an irony bordering on cynicism, or is there a deeper meaning? Man does not live by Big Macs alone. Religion has ceased to be the opium of the people for quite some time; it has been replaced by consumption.” 

 

 

The books Henisch discussed don’t answer these questions but this is precisely why I wrote the Jesus book which, hopefully, will be on the market in the fall. It is noteworthy that I have expressed Henisch’s question as,

 

 

. . .  the privilege of the human being is a degree of free will and upon that depends our Weltanschauung (how we view the world). As materialists we may chose to believe Macbeth’s conclusion that life is “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing,” or we can see ourselves as having been granted an opportunity to grow in mental and spiritual stature. The choice is an individual one but this is how we shape our karma (consequence of all our thoughts and actions) for the rest of our life.”

 

 

As mentioned earlier an exposition of the esoteric aspects of our lives will be taken up in a subsequent issue which will also provide an answer to Peter Henisch’s question. For now I would like to conclude with one more observation. The Greek New Testament term for “faith” is “pistis.” This led me to, what is called in neurology, a “clang association,” “piston.” Although the two words are not etymologically related I believe that they bear a close relationship because faith is the piston that drives the will and thereby directs subsequent behavior in a given direction. Its content can and does change over one’s lifetime but its existence should not be denied. Even suicide, which at times is regarded as due to a loss of faith, can still be motivated by the faith that an apparently unendurable situation can thereby be terminated. This leads one to conclude that faith should be directed to a better way of dealing with the vicissitudes of life – one which is not destructive and mechanistic but constructive and organic.







September 1, 2009

OBAMA’S REALITY CHECK

            August is usually a quiet month in American politics. Congress and the president go on vacation and the media entertain us with trivia. But this year was different. With the recession having shown some slight signs of easing, at least for Wall Street which seems to have started to enter its boom cycle again, the proposed health care legislation moved to front and center of the public debate. While the substantive issues are clearly important, it has been politicized to such an extent that any agreement between Democrats and Republicans has become unlikely when Congress convenes again in September. The atmosphere has been poisoned to such an extent by the media and town hall meetings that the issue has become a referendum on President Obama. His detractors now see health care as the tool to discredit his administration and pave the way to a Democratic defeat in next year’s Congressional elections.

Let us now look at how Obama allowed himself to be maneuvered into this impasse. One clue resides in his character and the other in America’s political system. For his character and what he really intended to do we have his own words in “The Audacity of Hope.” In the Prologue to the book while talking about how age tends to reveal physical and mental flaws, he wrote, “In me, one of those flaws had proven to be a chronic restlessness; an inability to appreciate, no matter how well things were going, those blessings that were right in front of me.” This restlessness propelled him, within the short span of four years, from an unknown junior senator to the presidency. When we use instead of the word “restless,” “impatient,” it becomes clear that this very American character flaw may result in political failure.

As mentioned repeatedly in theses pages when Obama took the oath of office the country faced unprecedented staggering problems: Two wars that cannot readily be terminated but drain the already depleted treasury; the potential threat of further terrorist attacks; a massive fiscal deficit; the economy teetering on the verge of collapse; unsustainable health care and Social Security costs; an inadequate educational system; and a world that had become increasingly suspicious of America’s motives. All of these problems were to be solved by the mantra of “change” and the hope that through sheer strength of personality the diverse factions which make up our country would somehow see the need to cooperate under an enlightened leadership which steers a rational course. “A more perfect Union” was the goal that has become ever more elusive with each passing month. 

The gauntlet was thrown down immediately after the inauguration by Rush Limbaugh, the widely listened to radio and TV commentator, who declared unabashedly, “I want Obama to fail.” When he was taken to task for this stance, he modified the statement to “I want his policies to fail,” which is obviously a distinction without a difference. When the Obama administration then tried to tackle most of the problems listed above essentially simultaneously, with the only available remedy namely massive deficit spending and some government oversight of the banking and auto industry, it provided the fuel for the fire which broke out in regard to the health care legislation. The final straw was when the Congressional Budget Office, which is non-partisan, projected that the plan which was under consideration would cost approximately $1.6 trillion over the next ten years. This expense would be added to the $9 trillion of the current ten year federal deficit projection.

These are clearly figures which stagger the imagination but, as mentioned in a previous issue (Uncharted Waters. April 1, 2009), are quite meaningless. Economists could not predict the 9/11 tragedy and that the 2000 surplus would morph within one year into ever increasing deficits. But figures of this type do have a purpose. They can be used to scare the public. Nevertheless apart from the projected cost, the bill that was supposed to have been voted on had indeed significant other problems. When one considers what the bill was actually supposed to accomplish it is clear that the administration had left itself wide open to justified, as well as purely polemical, attacks.

Before examining the major bones of contention of that bill let us first look objectively of what is wrong with the way the current health insurance system works. First of all we have again a misnomer. We don’t insure health, nobody can do that, we want the cost of illness to be covered by insurance. This is just another typical example of the euphemisms which pervade our society and prevent straight thinking. Medical care costs have risen astronomically over the past years. This was mainly due to more sophisticated technology, rising medical and malpractice insurance rates as well as medication costs. Insurance carriers have raised their premiums to an extent that catastrophic illness can now bankrupt families. In addition the last quarter of the previous century saw the rise of “Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs),” another euphemism for limited insurance against illness. The reason why I am saying “limited” is because the particular organization one joins allows one to receive care only by participating physicians and hospitals, rather than the institution one might really want to have take care of oneself in case of a complicated serious problem. Not only do these HMOs limit the choice of physicians but also the diagnostic procedures a given member may receive as well as the type of medications. Their “bureaucrats” already act as gate keepers to keep the HMO profitable rather than the patient as healthy as possible. This aspect is completely overlooked by the opponents of the reform bill who claim vociferously that the Obama plan will, through “socialized medicine,” deprive us of our free choice of physicians. For many, if not most of us, this option no longer exists anyway.

In addition to these private insurance carriers there is for veterans the government Veterans Administration (VA) system; for disabled children and some indigents Medicaid, and for everyone above the age of 65 Medicare. With other words we already have three government supplied medical insurance programs, all of which have problems of their own. Leaving the VA aside, Medicaid is the most problematic. Costs are split between the federal government and the various states; it ensures indigents against certain illnesses but not all and pays physicians and hospitals such a pittance that a considerable number refuse to participate because every patient they see is a financial loss. Medicare is, as has been mentioned, automatic and cannot be refused even if one has private insurance. For the elderly population, which is the one most in need of medical services, we now have the anomalous situation that two bureaucracies do the billing if you have private insurance through your former employer’s pension plan. Medicare as the primary provider pays for some services then the bill goes to the secondary insurance which may or may not pick up the rest of the charges. As a result of my hip problem I now get most every other day form letters from Medicare which assure me that “This is not a Bill” but an “Explanation of Benefits” and I have no idea what to do with them. They are frequently vague, contain a lot of “$0s paid” but do provide the phone number to call if one has questions. To anyone who tries to do so one has to wish good luck with maneuvering through “menus” before one gets a human being who may or may not be helpful.

Martha and I are among the fortunate few who have excellent secondary insurance as part of my retirement package from the State of Michigan. It is administered through Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Michigan and out of pocket expenses have so far been minimal. In addition the insurance is “portable” and we can truly go to the physician and hospital of our choice anywhere in the country. This is what should be and is an example what “government” (in our case State Government, but also the Federal Government for its employees) can supply.

Yet this option is not available to the majority of our fellow citizens because everything depends on the plan the employer chooses and this is where cost cutting measures come to the fore. Why chose the best and most expensive plan when you can get by with the minimum HMO? This is another area where unbridled capitalism directly impacts on our lives and we can do absolutely nothing about it. If one happens to be self-employed one can buy private insurance but there are restrictions. A pre-existing condition such as diabetes or epilepsy might either lead to refusal or to premiums which are clearly unaffordable. In addition, as mentioned above, premiums have steadily gone up over the years and middle class incomes cannot keep up with them. As such approximately 46 million (the number is hotly disputed) forego insurance and simply show up in emergency rooms when the need arises. Under these circumstances the hospitals have to absorb the costs for services which might have been handled for considerably less by a private physician.

In view of this situation health care reform has been discussed at least since the first years of the Clinton administration. Hillary was tasked to achieve it but her efforts came to naught. It was noted at the time that the plan was hatched in secret and Congress was expected to sign on the dotted line. The insurance companies rebelled; the media roundly denounced it; TV ads saturated the public with fears of “government take over” and “socialized medicine.” All of this led not only to a defeat for improved medical insurance but also the Republican Congressional victory in the midterm elections of 1994.

This was the example Obama was confronted with and why he decided to do the opposite. He would provide Congress with broad guidelines and let the House and Senate fill in the details. The intent was that the plan would be affordable, available to all and portable (not dependent on employment and free choice of physician anywhere in the country). The costs were to be largely covered by eliminating waste and streamlining bureaucracy. This was regarded as relatively easy to accomplish. With a Democrat majority in the House and Senate passage was expected before the summer recess. But when the House Bill emerged it covered more than 1000 pages and was so complex that hardly anyone who is not a lawyer could understand it. Since the administration knew that any delay in passage would be fatal they tried to ram it though the House but when the price tag appeared even some Democrats got cold feet. Congress adjourned and the media had a field day all throughout August.

Apart from the cost two aspects became the rallying cry for the disenchanted Republicans. One was the so-called “public option,” an insurance system run by the government for those individuals who could not afford the private premiums and the other which was termed the “Death Panels.” The “public option” was derided as “socialized medicine” and government take over of the health care system. Private insurers, it was claimed, would no longer be able to compete on a level playing field and as such it was inimical to a free capitalist society. This was a repeat of what had been called Hillarycare in the Clinton administration and has now been changed to Obamacare. The “death panels” were, however, a new wrinkle and termed as such by the ex-Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, who is apparently already running for the presidential elections in 2012. They have an interesting history and the topic requires an open and intelligent discussion.

The mentioned House Bill had a provision which allowed Medicare payments for a consultation with a physician about “end-of-life care.” If an elderly person had previously wanted to do this, it would have been an out of pocket expense. It is well-known that the major medical expenses occur within the last six months of life during terminal illnesses. From society’s point of view significant savings could be achieved if terminally ill patients, who may or may not be mentally competent, were to receive compassionate care but not extraordinary measures of life support such as artificial ventilation and feeding. The proposed bill intended to make the elderly aware of what options are available to them by making what is called a “living will;” giving a trusted family member “durable power of attorney;” and acquainting them with local hospice rather than hospital care. The consultation, as envisioned in the Bill, would be voluntary and initiated by the patient. After five years, or drastically changed life circumstances, another one would also be paid for by Medicare.

From a purely rational point of view this provision is good for the patient as well as society. All or at least most of us have a “Last Will and Testament,” which informs our heirs what to do with our property, and some of us have even bought burial lots and made arrangements for the funeral. Yet, when it comes to the choice how we want to be treated when accident or illness deprive us of our decision making capacity this aspect of our lives seems to be out of bounds; even for discussion. Every intelligent person ought to ask him/herself to what extent resuscitative measures should be undertaken after cardiac or respiratory arrest. Does one really want to linger unconscious in a hospital bed on a ventilator with tubes in every natural and artificial orifice and when what was previously called “the friend of the aged,” pneumonia, arrives it be combated with antibiotics? But this is what happens in America on a daily basis.

Let me relate a relevant personal anecdote. In the 1980s when I was in charge of the Clinical Neurophysiology Laboratory of Harper Hospital in Detroit one of my duties was to certify that in a given comatose patient “brain death” had occurred because its electrical activity had ceased. Once I did so physicians and nursing personnel could tell the family that the patient had died. Permission was then given to “pull the plug.” The respirator was disconnected and the patient was officially declared dead. There was usually no problem, but in one instance the son adamantly refused for several days to give the requested permission. The reason was that he still wanted to get the father’s end of the month Social Security check! I don’t know if he really needed it or whether it was pure greed but the fact remains that this is what can happen if a person has not previously made the appropriate legal arrangements about end-of-life care. The Terry Schiavo case, which has been discussed previously,(Pain and Suffering. April 1, 2005) ) is, of course, another example.

Without such a declaration one becomes part of what I call “the system.” It operates on laws of its own and these are geared nowadays mainly to do everything possible to avoid a law suit. “Standards of Practice”, which may or may not be reasonable have evolved for every conceivable contingency and unless these are adhered to, the malpractice lawyers would have a field day. The recent hip surgery is a case in point. I have a living will, Martha has durable power of attorney for me and I not only supplied the hospital with copies of the forms but also told the anesthetist and the surgical personnel before lying down on the operating table that in case of cardiac or respiratory arrest no resuscitative measures were to be taken. In addition there had earlier been an animated discussion with the surgeon over the pre- and postoperative “standard of care protocol.”

Surgical procedures can be followed by blood clots in the legs, due to immobility, and the Society of Orthopedic Surgeons has decreed that patients have to be placed on the blood-thinner “warfarin,” which is its generic name. The drug is relatively expensive but in addition, and this is the main problem, unpredictable in its effect. The same dose may not prevent clotting in one patient and can produce increased bleeding in another. As a physician I was aware of this problem and I also knew that aspirin is a very effective blood-thinner without leading to increased bleeding. When I discussed this with the orthopedic surgeon he told me that he was obliged to follow the official recommendations but I was equally adamant that I would go with the aspirin after, rather than before, the operation. I could not fathom why I should encourage bleeding by taking warfarin prior to an operation which by necessity will lead to increased bleeding. As a physician I could discuss these aspects rationally with my colleague the orthopedist, he could put it in writing, to protect himself and everybody was happy. After three weeks when the staples came out the nurse was surprised to see how clean the wound was; there was none of the bruising and swelling she usually sees at that time in other patients. I couldn’t help but feel that the aspirin rather than warfarin regimen, which I had opted for, may well have played a role in better healing. Yet, the warfarin discussion was an option which was available to me, as a physician; the average patient might not have such a choice. Treating physicians have to go by the book, but the studies which lead to the dogma of “Standard of Care” for a given condition may not be all that reliable. This aspect was in part covered in Faith and Science (June 1, 2009).

Everyone needs to know, therefore, that once you enter “the system” you have given up significant portions of your autonomy and the sooner you can leave “the system” for your home the better off you are. In my situation I limited the stay to a total of 48 hours. This was both cost-effective and provided peace of mind as well as rest that would be unavailable in the hospital where nurses are obliged to check your vital signs during the night when all you want is to sleep. These are today’s realities which the “health care reform” is supposed to fix.

One would think that from a few paragraphs which basically allowed payment for “end-of-life discussions” with your physician to Sarah Palin’s “death panels” is a large jump. But not so large if one enters the conservative mindset as expressed on November 23, 2008, barely three weeks after Obama’s victory at the polls. On that day the Washington Times (a conservative daily newspaper) published an Editorial with the headline “No 'final solution,' but a way forward.” The author linked Hitler’s euthanasia program, which was enacted at the beginning of  WWII, with this country’s abortion issue, which the author feared would become worse as a result of Obama’s election. Hitler’s team of physicians and administrators which decided who could be euthanized, as being a drain on society, became Sarah Palin’s “death panel.” The phrase showed remarkable viability in spite of the fact that it has absolutely no bearing on the plan as considered by the House. Palin, mother of a child with Down syndrome, was, apaprently struck by a quote from  Rev. Briane K. Turley in the mentiond Editorial, which stated,

 “Here in North America, since the 1970s, we have discovered a far more efficient means of weeding out those with disabilities. ’Were God's design for us left unhindered,’ he says, ‘we could naturally expect to welcome 40,000 or more newborn infants with Down syndrome each year in the U.S. And yet we have reduced that number to just under 5,500. These data strongly indicate that, in North America, we have already discovered a new, 'final solution' for these unusual children and need only to adapt our public policies to, as it were, 'cure' all Down syndrome cases."

On August 7 Mrs. Palin published on her Facebook account this comment, “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”

            The issue was then joined by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who was not known to be a firebrand, with a comment on August 14 that, “We should not have a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma.”

            On August 17 Betsy McCaughey (former Lt. Governor of the State of New York) weighed in with an article in the New York Post under the title Deadly Doctors, “The health bills coming out of Congress would put the decisions about your care in the hands of presidential appointees. They'd decide what plans cover, how much leeway your doctor will have and what seniors get under Medicare.”  

These are outright falsehoods and to their credit Palin as well Grassley have subsequently retracted their statements. Nevertheless the fact that a secret program which was initiated in a totalitarian state at the outbreak of WWII is equated with a bill which is discussed in Congress and to be voted on by elected representatives shows the level of hatred which exists in some circles and which is regularly stoked by some radio and TV commentators.

Leaving aside the deliberate political distortions there are two genuine concerns in regard to the insurance issue. One is what type of health care reform plan should be adopted, and what is our society’s attitude towards death? The latter can be summed up in one sentence. Many of us are literally deathly afraid of dying. This seems to be a peculiarly American situation because it does not hold true to the same extent for the other cultures I am familiar with. In our country any and all efforts are frequently made to keep someone alive even in the face of an aged patient with obvious terminal illness. Why should this be so? Theoretically approximately 75 per cent of our citizens are Christian for whom death should present no problem because according to that faith Jesus had died for our sins and if we place our faith in him we will go to our reward. Muslims accept death as the will of God, while Hindus and Buddhists are re-incarnated anyway. Of our approximately 3.6 per cent Jews, and whatever number of atheists, some may have a serious problem because their faith does not allow for an after-life, but they should not dictate policies.

In this area we are clearly at the intersection of faith and politics. While a faith in God, under whatever name, will remove fear, its absence promotes it. Faith in God has been replaced in some quarters by faith in Man, whom we have, however, every reason to distrust as past history has shown. While physicians generally do the best they can, they also know the limits of their art, and medical science is a work in progress. All of us should realize that we live on “death row.” We have not given life to ourselves and we don’t know when this gift will be withdrawn. We should cherish it while we can, but we ought not to cling to it when its purpose has been served. We are part of nature so let nature take its course. When the apple is ripe it falls to the ground and the deer or other creatures eat it. What we are doing with artificial life support is akin to fastening the apple with duct tape to the branch. It will prevent the apple from falling but just leaves it to rot on the tree where it won’t even be healthy for the birds.

Fear of death has been with the human race for millennia and is probably one of the reasons why religions flourished. But one does not necessarily need to subscribe to a specific one; the Stoics of ancient Greece and Rome provided a rational answer. Epictetus (ca. 55-135 AD) wrote,

 

When death appears an evil, we ought to have this rule in readiness, that it is fit to avoid evil things, and that death is a necessary thing. For what shall I do, and where shall I escape it? . . . . I cannot escape from death. Shall I not escape from the fear of death, but shall I die lamenting and trembling? For the origin of perturbation is this, to wish for something, and that this should not happen.

 

 

What conclusion should rational adults draw from the foregoing? Since death is inevitable prepare yourself and your family mentally for it. Don’t live in denial because when you do so you give up your most valued possession, your autonomy. Others will deal with you according to their needs and this may not be what you or your family really wanted. In our day and age a “living will” should be part and parcel of one’s Last Will and Testament and it will be honored by authorities as long as we have an elected rather than despotic government.

What should Obama do now to extricate himself from the mess the health care reform is currently in? First of all he should re-read pages 183-189 of his Audacity of Hope. Let me just quote the first key sentence, “We could start by having a nonpartisan group like the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine (IOM) determine what a basic, high quality health-care plan should look like and how much it should cost.” If Obama had adhered to this idea he might have saved himself a great deal of grief. But under pressure from his supporters and in the belief that his popularity would overcome whatever obstacles his detractors might put in his way he had turned the matter over to Congress, where the process was doomed to fail. His fundamental mistake was the assumption that the American people at large trusted him and thereby his administration. He had not realized to what extent faith/trust in government had already been eroded by previous government actions and that it cannot be restored overnight by well-meant speeches. This message was conveyed loud and clear, in the various town hall meetings that had been conducted by senators and representatives during the past month. In addition Obama had underestimated the intense personal animosity which his victory in November has elicited in some as well as the profound polarization of politics. The center seems to have disappeared in public discourse and those who try to make the voice of reason heard get literally shouted down. Some commentators, even on CNN, can hardly hide their glee when they report on Obama’s falling popularity poll numbers.

There were two other aspects in Obama’s book he might profitably ponder at this time. The mentioned Prologue quote was followed by, “Someone once said that every man is trying either to live up to his father’s expectations or make up for his father’s mistakes, and I suppose that may explain my particular malady as well as anything else.” Yes indeed; Obama is trying to live up to his father’s expectations. But just as his father’s political hopes for Kenya were wrecked by tribal politics, the son’s political future is here being determined by party politics. This is one lesson he needs to take to heart and learn why his father had failed in that respect. The other is the question Obama has raised at the end of the Prologue, “how I, or anybody in public office, can avoid the pitfalls of fame, the hunger to please, the fear of loss, and thereby retain that kernel of truth, that singular voice within each of us that reminds us of our deepest commitments.”

 These are character issues and will determine either success or failure of Obama’s Presidency. What he needs above all in the current climate of lack of trust in government, is that rare virtue: patience. He must not allow himself to be stampeded by either the right or the left into decisions which, once they are made, are irrevocable and may not conform to the best interests of the American people.

In regard to the current health care proposals the Democrats have already dropped the “public option” and the “end-of-life counseling” provision. It seems that in their eagerness to get some type of legislation passed in the fall, further compromises will be made and a Bill will be passed which is likely to compound, rather than solve the problem. Any reform that does not address the excessive profit motive of insurance companies, trial lawyers and the pharmaceutical industry is doomed to fail. I have left out physicians and hospitals because if they charge exorbitant fees, patients will not use them.

Instead of creating new bureaucracies on top of existing ones the government could provide a genuine “public option” for patients who cannot afford or obtain private insurance. Medicaid could be abolished and instead Medicare would cover all patients, regardless of age, who do not have access to private insurance. In the private arena some version of the Blue Cross-Blue Shield model could be made available to everyone and not merely to government employees and its pensioners. The immediate outcry will be, “but we can’t afford that!” The answer to this financial problem will require a re-thinking of our priorities and an awareness of how our government really works instead of how it was intended to work. To explain this to the public, honestly and in simple language, ought to be Obama’s task in the coming weeks and months.







October 1, 2009

CRISIS OF TRUST

            Among all the crises, real and artificially created, there is perhaps none that is more serious and detrimental to our country than the erosion of trust in our institutions. When there is no trust fear reigns and in the June 1, 2009 installment I have commented how fear is deliberately spread in our country to gain political points. The tone was set by ex-Vice President Cheney who chastised President Obama for being lax on national security and thereby inviting further terrorist attacks. This was the opening salvo which has become a virtual barrage of fear mongering by some members of the Republican Party but more importantly, by media personalities. The latter are now driving policies especially in the health care debate which was discussed last month and rages on unabatedly. A recent e-mail dubbed it, “Obama’s Health Scare Plan.”

The issue is still being vigorously debated in Congress, Obama gives speeches and interviews but it is already obvious that whatever legislation is eventually going to be passed, will be saddled with so many amendments which may aggravate rather than solve the problem. Since the president has made health care reform one of his prime political goals he may well sign a piece of legislation that will come to haunt us in years to come.  

Health care is, however, only one of the many aspects of our culture where fear is stoked. This has very practical and dangerous consequences. A recent article in The Salt Lake Tribune pointed out that while the overall economy lingers in recession, gun sales, ranging from handguns to assault weapons, are experiencing an unprecedented boom. Utah, a State of about 2.7 million people, issued about 7,000 permits for concealed firearms in all of 2001 but 56,370 from Jan. 1-Aug. 31 of 2009. Gun sales had remained up to 10,000 for the first five years of this decade but had shown a steady rise thereafter and officials expect to process 70,000 applications next year. Citizens are clearly arming themselves and the question is: what for? There may be individual valid reasons but for the most part these weapons are clearly unnecessary and will unavoidably create more homicides. Since violence, in addition to sex, is the daily fare of our TV programs this outcome is totally predictable. What is one to expect when concealed weapons are now allowed to be taken even to churches?  

While fear has reached in part irrational proportions, trust, which is the glue that must hold a complex society together, is also steadily being eroded. The reason is that we are being lied to by government, institutions, the media, businesses as well as private citizens. The lie has become the biggest problem of our lives and comes in many forms. The most egregious is, of course, the deliberate misrepresentation of the truth as one knows it. This is, however, not necessarily the most common or vicious one. The worst lie is the deliberate withholding of part of the information which is essential to form a correct opinion about a given plan or proposition. I have discussed this aspect previously in the essay on The Great Satan (February 1, 2002), where I pointed out that it was precisely this satanic lie which led to what has been called the original sin and which is re-enacted on a daily basis. It is the precipitous rush towards some expected gain based on information from which an essential element has been deliberately withheld. In this manner the human being’s innate trust is being abused and the fabric of society frayed.

The Bush 43 administration may have done the greatest harm in this respect and the Obama administration has so far not found the courage to confront the most vicious lie of this new century. Obama has inherited two wars and in both instances the reasons given for invading Afghanistan as well as Iraq were not the full truth. While it is today agreed by most that the Iraq war was unnecessary and a mistake, conventional wisdom still has it, that the war in Afghanistan was one of necessity. This war has now been going on for 8 years and our new commander, General Stanley McChrystal, declared that the war cannot be won militarily, but total defeat can be staved off by sending more ground troops to fight the Taliban insurgency. Some of us who have a smattering of history know that Afghanistan has been called the graveyard of empires; as the British found out and subsequently the Soviets. This is the reason why I wrote, in the aftermath of the September 11tragedy, on these pages in October of 2001, that military action against Afghanistan would be a serious mistake because this is precisely what bin-Laden wanted and in order to understand our enemy we need to put ourselves mentally in his shoes.

These statements were correct then and they are still true. The only mistake in that article was my ignorance as to who was really in charge of our country. At that time I still had faith in the wisdom of George W Bush’s advisors without knowing that they were in the neoconservative camp that itched for war with Iraq and only acceded to the Afghanistan route to Baghdad out of expediency. I had also been unaware of previous discussions with the Taliban by Unocal for a proposed gas pipeline through their country and then via Pakistan to the Indian Ocean which they had turned down in August of that year. As such further terror attacks were not needed because we fell, voluntarily, into bin Laden’s trap. I also wrote on November 1, 2001

 

“Deny it as we might the current war against "terrorism" is indeed a religious war of ideas and, as mentioned repeatedly, it cannot be won by bombs or even ground troops in Afghanistan, Iraq or other places around the world. Even if the Taliban were to be defeated and a pro-Western government installed in Kabul, fundamentalist-nationalists would simply melt into the mountains and guerilla warfare, accompanied by terrorist tactics, would continue ad infinitum. It pains me to say so but Osama bin-Laden has so far succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. A $200,000 investment in martyrs (which was recouped anyway by selling assets on the stock market before its expected 9/11 crash) has produced, and continues to produce, billions of dollars of losses to the American economy, fear is being spread by the media and if we are to believe our politicians we are engaged in an Afghan war with a projected duration of several years. Even if we kill bin-Laden now he will be a martyr (which is what he wants anyway) who goes to paradise and his image will spur on other fanatics to continue with his work of creating hatred for America in the Islamic world.”

 

            I don’t claim the gift of prophecy but the outcome of the wrong decisions which were made by the Bush administration immediately after 9-11-2001 was obvious to anyone who is not blinded by passion. As mentioned above General McChrystal realizes the difficulty, if not impossibility, to bring the Afghan war to a victorious conclusion but hopes that with an additional contingent of 40,000 American troops and a strategy that provides security for the Afghan people, the tide can be turned against the Taliban. Past history, including that of the Vietnam War, tends to make this hope illusory. Even 100,000 troops are inadequate to control and hold a country of Afghanistan’s size and geography. In the absence of a stable popular government, indigenous rebels have time and terrain on their side. They know fully well that sooner or later we will have to leave, regardless of what our government may say and they can wait us out while harassing our troops to the best of their ability. They win by just surviving. Since our troop strength will always be inadequate, unless the draft was to be re-instituted, which would be political suicide, we will be forced to continue to rely on air power to hit Taliban strongholds.

            This strategy had proven itself fruitless in Vietnam and has the additional disadvantage that it relies on local informants as to the targets. This not only opens the way to settle scores among rival Afghan factions, with American help, but inevitably causes civilian casualties which are then blamed on us. In addition that country has a warrior ethos where you are supposed to face the enemy and lay your life on the line. But Americans are averse to risking the lives of soldiers and airmen and we are now fighting the air-war largely by drones. The pilot sits in relative comfort in Nevada, flies his mission via “joystick” and then goes home for dinner. While this may well be the war of the future it is bound to be fiercely resented by the recipients of this type of fire power because it will be regarded as cowardice on our part and thereby stiffen the resistance.

            The problem the Obama administration faces in regard to Afghanistan is compounded by the apparently fraudulent election results, which deprive the Kabul government of legitimacy. President Obama, who has no love for this war, but doesn’t know how to end it without ruining his and his party’s political future, has so far decided to what is commonly called “kick the can down the road;” to wait a while before making a decision in regard to troop strength and strategy. This is understandable but akin to hoping for a miracle.

The problem and thereby its potential solution demands a fundamental re-assessment of America’s role in the world of the 21st rather than 20th century. Obama realizes this, as his speech to the UN’s General Assembly and the enlargement of the G8 to G20 showed, but the American media and therefore the public have as yet not caught up with these changed realities. In addition, the American political system which is geared to winning elections, rather than towards long term solutions of problems, does not lend itself to sober reflection on what is possible to achieve, rather than what we would like to happen. As far as Afghanistan is concerned this would mean an educational campaign not just in that country but right here. We need to stop lumping Al-Qaeda with Taliban and simply regard both groups as terrorists who are equally responsible for the 9/11 tragedy. The Taliban are predominantly tribal nationalists, who want to run their patch of the earth their way and have no interest in exporting their ideas beyond possibly Pakistan. While their religious philosophy is unacceptable for us, we can’t change it by bombs. Some accommodation will have to be made in the short term and in the long run religious fundamentalism, of whatever stripe, is not likely to carry the day in a technologically integrated world.

The apparent fear is that if we leave Afghanistan and the Taliban assume power, Al-Qaeda will again have a safe haven from which to instigate 9/11 type attacks. But it has been pointed out repeatedly that this group no longer needs Afghanistan because there are enough other unstable countries around the world from which they can operate. Al-Qaeda likewise will never be defeated by bombs or other military actions and its activities will cease when they are no longer deemed necessary and financial support dries up. In the meantime international cooperative police actions can thwart terrorist plans and even if not fully successful minimize their impact. The key aspect is again not to let irrational fears cloud better judgment. This is, however, precisely the problem. There are some in our country who apparently need this fear in order to enact their own agenda which has little to do with the ostensible reason.

The 9/11 tragedy will continue to serve as the excuse for ill-considered military as well as  other actions (e.g. Patriot Act) and this is why it will continue to haunt us until our media as well as our government, provide us with the full truth about the events of that day. This is still withheld from us. What I have above called “the satanic lie,” the purposeful use of half-truths has become dogma and whoever does not subscribe to it loses membership in polite society as well as potentially his/her job. Yet there is a substantial segment of our society which cannot believe the official version of what happened on 9/11, but is powerless to gets its voice heard. This adds to the distrust of government and the promised transparency which many of us voted for last year has not materialized.

Let me just give a few examples why I believe that we have not been told the full truth about what happened on that fateful day and why a re-evaluation of the official version is urgently needed. Recently a memorial service was held in Somerset County Pa. for the passengers who supposedly took charge of the doomed UA 93 flight and crashed it to the ground. But there is a problem with that story. No plane or bodies had initially been found on the supposed crash site; there were only widely scattered debris over a radius of several kilometers. The coroner, Wallace Miller, has been quoted as saying that "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there were no bodies there.” This disintegration of the plane and its passengers is, of course, highly uncommon, if not unheard of, when airliners crash. While the FBI reported that 95 percent of the plane’s debris had been found, the coroner told a Canadian audience that only eight per cent were recovered, “everything else was vaporized.” The most reasonable explanation, which was denied by the FBI, is that the plane was shot down by one of our military jets to prevent it from crashing into the Capitol or the White House. It seems that Dick Cheney, with or without Bush’s approval had given the order and under the circumstances it was the right thing to do. Yet, the American people are not to be trusted with being able to handle the truth and the disasters of that day seemed to have demanded a heroic ending. The truth about the crash site ought to be presented publicly to the mainstream media by the emergency personnel, including the coroner, who were called to the site on that morning. Once this has been established, if the scenario as outlined above (it comes strictly from Internet sources) is validated, the true cause of the plane’s pulverization should be ascertained. The purpose is not to diminish the plight of the passengers and their possible attempt to take charge of the plane but to clear the air as to what is rumor and what is fact.  

            The same applies to the unprecedented collapse of the Twin Towers within half  an hour of each other and the even more mysterious one of building WTC 7, which had  not been hit by a plane but was partly on fire from falling debris and combustibles within it. People who question what had really happened are relegated by the media to the lunatic fringe as conspiracy theorists. Some are, but there are also reputable scientists who are not and their concerns are not being properly listened to and investigated. One such person is physics Prof. Steven Jones of Brigham Young University, a good Mormon, who is not given to outlandish ideas. As a result of his investigations which suggested that thermite (explosive used for controlled demolitions) may have been present in some of the dust from the Twin Towers’ wreckage, he lost the use of his laboratory, was initially placed on paid administrative leave by the university and he retired thereafter. Another is Prof. David Ray Griffin who had a good name in his field (Philosophy of Religion and Theology) because among other aspects he had been co-editor of Alfred North Whitehead’s Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology, which is the definitive version of that well known philosopher’s epoch making book. The common link between these two professionals is their love of truth and their dislike of being manipulated by falsified data.

Some of these aspects have previously been discussed in the article, “The 9/11Coverup” (October 1, 2006) which was based on then available literature, including Griffin’s book, The 9/11 Commission Report. Omissions and Distortions. Since that time NIST (National Institute for Standards and Technology) issued another “draft” report on August 21, 2008 for which it invited comments. This report stated that, “‘Our study found that the fires in WTC 7, which were uncontrolled but otherwise similar to fires experienced in other tall buildings, caused an extraordinary event,’ said NIST WTC Lead Investigator Shyam Sunder. ‘Heating of floor beams and girders caused a critical support column to fail, initiating a fire-induced progressive collapse that brought the building down [http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/wtc082108.html].’”

USA Today also reported these statements by Dr. Sunder, "The public should really recognize the science is really behind what we have said. The obvious stares you in the face [http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-21-wtc-nist_N.htm].” It may have been obvious to Dr. Sunder and his team but there were a great many dissenting voices and Prof. Griffin published on September 8 of this year a book devoted to this topic entitled, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final official report about 9/11 is Unscientific and False. I have not yet had an opportunity to read the book because amazon.com does not have it in stock and there is a two-three week delay before it can be delivered. This indicates that main-stream publishers were loath to associate themselves with the professor’s views. But Griffin gave a lecture on the NIST report on September 10 and wrote an article on Sept.14 for Global Research which is available on http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15201.

In the article the author accuses NIST of having committed “scientific fraud,” by omitting evidence which did not fit into the preconceived politically desired conclusion. The article provides extensive references and the main gist is that fire alone could not have brought the building down. It is stated that a steel beam had been found which had “melted so severely that it looked like Swiss cheese.” This would have required temperatures which cannot be reached by fire. In addition particles of dust were recovered from the nearby Deutsche Bank Building. The Bank’s insurance company failed to pay for the clean-up claiming that the dust had not come from the WTC collapse. The private firm RJ Lee was, therefore, hired to determine whether or not the dust had indeed come from the WTC destruction. Their report, also available on the Internet, showed unequivocally that the WTC dust had its own “signature,” which differentiated it from other normal “background dust.”  WTC dust contained toxic material and evidence of extremely high temperatures. “Various metals (most notably iron and lead) were melted during the WTC Event, producing spherical metallic particles.” The report also stated, “The presence of lead oxides on the surface of mineral wool indicates the exposure of high temperatures at which lead would have undergone vaporization, oxidation, and condensation on the surface of mineral wool.” Griffin stated that this would amount to temperatures of 1,749 degree C (3,180 F). Fire temperatures vary depending upon the material which is consumed, but it appears that napalm is at the top of the list with about 1,250 degree C. 

It now needs to be mentioned that the official explanation provided by NIST, which is to be taken as the full truth, is actually only a theory. It was mainly based on computer simulations and no actual debris had been examined. NIST pointed out that the steel beams used for WTC7 were not labeled, as had those from the Twin Towers and whatever steel beams were left in the scrap yards that had not already been shipped off to Asia could therefore not be definitively identified. This applies, of course, also to the dust samples. While one can understand NIST’s predicament, relying nearly exclusively on computer simulations for a definitive explanation of the mysterious collapse of WTC 7 leaves us with a problem. Everyone, who has been using such data, knows that all you can get is “virtual reality” and a “model” rather than “what really happened.” The official theory demanded that fire was the culprit and, therefore, the theory had to be proven by simulation. As Griffin pointed out this is not how unbiased science is supposed to proceed.

Since the collapse of the Twin Towers seemed to have been preceded by explosions which sent dust and debris even to New Jersey and that of WTC7 looked to everyone, who does not have preconceived ideas, remarkably similar to an implosion resulting from a controlled demolition many people have had difficulty accepting the official government explanations. A Zogby poll in 2004, after the publication of the 9/11 Commission Report, showed that 49 percent of New York City residents and 41 percent of those in New York State believed “individuals within the US government ‘knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act.’" The margin of error for this poll was 3.5 percent. When nearly 50 percent of New Yorkers, people who were most affected by the tragedy, believe that the government cannot be trusted in this respect we are no longer dealing with the lunatic fringe.

A group that called itself 911 truth.org published on Oct. 26, 2004 on their website that “An alliance of 100 prominent Americans and 40 family members of those killed on 9/11 today announced the release of the 911 Truth Statement, a call for immediate inquiry into evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur.” Focusing on twelve questions, the Statement highlighted areas of incriminating evidence that were either inadequately explored or ignored by the Kean Commission. These ranged from insider trading and hijacker funding to foreign government forewarnings as well as inactive defenses around the Pentagon. The Statement asked for four actions: an immediate investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Congressional hearings, media analysis, and the formation of a truly independent citizens-based inquiry.

Needless to say this was an exercise in futility and exposed the signers of this petition to potential jeopardy of their careers, especially since the statement also contained the words that, “this 9/11 Statement, which calls for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”

The most recent victim of the signatories was Van Jones who had been appointed by the Obama administration to what has been called, “green-jobs czar.” He was forced to resign on September 6, 2009  and Charles Krauthammer wrote on September 11 in the Washington Post that the major problem with Jones’ views was not necessarily his leftist opinions but,

 

He's gone for one reason and one reason only. You can't sign a petition demanding not one but four investigations of the charge that the Bush administration deliberately allowed Sept. 11, 2001 -- i.e., collaborated in the worst massacre ever perpetrated on American soil -- and be permitted in polite society, let alone have a high-level job in the White House. Unlike the other stuff (see above [left wing radicalism]), this is no trivial matter. It's beyond radicalism, beyond partisanship. It takes us into the realm of political psychosis, a malignant paranoia that, unlike the Marxist posturing, is not amusing. It's dangerous. In America, movements and parties are required to police their extremes. . . .  You can no more have a truther (sic) in the White House than you can have a Holocaust denier -- a person who creates a hallucinatory alternative reality in the service of a fathomless malice.”

 

While the petition did not state that the Bush administration had indeed been responsible, although it hinted at it, the intention was to get an honest inquiry to clear the air once and for all. But Mr. Krauthammer’s language is typical for how people tend to get labeled nowadays if one wants to pursue the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, regardless where it leads to. The unwarranted linking to Holocaust denial is also typical.

The 9/11 truth group did indeed have some members who harbored outlandish theories and this is why the scientifically inclined members then formed a separate organization in 2007 which calls itself Scholars for 911Truth and Justice and focuses on scientific research in regard to the government’s claims (http://stj911.org). The key issue in regard to the collapse of the WTC buildings is: whether or not the fires could have destroyed the buildings and send the mentioned clouds of toxic dust far and wide as the government maintains. Prof. Jones did not believe this scenario and his talk before the Utah Valley State College can be viewed at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=964034652002408586#. In his original publication where he reported having discovered highly explosive thermite in a dust sample, which a private citizen from Manhattan had provided him with, he had asked for additional samples from other private individuals and that these should be made available to a group of independent scientists.

This was done and a report has been published in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, 2009, Volume 2 Harrit et al.. It represents a collaborative effort of several scientists including Prof. Jones and the lead author is from the Chemistry Department of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. The pdf version of the article can be downloaded for free and the essence is that four independent dust samples contained evidence for having been exposed to extremely high temperatures, above those of fire. In addition to iron rich microspheres, red/gray chips were present which represented “active, unreacted thermitic material, incorporating nanotechnology, and is a highly energetic pyrotechnic or explosive material.” The article also pointed out that this type of nanotechnology was available in 2001 and that the 221st National Meeting of the American Chemical Society held during April 2001 in San Diego featured a symposium on Defense Applications of Nanomaterials. Dr. Niels Harrit’s interview of April 10, 2009 on Danish TV can be seen on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_tf25lx_3o.

            Since the dust samples were available to non-government scientists one must wonder why NIST had not availed itself of this opportunity which is the point of Griffin’s book and article. The key questions were: 1) why did NIST deny that “molten steel” had been observed not only in the remains of the Twin Towers but also in those of Building 7. 2) Why did the NIST report state unequivocally that “the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery” and that it “did not find any evidence that explosives were used to bring the building down”?

The answer is that scientific integrity had to make way for political expediency. As a former NIST employee stated, “everything had to be approved by the Department of Commerce, the National Security Agency, and the Office of Management and Budget.” As such political pressure was exerted to bring about a desired result and this is not how science should proceed. In addition NIST’s spokesman had not been entirely truthful when he had declared that the mystery of the WTC 7 collapse had been solved because no physical evidence was examined and a follow-up letter based on the Freedom of Information Act brought on August 12, 2009 this reply, “As we mentioned previously, we are unable to provide a full explanation of the total collapse of the upper stories of the tower. . . . . NIST did not conduct tests for explosive residue and as noted above such tests would not necessarily have been conclusive.”

While it is true that tests might have remained inconclusive this is no excuse for not even undertaking them and to declare officially that no explosives had been used. These are the facts which the general public needs to know and ought to make headlines in the papers as well as promote discussions by TV pundits. In their absence trust into the veracity not only of the government but also the mass media will be further, and possibly irreparably, eroded. These questions are absolutely vital and a new investigation into the events surrounding the collapse of the buildings is urgently needed. An international group of scientists, who are free from government control, as well as potential retribution, should be officially empanelled and given the resources to produce an honest report.

The official cover-up in regard to the events of 9/11 persists and there is indeed a conspiracy. Not necessarily by people who want answers but a conspiracy of silence by the government and media, which is compounded by the demonization of those who object to it. 9/11 was not only a crime but it can also be regarded as the “original sin” of this new century. Until it is fully confessed to, it cannot be expiated. As such it will continue to fester, and wrong decisions will again be made with ensuing new disasters. The satanic lie of half-truths must be exposed for what it is if trust in our institutions is ever to be restored. 







November 1, 2009

THE JESUS CONUNDRUM

PART I

 

WHY ANOTHER BOOK

 

            In the July 1 Issue (Faith and Science) I mentioned that a book dealing with an attempt to understand Jesus, as he is depicted in the gospels, was finished and making its rounds to some friends and colleagues for comments and critique. The major suggestion was that the title, “Understanding Jesus. A Physician’s Search for the Truth” did not fully correspond to the contents and ought to be given further thought. This was correct because titles and cover picture are important. Unless they catch the eye a given book will not merit a second glance, let alone be picked from the shelf for closer inspection, regardless of its intrinsic value. This leads at times to such exaggerated titles as The Murder of Tutankhamen, for which there is no evidence; or Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers which turned Mischlinge (individuals where one parent or grandparent had been Jewish) into full blown Jews thereby misleading the public.

Since I have some personal experience in these matters and the mentioned books are supposed to be non-fiction I contacted the authors and they readily admitted that these titles had not been their first choice. They had been selected by the publishers for marketing purposes. It seems that a similar process was also at work in a most recent tome which features on the front of the dust jacket the word God in triplicate and large font with “The Evolution Of” in the center in smaller print. One may now ask: does God evolve? Or do our opinions about the Deity change over the span of recorded history? It is, of course, the latter aspect. Furthermore, of the nearly 500 pages about 400 are devoted to show how the god of Abraham, a tribal deity, had become “the One and Only God.” While the book clearly has merit the near exclusive preoccupation with Yahweh, or El Shaddai as he was originally referred to, is not apparent from the title. Karen Armstrong’s book title: A History of God. The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which had covered essentially the same material about 15 years earlier, was considerably more explicit.

In view of these precedents and for the sake of accuracy Martha and I, jointly with our daughter, put our heads together and came up with a new title, The Jesus Conundrum. Searching for Truth beyond Dogma. This title reflects two realities. One is that a fair number of our educated citizens have become estranged from the official teachings of the Christian churches and thereby don’t really know where to place the figure of Jesus into their mental horizon. As such, he presents us with a conundrum. The second aspect is the emphasis on “truth” and “searching.” Please note that the definitive article was omitted because “the Truth” is a matter of faith and in the realm of religion. The mere fact that numerous religions exist, all of which lay claim to the exclusive truth, is sufficient evidence that it behooves us to be more careful. The truth as it is explored in this book deals with common consensus, which is independent of a given culture or time period. In addition it represents a personal perspective and does not aspire to universal agreement.

Since the book contains over 300 pages and I would like you to read it I shall give in these three essays only the reasons why I think you could profit from doing so. In this first installment I shall deal with why it was written. The second one will discuss the methodology used in trying to reach an answer to Pilate’s immortal question: What is Truth? The third essay will explain why the answer to this question is of fundamental importance for our society. In the current installment, as to why I wrote this book I shall also proceed in three steps. First of all Jesus presents us with a challenge; not only for our personal lives but also for the society we live in and which we are constantly changing. Second: What are the hallmarks of our current society and to what extent do they satisfy human needs. Third: What are the personal aspects that prompted me to write this book and my qualifications for so doing.

 

The challenge

As mentioned above, we know of Jesus but don’t know what to do with him and a fair number of us just want him to go away, as was so beautifully expressed by Dostoyevsky in The Brothers Karamazov, more than a hundred years ago. His name is on our lips but our secular society has difficulty finding a place for him in our hearts and minds. This conundrum is perhaps best exemplified by a Multiple Choice Test, as it might appear in a quiz, and which also will give you an insight into your own personal current attitude.

 

The word Jesus refers to:

a)  An expletive used when one is angered or distressed.

b)  A prophet of God.

c)  A deluded itinerant Galilean preacher and miracle worker.

d)  A dangerous false prophet.

e)  The savior of mankind.

 

The fact that one can phrase a quiz in this manner makes it obvious that Jesus may be the most controversial person who has ever walked on earth. For some he was, and still is, a stumbling block which has to be rejected. For others he is the cornerstone of their belief system. Still others use his name simply as an expletive. Among religious figures he is quite unique because his name arouses emotion which is not the case for Moses, the Buddha, Zarathustra, Muhammad, or others. The Christian claim to his divinity only partially explains the phenomenon. 

Let us look closer at the choices. Choice a) is the most common in popular culture but it may surprise some that choice b) is part of Muslim belief system where he and his mother figure prominently. Muslims diverge from Christians only to the extent that they cannot accept Jesus as “the only begotten Son of the Father” because as stated in the Koran, “Allah has no son.” Full divinity of Jesus, as expressed in the Christian Trinity, is regarded as violating strict monotheism. Choice c) is common among members of our intelligentsia who have become estranged from official religious creeds and have not taken the time to think more deeply about the problem. Choice d) reflects orthodox Jewish belief system and choice e) is, of course, Christian dogma. As such, the questions arise: where does truth reside; and is it possible to come to a modicum of agreement?

 

Aspects of our society

What are some of the reasons why the Son of Man still has not found a home even in so-called Christian countries? Yes; churches profess and extol him but even listening to his teachings, let alone following them, is by and large limited to Sunday church services which are increasingly sparsely visited. There is good reason for this state of affairs. The image of Jesus as presented to us has become so overlaid and encrusted with dogma that a rational understanding, of which we pride ourselves, has become nearly impossible. We regard ourselves as a society guided by reason, facts, and science in which the “supernatural” obviously has no place. Yet when we look at the history of the past century and even the beginning of this one it is obvious that these assumptions are a myth. Instead we are led by crude emotions of greed and fear which are camouflaged under noble names such as patriotism, national security, democracy, freedom and the workings of capitalism. A teacher who admonishes us to deny ourselves for the sake of others has an infinitely more difficult time to find genuine disciples than one who promises material benefits if certain commandments are being followed. This is in essence the difference between Moses and Jesus.

Moses had promised the Israelites a long life and lots of progeny in a land flowing with milk and honey provided that they fully adhered to Yahweh’s commandments. Jesus, on the other hand, promised his disciples a kingdom of God. Its nature was explained only in parables, which even the disciples had difficulty understanding. Furthermore, the kingdom was to be reached by serving others rather than lording over them, and in addition exposing oneself to persecution for the sake of it. This is hardly conducive to gaining worldly aplomb and the fact that the Christian churches succeeded to the extent they did was due initially to a few dedicated souls who were willing to give up their lives for the master and subsequently the compromises that were made for political purposes.

When the human being’s choice is between immediate gratification of appetites and postponing the fulfillment of desires to an indefinite future, the outcome tends to be obvious. Even the Israelites couldn’t adhere to the relatively simple Ten Commandments that were initially imposed on them, as the story of the Golden Calf demonstrated. It was used by Gounod as a ballet in his Faust, which is an operatic masterpiece. Since we are talking about truth the words of Mephisto’s song, as presented below, are one example.

 

Le veau d’or est toujours debout:

On encense sa puissance

D’un bout du monde à l’autre bout!

Pour fêter l’infâme idole,

Rois et peuples confondus.

Au bruit sombre des ecus

Dansent une ronde folle

Autour de son piédestal!

Et Satan conduit le bal!

 

Le veau d’or est vainqueur des dieux;

Dans sa gloire dérisoir

Le monster abjecte insulte aux cieux!

Il contemple, ô rage étrange!

A ses pieds le genre humain

Se ruant, le fer en main,

Dans le sang et dans la fange

Où brille l’ardent métal!

Et Satan conduit le bal!

 

The golden calf always stands high (can also be translated as “is alive”). One worships its power from one end of the world to the other. To celebrate the shameful idol, kings and commoners together, to the murky clink of money dance a mad round about its pedestal, and Satan conducts the ball!

The golden calf is the conqueror of gods; in its grotesque glory the abject monster insults the heavens. It contemplates – oh strange lunacy – the human race stampeding at its feet, weapon in hand, amidst blood and filth (vice) wherever the fiery metal glitters! And Satan conducts the ball!

 

            This is our reality and even our current wars are fought for material gain. The Golden Rule is now interpreted as “he who has the gold rules” and in the form of laissez faire capitalism it has penetrated all walks of life in our country. Adam Smith’s idea of the “invisible hand,” where the pursuit of individual self-interest would unintentionally produce a collective good for society, was again exposed as a pipedream as recently as last year. Self-interest does not provide a check for greed. The crucial knowledge of when enough is enough is elusive and requires wisdom. While unfettered capitalism is one bane of our society, which President Obama tries to curb to some extent, the idea persists that more money will solve our problems.

To understand the folly of our time we need to realize the extent of the hole we have dug for ourselves; the immense amount of debt we have acquired, and the idea that we can borrow ourselves out of debt by incurring further debt. The figures we are dealing with are astronomical and the “science” of economy, which is supposed to be the remedy likewise defies human understanding.  The November 1 issue of The Christian Science Monitor reported that, “Federal debts currently stand at $11.9 trillion, a total that includes reserves of Social Security and Medicare trust funds as well as debt owed by the public in the US and abroad.” It was also noted that, “even at today’s low interest rates servicing the debt costs almost $500 million a day, much of it going to foreign banks and governments.”

The 2010 federal budget amounts to about $3.5 trillion of which about $680 billion are supposed to go to the Department of Defense. To this one needs to add approximately $55 billion for the Department of Homeland Security and $18 billion for the FBI. The additional costs for the CIA and the National Security Agency are undisclosed. The real costs for “defense spending” are, therefore, unknown although we live in a republic rather than an authoritarian state and are supposed to approve each expense item. Compare the available defense related figures with the $99 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services. In spite of the fact that the Cold War is over, defense spending has steadily risen. An article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs has pointed out that in 1960, at the end of the Eisenhower administration but in presence of a hostile nuclear armed Soviet Union, defense spending amounted to $265 billion in today’s dollars. So; where are our priorities? Gounod had it right: Satan conduit le bal!

In addition to the unsustainable debt we are incurring as individuals, as well as a nation, there is the problem of fragmentation and dehumanization of our society. On the military side hardly anyone gives any thought to the consequences of the fact, which I have mentioned last month, that we are now conducting our air-war in Afghanistan and Pakistan largely by drones which are remote-controlled from sites in the US. We are thereby telling the world: our lives are precious but yours are readily expendable. Civilian losses are merely “collateral damage” for which we are willing to pay some money. Human beings have become a commodity to which a price tag can be attached. This type of thinking cannot bode well for our attempts to convince especially the Muslim world that the example we set should be followed.

In civilian life corporate greed, which frequently cares nothing about the well being of the people in their company, has become the main fact of life. Profit is the overarching goal and companies have become commodities that are being traded as if they were lifeless objects. Their workers can be fired at any moment because in order for the top brass to make more money the work force needs to be “down-sized.” The 1987 film Wall Street was a typical example and the situation has only gotten worse since then.

While people have always aspired to the American dream of homeownership and a degree of freedom from material worries the changes that have taken place in our society since I first set foot on these shores in 1950 are truly astounding. At that time America still regarded itself officially as a Christian country. At Christmas time there were crèches on public property. Everybody knew what marriage meant and the idea that it needed a legal definition and possibly even a constitutional amendment would have been laughed at. Children recited the pledge of allegiance in school and no one took offense that it contained the words “one nation under God.” Likewise, the oath which was administered at court proceedings did not only contain the promise to tell “the truth, the full truth and nothing but the truth” but also the additional ending “so help me God.” If anybody had asked me what Hanukkah was he would have gotten a blank stare and even Jews didn’t celebrate it to any extent. The word holocaust existed only in the Bible in spite of the fact that this crime against humanity was in the recent past and Europe was still full of camps housing DPs (displaced persons). Israel was a state like any other. When late, in the Suez War, it transgressed its assigned borders the Eisenhower administration took its government to task and the spoils of war had to be returned.

What has happened in the meantime came about so gradually that it went practically unnoticed. Under the banner of strict separation of church and state atheistic Jews have fought and won a series of court battles. This was to lead not to freedom of but freedom from religion. I have documented some of these in The Moses Legacy. The result was that the Christian majority gave way, step by step, to Jewish demands. It is true, of course, that these measures were not taken by Jews only for Jews but were supposed to benefit all. Nevertheless Jewish secularism has clearly been the winner with Christians steadily losing ground. Even the Catholic Church had to make concessions in its liturgy to avoid the constant accusation of anti-Semitism. It is not polite to speak of Jewish power in our country yet it pervades all walks of life from culture to politics. “Fear of the Jews,” of which the gospels speak, is not a fantasy but a reality. We cannot even pursue an independent foreign policy at this time which is not approved by our homegrown Zionists. While Eisenhower could order Ben Gurion to return the Sinai to Egypt, Obama cannot even make Netanyahu desist from building further settlements on Palestinian soil.

While crass materialism has come to dominate public life, individuals are increasingly looking for some answers to the question of meaning which elude us. This has given rise on the one hand to a spate of books on atheism and on the other to renewed interest in esoterics. Books and movies of the latter genre are more common and doomsday scenarios are abundant on TV shows. The Apocalypse, or more precisely the Book of Revelation by St. John, also has become immensely popular and I have discussed it previously under the title The Unholy Alliance (May 1, 2002). Now even Nostradamus’ quatrains are regularly milked on the History Channel to show that he has predicted the arrival of the third antichrist. Napoleon and Hitler shared the honor of this title for the 19th and 20th century respectively. The current doomsday date, with or without the subsequent arrival of the kingdom of God, is December 21, 2012. A once in thousands of years celestial alignment is supposed to take place and this is said to coincide with the end of the Mayan calendar. If you “google” that date you will be amazed at what you find.

While these are some of the reasons for writing the book, it also represented closure of unfinished business. In The Moses Legacy I have discussed the foundations of Judaism and its impact on our society but could deal with Christianity in only a limited manner. A more detailed exposure of the fundamental differences beween the two belief systems, which are glossed over by the term Judeo-Christian tradition, became necessary. In addition there was an even more personal aspect which can best be stated as an attempt to express my gratitude to Jesus for his help throughout a long, eventful and turbulent life. The idea was born under the most unlikely circumstances and started with a dream. Not the Martin Luther King type of dream, but the nocturnal event which is part of our physiology. It occurred during a sailing trip in the Caribbean where I was island hopping on a forty footer with a friend who owned the boat and his friend, a lady pediatrician. The weather was perfect, our little crew of three most compatible, and life could not be better. It was one of those rare days when you truly have no worries. God is in heaven and there is peace on earth.

During the night I dreamt that it was late afternoon on Christmas Eve and I discovered to my dismay that I had not bought a single present for the various family members. It was a disaster. “Where am I going to get gifts now at the very last minute?” was the worried thought. But immediately came the next one, “What are we really celebrating?” “Jesus’ birthday, of course.” “But what can I give Jesus? He has everything he could possibly want?” The answer came back, “Souls!” Yes indeed; and if this book can help even a single soul to understand Jesus and his message better it has fulfilled its purpose. Just as in my scientific publications, the purpose of this book is therefore: to set the record straight; to separate fact from fancy and attempt to arrive at a cohesive world view.

 

Qualifications

One may now ask why I, a physician, would want to tackle this topic when there are literally hundreds of thousands of books about Jesus by eminent authorities extant, including one from the current Pope Benedict XVI. “Legitimate” inquiry into the life and meaning of Jesus is relegated by our society mainly to theologians, historians and professional teachers of comparative religions. This is due to the fact of increasing specialization. We divide our world and what is happening in it into relatively small niches where certain “experts” have the answers and the rest of us, the laity, are expected to submit to superior wisdom. Our professions are supposed to define us and if we step outside this narrow circle we do so at our peril. As will be shown below these circles of professions within professions have become progressively smaller due to increased specialization and we now have reached the stage where a given professional knows more and more about less and less. This adds to the fragmentation of society where the forest is being lost for trees, leaves and their spines.

The question arises, therefore: What qualifications can a physician and neuroscientist claim that his views might merit a hearing? In my case perhaps the most fundamental one is an urge to understand the ununderstandable in human behavior. This led to the choice of my medical specialty in the first place. It has remained a life-long vocation rather than a profession for which one receives financial remuneration and from which one eventually retires in advanced age. Here again is, however, an example of how our society has fragmented. In 1950 when I first started working at Vienna’s University Hospital for Neurologic and Psychiatric Diseases, the Nervenklinik as it was popularly dubbed, the two fields were one. It was axiomatic at the time that the mind could not be separated from the brain and that their reciprocal influence is responsible for health as well as disease. But when I applied in 1951 at the Mayo Clinic for continuation of my training, I had a rude awakening. When asked by the director of the Mayo Foundation what I wanted to specialize in and said “Neurology and Psychiatry” I was told that this was not possible. I had to choose one or the other.

Unbeknownst to me a shift had occurred in America which can be laid directly at Hitler’s feet and is another example of how interconnected events really are. His persecution of Jews had led to large-scale emigration and psychoanalysts, who were mainly Jewish, relocated largely to America where that field had already penetrated popular culture. Prior to WWII, neurology and psychiatry had been one specialty here, like in the rest of the world, but the influx of psychoanalysts changed the situation. The neurologically oriented members of the profession could not swallow Freudian doctrine, left the fold and went their separate way. By 1951 the split had become practically complete, although there was still one Specialty Board and neurologists had to have a minimum training of three months in psychiatry and vice versa. Compare this with the situation I had left in Austria where the neurologist had to have a minimum of two years of training in psychiatry and three in neurology. For budding psychiatrists there were two years of neurology and three of psychiatry required. This arrangement had ensured adequate training in both fields and thereby minimized wrong diagnoses. Since three months, as was required in the US, are clearly inadequate, patients were commonly misdiagnosed. The psychiatrist became known as “the shrink,” brain tumors were missed and nobody in the general public knew what a neurologist was or did. I made up for this deficiency with additional training. The use of psychoactive drugs and the recent advent of computer-based imaging methods have shown again the interdependence of mind and brain, but the artificial separation of psychiatry and neurology persists in the training of physicians to the detriment of patients.

This excursion into my curriculum vitae is not irrelevant for the topic under discussion because Jesus has been labeled by some psychiatrists as a “paranoid schizophrenic” and St. Paul by some neurologists as an “epileptic.” Thus the two founders of Christianity carry diagnostic labels which clearly fall into the purview of my expertise. The book was, therefore, also an attempt to examine the validity of these medical-psychiatric opinions. While anyone can write a book, to get it published is an entirely different matter. The author wants to get his/her opinions across but the publisher is only interested in cash flow. Although books dealing with spiritual topics are, as mentioned, currently somewhat en vogue, publishers look at the proverbial bottom line. A person who has “name recognition” can immediately get a lucrative contract while those of us who feel that they have something to say but whose “name recognition” is limited to their profession have hardly any chance to get published by mainstream firms on topics that are regarded as lying outside their field of expertise. I mentioned the fruitless quest of the first version of the Jesus book in the April 1, 2004 issue (Mel Gibson’s Passion) and fared no better with the current one. When I submitted the query form to an appropriate publishing house I had to answer the question: What is your marketing plan? Well, Jesus doesn’t have one and as all of us know he told us that you cannot serve God and mammon, which happens to be true. When I answered that question with: I am going to talk about the book and discuss it on my website, but am too old to go on book tours around the country; the negative answer to the query came within 24 hours. No marketing plan – no contract is the reality for our era. Since I no longer have years to waste in fruitless search for a publisher I put, as the saying goes, my money to where my mouth is and contracted with Trafford where the book is currently in the process of being printed.

As mentioned in the introduction to this essay I shall discuss the methods employed upon which my opinions about Jesus and his teachings are based in the next issue.







December 1, 2009

THE JESUS CONUNDRUM

PART II

 

INTRODUCTION, MATERIAL AND METHODS

 

           

The subtitle of this essay may raise eyebrows because one does not ordinarily think in these terms when seeing a non-scientific paper. But scientists have to follow rules when they want to get their data published. First is the Introduction which consists of a selective review of the literature and the reason why the investigation was undertaken. This is followed by the Material and Methods section which provides information on how the presented Results were achieved. Thereafter comes a section called Discussion where the author puts the new information in relationship to what had previously been known and the literature references which have been used. Inasmuch as I have published numerous papers in the scientific literature in this manner it has become second nature and I have approached the “Jesus Conundrum” in a similar manner. In the previous installment I have already discussed to some extent why the book on Jesus was written. These comments will be amplified here as well as the basis on which the opinions, which will be presented next month in the Results and Discussion essay, were arrived at. This division is important because it justifies the subtitle of the book, “Searching for Truth beyond Dogma.” The latter was the hallmark of the endeavor because, especially in our day and age, truth is hard to find even in daily life.

The problem of truth, which is fundamental for an orderly society, has in part already been covered in previous essays on this site (What is Truth? September 2001; Perceptions of Reality, August 2004; Faith and Science, July 2009; Knowledge and Faith, August 2009) but for the present it is necessary to point out that the Jesus book is not about “absolute truth.”  The latter is not available to human beings and the emphasis on truth is therefore in regard to human relationships. What we regard as truth is personal and dictated by the individual’s life experiences. Mine were profoundly shaped by the Nazi era where the truth as proclaimed by the government deviated fundamentally from what the Catholic religion held and also from that which ruled family life. These were tensions the adolescent had to come to terms with and their reasonably successful solution reflected itself in the subsequent course of life and eventually the book under discussion.

It tends not to be fully realized that the so-called “Abrahamic religions,” namely Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are not merely religions, namely private belief systems, but have a political dimension which impacts on everybody regardless of the faith, including agnosticism, a given person may hold. The current conflict with Muslim countries is, also part and parcel of the political domain enshrined in the Bible. In the Jesus book I limit myself to Judaism and Christianity and explore their similarities and differences with their impact on 21st century America. 

In regard to Judaism there exists a fundamental difference from Christianity, which is not fully appreciated but has profound political implications. Moses did not merely intend to provide a rule book for ethical living. The goal was to create an enduring nation out of the Hebrews and the “mixed multitude” that had followed the tribes out of Egypt. As such, the Mosaic Law, and Judaism which evolved from it, was a political action program. Jesus, who lived in a different era, not only under Mosaic Law but also Roman occupation, which operated on a different value system, was not interested in nationhood but only in doing the will of God as he saw it. By following his truth, regardless of consequences, he became a symbol for the Kingdom of God - Life of the Spirit. 

In this way he had a profound impact on all aspects of our culture. So-called Western civilization, including its art and philosophy, is unthinkable without Christianity and Jesus at its center. Even historical time is still mainly reckoned as B.C., before Christ, and A.D., Anno Domini, although these labels are now spurned in scientific circles. In order not to offend other belief systems one has to use the terms B.C.E., before current era, and C.E., current era, if one wants to publish a scientific historical paper. If one uses the traditional terms the paper is likely to be rejected by its editors. This development is recent but another example that Christianity, and thereby Jesus, is gradually but steadily removed from public discourse and confined to the strictly personal religious sphere. But even in that realm traditional churches are losing ground and regular attendance is dwindling.

A cultural shift has taken place. It started in Europe with the so-called enlightenment of the 18th century and has steadily gained traction ever since. The “miracles” of science and technology all of us have witnessed are the major reason why the “educated” members of society began to look askance at whatever cannot be explained by reason. Inasmuch as genuine religious experiences are not part of the sensory systems upon which we commonly operate, people who still believe in them tend to be regarded as “out of touch with reality.” Depending upon the vigor with which persons defend this obsolete faith they tend to be pitied, ignored, or regarded as delusional.

The first crack in the unbridled optimism in regard to the exclusive role of “scientific reality” in regard to human behavior appeared in the European mind with the First World War. Here was an unmitigated disaster which defied rational explanations and showed how science and technology are not merely servants of mankind but can be used for its destruction. Nevertheless, this lesson did not sink in immediately. On the contrary, scientific materialism became the hallmark of the first half of the twentieth century in Europe. Its political expression was Communism and as a reaction to it Fascism in Italy and National Socialism in Germany. All these systems were authoritarian and shared the belief that all problems can be solved by science and technology. But the conduct towards their citizens who did not accept the officially proclaimed truth differed in the case of Italy.

While Mussolini’s system was originally relatively benign in this respect, the other two were vicious. The choice of the “enemy of the State” was based on local circumstances. In the Soviet Union it was the Kulak and the Bourgeois; in Nazi Germany the Jew and the Communist. I have deliberately capitalized the labels because this is how they were used at the time. Individual differences and thereby individual belief systems made no difference; the person was lumped into a given class and as member of that class disposed of according to the whim of the State. The slogan in Nazi Germany, the system I am personally most familiar with, was “Der Einzelne ist nichts, das Volk ist alles.  The individual is nothing the people (State, Nation) is everything. For the sake of the “people,” or rather the State, any and all means were legal once they had become official policy.

There is now an interesting and underappreciated fact of history that has become apparent in the demise of these two belief systems in regard to the choice of the enemy. Communism could be tolerated in the West, until the Cold War, because a slaughter of “Kulaks” and of “Bourgeois” was regarded as an internal problem and these people had no international allies. But for the Nazis the situation was different. Persecution of Jews, from which Mussolini had abstained prior to falling under Hitler’s influence, was intolerable in the eyes of the world. The Jewish Diaspora could not accept it and had the means to enforce its views. Theoretically it should make no difference who the person is against whom a crime is committed and the killing of millions of people in the Soviet Union prior to WWII should have aroused at least as much animosity in the world as the persecution of Jews by Hitler. Prior to WWII these consisted mainly of depriving Jews of their livelihood, making their lives miserable by chicaneries, and thereby encouraging emigration. Outright mass murder was the result of the war.

In my previous books War & Mayhem, as well as The Moses Legacy, I have shown that Hitler’s belief system was not merely the opposite of Christianity, which earned him the title of Antichrist, but even more so the outgrowth of Old Testament thinking. The “chosen people” had, in Hitler’s opinion, seriously trespassed against the needs of the German nation and, at least within Germany, they had to be brought to heel. He thoroughly underestimated, however, the history of the Jewish people who, although they also valued their nationhood (albeit in exile at that time) above all else, would not tolerate that a Jew anywhere in the world was subjected to discrimination simply for being a Jew. For the Jewish leadership this was a matter of survival and the world’s resources had to be mobilized to get rid of this danger. When Hitler spoke of Weltjudentum, world Jewry, and its power, he was correct in a sense, but he was mistaken in thinking that he had the means to overcome it.

Inasmuch as WWII, its causes and goals, tend to be misrepresented in the American media, a small excursion into what for me was Zeitgeschichte (personally experienced history) is necessary at this point. Without coming to grips with how WWII really started we cannot hope to avoid WWIII. A search for truth beyond dogma inevitably also involves the political sphere because what was a propaganda slogan for a specific purpose can subsequently become dogma for all time. As far as Hitler is concerned he had thoroughly deluded himself by not reading “the sign of the times” (Matthew 16:1-3). He still thought as a pre World War I European who had not realized that America was already in ascendance and in the process of relieving the British Empire of its burden. The idea that he could confine his war against the Soviet Union, which was the foremost goal, and that the Brits would be happy if he helped them with his Wehrmacht to hold up their tottering empire, was thoroughly anachronistic. As the Spanish-American war and WWI had shown, America’s frontiers had moved not only to East Asia but also to Europe. Once Britain had entered Hitler’s war the outcome was pre-ordained because by hook and by crook America had to be dragged into it.

On the other hand for the average American citizen to become a willing participant, who would sacrifice his life, the reason for the war had to be redefined. The Nazis were now portrayed as the sole menace to civilization and since they officially fought against “atheistic Jewish bolshevism” in order “to save Western civilization,” a new rallying cry had to be found. I have used quotes in the previous sentence because this is how Hitler’s war was sold to us at that time.  Americans could not be expected to enter the war in the defense of British and Jewish interests, as well as those of industrialists who would profit from it and Charles Lindbergh’s speech in Des Moines, Iowa on September 11, 1941, which is available on the Internet at http://www.charleslindbergh.com/americanfirst/speech.asp, provides a picture how the war was portrayed here at that time. Similar forces are operative at present and for this reason the speech will be discussed in more detail in another essay.  Lindbergh was promptly ostracized for speaking truth to power, smeared as an anti-Semite, and the rush to war continued.

Since there was a considerable popular groundswell of anti-Semitism in the America of the 1930s, which actually lasted to some extent until at least the 1950s (Jews could not move to Grosse Pointe when we bought our house there in 1957), no one would have been willing to sacrifice life, limb or property for the sake of European Jews. A high ethical reason had, therefore, to be found. Inasmuch as the words Christian and Christianity had become tinged with anti-Semitism, as a result of Father Coughlin’s widely listened to speeches, a compromise solution was reached. Defense of “the Judeo- Christian heritage” now became the slogan of the day. Since evangelical Protestants always had somewhat of a preference for the Old Testament over the New, the term was eminently successful. It has not only survived the war but has replaced the word Christianity in public and especially in political life. It is impossible to win an election for major public office unless one professes allegiance to this Judeo-Christian tradition (heritage) rather than Christianity and Jesus. Yet, for anyone who has given thought to these matters it is obvious that the term “Judeo-Christian” is merely a political expedient, a popular half-truth, and thereby dangerous.

Inasmuch as we live in dangerous times where truth is again manipulated to serve political purposes, I felt the need to explore the reasons for it and the book resulted from these endeavors. As a physician I concentrated on the human aspects of Jesus’ life leaving “Christology” to theologians. But in the effort to discern how Jesus might have felt and why he did what he did, we are limited to the narrations of the evangelists and they don’t agree on some key aspects. Nevertheless, a wise Rabbi once declared, “it doesn’t matter what really happened, what matters is what people believe has happened.” This is correct and a limitation all of us have to accept. For this reason we can work scientifically with the gospels only in an “as if” manner. This means that we can study what is written, not necessarily as absolute historical truth, which does not exist even in secular literature, but as a version of events that is regarded as such.

When one works with the gospels in a systematic manner the first thing one has to realize is that we are dealing with translations of translations. We do not have Jesus’ original words because no Aramaic text has ever been discovered. The gospels were written in Greek and translated during the fourth century A.D. by St. Jerome into Latin as the Vulgata, which means the language of the common people. The subsequent translations into the various languages of the world, and their revisions, are based either on the Latin or Greek text. Since Greek was the original language the gospels appeared in, one might be tempted in one’s quest for authenticity to disregard the translations altogether and simply concentrate on the Greek version. Unfortunately, the original Greek versions of the gospels no longer exist. They have been revised several times and the earliest printed version, as opposed to handwritten, dates to 1514. The Greek text that is currently commercially available, and which was used for the book, represents a 1901 revision.

While this makes a scientist shudder, the situation is even worse for the Old Testament. The Hebrew collection of scrolls, which eventually became our Bible, emerged over a period of centuries. They contained no vowels or punctuation and are read from right to left. Bible scholars who want to glean “the truth” from early Hebrew documents, to the extent they exist, as for instance in the Dead Sea scrolls, are faced not only with a formidable but a basically unsolvable task. A given sequence of consonants can be filled in with vowels of one’s choice, and sentence endings may have to be artificially constructed. For the Dead Sea Scrolls the problem is compounded by the fact that the scholars have to work, to some extent, with scraps of material which have to be pasted together in some type of logical sequence. This process is, of course, also open to bias.

In addition there is a difference between the spoken and written word which is called prosody. A little Jewish joke might illustrate this better than erudite explanations. Moshe and Shlomo had an argument during which Moshe called Shlomo a scoundrel. Shlomo was upset and took Moshe before the judge. The judge said to Moshe, “Tell Shlomo that he is not a scoundrel.” Whereupon Moshe said, “Shlomo is not a scoundrel?” The judge reproved Moshe saying that this was not what was meant, whereupon Moshe replied, “Your honor, you can give me the words but I make the melody!”  Yes indeed; it is the melody which counts and we try to convey it in written language by commas, exclamation marks, question marks, periods and so on. When these are missing, as they were up to the early centuries of our time, all bets are off as to the intended original meaning. This is why one can dispute interminably what a given word or sentence in a Hebrew document might have meant originally.

All of this is compounded by the fact that language is not static but changes over decades let alone centuries or millennia. No one would have expected in the 1950s, for instance, that the simple word “gay” would refer to homosexual people. It seems quite possible that in another fifty years that this is all it will mean and that the Christmas Carol, “Don we now our gay apparel” will be viewed as an invitation to cross dressing. Who knows? Furthermore, words have more than one meaning in different languages and the translator has to choose the one that fits best into the concept he wants to convey. There is inevitable bias inherent in this process and it is exceedingly interesting to not only compare the various gospels, but also the different translations within the same language. If this were not enough, each translator lives in a given time period with the culture of its day and cultural bias is, therefore, practically unavoidable. We should also never forget that words are not things per se but symbols which stand for thoughts, feelings or visions. In this way they are always inadequate, especially when it comes to the expression of spiritual topics.

In order to reach an understanding of what Jesus might have said and done I used as basic documents the New Greek - English Interlinear New Testament and for the Old Testament mainly the Septuagint which is the Greek translation from Hebrew. The latter is actually the oldest complete Bible, in the form we know the book today. It was also the main text the gospel writers used. For comparison purposes other Bibles were also consulted as well as the Socino Chumash for the Pentateuch (first five books of Moses) and for some of the prophetic writings. Using the Greek text had the advantage that a given word could be explored for its various meanings which opened new understanding of some difficult concepts. Since I had only learned Latin, English and French in High School the Greek language was indeed Greek to me but the problem was overcome with the mentioned text and the help of Zodiathes’ The Complete Word Study Dictionary, which cannot be recommended strongly enough for serious Bible study.

Although I proceeded initially in the usual sequence of the gospels, as laid out in the New Testament, it soon became apparent that the material would not only become unmanageable but also fail to reach the desired end. I, therefore, changed the sequence by presenting the gospel of Mark first and then merely discussed the discrepancies between Mark’s gospel and those of Matthew and Luke which form what is called the synoptic gospels because they show internal coherence. Inasmuch as Luke provided not only the life of Jesus but also The Acts of the Apostles, his sequence was retained. The Acts can, however, not be understood unless one is familiar with the major Pauline Epistles. They were, therefore, presented after The Acts. These in turn led into St. John’s gospel which is a theological treatise, rather than a biography of Jesus, and subsequently the Revelation of St. John the Divine, better known as the Apocalypse. These two chapters are the most challenging to the intellect and can readily be misunderstood. The subsequent chapter put the gospels into their historic context and the final one addressed Pilate’s immortal question: What is truth? followed by Conclusions and Bibliography.

As a scientist I proceeded in the same manner as for my medical investigations. I was familiar with the conventional textbook wisdom but ever so often a question arose on some specific aspect where the textbook and clinical experience did not quite agree. I then performed the appropriate experiment and reached my own conclusions. Only after I had obtained my results and was ready to prepare the data for publication did I perform a thorough literature search in order to see what others had reported. This method while limiting bias also led to major disappointments, because ever so often I found out that my efforts had merely duplicated the findings of others. But apart from hurt pride for not having been the first one to make this particular observation, I could give the previous authors credit. In addition, when one can independently confirm somebody else’s results this provides them with even greater validity.

The literature on Jesus is, however, so vast that nobody can read it in one’s lifetime. A choice had to be made and in my search for purity I, therefore, concentrated mainly on authors from past decades and centuries. There was no slight intended because as explained in the book, the truth has to stand the test of time. This is contrary to the current Zeitgeist where what is new is automatically regarded as being better and this is why we are confronted with so much contradictory information even in regard to scientific matters. The hallmark of the truth, especially in matters of the spirit is that it keeps! What was true yesterday, years, decades, centuries and millennia ago should still be true today! Furthermore, what is true for one civilization needs to be true for humankind at large because truth does not know national borders.

There is a spirit of truth which has been known to mankind throughout history. Different cultures have given it different names, but in Christian lands it is called the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost. Personally I do not much care for the term Holy Ghost because the word ghost pertains mainly to apparitions of the dead while Spirit animates the living. Among the acknowledgments in the book I, therefore, also listed the Holy Spirit upon whose guidance I had relied throughout my life and during the writing of this book. Since the Holy Spirit is the center piece I was looking for an appropriate symbol that could be used for the front cover of the book. By putting our heads together as a family we came up with the idea of a dove emerging from the sun and carrying in her beak the feather of Maat (Ancient Egyptian symbol for truth and justice; discussed in Our Need for Maat, August 2007) to earth. To put these thoughts into a picture I entrusted the task to Mr. Zack Johnson who is also my webmaster. When I first saw the finished product I experienced a little shock of dismay because I had visualized a pure golden sun rather than the way it was depicted and reproduced below.

 

 

The Jesus Conundrum

 

 

 

After I had looked at it for a little while I became aware that, unintentionally, the picture contained not only greater symbolism than I had expected but also corresponded better to the truth. For the sun and the earth actual photographs from outer space were used and it just so happened that the dove heads for the Middle East, the birthplace of our civilization. Egypt, the Red Sea, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf are clearly visible as terra firma at the upper end of the globe. In regard to the appearance of the sun, which could also be regarded as the cosmic egg from which all else emerged, I had another surprise when for some unfathomable reason my eye was drawn one day to Swedenborg’s  Heaven and Hell which had been sitting for decades on one of my library shelves. I had never read the book from cover to cover, only scanned certain portions and had retained only their essence. I shall deal with Swedenborg in more detail at another time but for now I was flabbergasted to read, as part of a random selection, how the angels see God according to Swedenborg’s conversations with them. In the chapter on “Change of State of the Angels in Heaven,” section 159, he wrote:

 

I have been shown how the Lord, as a Sun, appears to the angels of the celestial kingdom in their first state, how in their second, and how in their third state.  The Lord as a Sun was at first seen, golden red and glittering with a splendour that cannot be described. . . .  Afterwards there appeared a great dark belt around the Sun and by this its first glow and brilliancy which gave it such splendour began to be dulled. It was said that such is the appearance to them in their second state.

 

 

For the purely materialistically oriented mind it is obviously a coincidence that Zack picked from all the available NASA earth photographs this particular one as well as one of the sun which is the most appropriate for the context. Furthermore, that I not only looked at the Swedenborg book, after several decades, but chanced upon this particular paragraph from its more than 500 pages, will likewise be regarded as coincidental. But events like these have happened on other occasions and this is part of the reason why I am giving the Holy Spirit His due in the Acknowledgments of the Jesus book. The cover picture was, however, designed only after the text had been submitted to the publisher and the above mentioned details are not included in the book.

As mentioned, the contents of the book are concerned with the search for truth beyond dogma and, therefore, not limited to a specific belief system. It required an investigation of how other cultures in previous centuries had dealt with the problem of living in relative peace with oneself and one’s neighbors. This is the key aspect and unless we solve this problem we cannot hope to achieve material, let alone spiritual, well-being. Material-scientific progress alone cannot achieve this goal. Europe has learned from the tragedies of the first half of the 20th century, is sick of war, and is again beginning to add a more humanistic component to continued scientific progress. Yet, the influential circles which govern America’s fortunes are still mired in the thought patterns of optimistic, materialistic 19th and early 20th century Europe. In the November 23 issue of Newsweek the well known Christopher Hitchens, who is a militant atheist, wrote: “The United States has to stand or fall by being the preeminent nation of science, modernity, technology, and higher education.” Hitler could have said the same thing for Germany, Lenin and Stalin for the Soviet Union, and the Chinese communists for their country. Not only is “preeminence” the key word, which also implies domination rather than cooperation, so is the absence of a spiritual component: truth and justice for all. In the Jesus book I have tried to show how a synthesis of matter and spirit can be achieved and why this is necessary for the further evolution, if not survival, of the human race.

I had hoped that the book would be available for Christmas but numerous delays by the publisher made this impossible. It is now slated to appear in print sometime in January.







January 1, 2010

THE JESUS CONUNDRUM

 

PART III

 

RESULTS and DISCUSSION

 

 

            In the previous installments I discussed why I felt compelled to write this book and how I proceeded in a somewhat scientific manner to analyze the gospel material about Jesus and his time. It has also been pointed out that the book, although dealing with Jesus as a person, does not claim to have discovered the “historical” Jesus. Furthermore, as a physician and neuroscientist I have also not ventured into what can be called Christology because that is an area that belongs to theologians and philosophers. But since there is near universal agreement that a human being called Jesus of Nazareth existed in Roman occupied Palestine and was crucified there, the physician has a right to be interested in this person and to try to find out why he did what he is reported to have done. This was not only of personal but also professional interest. Jesus has been labeled by some of my psychiatric colleagues as “a paranoid schizophrenic” and St. Paul as an “epileptic.” Since these illnesses and their differential diagnosis clearly fall into my medical specialty it should not be surprising that I wanted to examine the basis for these claims.

            As has also been mentioned previously the only information anyone, who wants to write about Jesus, has available are the four gospels. Regardless of the qualifications a given person can bring to the study of Jesus these are the only basic documents extant at this time and it is upon those that personal opinions are rendered. Furthermore, the gospels were originally written in Greek and the vast majority of people around the world who profess to be Christians no longer understand that language. We are, therefore, when we talk about Jesus’ words and actions, dealing not only with translations into the various languages of the world but also with an ever increasing number of versions of the New Testament (NT) even in the English language. From these one can pick and choose the one which best suits one’s needs and interests. This fundamental fact must be clearly recognized and so must be the fact that the Greek language was considerably more expressive in philosophical matters than contemporary English. We are doing the spirit of the gospel writers a profound disservice if we don’t attempt to look at the meaning of what they have tried to convey and simply stay with a few basic English words such as: love, grace and charity.

            Although I did not have the benefit of having learned Greek in High School, I tried to make up for this deficiency by using a Greek-English transliteration of the NT and by examining, in dictionaries, the multiple meanings of certain words. This provided personal insights which tend to go beyond what one commonly reads in modern literature. The emphasis is on “personal” and the book makes no claim to have discovered universal truth to which everyone must subscribe unless eternal damnation were to result. This is the realm of religious dogmas and the difference between truth and dogma is not always appreciated. The Greek word for truth in the NT is aletheia and refers to: truth, veracity, uprightness, honesty and reality in contrast to: an appearance or a lie. Aletheia was differentiated from doxa which referred to: opinion, notion; expectation; false opinion, delusion, fancy; decree, project; judgment; reputation, report, estimation, honor; glory, splendor. In the NT the word is used, especially in regard to God, in the last two meanings. While dogma also carried the meaning of opinion, it was strengthened by: decree; resolution; doctrine.

            Unless one clearly differentiates these terms and merely supplants them with the one word “truth” no agreement will become possible. It is this failure to differentiate aletheia from doxa which leads to the current frequently expressed notion: there is no truth; all is opinion to which cynics may add that all opinions are equally unreliable. This type of thinking allows lies to flourish and is the root of many of our problems. It is true that most of our ideas are doxa and some of them have been elevated to dogma in the religious as well as political sphere, but this does not mean that aletheia, in the sense of honesty, does not exist. Although aletheia is to some extent also personal and flavored by the life experiences of the individual, it can be checked for veracity by others who are willing to do so. 

            In the book I have kept the difference between these three terms in mind. There is no dogma to which any reader is supposed to subscribe, there is a great deal of doxa, which is necessitated by the limitation of the topic’s sources, but also aletheia in the sense of remaining honest in the presentation of the data. This is the aspect which may give some readers the most trouble because honesty, although being paid lip service to, is not desired by our society. We are told by well meaning friends “but you can’t say that, you’ll offend the other person.” This is the point where we tend to give in, and either shade our truth or hold our tongue altogether. “Thus makes conscience cowards of us all” said Shakespeare, and Goethe had Faust say, when paraphrased: the few who have had the temerity to proclaim what they really knew have always been crucified or burned at the stake. Stating the unadulterated truth is dangerous to one’s professional life, and occasionally even in the family circle. In addition, personal experience has taught me that the truth is also that which hurts the most to admit!  This is documented with examples in the book and is also the reason why the book is not likely to become a bestseller. Nevertheless, it puts the book in good company and I have quoted Seneca (4 B.C-65 A.D.) who stated, “What I say will benefit you even if you don’t like it. Words that are not soothing must sometimes reach you . . .”

            In the previous installment I mentioned the order in which I proceeded in my quest for understanding Jesus and that I had started out with the gospel of Mark rather than, as in the NT, with Matthew. It had become apparent that the four evangelists had come from different backgrounds and wrote for different audiences. Our current picture of Jesus is, therefore, an amalgam of different viewpoints and as such in part contradictory. Even when one leaves the gospel of John aside for the moment, the writers of the three synoptic gospels provide, in part, conflicting information which can only be explained by their underlying motive and that the documents had undergone an editorial process in ancient times. It is also clear that neither Mark nor Matthew or Luke actually wrote the final documents which now bear their names and the Church has made this apparent by referring to the specific gospel as “according to” rather than “by,” which leaves authorship open.

            Since the gospel of Mark is the most concise, largely avoids polemic and provides a relatively coherent narration I have placed it first in the book. It was written for a gentile audience and presents a Jesus whom I could understand and sympathize with. Even some of the “miracles” can potentially have a rational explanation as was shown in that chapter.  Mark also presents the tragedy of human endeavors. The first words attributed to Jesus in Mk 1:15 were, “The time has been fulfilled; the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.” The last ones, uttered on the cross were, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” A conviction, his personal aletheia, of having been chosen to save the Jewish people, if not humanity, from its errors had given way to his new reality that he had failed and could not fathom the will of God. It was no longer Abba, the Father, whom he addressed in his agony but that power of the universe, Eloi, which we can give names to, but which defies human understanding. In this way the gospel of Mark mirrors the fate of the human race. Imbued with good will and full of hope we try to put our stamp on the world but when we do so in disregard of the “Prince of this World” we are bound to come to grief. But, as explained in the book, words are not what we die with. We are going to see pictures which are likely to represent our deepest held beliefs and under those circumstances Jesus may well have seen himself received by the loving arms of his Father.

            Since it is obviously impossible, and not even desirable, to condense the entire book into a few pages here, I will provide only some snippets which deal with the explanation of words and conclusions derived therefrom. For instance what does “repent” really mean? The Greek word was metanoeite and conveys the concept of “to rethink,” to consider what and how one has thought up to that point and to change these thoughts for the sake of current reality. In the Jesus context it would mean: don’t concern yourself any longer with thoughts of material prosperity, regardless of the means to gain it, or of rebellions against the political system; they are not helpful. The kingdom of God – the reign of aletheia and freedom of spirit which only God can provide – is coming. This would be the timeless message of the euaggellon, evangelium, good news. In Jesus time there was the additional element of wide-spread apocalyptic thought, which literally expected a fiery end of this world at any moment.

            Metanoia is not limited to the concept of sin but is useful to keep in mind for everyday life.  Let us reflect on our conduct and see where and what type of improvement is needed. This applies also to the Greek word for sin, which is hamartía.  Sin is an offense against God and since God does not exist for atheists they can, therefore, not sin. Nevertheless, they can still fall victim to hamartía. This paradox is resolved when one realizes that the term refers primarily to: miss the mark, err, or fail. The word has even found its way into neurology where we find it as hamartoma, which refers to a group of nerve cells which have missed its destination in the cerebral cortex, formed a tumor in places where they don’t belong and thereby create illness. I must admit that, although I knew of hamartomas, I did not know the derivation of the term before I embarked on the study of Jesus and thereby reaped an unexpected professional bonus. Thus, missing the mark is the key aspect we should hold in front of our eyes at all times. What is the goal we try to hit with our arrow and how good is our aim? Those are the questions each one of us ought to reflect on and they are independent of all the variables, such as: race, gender, national origin, and religion with which we separate ourselves from each other.

            As mentioned above Mark’s gospel is concise. There is no genealogy, history of supernatural birth, and there is not a single one of the “woes” which we find in Matthew and Luke. There is also no mention of the Church which Jesus will found on his rock – Peter. When Jesus asked his disciples: who do you say I am? Peter blurted out: “You are the Messiah.” In Mark’s gospel (8:29) Jesus merely told them not to mention this to anyone, while Matthew (16:16) put the well known Church founding verses 16:17-19 into Jesus’ mouth. As explained in the book, some of the words and parables attributed to Jesus reflected not so much Jesus’ core belief but the needs of the growing Church which had to differentiate itself from Judaism as well as the various splinter groups of emerging Christianity. Mark also tells us nothing about Jesus’ biologic father and the only Joseph who appears in the gospel is Joseph of Arimathea who provided the tomb and assisted in the burial. The fact that Jesus is referred to in Mark’s gospel as “the son of Mary” (6:3) is highly unusual in biblical literature and I have discussed ancient as well as recent thoughts about Jesus’ physical, as distinct from spiritual, paternity in the book.

            Finally, Mark’s original narration of the resurrection events ended with the women who had come to anoint the body but having found instead “a young man dressed in a white robe” who told them that Jesus “had been raised” and that they should tell Peter and the disciples that “they will see him in Galilee.” Whereupon the “they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid [16:5-8].” Since whatever Mark had written thereafter, was no longer available to the Church fathers and they could not end the book with frightened women running away, they compromised and provided a short as well as a long ending, which is now official. The short one was added to verse 8 while the long one consists of verses 9-19. Both versions are, even by the Catholic Church, regarded as inauthentic. But Jesus’ supposed prophecy in regard to his followers’ speaking in tongues, handling poisonous snakes and drinking toxic juice has become folklore and is enacted in some religious “Christian” communities to this day.

             The gospel of Matthew was written by a Jewish convert for his Jewish brethren. It relates many of the same events as Mark did but elaborates on them and although insisting on virgin birth, traced Jesus’ paternity from Abraham through David to Joseph. It also contains the wise men from the East, Herod’s massacre of the innocents, the flight to Egypt and eventual return to Galilee and Nazareth, which according to Matthew had not been Joseph’s original home. The book explains why these elaborations were necessary from a Jewish point of view. The difference between Mark and Matthew also becomes palpable in the way Jesus’ attitude to the oral Law was depicted. Mark’s Jesus clearly had no use for the 613 rules and regulations the Pharisees had imposed upon the people and he even reduced the written Law to “love God and thy neighbor.” This presented a conflict for the observant writer of Matthew who had Jesus say that, “. . . whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same, will be called the least in the kingdom of heaven . . .  (5:17-21). These verses are an insert in the Beatitudes and conflict with Mark’s Jesus who dined with sinners (violating the dietary rules and ritual cleanliness of dishes) and worst of all told the Jewish authorities that the Sabbath was made for man and not the other way round (Mk 2:27). Since Matthew also relates the Sabbath healing and other aspects of oral Law violations by Jesus it seems apparent that an editor had been at work on the original document which led to these contradictions. Whether or not the famous woes to the Pharisees were indeed proclaimed by Jesus can no longer be ascertained but they have their counterpart in the Old Testament (OT) book of Enoch where they are addressed to sinners in general rather than Pharisees in specific.

            Luke’s gospel largely agrees with Mark and Matthew but added the stable and shepherd story to the nativity scene and seems also to have been edited in ancient times. It was written for a gentile audience and it is assumed that the main author was Luke, a physician, who had accompanied St. Paul on some of his missionary journeys. There are some additional key differences from Matthew. The genealogy not only traces Jesus’ biologic paternity beyond Abraham through Adam to God but the names of the various fathers differ, except for Joseph and David. In addition the gospel contains the parable of the Good Samaritan which defines the concept of “neighbor;” Jesus’ healing the severed ear of the High Priest’s servant at Gethsemane, and the momentous “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing (23:34).”  It needs to be noted, however, that the latter statement was placed in square brackets in the Greek text indicating that the statement was a later insertion. Nevertheless, by the time the gospel was translated into Latin and all subsequent languages, these brackets have disappeared. Although Luke’s gospel, as it exists today, had undergone revisions in ancient times by merging different texts it makes important points for Christian living as the above mentioned forgiveness statement shows.

            Another deviation from Mark as well as Matthew occurs in regard to the Last Supper. Although the scene setting is largely identical, only Luke added the words “do this in remembrance of me.” These few words portray a thoroughly human Jesus who knows that he is going to die a cruel death, whose disciples may or may not be reliable in following his example of supreme self-sacrifice for the sake of God, but at least they should keep his memory alive. Isn’t this what we mainly want: to be remembered in a positive light? For accuracy’s sake, it should be mentioned that although the other synoptic gospels do not contain these words they do show up in St, Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians (11:24) and if Luke indeed accompanied Paul on some of his travels he might have heard them from him.

            By the time the gospel of John was written, the synoptic gospels were already available, but a need was perceived for a permanent transfiguration of the human being Jesus of Nazareth to the everlasting Christ, the “logos,” who had preexisted from eternity. The gospel only uses Jesus as a framework to make theological points and cannot be understood from a materialistic point of view. It is the only officially condoned “Gnostic” book of the NT and needs to be read from a spiritual and allegoric point of view. Unless one does so, one would have to conclude that Jesus was indeed suffering from megalomania. To reconstruct human biographical features of Jesus is well nigh impossible and was never the intention of the author. An understanding of this gospel requires not only information about Greek philosophy (logos and its various meanings) but also awareness of the power struggles within the nascent Church. These are hinted at, especially in Matthew and the Acts of the Apostles, but are clearly apparent in John who expressed a great deal of indignation about the Jews. Jews, as Jews, do not figure in the synoptic gospels except for the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. In John there are more than 50 references to them and usually in a negative manner.

            The reason for this change can probably be traced to the fact that Jews, by and large, had failed to recognize Jesus as the promised Messiah and not only refused to join the Church but the Jewish authorities were, for good reason, hostile to it because they perceived the obvious threat to their established religion. The followers of “The Way” as they were originally called, before the initially derogatory term Christians was bestowed on them, were regarded by Jews as a dangerous sect and John, or more correctly the various writers and editors of the gospel who came from the Jewish community, were deeply disappointed by this turn of affairs. This hostility is also clear in the Pauline epistles. On several occasions he only narrowly escaped from Jewish mobs during his missionary travels and eventually had to procure his Roman citizenship papers in order to avoid being killed in Jerusalem. For the story that he was beheaded in Rome in 65 A.D., there is no evidence; neither from the NT nor from Roman sources.

            As mentioned, the gospel of John also had several authors and this accounts for the numerous repetitions in the text. But the first chapter, which does form a somewhat cohesive whole, gives an indication of what John had intended to prove. In view of subsequent Church dogma it is of interest how the idea of Jesus as the only begotten Son of the Father had arisen and why the split between the Western and Eastern Church had occurred. The details are in the book but it may suffice to mention here that for the first instance the relative adverb hós which denotes: who, how, in what manner or way, as, so as, like as, which appears prior to monogenous was translated to “as of” in the King James Version (1:14). The Latin vulgate is, however, more accurate by translating hós with quasi, “as if,” which clearly denotes analogy rather than identity. One marvels what a difference the translation of one simple word and the exchange of an “i” for an “o” in the English language can make. But this is an example how dogmas come into being.

            Another example of dogma creation deals with an “i” in the Greek language. A dispute in regard to the extent of Jesus’ divinity had arisen in the early Church. There were two factions; one insisted the Jesus was of the same substance as God, homoousios, while the other insisted with equal vigor that this could not be the case and that he was of similar but not identical substance, homoiousios. The first group, monophysites, won the day by a democratic vote and those who had championed the similarity as opposed to identity were cast out as heretics. Democracy and Majority Rule have their virtues but provide no guarantee that aletheia will thereby triumph. 

            The first chapter of John has another interesting aspect. Verse 17 provides the essential difference between Christianity and Judaism. Translations differ slightly but the essence is: the Law was given through Moses but grace and truth through Jesus Christ. Truth, aletheia, has already been explained but “grace” is another difficult concept with several potential meanings. The intention of the author becomes clear when we look at the Greek word which has been translated as “grace.” The word is “charis” and stands for the joy of a recipient for an unexpected and undeserved gift. From “charis” charity was derived but this fails to include its essence – joy. Yet, it was joy which was the Good News, the euaggellon.

Years ago when I read some of Kazantzakis’ books for the first time, I was struck by the fact that the Cretans greeted each other on Easter Sunday with, “Rejoice, the Lord has risen;” while sailing aficionados who have read Patrick O’ Brian’s series about the exploits of Captain Aubrey and his friend Dr. Maturin will remember that they greeted each other with “give you joy.” This seemed to me at the time as quite incongruous because in our day and age we would not talk this way. Yet, O’Brien knew his Greek and that when people met, either in Crete or in ancient Palestine, they said “chairete,” Joy, be with you! This is also the word Jesus used when he greeted his disciples (e.g. Mt. 28:9). What do some of our English language NTs say? The King James translation uses “All Hail,” the Amplified Bible: “Hail (greeting); The New English Bible: “he gave them his greeting;” The New Greek-English interlinear Testament in the English text: “Greetings,” but chairete was transliterated as, “Hello.” This is a typical example of the paucity of our language because none of these terms convey the joy which one may feel when meeting someone who is dear to one. 

Another important example is the word “love,” which has an erotic-sexual as well as a wider connotation. In our day and age the sexual element predominates and this is in no small part due to the influence of Freud on our culture which will be discussed separately on another occasion. For now it suffices to say that he seemed to regard St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, in which he praised love above all else (I Cor. 13:1-13), also in the context of eros (Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse, chapter on Suggestion and Libido), rather than the words used in the Greek or Latin version of the NT. While we have only one word for love, the Greeks had three. These were: agape, phílos and eros. Eros dealt with sexual attraction, phílos with friendship and agape with: affectionate regard, goodwill and benevolence. It is the selfless love of parents towards their children and in the context of the NT the love of God for mankind and Jesus’ love for his disciples. It is essential that these concepts are kept separate but since this is somewhat difficult in the English language, or for that matter the German, confusion abounds.

Since agape (the “a” is pronounced as in “ah” and “pe” as in Peoria) is such an important and undervalued concept, but the essence of Jesus’ message, I shall try to explain it further. Erotic love, with or without sexual consummation, is always directed towards one other person or object (as in fetishism). The love object may change over time and is usually one individual although a ménage à trois may occur. Furthermore, as Freud has pointed out, there is also a degree of ambivalence (attraction and repulsion) involved, and love can readily change to hate. As such, erotic love is selfish and requires a partner for wish fulfillment. Agape on the other hand is omni-directional, not limited to a person or persons but extends to all of nature and may even be regarded as the glue which holds society together and connects it to the universe. Agape simply is; it gives and gives without expectation of any return. With other words it is utterly selfless. In this way it is closely linked to, but not necessarily identical with, charis which also gives without expectation of a return. But since it has the added joy which is experienced by the recipient as one of its essential elements it pertains mainly to human beings. One may also visualize the difference as agape being the underlying substrate, which expresses itself in action as charis. This can be experienced by the human being especially when the English word “agape” is used in the context of keeping one’s mind wide open to other ideas. Under those circumstances one would not automatically submit to deeply rooted prejudices but see the world in a new light.

In the conclusions of the Jesus book I stated that, “in the struggle for our minds and souls, Moses has won and Jesus has failed.” This sounds like a harsh indictment but reflects reality. As mentioned above, St. John stated that Moses brought the Law but Jesus aletheia and charis. I am deliberately using the Greek terms because the words lose their essence in English. As a society we put our faith in laws, which proliferate on a daily basis, and people attempt to cirumvent them whenever possible. Selfishness, or Freud’s “libido” pervades all aspects of life and Christian principles are proclaimed but not practiced. Even the so-called born-again Christians, foremost among them our immediate past President, George W Bush and Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, lacked the essential ingredients of a Christian life with which I closed the Jesus book: Aletheia, Agape, Charis. A person who lives by these principles would never start a war and when a tragedy happens, such as on 9/11, would have provided a clearly defined non-violent rational response rather than used it as pretext for invading other countries.

The 9/11 response of our government was a typical example for Moses’ success over Jesus because fear and the desire for revenge against the evil-doers, which are clearly sanctioned in the OT, trumped “agapate your enemies” (Mt.5:44). The reason is obvious, hate and revenge are natural biologic passions while agape, even toward those who harm you, requires spiritual effort few can muster. Those are facts, aletheia, and unless we come to grips with them mankind will continue to stumble from one disaster to the next.

In order to overcome our ingrained passions the message of Jesus is clear. On the societal and political level the key sentence is found in Mark 8:15, “Watch out, guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and Herodians.” With other words, don’t fall for religious or political propaganda, but examine carefully what you are told. For personal conduct we need to take Matthew 7:5 to heart, “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” This admonition cannot be emphasized sufficiently and this why I shall paraphrase it: look at your soul, don’t hide it in the attic like Oscar Wilde’s picture of Dorian Gray! Examine your thoughts and conduct on a daily basis and then change what needs to be changed before you make others conform to your opinions. Only when one honestly confronts all one’s failings can spiritul progress be achieved and one knows when one is on the right track when one can live with the final reassurance: Fear not; aletheia will set you free!

In contrast to the fear of the Law, which comes natural, the above mentioned Christian precepts, which by the way were also taught by the Buddha, require a great deal of effort and tend to be shunned. Yet, our society can no longer afford to do so and metanoia in the sense of reassessing who and what we are is urgently needed.

Finally we can safely leave the question of physical resurrection and the physical return of Jesus to this planet to the theologians. If and when he were to return we might not even recognize him because as some of the gospels tell us he appeared after resurrection in “another form.” In Luke we read that two disciples on the way to Emmaus regarded him as a stranger, and in the gospel of John even Mary Magdalene thought him to be the gardner. In the last chapter of that gospel the disciples did not recognize him either when he showed himself to them on the shore of the lake in Galilee. The important message that is contained in these few verses, namely to see Jesus in the stranger, is widely disregarded. Thus, the task for those of us who would like to consider themselves as Christians, is clear. Resurrect the spirit of Jesus in your heart and mind and then act accordingly. This is our freedom, which no one can take away, and in this way he and his words will indeed be with us until the end of the world.







February 1, 2010

THE HUMPTY DUMPTY SOCIETY

            In the three previous installments I discussed why I felt the need to write The Jesus Conundrum book (now available on www.amazon.com as well as www.trafford.com) and why it is important for our society to heed the essence of Jesus’ message if it wants to avoid meltdown into complete chaos. Yet, I was also fully aware that our society simply is not ready for metanoia, which is the Greek word used in the New Testament for repentance. We have here another example of how words when translated into another language which demands that only one meaning be taken from several possible ones can lead to false thinking and thereby either wrong action or inaction. Anyone who tells Americans that they need to repent of past conduct will be looked askance and might even be regarded as a religious fanatic. We are, after all, if we listen to our leadership, the paragons of virtue whose “freedoms” need to be exported even to countries which don’t particularly hanker after them. Anyone who casts doubt on this stance is likely to be branded as un-American and possibly even as lending aid to our enemies. But metanoia, as explained in the previous issue, need not be confined to a religious context, it can be taken in its literal meaning of: to rethink, to reconsider.

            Serious thought, although essential for future conduct, is, however, at present a rare commodity in American life. Instead one finds mindless repetition of political or religious slogans, which in the latter case are called dogmas. This goes to the extent that if one knows a given person’s party or religious affiliation one can readily predict the opinions which will be expressed. Dissension from official dogma, regardless whether it is political or religious, can only safely be expressed against the opponents of one’s party or faith. Freedom of speech is only tolerated within these limits. We have thereby drifted into Humpty Dumpty type thinking without even realizing what has happened.

            The nursery rhyme:

 

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again”

 

is, of course, known to everyone whose childhood was spent in English speaking countries. Originally in the early 1800s it served as a riddle why this should have been impossible. The answer was that one was talking about an egg. But it was Charles Dodgson who provided us with Humpty Dumpty’s essential characteristics. Before explaining those it is of interest to know a little more about the author and why he found it necessary to publish under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll.

            Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), the scion of a long line of  Anglican clerics, was raised in a small parsonage but subsequently went to Oxford’s Christ Church College and was expected to follow into the father’s footsteps with a clerical carreer. His interests and ambitions lay, however, elsewhere because he was a gifted mathematician, writer as well as photographer. Although he remained at Oxford as Lecturer in Mathematics for the rest of his life he was rather bored by it and enjoyed more playing with words, puzzles and acrostics. The stories which are now known as Alice in Wonderland and which dealt with the dreams of a little girl had some external precipitant. The Dean of the College, Henry Liddell, with whom Dodgson was friendly had three daughters whom Dodgson intermittently took out on rowing excursions. It was on one of these that the thought, which would later on become his most famous stories, occurred to him. When he first told them to Alice, the youngest of the three, she begged him to write it down for her. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland became an instant literary as well as commercial success and was followed in 1871 by: Through the Looking Glass.  

            While Alice had entered her adventurous dream wonderland through a rabbit hole, she met Humpty Dumpty on her trip through a mirror. Let me now paraphrase the beginning and then follow it up with an extensive quote. Alice had been to a store, which was tended by a shape-shifting sheep, and wanted to buy an egg. The sheep insisted, however, that two eggs were cheaper than one but under the condition that she had to eat both of them. Alice opted for one and tried to reach for the egg but it got larger and larger, more human, and then assumed the well known form of Humpty Dumpty who sat crossleged on top of a narrow high wall making remarks which did not relate to her. At that point Alice softly recited the above mentioned rhyme except that the last line read, “Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty in his place again.” This was followed by:

 

“’That last line is much too long for the poetry,’ she added almost out loud, forgetting that Humpty Dumpty would hear her.

‘Don’t stand chattering to yourself like that,’ Humpty Dumpty said, looking at her for the first time, ‘but tell me your name and your business.’

                        ‘My name is Alice, but – ‘

                        ‘It’s a stupid name enough !’ Humpty Dampty interrupted impatiently. ‘What does it mean?’

                        Must a name mean something?’ Alice asked doubtfully.

                        ‘Of course it must.’ Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: ‘my name means the shape I am–and a good handsome shape it is too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.‘”

 

            Alice didn’t want to argue so she changed the subject but the point to be made is clear. Humpty Dumpty is a proud character who lectures everybody on everything and who is always right as will be apparent in the next excerpt. But Dodgson played a trick on us, which has probably eluded the majority of casual readers, when he had Humpty Dumpty refer to Alice’s name as “stupid enough” and that, “with a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.” While the average reader might assume that Alice’s changing shape from that of a normal child to a very small or extra large one was the sufficient explanation for that statement Dodgson had a more profound thought in mind. The name, Alice, does have meaning and it does deserve Humpty Dumpty’s derisive dismissal when one looks at the world only on his terms. Alice is derived from Alicia, which in turn is the anglicized version of Aletheia–Truth. Thus, when  Dodgson repeatedly denied that Alice Liddell was indeed the model for his stories he was correct because the Liddell Alice was only one form of the universal truth of childhood he tried to convey in the dream imagery. It is equally obvious now that a character, as portrayed in Humpty Dumpty, could find no possible use for it except possibly as the assumption of different forms.

            The conversation continued with Humpty Dumpty correcting Alice at every turn and taking each one of her comments literally. After he had informed her that un-birthdays are infinitely more important than birthdays, the following exchange took place:

 

“’… that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents–‘

‘Certainly,’  said Alice.

‘And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!’

‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory,”’ Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t–till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’

‘But “glory” doesn’t mean a “nice knock-down argument,”’ Alice objected.

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.’

‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master–that’s all.’”

 

This is indeed the question for our time to which I shall return later. My private question, however, is: did Deacon Dodgson allow himself a spoof on John 1.1? Well educated trickster that he was I would not put it beyond him. Let us look at that quote as it exists in the King James Version which was authoritative in those days. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” As explained in The Jesus Conundrum this was, of course, a simplistic translation from the original Greek where logos was used in that sentence and which has a much broader meaning. The most relevant one in the current context would be: thought and reasoning power. Nevertheless, a gifted atheist might translate logos with story, fable or rumor and no one could contradict him because logos not only allows these meanings but many others. When the gospels were translated into Latin for dispersion throughout the Roman Empire the translator was, therefore, confronted with a difficult choice from all the potential meanings and settled on: In principio erat Verbum . . . . St. Jerome’s version (c. 347-420), the Vulgate, which was adopted as official by the Church, then elevated Verbum, word, when written in capital letters, to God. This was retained in all subsequent translations thereby creating no end of confusion, especially since spoken language does not distinguish between upper and lower case. The situation became even worse when Luther and his followers declared the Bible in its entirety as the inerrant word of God.

The deliberate misuse of words has a long history. In Faust a new student was advised, when paraphrased, “most of all rely on the master’s word, then you shall enter through the portals to certainty.” When the student objected that there ought to be a concept behind the word he was told, “don’t get all flustered over that. Precisely when there is no concept you’ll find a word. With words you can most eloquently argue, with words you can create any system you like, in words you can readily believe and you can’t even deprive a word of an i.” The latter was a pun in High German language because the letter “i” is spoken as iot (pronounced yot) and and “not even one iot” means: not even the slightest trifle. But Goethe was making an additional point; he castigated the battle over the i which defined the nature of Jesus among warring views, as explained in the Jesus book and the previous installment. The word homoousis, identical with God, versus homoiousis, similar to God,  had fractured the Catholic (universal) Church and the split persists to this day. Goethe, just like Dodgson, had a keen sense of  humor and put some of the most profound truths of daily life into the mouth of Mephistopheles, as exemplified above.

These were just some relatively more recent examples from the literature yet Humpty Dumpty type thinking goes all the way back to the times of Socrates. But when one familiarizes oneself with those days one comes to the remarkable conclusion that we know as little about the “real” or “historical” Socrates as we do about Jesus. There are three depictions of Socrates extant, that I am aware of, and one can pick and choose among them the one which best fits one’s preconceptions. There are no original publications by Socrates, just as there are none by Jesus, and all we know about these human beings is what others said about them.

Since I have previously discussed Jesus at length it may be useful to stay with Socrates for a moment because there are so many parallels with Plato’s account of him that one is tempted to wonder to what extent aspects of his Socrates might have served as a model for the Jesus of some of the gospel writers. But as mentioned there are two other views of Socrates; one by Xenophon and the other by Aristophanes. All were contemporaries and had known Socrates personally. While Xenophon, similar to Plato, exalts Socrates’ wisdom and defends him against the unjust accusations which had led to his judicial murder, he presents us with a more practical side of the man. His Socrates gives sage advice on matters of warfare, husbandry, and marital affairs. The social critic and satyrist Aristophanes on the other hand turns Socrates into a smug atheistic sophist from whom one can learn how to use language to overcome ones adversaries in legal matters regardless of the truth of the matter.

It is a pity that Aristophanes’ “The Clouds” are no longer shown on the stage or on TV because this is one of the most modern plays I have come across, although it was first performed in 423 B.C.. The Peloponnesian War had been going on for years and Athens had suffered a serious defeat at Delium in 424 which had led to a temporary truce with Sparta. Aristophanes had no use for that war and Cleon, who ruled the City-state at the time, was a frequent target of his sarcastic ire. But since there seemed to be peace on the horizon Aristophanes devoted The Clouds to the larger issues of society namely religion versus science and legalisms versus truthful speech. The reason of the protagonist, Strepsiades, for seeking out Socrates in “the thinkery” is to learn “wrong logic” so that he can get out of his debts. Although the play abounds with aspects that are specific to the times and locale its underlying message is reenacted in our days when words are again twisted out of context to serve private gain. It could readily be translated again in modern idiom to show our fellow citizens “what fools we mortals be.”

Let us now move from fith centry B.C. Athens to 21st century America which finds itself embroiled in two wars and which, just like the Athenian one, were brought about by Hubris. Yet if one listens to our politicians and pundits they were forced upon us through sheer villainy of others. In additon, one gains the impression from TV commentators that the United States is about to succumb to terrorists at any moment unless we pour vast sums of money into this war on terrorism and enact even more stringent regulations on civilian travel than already exist. It can safely be predicted that when the next underwear, or whatever, suicide attempter arrives on the scene futher regulations will be imposed and if things go unchecked we might even get martial law, which some of our fellow citizens seem to look forward to.

I don’t deny for a moment that there are misguided people who want to blow themselves up and take as many innocent civilians with them as possible, but let there be some sanity. While reasonable precautions need to be taken and cooperation by international security organizations (such as Interpol and the various spy agencies) is essential, ordinary nail clippers or a toothpaste need not automatically be regarded as contraband and confiscated when one wants to board an airliner. Those of us who lived as adults through the sixties and seventies will remember the evil organization Thrush and people such as Goldfinger, Dr. No and other miscreants who threatended the world with disaster. It seems that these TV scripts are now serving as blueprints for political propaganda. The current arch-villain is Osama bin Laden although there is good reason to believe that he may actually already be dead and only his name is kept alive to provide credence for a variety of groups which now call themselves Al Qaeda affiliates. The purpose of all this is to frighten our citizenry and bring about a return from President Obama’s Internationalism and hankering after diplomatic solutions of our problems to the more robust Cheney-Bush years which, in the words of Senator McCain during the election campaign, will defeat evil. Since this has been tried with the same methods for millennia it hardly seems likely that going down the same road again will lead to a different result.

The sad state our country has come to as a result of Humpty Dumpty type thinking was again demonstrated last Wednesday during President Obama’s State of the Union Address to Congress. This annual spectacle of pomp and glory is apparently the closest America can come in imitation of past European splendor. A ritual has evolved, which surely was not what George Washington or Thomas Jefferson had in mind when the  Constitution was adopted. Its pupose was simple, namely to have the president of the country report ever so often, at a time of his choosing, the situation the country is in and what he intends to do about it. The fact that the time has become fixed doesn’t matter but it is the grand entrance that strikes a devotee of simple tastes as rather quaint. Various luminaries, such as members of the Cabinet, the Supreme Court and others are announced first. Then comes a pregnant pause and two worthy gentlemen appear. They head down half way to the center of the hall and then one announces “Madame Speaker,” addressed to Mrs. Pelosi as Speaker of the House, while the other, after another due pause, declares: “The President of the United States.” Whereupon among universal cheers and handclaps Mr. Obama emerges from the shadows where he had been patiently waiting to shake hands with some, embracing others, while he wends his way to the rostrum. Once arrived under continuing applause Mrs. Pelosi eventually pounds the gavel on the desk and announces again that the president has now arrived. This leads to another outburst of applause and when the president then tries to talk he can’t do so because of unending new rounds of applause.          

This would all be very nice if it weren’t staged and if the acclaim were genuine which in many instances was not the case as soon became obvious. President Obama gave a good speech, as speeches go, and covered all the bases mainly on the domestic front. He promised to save us money by 2011 with a “freeze on government spending for three years.” But “spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will not be affected.” Since it is those aspects, however, which gobble up most of taxpayer money a genuine deficit reduction can hardly be expected to occur. He vowed that he would continue to fight for the moribund “health care plan,” although it won’t save much money but it was the right thing to do. In the realm of foreign affairs he promised to have all “combat troops” out of Iraq “by the end of this August” and “make no mistake: This war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home.” In Afghanistan it is expected that their security forces “can begin to take the lead in July of 2011 and our troops can begin to come home.” He also informed us that during the previous year “hundreds of al-Qaida fighters and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed – far more than in 2008,” and that Iran and North Korea will face even tougher responses if they continue their pursuit of nuclear weapons. To placate Muslim sensitivites he assured them that, “we are working with Muslim communities around the world to promote science, education, and innovation.” This is nice but hardly addresses their main grievance because he had left the Palestinians to the continued not so tender mercies of the Israelis.

On the whole the speech was conciliatory and Obama genuinely tried to convince Republicans that they should no longer automatically block his legislative agenda and instead of thinking what is good politics at the moment to consider the well-being of the country. On the other hand it was obvious that he didn’t change a single vote. While Democrats stood up clapping their hands furiously, especially in the beginning, they seemed to have gotten tired after about half an hour, the Republicans sat on their hands and were already thinking of when they could go home.

After the president’s exit the networks waited for a few minutes and then came the customary response by the opposition which was given at the State House in Richmond Virginia to a loyal crowd by their Governor Robert McDonnell. One might expect that a response would be a reply to what the president had just said. The transcript had been made available to the media earlier and was, therefore, already in the public domain, but that would never happen in a Humpty Dumpty society. In this one it is necessary for the respondent to ignore the speech and pronounce instead the Republican agenda. Never mind that it hardly differed from the goals of the president especially since the details how to accomplish them were left rather vague. As such Republicans and Democrats were talking on parallel tracks where never the twain shall meet.

America now finds herself in the difficult position where the reality of relative loss of power, through fiscal mismanagement and militaristic adventures, is beginning to become obvious. Yet, instead of  laying doctrinal differences aside and starting to embark on a genuine effort by both political parties to work towards what is good for the country, the current overriding goal of Republicans is winning the November midterm elections to regain enough seats in Congress so that Obama’s “socialist” plans can be brought to naught. Although the previous elections were already exteremely costly the midterm elections of 2010 are likely to become the most expensive ever. Raising obscene amounts of money was aided by the recent Supreme Court decision which declared previous laws in regard to campaign financing as unconstitutional (including  Senator McCain’s prime claim to fame, the McCain–Feingold Bill) because it curtailed “free speech.” What giving money has to do with free speech eludes ordinary citizens, but it should not when one realizes that Humpty Dumpty also rules the Supreme Court of the land. This decision means that all pretense of democracy is gone because the vote will now go to whoever has received the most money. While Hitler had always railed against the “plutocrats” we will in fact have even more plutocracy than ever before.

To a realistic observer of the American scene it has become obvious that no later than last summer a decision was made in Republican circles that the Obama administation must not be allowed to succeed and that the health insurance plan was to be “his Waterloo.” This goal, of derailing every and all of Obama’s efforts had already been enunciated prior to that time by the radio personality Rush Limbaugh as soon as the new president was sworn in. But it took till the summer to become unspoken, yet apparently official, policy. In previous years a simple majority could pass legislation in Congress but this is no longer possible. Now the supermajority of 60 votes is required in the Senate and up to January 19 the Democrats were able to muster it by cajoling and bribing reluctant members of their party. This state of affairs ended on that Tuesday when the good citizens of Massachussets elected a Republican to fill Teddy Kennedy’s seat, who had died last year of a malignant brain tumor. Athough other local issues  had been at play, the election outcome was widely hailed as a repudiation of Obama’s policies in general and the health insurance program in particular. The newly minted Senator, Scott Brown, declared immediately that he would vote against the currently existing plan which is undergoing a “reconciliation” of the House and Senate versions before it can be submitted to the president for signing it into law. Thus it is obvious that there will be no meaningful change in the health insurance situation except that the insurance companies, in anticipation of harder times ahead, have already raised their rates in some instances and some medications which had previously been covered are no longer.

The question now arises: can an educated citizenry put a halt to this slide into political chaos and infighting which prevents proper government? The outlook is not good because as discussed two years ago (Is America Fixable?, February 1, 2008) the American educational system has been geared towards the lowest common denominator and there is no sign that serious reform is in the offing. President Obama correctly declared in his address to Congress that a High School diploma no longer guarantees a good job, but he failed to put his finger on the cause. Instead he advocated more money for community colleges. Yet, college cannot, and should not, make up for the years that were wasted during Primary and High School education. Ill considered legislation which requires of teachers to achieve across the board acceptable pupil test scores, when some of them are mentally handicapped and others don’t even know English, is absurd. Yet it is curent law because “no child must be left behind.” While test scores may go up under these circumstances genuine learning can hardly occur. Unless curricula are revamped, at all levels, American youngsters will not be able to compete against the rest of the world which does take the education of its children seriously. We are spending infinitely more on our schools than other countries, yet are producing a worse outcome, which is another example of Humpty Dumpty’s reign.  The mental level of America’s younger generation, who will be in leadership positions in the near future, is perhaps best exemplified by a cartoon which came through the e-mail a few months ago

 

             

 

 

 

 

            A society where its male members, have largely given up on extracurricular political or intellectual aspects of life and limit their interests to the Trinity of: Money, Sex and Sports, in varying proportions, can hardly be expected to retain a responsible leadership position in the world. The cultural level of our country is not only portrayed but also manufactured by the mass media. They show us Humpty Dumpty land and some years ago Woody Allen “joked” that “the brain is my second most favorite organ.” But it wasn’t a joke; not for him and not for a great many of our citizens. As long as this state of affairs persists, all well meaning efforts to bring our society out of its rut will be in vain. Humpty Dumpty’s fate is well known and so is the proverb that pride comes before the fall. We are fortunate at this time to have a president who is genuinely well meaning, regardless of what the opposition says, and has the intellectual and emotional acumen to guide the country into calmer waters. But the forces which are arraigned against him are substantial and the audacity of hope may not be enough to carry the day; although it is our best chance.







March 1, 2010

PRISONERS OF WORDS

In last month’s installment I mentioned that The Jesus Conundrum is now available for purchase from the Internet (www.trafford.com; www.amazon.com; www.barnesandnoble.com ). Readers of this site who are personally acquainted with me, however, need not buy the book because I shall send them an autographed copy gratis. In case they have mislaid the e-mail address it is erodin@pol.net. Since the address is haunted by spam I would recommend that you list the subject as “Jesus Conundrum book” so that I do not accidentally delete your message. I shall also welcome your comments, questions and critiques of the book as well as aspects of the Hot Issues. They will be answered promptly unless I am out of town.

The title of this month’s installment comes actually from the Conclusions of the Jesus book where it was used in the context of the difficult commandment to “love” ones enemies. In addition, it follows on last month’s discussion of “The Humpty Dumpty Society” where I pointed out how words can be arrogated by someone without regard to the meaning as it is commonly understood. Since this is an important problem not only in the political-religious but even scientific sphere, I shall discuss it here in some more detail.

Let me start with science first because the misuse of language in that arena of “objective truth,” may not be obvious.  Yet, as mentioned on previous occasions, objective truth does not exist and since scientists are human beings, subjected to all their foibles, it should not be surprising that faulty thinking can arise even in the hallowed halls of academia. The one I am most familiar with in my professional work is in the field of epilepsy and I published a paper on it last year in the international literature. Although everybody knows the word “epilepsy,” it may come as a surprise that my colleagues cannot agree on its meaning and have, therefore, practically abolished it. There are several reasons for this state of affairs. In the 1950’s it was felt that the stigma which has characterized the illness is best removed by renaming the disease. Instead of “epilepsy” the words “convulsive disorders” became the scientific politically correct term. This change was not based on science, but on the assumption that the general public cannot stomach the truth.

Yet, “convulsive disorders” was a poor choice of words for two reasons. One was that not all patients who suffer from epileptic seizures “convulse.” The other reason was that epilepsy was then no longer regarded as a disease sui generis for which one can give a prognosis, but merely a symptom of a whole host of other brain disorders. Under these circumstances it is, of course, futile to look for a common underlying mechanism which might pertain to the great variety of most epileptic seizures. In view of the fact that a “convulsion” is not necessary for a diagnosis of epilepsy the term “convulsive disorders” has subsequently been dropped and replaced by “The Epilepsies” and/or “Epilepsy Syndromes.”

Although this is currently the official terminology in scientific circles it suffers from the same defect of mistaking the symptom–the epileptic seizure– for the underlying disease, the cause of which is in most instances unknown. This has very practical consequences as I have already pointed out in the 1960s in my book on The Prognosis of Patients with Epilepsy. If epilepsy is just a symptom of a whole host of other diseases, such as a cough, it would make no sense to look for a prognosis let alone search for a cause. This view was, however, the proverbial voice in the wilderness; the book was first criticized and then ignored. Last year was the 100th anniversary of the International League Against Epilepsy, and this prompted me to review the world-wide progress that has been made in the understanding of the illness since 1909. The result was dismal. Although we know a great deal more about the electromagnetic mechanisms which are the concomitants of overt behavioral seizures, as well as their trigger, we still don’t know why these events occur in the brains of some people and not others; what leads to their episodic recurrence; why our anticonvulsant drugs are not more effective and why even surgery, where the supposed offending region of the brain is removed, frequently does not result in a complete cure. In these fundamental aspects we are still as ignorant as our colleagues were in 1909, when they first gathered in Budapest for their exchange of views.

By changing terminology from the singular of the word, epilepsy, to its plural we have imprisoned our minds, concentrated on the differences, instead of potential commonality, and thereby prevented progress in the understanding of fundamental aspects of the illness to the detriment of our patients. Fortunately, at long last, there are some epilepsy specialists who have again realized that a longitudinal approach, which looks at a given patient over a period of decades, is needed rather than the current cross-sectional one which labels a patient according to the prevalent seizure type at the time of the visit to the physician. “Epileptogenesis,” the process in brain structure and metabolism that underlies the propensity to recurrent seizures, is now pursued in a number of basic science laboratories. The term is correct and one can hope that genuine insights will be gained.

But what took us so long to see the obvious? We allowed ourselves to be misled by inappropriate terminology and suffered the consequences. This is a fact of life which pervades all areas of our society and I have used the scientific example first because it is least expected by the general public. This brings us to the next question: why do words, and subsequently language, have such a powerful influence on us? Since words are only symbols, which stand for thoughts, we need to be clear how thoughts are generated, translated into words and what we know in regard to their neurophysiologic concomitants. In the discussion of these questions I shall refer to the work of my friend and colleague emeritus Professor of Neurophysiology and former Director of the Neurophysiologic Institute of the University of Vienna, Professor Hellmuth Petsche, whom I have mentioned on past occasions and whose help I have acknowledged in some of my books.

But before doing so a few words of explanation are needed. Although Petsche and I have closely worked together only for somewhat over six months at the start of my training in neurology and psychiatry, because I came to the USA thereafter, I have always respected his integrity and carefulness. This is why we have stayed in contact ever since January of 1950 when we first met at what was then popularly called the Wagner Jauregg Klinik; the University Hospital for Psychiatric and Neurologic Diseases. The eponym was applied to honor its former director, Julius Ritter von Wagner Jauregg (1857-1940), who had received the Nobel Prize in 1927 for his discovery that “general paresis of the insane,” also called “dementia paralytica,” a late stage of syphilis infection, which was highly prevalent and incurable at the time, could be successfully treated by inoculating the patient with malaria.

Petsche’s and my scientific interests, EEG and epilepsy, paralleled each other and I was able to prove in the late 1980s and 1990s, with improved technology, the validity of some of his early work of the 1960s, on what used to be called Petit Mal and has been renamed to absence seizures. In contrast to myself, who likes music but cannot play an instrument, he is a gifted cellist and pianist, which led him during the later years of his scientific career to investigate the electrical concomitants in the brain when an individual listens to music and how these processes differ in musicians from people like myself. His work was responsible for the “Mozart effect,” which had aroused considerable interest in the general public during the 1990s. This in turn brought up the problem of, “what is thinking” and the overlap of science with philosophy. It was in this area where our interests converged again and while I had stayed on the philosophical side, Petsche added his neurophysiological experimental work. With his colleagues Prof. Peter Rappelsberger and Prof. Helmut Pockberger he published a series of papers on the EEG concomitants of thinking, language, and differences beween gifted artists versus laypeople in the appreciation of music and the visual arts.

Before discussing Petsche’s and co-workers scientific conclusions let me start with some general aspects of thinking which differ markedly between people and depend on brain function and anatomy. These are intimately related because they are influenced not just by heredity. Early childhood experiences can also shape anatomy. Petsche and I can be used as examples of different types of thinking and how this might have come about, because we freely share our thoughts on this topic. His interest in philosophy and science resulted from a loving father who nurtured these aspects in him already at an early age, while his mother was a pianist and in his childhood they played Haydn symphonies together four handed. Anyone who has read War & Mayhem is aware that this was not the case in my situation. Music was absorbed by osmosis rather than practice and the interest in science and philosophy had a very practical grounding in the desire to find out why people do what they do, and at times treat each other in such a callous egotistical manner. Although we came from different routes and arrived at similar conclusions, our mode of thinking still differs. Mine is essentially verbal, while his is more inclined to pictures and musical elements. In addition, since his interests were aroused as part of childhood play he enjoys what one may call academic-theoretical philosophy as exemplified by Parmenides, Heraclites, Plato, Plotinus, Cusanus, Leibniz, Spinoza all the way up to Wittgenstein, Jaspers, Cassirer and Whitehead. My favorite philosophers on the other hand were Confucius, the Stoics, especially Epictetus, and the one whom I regard as their spiritual father: the Buddha. They appeal to my practical nature which had to adapt to adverse circumstances and provided rules of conduct that not only made sense to me but could be enacted. The connection between these two different types of thinking was, however, facilitated by our mutual admiration for Goethe who truly was a polymath and had the gift to express the most profound truths in poetic language. 

One can ascertain one’s own type of thinking by just closing one’s eyes in a quiet room and watching how a thought develops. This is an exceedingly healthy effort because it is the only way to get to know oneself, which aught to be one of the goals of our lives. When I do so in a relatively dark environment there is at first darkness with some inchoate shapes akin to fireflies. Thereafter comes some kind of a stirring and a snatch of a syllable or even a word, then comes the thought of a complete word which is, however, not yet spoken and eventually an inner spoken sentence. It is clear, therefore that on “automatic pilot” there is no will; there are just happenings, which can be observed. These verbal thoughts can be quite intrusive and prevent me at times from falling asleep. The cure is to force myself to dismiss a word as soon as it arrives and instead concentrate on a picture, sequences of pictures, which then lead to day-dreaming and sleep. This, however, requires effort and is voluntary rather than letting nature take its course. As Petsche wrote to me his initial shreds of thoughts (Gedankenfetzen) are picture fragments with some musical underpinnings, rather than words.  

These undertakings are not just idle musings. On the one hand, since they are play they are fun, and we can use all the fun we can get out of life, and on the other they can lead to an understanding how our individual mind works and how we can improve on its function. Let us stay with mind for a moment. If we are observant of what goes on inside of us, one notices that our thinking, unless directed towards immediate problem solving, is far from “logical” in the sense where one thought dictates the next one in a sequence which leads to the desired goal. There are always “cross associations” namely unwanted intrusions which deflect from the intent and it needs “will power” to return to one’s task.  This is, of course most obvious when we just let our brains have their way and under those circumstances thinking resembles a swarm of gnats (Mueckenschwarm) in sunlight, as Fritz Mauthner (German philosopher, 1849-1923, of whom I knew nothing until Petsche pointed me to him) has expressed it, or an anthill as is written  in Buddhist literature. Actually I prefer the anthill analogy because it carries the additional adjective of “burning anthill” to signify the passions of the human mind which frequently distract us from our goal. 

Another reason why I like the anthill picture is because one can observe the behavior of some members of this species in detail. When I am in the backyard in the summer ever so often an ant will appear from nowhere and crawl around. But it doesn’t just go steadily in a straight line. It does so for a little while then zigs to one side, zags to the other, goes backwards, forwards, subsequently revisits the same spot it had been before. This goes on until either I get tired of watching or it vanishes from sight. It then dawned on me that this is actually how my own thoughts zig-zag around, although there is also some thread that eventually pulls them back to what is supposed to be accomplished. This thread which brings order to chaos is, however, heavily influenced by emotional components, which remain unconscious and are not subject to the will. Nevertheless, they reflect themselves in how a given person perceives the world and reacts to it. A point to which I shall return later.  

For the question why we can’t do better in regard to the control of our minds we need first of all to look at our brains and their individuality. I shall now provide some aspects of Petsche’s scientific work which he has summarized in a book EEG and Thinking (H. Petsche and S.C. Etlinger. Verlag der Oesterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien 1998). The first fact we need to be aware of is that no two brains are alike in the external appearance of their folds (gyri and sulci) and these differ even more than facial features. The cortical folds are due to the fact that our nerve cells (neurons), their connections (fibers), and supporting structures (glia) require more room than can be accommodated within the fixed size of the skull. At birth the gyri and sulci are present in a somewhat rudimentary form while the mature appearance tends to occur during late puberty and early adulthood. During maturation our different life experiences find their reflection in the structure of the brain and in this manner: heredity, structure and function become interlinked to lead to the thinking patterns and their verbal as well as behavioral expressions of individuals

It has been estimated that the cortex (surface layers of the brain) contains about 10 billion neurons but obviously nobody has counted all of them and surprisingly enough even the word “billion” is ambiguous. The American “billion” is the European “milliard” which follows linguistically after millions and only a thousand milliards make a billion. The ten year projected trillion dollar deficit for the proposed health-care reform would amount to a billion in Europe. This is another example where we are using the same word for completely different concepts and expect to be understood.

Be that as it may; the next important aspect in regard to brain structure and function are the connections between all of these neurons, their fibers. These are vast and communication between widely separated areas not only of the cortex, but also its deeper structures (nuclei) and the cerebellum occurs within milliseconds. This is a fact which is not fully appreciated by the general public. We are currently seduced by pretty color pictures derived from functional magnetic resonance images (fMRI) which promise us to find the precise location of various brain functions and emotions. We are even told that fMRI pictures can be used to detect lying. Our capitalist system immediately smelled money and special machines are already on the market to sniff out lies. What these people deliberately ignore is that fMRI measures only changes in blood flow rather than direct neuronal activity. It is true that increased neuronal activity leads to increased blood flow, which is measurable, but there are two problems. One is that for blood flow to increase takes time, usually 1-5 seconds. The other is that the blood flow changes are so small that they need to be amplified by several repetitions of the test procedure, which is not how ordinary thinking, including lying, proceeds. The time element is especially crucial because as mentioned above initial neuronal connections occur within 1-2 milliseconds and their complete elaboration (secondary and tertiary responses) usually takes no longer than up to 300 ms. While we can find what might be called centers of gravity for some specific brain functions it is erroneous to think that we, therefore, can find specific areas in the brain which underlie a given thought process.

Petsche and co-workers have established quite unequivocally by their EEG work in the 1980s (prior to the discovery of fMRI) that these “centers of gravity,” or to use another analogy “airline hubs,” exist for certain mental functions such as music or picture appreciation as well as reading and memorizing. It is these “hubs” which fMRI is able to demonstrate. But it cannot establish their degree of connectivity to other brain areas because that occurs in the millisecond domain. The EEG, and now also the magnetoencephalogram (MEG), can do so and with appropriate software, as well as financial support, is likely to supplant fMRI in the future. What Petsche and co-workers have already shown, is that when one looks not only at the “hubs” but at the degree and extent with which they connect to other brain areas one can not only distinguish between the previously mentioned mental functions but also show how the brains of artists, be they musicians or painters, behave differently from non-artists when they are confronted with the same piece of music or painting. Even aptitude for a given talent could be ascertained to some degree by statistically assessing increase and decrease of connectivity (coherence in specific frequency bands) and so can differences in the processing of language by skilled professional interpreters during translations.  

When one keeps all of these aspects in mind it is obvious there has to be a tremendous variety in individual thinking which is the reason why we never really will “know” another person. Our “knowledge” is based on observed conduct over a period of time and we assume that this will not vary appreciably in the future. If the person then were to commit an act which appears to have been “out of character,” but was really an expression of his inner self, we are astonished, disappointed or even hurt because our judgment had been proven wrong. The point is that we want others to conform to our notions as for instance an exasperated Prof. Higgins exclaimed in My Fair Lady, “Why can’t a woman be like me!” It can’t happen; their brains are different from those of males as has also been demonstrated electroencephalographically. The answer to the problem is, therefore, first of all the recognition of these inherent differences and thereafter the development of respect and tolerance. These functions are not innate and even go to some extent against human nature which is for the most part egotistical. They need to be learned. These statements may be doubted, but just look at America’s conduct around the world. We want everybody to be like us and governed as a “liberal democracy” or at least by pliable dictators who take orders from Uncle Sam. 

What could or should be done about this state of affairs and how can tolerance be fostered? To answer this question we have to go back to words, their meaning and how they are put to together in a grammatical sequence to form language. We regard language as the highest achievement of the human race, which puts us above the world of the animals, but we forget one crucial fact of life. For every gain there has to be a loss. For us spoken and written language is our main means of communication, although “body language” may give us away when we are dissembling or lying. Animals communicate perfectly well among themselves and to some extent with us, without language apart from rudimentary sounds. Furthermore, we have forgotten, as mentioned above, that words are not things per se but only symbols which stand for either a concrete object or an abstract thought. The latter situation is even worse because we are piling one symbol on top of another. We completely disregard that abstract nouns, such as: truth, justice, democracy, as well as all the -isms are merely symbols sitting on top of other symbols created by our minds and Humpty Dumpty, my favorite example, can provide any meaning he likes to those. Yet, absurdly enough, these are the ostensible reasons over which wars are fought, including the current one on “terrorism.”  

When mankind developed language it opened the door to lies and they have haunted us ever since. In the December 1, 2009 installment I mentioned the 18th century scientist Swedenborg and that I shall return to him at some other point. The reason why I do so now is that according to him angels, with whom he conversed on a daily basis during later years of his life, are inherently incapable of lying. Communication between themselves as well as us consists, according to Swedenborg, of direct thought transfer, telepathy. We may not believe Swedenborg’s writings because seeing angels and communicating with them is not a common experience of the human race, but if we could develop telepathy we might even get rid of wars because they require secrecy and dissembling words for their initiation.

Imagine for a moment what the world would be like if all our thoughts were immediately accessible to everybody else. At first there would be massive consternation but thereafter, if I am right, there might be hilarious laughter and relief with an amazed, “what you too?” I had an inkling of this sentiment right after the demise of the Nazi regime. A Jewish parent or grandparent had stamped one, literally on official papers, as a Mischling. This had serious adverse consequences and was, therefore, kept very quiet as long as possible by the person who carried that label. Since Mischlinge looked and behaved like everybody else and were not required to wear a distinctive mark they could blend into society at large simply by keeping their mouths shut and their thoughts to themselves. But when the war was over and Nazi rule was gone it was absolutely amazing how large this “silent minority” had actually been and the, “what you too?” led to a round of laughter.   

With the obvious disadvantage of words, as consequences of and symbols for thoughts, is there a way to escape from their constraints on our thinking or are we destined to remain their “prisoners?” Since we don’t have telepathy, we have to use words because even if we were to think in pictures or in music we would still have to express our feelings about them to others, verbally. What matters, therefore, is to understand what our words originally meant and subsequently use them wisely. For the first part looking at the etymology of a given word has been a considerable help for me because originally the word held meaning, even if it came from a different language, which may have become lost over the ages. This method was very useful in writing the Jesus book. Precision in expression is essential; otherwise we shall reside for ever in Humpty Land where we talk to ourselves rather than each other.

The wise use of words is our greatest challenge but my favorite philosopher, Siddartha Gautama, the Buddha, has shown the way. He did not set out to found a religion that has to be believed in and he did not rely on miracles or supernatural intervention. He recognized that the mind, as expressed in words and deeds, is the reason for the misery human beings inflict upon each other and developed a method for controlling it which can be used by anyone who makes the effort. The noble path towards that goal starts with “right view.” I don’t know as yet the Sanskrit, or better yet the original Pali word, which has been translated into English not only as “view,” but also as “decision” and if a reader were to know it I would be grateful for the information. The German word is “rechte Erkenntnis [correct realization]” and by another author “rechter Glaube [correct belief, faith]. It is obvious that all of these translations have inadequacies but they also point to the difficulty inherent in all translations. Personally I prefer to think that the Enlightened One intended to advise the proper use of that deep stirring which precedes thought and is the groundswell from which all else arises: thought, speech, action, etc.. We cannot see this groundswell even in ourselves but only infer it from introspection and when it comes to others we have to rely on their words and conduct. Nevertheless we can infer it and I shall give a couple of examples.

During the years while I prepared and subsequently wrote The Moses Legacy I subscribed to Commentary which is the foremost conservative Jewish magazine in this country. I did so because I wanted to obtain authentic Jewish viewpoints rather than getting second-hand information. Two sentences from different authors, in different years, remained in memory. The first one was, “If I am not for myself, who is?” The context was in essence that the personal self and its needs should trump everything else. This struck me as the opposite of right view. As stated on another occasion I believe that: whatever you do for yourself, dies with yourself; what you do for others, lives in others. The second sentence was a headline, “The Virtue of Hate.” The author used it in defense of the policies of the State of Israel and was very eloquent in support of his thesis but hate hardly seems to be the proper vehicle to resolve serious international conflicts.

Thus, right view would consist of an outreach to others and provide help where help is needed. Right speech should then not only consist from abstention of gossip, lying and slander. It should also be precise, using words in their correct meaning and conform to the purpose of speech, namely, to effectively communicate ones thoughts to others without, however, insisting on having the last word. Communication has to be a two way street to be effective. Unfortunately this is rarely the case in today’s politicized environment as last week’s attempt at President Obama’s health-care summit has shown.

Finally, for the recognition of the prison we have built ourselves with words it is essential to keep in the forefront of our thoughts the differences between: dogma, opinion and truth. All of human “knowledge” falls somewhere on this spectrum and within it we either find our freedom or perpetuate our prison. This will be further discussed with contemporary examples in a subsequent issue.   







April 1, 2010

RIGHT VIEW

            In the previous installments I have discussed the necessity of precise thought and language if we want to talk with each other rather than engaging in self-congratulatory monologues. I have also pointed to my friendship with Professor Petsche and how our correspondence has been mutually fruitful in clarifying our thoughts. To summarize briefly: Human brains are highly individualistic. They are shaped anatomically and functionally by heredity as well as the life experiences of the individual. While it is agreed that the “mind” is influenced by past experiences the fact that this reflects itself in brain structure and function is less commonly admitted to. Yet, since this is the case it provides the reason why some behavior patterns are so difficult to change even if they are harmful to the individual. The other point to emphasize is that we, therefore, should not merely ascribe ill-will to others who do not readily agree with our views because in many instances they simply cannot follow our line of thought by not having undergone our life experiences. This is theoretically obvious but since it calls for tolerance of differences, rather than condemnation, we find ourselves in the political as well as at times in the private sphere of our lives at odds with others, who then receive a variety of undesirable labels which in turn leads to mutual recriminations.

            Since Petsche and I are not only neuroscientists but also have philosophical interests we have been trying to bridge this gap between science and philosophy which bedevils the public at large. Furthermore, as neurologists, we have chosen the study of the brain and its functions as one of our major professional goals, with the other endeavoring to provide the best possible care of our patients. Therefore, it was more or less inevitable that we should drift into the fundamental questions of how human beings think and communicate with each other. In so doing Petsche came up with two terms in the German language which need to be kept apart when we talk about the genesis and use of thought processes. These are Gedankenkunde and Gedankenkunst. Gedankenkunde denotes the scientific investigation of the physical concomitants of thinking with EEG/MEG, fMRI and other imaging methods, as has been discussed in last month’s installment. This will lead to a body of information which already has practical value. Examples have been shown in a recent “60 Minutes” segment where patients, who had lost the functions of their limbs as well as speech, communicated their thoughts via EEG signals, which were deciphered by a computer program and displayed on a video-monitor.

            Gedankenkunst on the other hand is more difficult to define in the English language because the word Kunst – Art has been degraded to a considerable extent in our culture. A fair number of our celebrated “artists,” regardless of the field they labor in: music, the theater or the visual arts, would hardly have qualified for that title in previous decades. The Gedankenkunst Petsche is talking about, is the ability to express one’s thoughts not only in a beautiful poetic way but also in a coherent system of thought which can stand as a monument to its creator. Petsche, who has read infinitely more philosophy than I have, had to conclude that most of our well known philosophers have really not created a cohesive system that can be regarded as valid across different cultures but have produced philosophems.

            Let me explain the various terms. A philosopher, strictly speaking, is merely a “friend of wisdom” and this does not require even a college degree. Since a number of professional teachers of philosophy were actually not “friends of wisdom,” but merely spouted theories invented by others, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche excoriated them. A philosophical system could be compared to a mental home, in an attractive neighborhood, which is well founded and furnished, where the person is content to live. Looking at the various existing philosophies this goal is hardly ever met. Our philosophers have instead provided us with the mentioned philosophems which are defined as: a philosophical proposition, doctrine, axiom, theorem or principle of reasoning. With other words our well known philosophers have provided us with some bits and pieces of advice, which may or may not be well founded, but for the most part they have not been able to provide us with a mental home of the type described above. This would have required a true architect of the mind who is not just an architect but a Michelangelo who can see a Pietà in a block of marble. This is the Gedankenkunst Petsche was talking about.

            True artists as incorporated in Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Rubens and others in the visual arts; Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven in music; Shakespeare and Goethe in poetry and language, are nowhere to be seen among today’s celebrities. Instead we have what is called in German Kuenstlerei that is: pretension to artistry. The word “artifice” came to mind but its definition of, “crafty but underhanded deception; a trick played out as an ingenious, but artful, ruse; a strategic maneuver that uses some clever means to ...,”  has a negative connotation which I do not want to imply. What some of our contemporary “artists” are doing is merely to conform, frequently with meager talents, to the Zeitgeist in order to achieve fame and fortune. Since we live in the “modern deconstruction” era any artistic result which expresses universal beauty and harmony can hardly be expected.

            All of this may sound highly theoretical but it is not. The mental world we live in expresses itself in conduct which affects others, and for those in power the world at large. Especially for people in leadership positions the inner and outer world becomes one and since thought precedes action it is imperative that we acquaint ourselves with the mental homes our leadership lives in. This can only be done by inference, of course, but we do have their spoken and written words as well as actual conduct on which to base a reasonable estimate. Furthermore, as mentioned in last month’s installment, there exists an unconscious attitude which precedes conscious thought. It flavors the thought and thereby all subsequent actions. As a result thoughts, reasoning and philosophy are frequently used to justify the unconscious wish and “rationalizations” are invented. This is precisely the reason why the Buddha, Siddartha Gautama, placed “Right View” on top of his eight fold Noble Path and why it needs extensive discussion.  

            In the March installment I have also mentioned that I did not know the original Sanskrit terms for the various aspects of the Noble Path but our daughter came to the rescue. The term dŗst for view is derived from to see and therefore does reflect inner view or insight. Right stands for correct and as everything else in Buddhism, does not reflect a moral judgment in the sense of right and wrong. It merely denotes that there are two ways of doing something: a right way which leads to the desired result come hell or high water and a wrong way which will not withstand adversity. Any sailor knows that there is only one right way to make a given knot and a hundred different wrong ones, which led to the adage that, “He who doesn’t know how to tie a knot, ties a lot. This brings us to some examples from the past month which illustrate concretely what has been so far discussed only in the abstract.

            The on-line bookstore Daedalus had sent me one of their periodic catalogues and in it I found the title: “Jesus and Yahweh” by Harold Bloom with the subtitle, “The Names Divine.” I had not been familiar with Bloom’s writings but in view of just having published the Jesus book I thought it might be useful to read his views on the topic. The subtitle should have given me pause because it is, of course, unusual in the English language to put the adjective after the noun, but the meaning eluded me at the time. Mere curiosity prevailed, I bought the book, read it and was puzzled as well as to some extent annoyed. Mind you, I knew absolutely nothing about the author and merely judged this particular product. But since he wrote, “This book culminates for me what began half my lifetime ago, on my thirty-seventh birthday, when I woke up from a nightmare to begin writing an essay called ‘The Covering Cherub or Poetic Influence.’ This was published six years later, much revised, as the opening chapter of a short book called The Anxiety of Influence (1973);’” I also had to obtain that one from the Marriott Library of our university. This was necessary because I had never felt any “anxiety of influence” in my life and didn’t know what he was talking about.

            For now, let me stay with Jesus and Yahweh, because one can summarize the essence of the 238 pages in one paragraph. The first part of the book deals with Jesus and the second with Yahweh. He agrees with others that the quest for the historical Jesus, or Yeshua how prefers to call him since Jesus was a Jew, is futile. The gospel biographies are unreliable. From extra-biblical sources about Jesus, Bloom mentioned only the brief quote by Josephus, whom he calls “a superb liar,” as confirmation that Jesus had ever lived. The Christian Church has misread the Hebrew Bible for its own purposes, the “Father” of Jesus bears hardly any relationship to the Yahweh of the Hebrew documents and the idea of a Judeo-Christian heritage is untenable because there is an “Irreconcilability of Christianity and Judaism.”  

            I am glad that I had not read Bloom’s book prior to writing my own on Jesus because I have come independently to the same conclusions. We differ, however, not only in the style of writing but also on the basic premise in regard to the Deity. Let me discuss style first. It abounds in apodictic, at times sarcastic and at other times seemingly meaningless statements which are designed to impress the reader with erudition. As such the book is an example for what I have referred to above as Kuenstlerei or pretensions to art. The German language has another word which is applicable: Effekthascherei, namely trying to impress the reader regardless of truth or the harm that may be done by polemical statements.

            Here are some examples: “All Western irony is a repetition of Jesus’ enigmas/riddles, in amalgam with the ironies of Socrates [p.10].”  He regarded Yahweh, “by definition the most formidable of all ironists [p.12].” “Paul and the other three Gospel authors (or traditions) have and partly deserve their literary admirers, yet Mark stands by itself as the enigma-of enigmas, endlessly resistant to analysis [p.31].” On the other hand Bloom had stated earlier that “The Marcan Jesus may be as close to ‘he real Jesus’ as we can come [p. 11].” Other stylistic examples are “…the Trinity, Christendom’s extraordinary exploit in somehow asserting its innocence as to the exiling of Yahweh [p.98].” “Christology is a weird science from the perspective either of Judaism or of Islam. Immersing myself in its study has been an educational experience for me, not at all akin to my bafflement when I try to absorb Buddhism or Hinduism, both of which evade me [p.154].” While all of the above can be explained as the harmless musings of an author who seeks to justify his ideas, the statement, “If Yahweh is a man of war, Allah is a suicide bomber [p237]” is clearly inflammatory and occurs in the final chapter headlined “Conclusion: Reality –Testing.”

            The statement that, “Only Mark’s Jesus goes through an all-night agony because his death is near [p.8],” is factually incorrect. The night at Gethsemane is reported in all three synoptic gospels. Furthermore, “Mark’s persuasive misreading changes ‘one like a human being’ into the apocalyptic term ‘Son of Man’ [p.64].This leaves the impression that Mark engaged in a deliberate distortion of an Aramaic document and ignores that Mark had, in all probability, used the Greek Septuagint for Daniel’s vision where the term is indeed nion anthropon which translates into son of man.

            The main point of the book seems to be a demonstration that the “Anxiety of Influence” was at work in the preparation of the New Testament, which he prefers to call the Belated Testament. Here is Bloom’s explanation of what he means,

 

 

“I have learned that my idea, the anxiety of influence is very easily misunderstood, which is natural, since I base the notion on the process of ‘misreading,’ by which I do not intend dyslexia. Later works misread earlier ones; when the misreading is strong enough to be eloquent, coherent, and persuasive to many, then it will endure, and sometimes prevail. The New Testament frequently is a strong misreading of the Hebrew Bible, and certainly it has persuaded multitudes [p.46].” . . .

 

Influence is a kind of influenza, a contamination once thought to pour in upon us from the stars. Mark’s influenza was caught by him from the J writer, or Yahwist; Paul’s and John’s cases stem from the Law and the Prophets alike. The great critic Northrop Frye (who had contaminated me) remarked to me that whether a later reader experienced such an effect was entirely a matter of temperament and circumstances. With amiable disloyalty I answered that influence anxiety was not primarily an effect in an individual, but rather the relation of one work of literature to another. Therefore the anxiety of influence is the result, and not the cause, of a strong misreading. With that we parted (intellectually) forever, though in old age I appreciate the irony that my criticism is to his as the New Testament is to the Tanakh, which is spiritually the paradoxical reverse of our spiritual preferences [p.47].”

 

 

The last sentence of this excerpt will be discussed later but while I can understand that later writers are inevitably influenced by what others have previously written and may either modify, or plagiarize the contents, I could not see why this should be regarded as one being “contaminated” by it and wondered where the “anxiety” fit into all of this. This is the reason why I had to consult the 1973 work which was the seminal one and established Bloom as one of the foremost literary critics of this country. It earned him tenure as Professor of Humanities at Yale and numerous prizes. What struck me most in that book was its Humpty Dumpty quality in the idiosyncratic way he uses language.            

The subtitle of the book is: A Theory of Poetry. Although he does talk about poets he also lists as examples Freud and it becomes apparent that he really means anyone who tries to bring a new aspect to literature. The main point is that “the poet” strives for originality but has to “wrestle” with his precursors lest he becomes overwhelmed by their “influence.” “… Self-appropriation involves the immense anxieties of indebtedness, for what strong maker desires the realization that he has failed to create himself? [p5].” Later on we read, “The anxiety of influence is so terrible because it is both a kind of separation anxiety and the beginning of a compulsion neurosis, or fear of a death that is a personified superego [p.58].” I could go on with numerous other examples of this type which filled 157 pages but the Freudian influence is obvious and I believe that the reader will already have the flavor of Professor Bloom’s type of thinking and style of writing.

Let us, therefore, return to the last sentence of the excerpt from page 47. Herman Northrop Frye (1912-1999) was a Canadian author who can be regarded as having established “literary criticism” as an academic scientific discipline with his essay on: Anatomy of Criticism, which was published in 1957. He had studied theology and became an ordained minister of the United Church of Canada. Bloom on the other hand is conflicted about his religion.

 

“Yahweh, whom I have evaded throughout my three-quarters of a century, has an awesome capacity not to go away, though he deserves to be convicted for desertion, in regard not just to the Jews but to all suffering humankind. In this book [Jesus and Yahweh] the interpreter is a Jew whose spirituality responds most fervently to the ancient tendency we term ‘Gnosticism,’ which may or may not be a religion in the sense that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam remain the primary Western traditions. I very much want to dismiss Yahweh as the ancient Gnostics did, finding in him a mere demiurge who had botched the Creation so that it was simultaneously a Fall. But I wake these days, sometime between midnight and two A.M., because of nightmares in which Yahweh sardonically appears as various beings, ranging from a Havana-smoking Edwardian attired Dr. Sigmund Freud to the Book of Daniel’s silently reproachful Ancient of Days. I trudge downstairs gloomily and silently, lest I wake my wife, and breakfast on tea and dark bread while rereading yet once more in the Tanakh, wide swatches of Mishnah and Talmud, and those disquieting texts the New Testament and Augustine’s City of God [p.236].”

 

 

            When one reads these lines it is obvious from where this anxiety of influence originated and, in spite of protestations to the contrary by Bloom, Frye was correct when he diagnosed the “anxiety” as an effect of the literature on Bloom rather than the other way round. Bloom prefers the term Tanakh (acronym for Torah, Prophets and Writings) over Old Testament, which is understandable, but he does not seem to realize, that the Tanakh is only a partial version of the first complete Jewish Bible – the Septuagint. He stated that the “New Testament accomplishes its appropriation by means of its drastic reordering of the Tanakh,” and then proceeded to list the books of the Bible in the order in which they appear in the Christian Bible and contrasts it with that of the Tanakh. When one peruses this table one finds that the Tanakh does not contain different books from the OT but merely omits some which are present in the Christian version. Furthermore, these books are contained in the Septuagint, and their sequence is identical to the Christian OT. Bloom apparently felt that the Church Fathers had willfully changed the sequence so that the books end with Malachi instead of with II Kings, as in the Tanakh, to provide a different emphasis. But I believe that he was mistaken. Since Greek was the lingua franca in the first century A.D. the Septuagint was, in all probability, the original scripture from which the gospel writers took their information rather than a Hebrew or Aramaic text.

            It is, of course, true that the gospel writers did adapt the prophecies contained in the Septuagint to allow for an identification of Jesus with the expected Messiah. This was not some inadvertent misreading but purposeful, as has been pointed out in my book on Jesus. Since these points deal with a fundamental aspect of Christian religion they will be discussed further in appropriate detail at another time. The important aspect for now is the relationship of Bloom to Yahweh. It is not idiosyncratic but pervasive in a considerable “secular” segment of the Jewish population and a source of inner conflict. This is then projected onto the outer world. Bloom defined the differences between the three “Abrahamic” religions as,

 

“A Christian believes that Jesus was the Christ, anointed before the creation in order to atone for the sins of the world. Muslim’s submit to Allah’s will, shatteringly set forth in the Qur’an. My own mother trusted in the Covenant, despite Yahweh’s blatant violation of its terms.”

 

            Thus, for Bloom and like-minded others the role of the Deity is to serve the needs of individual humans or the nation, apparently regardless of their conduct. As I have pointed out in The Moses Legacy the Covenant at Sinai, which is the hallmark of the Jewish religion, is simply a business contract on the model of Egypt. Here is the relevant quote,

 

“Erman in his Life in ancient Egypt gives the following example: ‘Contract concluded between A and B, that B should give x to A, whilst A should give y to B, Behold B was therewith content.’ The contract between Yahweh and the Israelites at Sinai stated that: ‘if you will hearken to my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be Mine own treasure from among all peoples… and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation [Ex 19:5, 6].’ ‘And all the people answered together, and said: ‘all that the Lord hath spoken we will do’ [Ex. 19:8].’ We therefore might say: ‘Behold the people were therewith content [p.72].’”

 

 

            When one subsequently reads about the actual conduct of the people, and their offspring as depicted by the prophets, it should come as no surprise that Yahweh was not pleased; he chastised them, and eventually may have given up on this ungrateful lot. These are, of course, assumptions, because there is no evidence, except from the biblical assertion, that such a Covenant has ever existed. Nevertheless, the idea that Yahweh owes the Jews something because of his promises has apparently penetrated some Jewish brains to the extent that even persons, such as Bloom, who no longer believe in or trusts Yahweh, still harbor this notion. In case one were to think that I am exaggerating, here are the last two sentences of the book, “Yahweh present and [italics in the original] absent has more to do with the end of trust than with the end of faith. Will he yet make a covenant with us that he [italics added] both can and will keep?”

            In the book on Jesus I raised the question, if “living without the help of an unseen benevolent power, which we like to call God, is possible?” The answer was yes, but “living in mental harmony throughout all of life’s vicissitudes is not likely.” I believe that this comment applies also to Professor Bloom and his persistent nightmares which prevent restful sleep.

While I was in the process of reading Bloom’s book our daughter came for a few days of skiing and she presented me with the counterpoint in form of: The Good Heart. A Buddhist Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It is a partial transcript of the John Main Seminar held in London, England, in 1994, in addition to an explanation of key aspects of Buddhism and Christianity, as well as short biographies of the main participants. The annual Seminar is sponsored by “The World Community for Christian Meditation” and this particular one was devoted to the Dalai Lama’s interpretations of selected New Testament portions. He was given eight passages, two from each of the four evangelists, for comments on his understanding of the scripture.

            When I read this book, immediately after having finished the mentioned two by Bloom, I was vastly impressed by the different spirit which was expressed in its pages. The main point was the deep respect both sides had for the viewpoint of the other. They had not come together to preach or to convert each other but merely to learn and understand the different viewpoints. The hallmark was that differences need not divide but can be used for the growth of understanding our world. The Dalai Lama pointed out that even Buddhism is not monolithic, different sects interpret the Buddha’s teaching in different ways, but this does not make one superior to the other. The common ground can be found in the teaching of the Reality of Suffering and how to overcome it. This requires respect and tolerance for the views of others because any other course would lead to an increase of suffering rather than its diminution.

            The passages the Dalai Lama was given to discuss dealt with: Love your enemy (Mt. 38-48); the Beatitudes (Mt. 5:1-10); Equanimity (Mk. 3:31-35); the Kingdom of God (Mk. 4:26-34); the Transfiguration (Lk. 9:38-36); the Mission (Lk. 9 1-6); Faith (Jn. 12:44-50) and the Resurrection (Jn. 20:10-18). In all instances he expressed himself clearly and succinctly and I was pleasantly surprised about the extent his opinions coincided with the ones I had expressed in my book on Jesus. The notion expressed there that a “Jesus Conundrum” exists only in the secular West and that Buddhists would welcome him as a Bodhisattva was correct because this is how the Dalai Lama had referred to him during the Seminar. The Good Heart is a highly recommendable introduction to Buddhist thought and some of its differences with Christianity; a topic which will be discussed further on another occasion.

            At this time it is appropriate to focus on the problem of suffering, which is the First Noble Truth, its meaning, and how to deal with it. The Dalai Lama offers us an excellent example. Tenzin Gyatso was born in 1935 of poor peasant stock in northeastern Tibet and was recognized at age 2 as the re-incarnation of the previous Dalai Lama who had died in 1933. He was moved to Lhasa where he received intensive religious and spiritual training. In 1940 he was officially enthroned as the 14th Dalai Lama and after his final examination in 1959 he was awarded the equivalent of a PhD with summa cum laude in Buddhist philosophy. The Chinese army had already invaded Tibet in 1950 and in 1954 the Dalai Lama went to Beijing to meet with Mao Tse Tung to arrange for some peaceful co-existence between the two countries. The talks failed; the Chinese occupation and repression of the local customs became increasingly harsh, which led to a rebellion. With his life in danger the Dalai Lama had to flee to India where asylum was granted in Dharamsala. These aspects are important. Not only had he experienced suffering first hand but its meaning was revealed through his life. Hardly anybody knows anything about the 13th Dalai Lama but the 14th is known the world over and has received the Nobel Peace Prize. Had the Chinese not invaded his country and eventually forced him into exile he would never have gained the stature he has today. He deeply thought about the meaning of suffering, internalized the teaching and now stands as a symbol for how to conduct oneself in adversity.

            This is the precise opposite of current Western society’s ideation, as also expressed in Bloom’s book, that whenever something untoward happens, someone else is to blame and if no one can readily be blamed, it’s Yahweh’s fault. Clearly this cannot be Right View and unless our society changes its mental outlook from always assigning blame to others, while we bathe in the innocence of righteousness, this century is likely to become even bloodier than the disastrous previous one. This is the lesson which ought to be taken to heart.

Although Buddhists do not believe in a Creator God they do believe in the power of prayer, not for themselves as individuals, but mainly for others. The Dalai Lama closed his Nobel Prize acceptance speech with, “I pray for all of us, oppressor and friend, that together we succeed in building a better world through human understanding and love, and that in doing so we may reduce the pain and suffering of all sentient beings.” Let us join him in this work. 







May 1, 2010

OUR ATHEISTS

             Prior to the publication of The Jesus Conundrum I had not been aware of the rapidly growing literature on atheism which for the most part heaps scorn on individuals, especially scientists, who still hold on to the outmoded idea that God exists. When one goes to amazon.com and types the key word “atheism” thirty books appear immediately and when one then looks at readers’ reviews of, for instance, The God Delusion one finds more than 1500 reviews. Atheism is, therefore, a “hot topic” in our country which deserves critical thought and discussion.

            I have read five of these books and these are, in alphabetic order, Dawkins’ The God Delusion, Dennett’s Breaking the Spell–Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Harris’ The End of Faith–Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, as well as A Letter to a Christian Nation, and Hitchens god is not Great–How Religion Poisons Everything. All have publication dates within the current century and have received wide critical acclaim. Four of them have obtained “New York Times Bestseller status,” while The Letter to a Christian Nation had to make do with “National Bestseller.” Nevertheless, it was regarded as, “A breath of fresh fire” by The Wall Street Journal. We are, therefore, dealing with a social phenomenon of considerable importance, which must be addressed forthrightly. Since there is a great deal of overlap and redundancy among these books I shall first give some information about the authors as well as key aspects of each book and subsequently discuss what I regard as a common fallacy in the thinking of the authors. This will be done in the order in which I have read the books.

Christopher Hitchens is a well known British journalist and author who in 1981 moved to the U.S. He is frequently seen on talk shows, espoused the Bush administration’s “interventionist foreign policy,” believes in “Islamofascism” and regards himself as a secular humanist and anti-theist. The essence of Hitchens’ book can be summarized as: If there was a creator god, he was not only incompetent but also malignant. As such, god is not only useless but harmful and there is no need to bother with him any more. Laplace’s answer to Napoleon why God had not appeared in his epoch-making calculations on Celestial Mechanics, "I did not need this hypothesis," is taken as the validation that God is obsolete. Inasmuch as this quote was also used by Dawkins it seems that the marquis may belatedly become an honorary patron saint of the atheistic community.

            Laplace (1749-1827) was a superb mathematician, astronomer and physicist whose work has made its re-appearance in some aspects of my profession. Electroencephalographers have always been confronted with the problem how to distinguish locally generated electrical brain activity from that which originates at a distance and is merely transmitted to a given area. This is, of course, of special importance in the surgical treatment of epilepsy. Bo Hjorth of Stockholm, Sweden, in 1975 adapted one of Laplace’s celestial formulas for the needs of electroencephalography and thus brought the heavens down to earth. The method was difficult to implement at that time because EEG machines were of the analog type, but with the advent of digital EEG systems and appropriate software Laplace’s idea can now be implemented with a mouse click. I have published several papers using the method and, therefore, have strong personal positive feelings for Laplace’s scientific work. Furthermore, in the context of Napoleon’s question his answer was correct. We may ask, however, whether or not the generalization which has been made in regard to this answer is valid.  Does it apply to all contingencies the human being encounters during life, as suggested by our atheists, or to some specific problems in regard to the physical universe?

We know too little about Laplace as a person and a single sentence is not likely to encompass the totality of his being. We do know, however, that he was a poor administrator. Napoleon, who had appointed him Minister of the Interior in November 1799, had to dismiss him less than six weeks later. In his memoirs from St. Helena Napoleon is quoted as having written, ”Geometrician of the first rank, Laplace was not long in showing himself a worse than average administrator; since his first actions in office we recognized our mistake. Laplace did not consider any question from the right angle: he sought subtleties everywhere, only conceived problems, and finally carried the spirit of "infinitesimals" into the administration.”

            Hitchens’ sees “The Need for a New Enlightenment” and his book is an entertaining polemic which strives to popularize the atheist point of view by pointing to all the misdeeds of the world’s religions, which he seems to regard as the norm rather than as exceptions. As mentioned he is by profession a journalist, has taken up Voltaire’s écrasez l’infâme and seems intent to devote the rest of his life to “fight the enemy.” Since he is neither a philosopher nor a scientist deeper thoughts about the problem at hand need not be expected from him.

While Hitchens is a journalist and one can, therefore, adopt a “take it or leave it” attitude towards his work, this is not so readily the case for Sam Harris who has a B.A. in philosophy and had last year received a  Ph.D. in Neuroscience from UCLA. Apart from articles for the general public he has also published, as first author, a paper on Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief, and Uncertainty (2008) as well as The Neural Correlates of Religious and Nonreligious Belief (2009). I have made a point of “first authorship” because the scientific community currently suffers from an inflation of authors. When I publish a scientific paper today I have to list as “authors” all the people who were remotely connected with the data upon which the paper was based. Simply giving them credit in the Acknowledgments no longer suffices. When one reads, therefore, that a given scientist has by the age of 50 several hundred papers to his credit one needs to realize that this does not mean that he has actually written them or even done some of the work. If one wants to do original work and publish the results oneself one can do so for maximally two or three papers in a given year. On the other hand since the motto in academia is “publish or perish,” it is understandable that people want to see their name in print. Thus, articles with ten or more authors are no longer a rarity and I am making this point explicit because the general public has a right to know what really goes on today in the hallowed halls of Science.

In my review of The End of Faith on amazon.com I used as title, “Talmudic Thinking,” but made it clear that this was not meant in a pejorative sense and mentioned that I had discussed this type of thinking in The Moses Legacy. It is characterized by the person knowing the answer to a given question and then justifying it by a variety of idiosyncratic reasons, which may strike an unbiased observer as strange and unwarranted. I provided typical examples in The Moses Legacy and since it can be downloaded from this website I need not belabor the point.

            The reason why I used this title for the review was to make it clear to readers of the book that Harris did not follow the rules of science in this publication and readers should not expect, in view of his Ph.D., a scientifically reasoned treatise. The book is likewise written in a polemical style and essentially covers the same ground as that by Hitchens. Like the other mentioned authors he exalts “Reason” above all other aspects of human life and in the Epilogue he stated,

 

“My goal in the writing of this book has been to help close the door to a certain style of irrationality. While religious faith is the one species of human ignorance that will not admit of even the possibility of correction, it is still sheltered from criticism in every corner of our culture. Forsaking all valid sources of information about this world (both spiritual and mundane) our religions have seized upon ancient taboos and prescientific fancies as though they held ultimate metaphysical significance.”

 

            Yet, in spite of this aim he at times lets emotion overpower reason, succumbs to unwarranted generalizations and on one occasion even raised the ghost of FDR’s speechwriter when he wrote “our enemy is nothing other than faith itself [p.131].” He has no use for “tolerance”and wrote in the first chapter (Reason in Exile), “I hope to show that the very ideal of religious tolerance–born of the notion that every human being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God–is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss [p.15].” Other morsels are: “faith is an impostor [p.66];” “Without faith, most Muslim grievances against the West would be impossible even to formulate, much less avenge [p. 138];” “Think of it: if a computer virus shuts down a nation’s phone system for five minutes, the loss in human productivity is measured in billions of dollars.  Religious faith has crashed our lines daily, for millennia [p.149];” “Is Islam compatible with a civil society? Is it possible to believe what you must believe to be a good Muslim, to have military and economic power, and to not pose an unconscionable threat to the civil societies of others?  I believe that the answer to this question is no [p.152].”

            Although Harris limits the term “faith” to religious faith, it is still apparent that he confuses it with “religious dogmas” of a given faith. He assumes in addition that members of a given religious denomination accept all of the dogmas and should automatically feel obligated to act on them. This is clearly not the case. His views on the Muslim religion seem to be largely shaped by the phenomenon of suicide bombers and he ignores their modern origin in the Israeli-Palestinian war. I am deliberately using the word “war” rather than the usual term “conflict” because it is fought on one side by soldiers with tanks, planes and infantry, while the other side has rocks, rifles, bombs and, so far ineffectual, rockets.  Before this war the conflict was originally over land rather than religion. The Zionists were mainly atheists and religious Jews wanted no part of them, as documented in Whither Zionism?which can be downloaded from this site. The early kibbutzim settlers had a Marxist ethos for whom God was either non-existent or irrelevant. The religious Jews who had lived in the land for generations had gotten along well with their Muslim and Christian neighbors. They even regarded the foundation of the State in 1948 as illegitimate. Only the messiah had the right to form the State and Ben-Gurion clearly did not fit that role. The local Arabs, on the other hand, resented that portions of what they regarded as their country was arbitrarily given first by the British, subsequently by the United Nations to Jews, and eventually all of it was conquered by the

Israeli army. Religion simply was not a factor initially but has become one as a result of the humiliation local Arabs experienced and their powerlessness against Israel’s might. Inasmuch as it is sustained by U.S. taxpayers we have earned their ire. When no help is obtained from human beings it should not be surprising that people turn to God for redress of grievances. Furthermore, to cast “religion” exclusively in the role of the villain, as done by Harris and others, ignores the fact that religion tends to be used and exploited for very secular gains by unscrupulous individuals. This is not to say that religious fanatics do not exist, they do and can create havoc, but they are a small minority. It should be our duty to deal with those individuals on an individual basis rather than denounce all religion.

This applies also to the phenomenon of Muslim suicide bombers where a command to jihad and the promised 70 or 72 virgins (one finds both versions) are presented as the sole motivation for their acts. Inasmuch as this seems to be one of the main objections to the Muslim faith it requires further comment. Serious literature on this phenomenon is just beginning to emerge and the Israeli Security Agency (ISA) has established profiles of successful as well as unsuccessful suicide bombers.  I have not yet had an opportunity to study this aspect of the “Clash of Civilizations,” to use Huntington’s term, to any appreciable extent but am aware of Efraim Benmelech’s (Assistant Professor of Economics, Harvard University, and Faculty Research Fellow, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts) and Claude Berrebi’s (Research Economist, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, California) work. They have studied some of these data and published their findings under the title, “Human Capital and the Productivity of Suicide bombers.” Their article http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/benmelech/files/JEP_0807.pdf did not enter into the question of motivation but the Israeli data base probably contains a considerable amount of information on these aspects and further studies are urgently needed to replace assumptions with statistical facts. That religion alone is not necessarily the main motivator is also revealed by the numbers of suicide attacks which have been carried out by Palestinians against Israelis. The  high water mark was during the second Intifada in 2002 and attacks have steadily decreased thereafter. Sean Yom and Basel Saleh carried out a Statistical Analysis up to 2004 (http://www.ecaar.org/Newsletter/Nov04/saleh.htm) and demonstrated this phenomenon. Although one might want to credit the “security wall” it should be noted that the decrease began before the construction of the wall and general support for suicide bombing has also steadily ebbed among Palestinians.  Yom and Saleh’s data also show that in most instances revenge was the major motive for the attacks rather than religion.

An example that Harris’ emotions can overpower reason is the following statement in regard to the possibility of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. “In such a situation, the only thing  to ensure our [emphasis added] survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own.” He went on explaining that this would be a terrible thing to do, nevertheless, he did posit it. There is no doubt that a nuclear armed Iran would further destabilize the world, but it does not follow that “our survival” would be at stake. The State of Israel’s possibly, but not that of the U.S. unless we were to respond inappropriately. Harris’ mental conflation of the presumed needs of Israel with those of the U.S. is common in our media, but erroneous and does not follow the laws of reason.

While these were some examples of Harris’ thoughts which can be questioned there are obviously others to which one can subscribe. For instance he does admit to a “spiritual” component to human life and that there exists “a sacred dimension [p.16].” This is in contrast to Hitchens who takes pride in limiting himself to being “a mammal;”  a term he also uses for self-description. The last chapter of Harris’ book deals with “Experiments in Consciousness” and leaves room for spiritual experiences, which he distinguished from faith. In addition, he pointed out that, “The idea that brains produce [emphasis in the original] consciousness is little more than an article of faith among scientists at present, and there are many reasons to believe that the methods of science will be insufficient to either prove or disprove it [208].” This was regarded as apostasy by some readers and forced Harris to discuss it in an Afterword  for the paperback edition. The complaint was that “The End of Faith is not a truly atheistic book. It is really a stalking-horse for Buddhism, New–Age mysticism, or some other form of irrationality.” Harris defended his position but it is obvious that deviation from the party line of atheists will not readily be condoned by what one can only call “the faithful.”

I headlined my review of Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation with  “Harris’ Antichrist,” because it is a replay of Nietzsche’s arguments against the Christian Church with equal vigor. The book, published in 2007 has only 120 pages and is a reply to criticisms he has received from a mainly Christian readership. I won’t deal in detail with this book because the essential material is covered in all the others so let me just quote from the “Note to the Reader,”

 

“In Letter to a Christian Nation, I have set out to demolish the intellectual and moral pretensions of Christianity in its most committed form. Consequently, liberal and moderate Christians will not always recognize themselves in the “Christian” I address. They should, however, recognize one hundred and fifty million of their neighbors. I have little doubt that liberals and moderates find the eerie certainties of the Christian Right to be as troubling as I do. It is my hope, however, that they will also begin to see that the respect they demand for their own religious beliefs gives shelter to extremists of all faiths [p.ix].”

 

What this says, in other words, and he is quite explicit on other occasions, everybody who has some form of Christian belief is an enabler of religious fanatics. Whether or not this stance is a dictate of reason or emotion I shall leave the reader to decide. I have used the above excerpt because the sentiment corresponds to that of, Dawkins and Dennett. It must, therefore be taken as one fundamental aspect of the atheist creed.

But before examining their views we have to return to Harris’ scientific publication. Only the second one needs to be mentioned because it builds on and encompasses the first one. In “The Neural Correlates of Religious and Nonreligious Belief" he demonstrated, by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI; the technique was discussed in the March and April 2010 articles on this site), that what may be called, “a belief system” exists in the brain. But, and this is the crucial element, it is content neutral. With other words Harris and co-workers showed that people believe or disbelieve whatever is currently acceptable and conforms to their thought structure, regardless whether the content is religious or secular. Harris will now have to draw the consequences of his own scientific work and realize that an “End of Faith” is not in the cards. People will continue to believe with equal fervor whatever is fashionable and acceptable at any given time in history, regardless whether or not it is “reasonable.” What is reasonable today can be regarded as patent nonsense tomorrow.

            While Harris is still in his early forties there is potential room for spiritual growth (Wikipedia informs us that he “has studied with ‘several meditation masters’ in the Buddhist traditions”). This may not hold for Richard Dawkins who by the time of publishing The God Delusion had already reached the age of 65. He is a product of the British Empire, born in Kenya, of Anglican parents and received his Ph.D. from Oxford University. He has published and lectured extensively, has been accorded international recognition, was president of the Biological Sciences section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 2004, and retired from his post as Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science in 2008. As such he is clearly a person who deserves a careful hearing.

            Dawkins first book for the general public was The Selfish Gene which was published in 1976 and all of his subsequent publications built on that foundation. I bought the book but have not yet had a chance to read it and will, therefore, postpone a discussion of its contents for a later occasion. Wikipedia tells us that Dawkins has been referred to as “Darwin’s bulldog” and judging from The God Delusion this seems to be an appropriate term. In his opinion evolution with natural selection can adequately account for all the phenomena human beings encounter and it is positively harmful to believe otherwise. It is especially heinous to indoctrinate children with unfounded religious beliefs. He denies that his atheism is dogmatic and states that if adequate proof for the existence of the supernatural could be brought to his attention he might change his view.

            For the present, however, he espouses Laplace’s answer to Napoleon and uses Laplace’s probability theory to demonstrate that the existence of any kind of God, is extremely improbable. The book is full of valid scientific data and most of his points are well taken. It deserves wide readership followed by unbiased thought and discussion. In my review I have called it “An Atheist Manifesto,” because, in analogy to Marx and Engels of 1848, Dawkins clearly laid out the reasons why he believes what he does and what he sees as the purpose of his life. He intends to be a “consciousness-raiser.” In pages 23-26 of the Preface he lists four aspects he wanted to demonstrate 1) that “to be an atheist is a realistic aspiration and a brave and splendid one.” 2) since all arguments for God’s existence “are spectacularly weak” and other types of –theisms, deisms or agnosticism are likewise unsustainable, the “power of natural selection” is a sufficient explanation for our existence and well-being. 3) Religion has anthropologic roots which are perpetuated by childhood indoctrination. A child cannot be a Christian, Jew, Muslim etc. because the child is too young to have an opinion on the matter. For parents to transmit their religious beliefs to their children amounts to “child abuse.” 4) “Being an atheist is nothing to be apologetic about. On the contrary, it is something to be proud of, standing tall to face the far horizon, for atheism nearly always indicates a healthy independence of mind, and indeed, a healthy mind.” These opinions are explained and justified in great detail over a span of 448 pages.

            The goal of an atheistic world is to be achieved by a “Brights campaign [p.380].”  But since this idea occurs also in Dennett any discussion of it requires first a degree of familiarity with Breaking the Spell and other writings by Professor Dennett. He is currently 68 years old and his photo on Wikipedia reminds one of one of the biblical patriarchs with the appropriate luxurious beard. By profession he is a philosopher and currently the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, University Professor, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. In 2004 the American Humanist Association named him Humanist of the Year. He has published extensively and the 35 papers and books, which are listed in the references of the book we are discussing here, probably represent only a small fraction of his literary output.

            The “spell” to be broken is the taboo which guards religious institutions and our current reluctance to discuss religious dogmas with individuals who belong to a different religion. The book is likewise very detailed and covers much the same ground as the others which have been discussed here, although with one major difference. Dennett admits to being a philosopher and as such he is “better at raising questions than answering them.”

Let me now point to some aspects Dennett and I agree on which can be found mainly in the last chapter section 5 entitled Patience and Politics. Although he wants atheism to take root,

 

“We must be patient and have faith [the sentiment Harris wanted to get rid of] in our open society, in knowledge, in continuing pressure to make the world a better place for people to live, and we must recognize that people need to see their lives as having meaning. The thirst for a quest, a goal, is unquenchable, and if we don’t provide benign or at least nonmalignant avenues, we will always face toxic religions.”

 

Christian Zionists who firmly believe in the “Rapture” (discussed in The Unholy Alliance May 1, 2002) and want to hasten the coming of Armageddon by joining Israeli zealots in their claim to the entire “Holy Land” and building the third temple on the site of  the current Muslim shrines in Jerusalem are mentioned as an example for the toxic group. The “End Times” movement is dangerous and an objective investigation of the people who adhere to it, possibly in high places of influence, need to be brought to public attention. Finally, “Ignorance is nothing shameful; imposing [emphasis in the original] ignorance is shameful.”

            Dennett limits himself to explain his own point of view and gently urges readers to reconsider theirs on basis of the evidence presented. He does want, however, to make atheism not only acceptable but the dominant creed. This is to be achieved by the Humpty Dumpty strategy (February 1, 2010). That is: you take a commonly used word and give it a completely different meaning. Dawkins and Dennett point out that this has been successfully done by the homosexual community which immediately changed its image by calling themselves “gay.” The same can be achieved by atheists if they no longer regard themselves as “godless” but as “bright.” Dennett has officially endorsed the concept in an article for The New York Times on July 12, 2003 under the headline “The Bright Stuff,” which is an obvious allusion to our space pioneers. The article is reprinted on http://www.the-brights.net which also provides the views of that organization. The website informs us that there are “brights,” those individuals who  subscribe to the ideas in private, and that there are “Brights” who are registering themselves as (dues paying?) members  of the “movement.” Since the word “movement” translates into German as “die Bewegung,” which was used by the Nazis to describe their grab for power, I have a healthy dislike for such “movements” which include the current “tea parties.” In English the word is also used for one of our ”natural functions,” which actually rid the body of what might be called “the wrong stuff.”

            After having read these books I found them nice in theory, although even the theory that Science and natural evolution are the summum bonum is open to doubt, but unacceptable in practice. Let me be quite concrete because we live in the real world where other people matter. Martha and I moved to Utah 20 years ago because there are: beautiful mountains to ski on, a nice lake to sail on, a university where I can continue to work and Martha could have her horse to ride near-by. Religion did not enter into the picture at all, because we belong to the religious moderates who follow a live and let live life-style. Although Salt Lake City itself is becoming more cosmopolitan, the suburbs, and especially the area we live, is at least eighty per cent Mormon. Nevertheless, not all of us are. The first name of our neighbor across the street is Mohammed, that of our neighbor to the south of us is Jim, but his neighbor’s is Ahmed. Jim has a statue of St. Francis in his backyard which identifies him as Catholic, while our Buddha gently smiles upon all creation. All of us get along with each other and our private beliefs remain just that, private! Since the Constitution has interpreted even abortion legal under “the right to privacy,” I don’t think that I have a right to discuss my belief system with others unless I am directly asked to do so or for instance on these pages, which anyone is free to read or disregard.

What would happen if I were to take the mentioned books as a clarion call to bring the gospel of atheism to all of our neighbors including the Mormons? You know perfectly well the outcome and I don’t  have to describe it. So the edifice breaks down on a very practical level. Another aspect the authors have ignored is that atheism has been official doctrine during the period called la terreur of the French Revolution. Hitchens, Harris and Dawkins, I am excepting Dennett because he is a gradualist,  seem to be a reincarnation of Hébertists (followers of Jaques Hébert)  who adored the “Goddess of Reason” and reportedly planted her statue on the High Altar of Notre Dame on November 10, 1793. They also had done away with the Christian calendar; introduced a new one starting with the French Revolution and had renamed all the months of the year. It didn’t work. In the following year the Hébertists became part of the estimated 50,000 who were guillotined during that era and a few years later the eminently practical Napoleon made peace with the Church. The atheistic experiment was then tried again by Lenin and his followers starting in 1917. But that one began to crumble during WWII when Stalin saw that his people wouldn’t fight for scientific materialism but would do so to defend “Holy Mother Russia.” He had to enlist the help of what had remained of the  Orthodox Church and as they say “the rest is history,” with the official recognition of the Church after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

We disregard history at our peril and I submit that militant atheism is going to be just as great a danger for our world in this century as religious fanaticism. This aspect as well as some other objections to the “Brights’ movement” will be discussed in the next installment.







June 1, year

RIGHT THOUGHT

             In the April issue I had discussed “Right View” as the basis for satisfactory human conduct and in the Buddhist “Eightfold Noble Path” it is followed by “Right Thought.” The official text lists as its aspects: the resolution not to cherish desires, not to be greedy, not to be angry, and not to do any harmful deed. While these four “don’ts” are useful universal guidelines, which can be followed by different people to different extents, there are also some additional practical aspects of wrong thinking which we encounter in our daily lives. These need to be exposed because conduct depends on it and when it occurs in persons who are in leadership positions immeasurable harm results.

One is the idea that if I think or feel in a given way so does, or at least should, everybody else. I have linked thinking and feeling because there is always, as has been mentioned in April, an emotional undercurrent to our thinking which, although unperceived, is nevertheless real. “Wishful thinking” is not an exception but more commonly the rule although it is usually not acknowledged as such and hidden behind a variety of rationalizations. It can pervade even what is regarded as objective science and expresses itself in unwarranted generalizations.

Another faulty thought pattern is the either-or, true-false, right-wrong, good-evil dichotomy, for which there is no middle ground. It has, of course, its appropriate uses but when it becomes the dominant thought form it is bound to lead to false conclusions and potential disasters. The presidency of George W Bush is an obvious example of where it can lead to. Although he is out of office now the thinking pattern persists in some influential minds and its fallacy needs to be exposed. Although unwarranted generalizations and either-or thinking are here treated separately it will be apparent that they frequently occur together in regard to some specific occurrences.

Let me now give some examples for inappropriate generalizations which have created a great deal of harm. One is from medicine and specifically psychiatry, where the uncritical acceptance of Freud’s theories has not only set the field back by nearly one hundred years but has also produced undesirable social consequences. While psychiatry is now finding its way back to where the biologic origin of the major mental illnesses is again recognized as fact, the social consequences will haunt us for years to come. When I started my specialty training in this country the idea that aspects of brain function should be explored as potential causes of mental illness was regarded as anachronistic because psychoanalysis was thought to have conclusively shown that aberrant behavior was a result of early childhood trauma, usually sexual, which had been repressed but had led to the current symptoms of the patient. The ubiquity of the Oedipus complex as the root of all, rather than some, neurotic behavior was accepted as scientific fact not only by the psychiatric profession but through movies and popular literature by the general population.   Because Freud had been conflicted in regard to his early desires for his mother and had experienced his father as a rival, he assumed that everybody else must have shared these feelings. In a letter of October 1897 he wrote to his friend Wilhelm Fliess about the progress in his self-analysis,

 

“Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise. One single idea of general value [emphasis added] has occurred to me. I have found love of the mother and jealousy of the father in my own case, and now believe it to be a general phenomenon of early childhood. . . . If that is the case, the gripping power of Oedipus Rex, in spite of all the rational objections to the inexorable fate that the story presupposes, becomes intelligible. . . . Every member [emphasis added] of the audience was once a budding Oedipus in phantasy, and this dream fulfillment played out in reality causes everyone to recoil in horror, with the full measure of repression which separates his infantile from his present state.”

 

 

 The quote was taken from Schur’s book, Freud: Living and Dying. It is a very valuable resource because Max Schur was Freud’s physician during his long illness from 1928-1939 and the book includes not only personal data but also previously unpublished letters which shed light on the genesis of Freud’s thoughts.  

Freud’s living arrangements during infancy and early childhood were far from typical. Sigmund’s mother Amalie was not the father’s first wife but there is no information whether she had died or there had been a divorce. There had, however, been two boys from that marriage who by the time of Sigmund’s birth in 1856 were already in young adulthood. What is more important is that Jakob and Amalie Freud lived in a rented room of a house where the lower floor contained the owner’s workshop, who was a locksmith, while the upper floor had two rooms. One was for the owner and his wife the other for the Freud family. Sigismund Schlomo (his birth name) spent the first three years of his life in that house and the single room witnessed first the birth and death of his brother Julius (1857-1858) and subsequently Anna’s birth in 1858. The older sons lived with their families nearby. It is obvious that young Sigismund had been exposed to “the facts of life” at an unusually early age which may well have made an indelible impression. It is, however, equally obvious that this type of living arrangement is uncommon, especially in our society, and that ideas which result from these experiences need not have general validity.

The above cited letter, without the ellipses which have condensed the content without doing violence to the context, is also reproduced in The Origins of Psycho-Analysis. Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, Drafts and Notes: 1887-1902 by Sigmund Freud, which is likewise most helpful in our understanding of how Freud arrived at his theories. Just as in the case of Nietzsche one cannot get a flavor of the person when one reads only his publications and critiques of them. Letters by the individual are of critical importance because, although to some extent also self-serving, they reveal the doubts and conflicts the creative individual has to undergo and which do not appear in official biographies.

Wilhelm Fliess (1858-1928) was a well known ENT specialist in Berlin who had, however, wider interests especially in the area of sexuality which formed the nexus with Freud. Fliess believed that the nose was also a sexual organ and he insisted that the bisexuality of human beings should be taken greater cognizance of. In addition he had developed the idea of biologic rhythms beyond the well known 28 day cycle. It made a brief reappearance in the 60s and 70s of the past century and one was able to determine, via a simple calculator, auspicious days in one’s cycle for various endeavors. It can still be found on the Internet where one is encouraged to try it for oneself. For the years of 1887 to about the summer of 1900, when the last personal meeting between them took place, Fliess had become the main sounding board for Freud’s nascent psychoanalytic ideas. 

The 1890’s were the critical period; Freud’s neurological interests had ended with the publications on Aphasia as well as Cerebral Palsy in 1891 and the collaboration with his friend and mentor Josef Breuer on the Studies of Hysteria began thereafter. The negative reaction of the Viennese psychiatric establishment to his presentation of the data was mentioned in a letter to Fliess (April 6, 1896) where Freud regarded his colleagues as asses (Eseln) because they did not recognize that he had shown them “the solution of a thousands of years old problem, a caput Nili. [the origin of the Nile, had been a hotly debated subject until firmly established by Stanley in 1872].” The unkindest cut of all came from Krafft- Ebbing, the author of the widely read Psychopathia Sexualis, with the statement that, “it sounds like a scientific fairy tale.”

But Freud persevered and upon the death of his father in October of 1896 he embarked on his self-analysis which culminated in The Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1899. In 1902 he received his professorship and how this event came about is documented in a letter to Fliess which he wrote on November 3 of that year. But this success also marked the end of the friendship which had, as mentioned, begun to fray in the summer of 1900. At their last meeting Fliess had expressed the opinion that temporary improvements in Freud’s patients were not necessarily the result of therapy but could be related to cyclical events which must also occur in the mind as well as the body. Furthermore, he had commented that “the thought reader reads only his own thoughts in those of others.” This was regarded by Freud as an unpardonable affront and Freud began to collect his own disciple for whom he became the father figure. Fliess was no longer needed.

Nevertheless, Fliess had been right and the identification of one’s own thoughts with those of others is an unfortunate common fact of life. I don’t deny that Freud had made major contributions to the understanding and especially popularization of the Unconscious, but he neither invented the concept nor could the theories be validated by the treatment results of actual patients. As mentioned in War&Mayhem, Schopenhauer (1788-1860) had already discussed unconscious motives underlying behavior and his ideas were subsequently fleshed out by Nietzsche (1844-1900). But when I wrote the mentioned book I had been unaware that there had existed in addition the massive Philosophie des Unbewussten by Eduard von Hartmann (1842-1906) which had been published in two volumes in 1869. In his youth Freud had been a voracious reader of philosophical subjects and he had also attended courses on philosophy at the university. He was, therefore, quite familiar with the major philosophical trends of the time. Thus, the Unconscious, which Freud took up as his life’s work was a hotly debated issue at the time and the major limitation of Freud’s efforts was what may be called its exclusive “sexualization.” For him libido was the one and only determinant, although he played for some time with the thought of a death drive to balance the concept.

This materialistic outlook on life was also responsible for Freud’s atheism, which is another example of, “because I do not experience what you say you do, you must be wrong.” One hundred years ago Freud regarded religion as an “illusion” while Dawkins relegated it to the realm of “delusion” in this century. The books by Hitchens, Harris as well as Dawkins, which were discussed in last month’s installment, are a typical example for modern times. They demonstrate not only the thought pattern as described above but additionally the either-or thinking. Furthermore, there is frequently no distinction made between religion as a personal experience versus the exercise thereof as a member of a specific denomination with its articles of faith. This muddled thinking makes good polemics but is not helpful in creating understanding between people with different belief systems. In addition it leads to intolerance of the views of others, as so clearly expressed in the mentioned books.

The problem is compounded when one does not distinguish between “experiential truths,” as known by all human beings, and “revealed truth” which is the subject of religious discussions. The latter is personal and belongs to what William James has discussed in The Variety of Religious Experiences. Confirmed militant atheists do not want to see this distinction and harp on the documented abuses of religion for secular purposes, as if these were the only aspects. In addition, the idea of God is regarded as a relic of mankind’s past which does not withstand the rigors of modern science. I have discussed the limitations of science on other occasions and need, therefore, add only one additional comment. Our science is based on vision and even when we listen via SETI for messages from outer space, we watch wiggles on a computer screen. Furthermore, scientific work demands measurement which likewise requires eyesight. The notion that something cannot exist because it cannot be visualized and measured, is unsustainable.

In Dennett’s book, Breaking the Spell, which I discussed last month, I found an interesting sentence in regard to evolution of the brain and the potential survival value of a “God center.” He quoted from Dawkins’ The God Delusion, “If neuroscientists find a ‘god center’ in the brain, Darwinian scientists like me want to know why the god center evolved.” Dennett continued, “… we don’t have an innate chocolate-ice cream center in the brain, after all, or a nicotine center.”  This statement immediately triggered a thought, “Yes Professor Dennett, the search for a God “center” would indeed be just as fruitless as that for a nicotine center, but we do have nicotine “receptors.” The extent to which they are connected to pleasure centers in our brains determines whether or not a given person will become addicted to nicotine or can readily give up smoking after a few trials because it doesn’t have any positive effect, as happens to be the case in my own situation.” This is again an example were unfounded generalizations break down and our statements need to be nuanced in order to be truthful. Could individuals with genuine mystical experiences have what may be called “God receptors” in their brain, which enable them to receive meaningful messages which are not perceived by others? Do all of us have them but in various degrees of expressivity? There is no way of knowing, but to categorically state that this could not be so is also unwarranted.

The anthropological explanation of religion as expressed in the previously mentioned books neglected an additional factor. When we look at the history of today’s major world religions we are told about a founder who had some type of revelation. Moses was confronted by the Lord in the burning bush, the symbolism of which seems not to be fully appreciated. According to legend Prometheus brought fire to the human race which he stole from Hephaestus smithy.  But there may also be an additional celestial fire which illuminates and invests but does not consume, as symbolized in the Bible story. Once an individual has an experience of this sort it needs to be put into words. Rationalizations occur thereafter and the individual may set out on a new path in life. For Moses the task was to bring the Hebrews out from Egypt; for the prophets including Jesus to bring the wayward Jews back to God, and for Muhammad to bring the message of the One God to his polytheistic people. It is at this stage where the original message can become garbled and human ambition can dictate further events leading to the establishment of a given religion, with all of its human faults. 

If we define God as “an unseen spiritual force that has a personal interest in us and can influence our lives in a variety of ways” atheists seem to have two main objections. One is that God is privy to all of our thoughts, which a number of people find intolerable. This problem is, however, strictly attitudinal. Instead of being afraid of what God will find in the hidden recesses of our minds one can also say, “Look at this mess; now please help me to clean it up!” The other stumbling block is the “supernatural” quality of God. In this instance we may again be prisoners of our words and thoughts. Physicists tell us that any number of parallel universes could exist in addition to ours. Might we, therefore, be better off to consider what we now call supernatural as “paranatural?” Can there be a parallel universe where its sentient beings are not dominated by the sense of vision and therefore locked onto forms, but where energy, including psychic energy, is the dominant principle? Might the thoughts of these beings sometimes intrude into our world? These are questions to which there are no answers; but why foreclose the issue?

While psychology and religion were examples for the “because I feel a given way, therefore everybody else does so,” the phenomenon is also observable in politics where it has even graver consequences in the form of war. Last week PBS aired a program on the destruction of the French fleet by the British Royal Navy at Mers el Kebir. This is a little known episode of WWII but was at least in part responsible for America’s entry into the war. When Churchill became Prime Minister on June 10 1940, the day Hitler had started the invasion of Holland, Belgium and France, he thought that the French and British armies could contain the German advance. But this idea became untenable within a few days and Churchill saw himself confronted with the specter of the German army looking at him from across at the channel. He knew that if France fell England would not be able to win the war and American assistance became, therefore, essential. This is the point where habitual thought patterns led to decisions which had fateful outcomes. Assuming what the adversary will do on basis of what you would do was one of the miscalculations which led to WWII in the first place.

The war originated largely in the minds of four people: Hitler, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt. The rest of the world’s population had become pawns in their hands to suffer the consequences of their thoughts. I am bringing this up now because Americans still believe that they have a voice in the foreign policy decisions which are being made for them. The facts are, however, that not only has history been distorted by political propaganda but what we receive today as “news” in the media is not only slanted for political purposes but becomes the history of the future.

Contrary to current popular belief Hitler harbored no animosity against the British and their empire because as part of the Nordic race they would keep the rest of the world’s “inferior races” in their place. His mind was that of a soldier who had served during WWI in the infantry and his goal was the destruction of the Soviet Union in order to gain Lebensraum (living space) for the German people. He had no interest in a war with England, let alone America, and had made this quite clear in the 1935 naval agreement with Britain where he voluntarily limited the size of his fleet. The Navy did not interest him and the purpose of the Air Force was to support the troops on the ground rather than engage in strategic bombing of the enemy’s cities. With other words he wanted strictly a land war where superior forces and technology would overcome the weaker enemy by surprise and with lightning speed. Because he was thinking in terms of “land” and wanted nothing from the British he assumed that they would understand and let him have his way. When they failed to follow his line of thinking and instead declared war on September 3rd there was profound disappointment in Berlin because none of the Nazi bigwigs from Hitler on down had wanted this to happen. The war in the West was truly forced on Hitler against his will.

Hitler’s main adversary in England was Churchill who harbored a visceral disdain against him, which was heartily reciprocated by Hitler, and precluded any type of agreement. But up until September 3rd 1939 he was out of power and could only vent his feelings in the press and the House of Commons. The essential point is that in contrast to the continent bound Hitler, Churchill, who was born and raised on an island, loved the Navy (he had been for some time First Lord of the Admiralty during WWI) and saw the world in global terms. For him naval power was the way to win wars by blockading the enemy, thereby depriving him of vital supplies, including food for the civilian population. This would be aided by air power which would destroy the enemy’s industrial capacity, terrorize the civilian population, and thereby induce surrender without having to fight major land battles for which the British were not equipped.

Since Churchill firmly believed in strategic bombing he had urged from 1935 on for Britain to build a bomber fleet and he used exaggerated numbers of German airplane production to gain his goal. With other words: since he thought that this was the best way to win a war he assumed that Hitler would think the same way. This was not the case and Germany started to build long range bombers only after the Brits had done so. Naval supremacy was likewise an essential aspect of Churchill’s thinking which had no counterpart in Hitler’s. Yet, it was this idea which led Churchill to issue the order for the Mers el Kebir attack.

With the impending fall of France, Churchill had become increasingly concerned about what he regarded as an imminent invasion danger, and he appealed to Roosevelt, as another “navy man,” to send him fifty destroyers to help counteract the threat. But Roosevelt had an election to win in November and his campaign, just like that of Wilson in 1916, stressed that he would keep America out of a European war. When the destroyer request was denied Churchill was in serious difficulty. France had surrendered on June 22nd and Churchill’s main concern was the fate of the French fleet. For him it was obvious that it would now come under German command. Jointly with the Italian navy the British would be heavily outgunned and the island could indeed be readily invaded. But this was not a fact; it was only a reasonable assumption by a person who thought in terms of naval power. 

As mentioned above, Hitler was not interested in navies, which was again demonstrated in the armistice agreement of June 22nd.  I have, so far, been unable to get a copy of the original German and French texts and have had to rely on Wikipedia’ s English version. The salient aspects of Article VIII are reproduced below,

 

“The French war fleet is to collect in ports to be designated more particularly, and under German and/or Italian control to demobilize and lay up -— with the exception of those units released to the French Government for protection of French interests in its colonial empire. 

Clause 1 The peacetime stations of ships should control the designation of ports. Clause 2 The German Government solemnly declares to the French Government that it does not intend to use the French War Fleet which is in harbors under German control for its purposes in war, with the exception of units necessary for the purposes of guarding the coast and sweeping mines. Clause 3 It further solemnly and expressly declares that it does not intend to bring up any demands respecting the French War Fleet at the conclusion of a peace. Clause 4 All warships outside France are to be recalled to France with the exception of that portion of the French War Fleet which shall be designated to represent French interests in the colonial empire.”

In addition to these provisions, which clearly stated that the Germans only wanted the French fleet to be neutralized for the duration of the war, Admiral Darlan, Commander of the French Navy, had given his assurance to the British that he had ordered the fleet to be scuttled in case Germany violated the agreement. Nevertheless, Churchill issued on July 3 an ultimatum to the French commander at Mers el Kebir,

 

“… His Majesty's Government have instructed me to demand that the French Fleet now at Mers el Kebir and Oran shall act in accordance with one of the following alternatives; (a) Sail with us and continue the fight until victory against the Germans. (b) Sail with reduced crews under our control to a British port. The reduced crews would be repatriated at the earliest moment. If either of these courses is adopted by you we will restore your ships to France at the conclusion of the war or pay full compensation if they are damaged meanwhile. (c) Alternatively if you feel bound to stipulate that your ships should not be used against the Germans unless they break the Armistice, then sail them with us with reduced crews to some French port in the West Indies–Martinique– for instance  where they can be demilitarised to our satisfaction, or perhaps be entrusted to the United States and remain safe until the end of the war, the crews being repatriated. If you refuse these fair offers, I must with profound regret, require you to sink your ships within 6 hours [emphasis added]. Finally, failing the above, I have the orders from His Majesty's Government to use whatever force may be necessary to prevent your ships from falling into German hands.”

 

            The French dithered, the Brits opened fire, disabling the fleet apart from the battleship Strasbourg which managed to escape to Toulon. Twelve hundred and ninenty seven French sailors died on that day and about 350 were wounded at the loss of one British aviator. It was a massacre and deeply resented by the French. One may argue, of course, that Churchill had no reason to trust the Germans or Darlan. Yet, when Germany occupied the rest of France in November of 1942, in response to the Allied invasion of North Africa, the fleet in Toulon was scuttled as Darlan had promised. Militarily the affair was a disgrace for the Britsh but for Churchill it was a political victory because he had shown to Roosevelt that regardless of morality or cost of lives the British were determined to fight and that they deserved American help.

With continued propaganda about Hitler’s non-existent threat to America, Roosevelt joined Churchill immediately after his November re-election in the war effort, although he had promised during the campaign, just as Wilson had done in 1916, that he would keep America out of war. Although Pearl Harbor is officiallly regarded as the cause of America’s entry into the war, the policies which led to that disaster for the U.S. Pacific fleet had been laid down years earlier. Nevertheless, history as told to the American people still continues to be influenced by propaganda. Although the PBS version of the Mers el Kebir tragedy was essentially accurate it did leave the impression that Germany had wanted the French fleet for its war effort, which was not the case. Although Hitler had violated other agreements when it was to his advantage, the navy was useless against his main enemy, Stalin, and there was no reason to inflame the French from whom he only wanted neutrality for the rest of the war.

This is not ancient history, as some might feel, because the thought patterns which led to these catastrophes still pervade the minds of some who are in today’s leadership positions both here and abroad. False generalizations abound in our attitude to current international problems ranging from the mislabeled “War on Terrorism,” through Iran’s perceived nuclear threat and Israel’s assumed vulnerabilty, the unresolved war between North and South Korea, to the entire rationale for American bases around the world. All of these problems have their roots in assumptions held by a few people who enforce their views through the media on the rest of the world. We the citizens of this “free country” are relegated to the sidelines and, as mentioned on other occasions, are only good for paying with money and some of us with blood for the misjudgments by others. The only difference between us and our adversaries is that we can voice our concerns openly. Nevertheless, as the history of how America was dragged against its will into WWII has shown, expressions of popular discontent have no decisive influence.

President Obama’s administration seems to be trying to bring a degree of sanity to international relations in order to defuse the powder keg, which is even larger and more dangerous than in 1914 and 1939. The Middle East can fully explode at any moment. But Israel’s conduct must still not be officially questioned, although President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu have completely different ideas about how the needs of both countries can best be met. Obama is nuanced in his approach, while Netanyahu represents the camp of those whose false thinking has been the point of this article. We can expect no help from Congress because its members have the November election as their first priority. Elections have become immensely expensive and money from pro-Israel sources is bound to flow freely. Thus Right Thought, although enunciated 2500 years ago, has still not reached the people who hold our fate in their hands. False ideas have always been camouflaged behind grand slogans, such as Wilson’s “making the world safe for democracy,” and the situation is no different today. Unfortunately, even if President Obama tries to stem the tide against these false arguments he may not have the power to do so. This is the sad conclusion on this Memorial Day, which is full of patriotic slogans about the “Fallen” in wars which could readily have been avoided.







July 1, 2010

WHITHER ZIONISM? UPDATED

            Although I had already passed the biblical age of three score and ten by several years in February of 2001, when I wrote Whither Zionism?, I still held the belief that good will and reason exist in our government and that if its members were to be offered an easy to read version of the actual history of Zionism they might reconsider their policy towards the fractious Middle East. President Clinton’s efforts in December of 2000 towards an Israeli-Palestinian accord had failed and Chairman Arafat had been made solely responsible for the outcome. We were told that Arafat had not only rejected the “unprecedented generous” territorial offers by then Prime Minister (currently Minister of Defense) Ehud Barak, but also responded with increasing terrorism to extract further concessions from the Israelis which they could not possibly agree to. This was the official version of events Americans were treated to on a daily basis at that time and it was obvious that renewed violence of massive proportions was about to break out again in the “Holy Land.” 

            We were not told that the Camp David II talks never had a chance to succeed. Clinton was about to leave office on January 20 and any potential agreement could not have been implemented within that time frame. Ehud Barak faced a tough re-election campaign against Ariel Sharon and whatever promises he made would be meaningless because the Knesset would not ratify major concessions. This was, of course, obvious to anyone with a moderate degree of insight and Arafat knew that the deck was stacked against him. He had not wanted to come to that meeting. It was premature because Barak had not adhered to previous commitments and unless those steps were taken first no “final status” agreement on the “Two State Solution” was possible. But Arafat had no choice; when the president of the United States wants you to come it is impossible to refuse. Arafat did request, however, that he would not be made the exclusive scapegoat if the talks were to fail. Clinton promised, but he promptly broke the promise after the meeting and the version of the events as described in the first paragraph has remained official history. The documentation for these statements can be found in the March 1, 2007 article: Barak in Salt Lake City and March 1, 2009: Whither Zionism? Revisited.

            When the Bush administration took office on January 20 I had hoped that our Middle East policy might become that of an “honest broker” who takes the needs, rather than desires, of both sides into consideration which might lead, over a couple of years, to a resolution of this conflict, which can degenerate into a major war at any time. While the Balkans, with their national aspirations, were the powder keg for the 20th century, the Middle East serves that function in the 21st.  This was the background which prompted me to write the mentioned book and to send it to all members of the Bush Cabinet as well as key members of the Senate and House. I thought that if I kept the narration short they might read it on some of their plane travels and take the contents to heart. As I noted in a postscript in 2004 I was sorely mistaken. As an average citizen I had no idea what the Cheney-Bush administration (sequence corresponds to the facts and is not a typographic error) was really all about. The administration, including the Pentagon, was chock full of “supporters of Israel” and any understanding with Arabs became completely out of the question when Sharon took office and reoccupied the West Bank territories in reprisal against the second Intifada which was dominated by suicide attacks against Israeli civilians.

The 9/11 disaster was the final nail in the coffin of any potential “peace process” because Sharon and Bush succeeded in submerging the Palestinian national liberation struggle into the “Global War on Terrorism.” The official line was that the Israelis had been the first victims of this Muslim terror and they were now regarded as the experts on how to deal with it. Israeli generals could walk unannounced into Pentagon offices; Israeli “advisors” taught our troops how to conduct urban guerilla warfare and how to extract confessions from unwilling captives. They had, after all, decades of experience in the matter but the fact that this type of experience had merely prolonged the conflict, rather than ending it, did not deter anyone in Washington. The mantra, which continues to this day, is that Israel is a small country, surrounded by implacable enemies devoted to its demise and, therefore, has special security needs. Furthermore, as the only democracy in the Middle East it is our most reliable ally and its conduct must not be questioned.    

When the Twin Towers of the WTC collapsed, Osama bin Laden was immediately named as the culprit and any possible link to grievances against America’s unconditional support of Israel’s policies against the Palestinians was squashed as anti-Semitic rumor mongering. The fact that the chief plotter of 9/11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) was the uncle of Ramzi Yousef, who was responsible for the first WTC bombing in 1993, and had provided him with money, was relegated to the relative obscurity of the Internet. According to Wikipedia Yousef had sent a letter to The New York Times after the 1993 attack which provided the motive: "We declare our responsibility for the explosion on the mentioned building. This action was done in response for the American political, economical, and military support to Israel, the state of terrorism, and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region.” Since the bomb had failed to wreak the expected havoc the group vowed to repeat the attempt with improved means. 

This aspect of past history, especially the fact that KSM was also reported to have had ties to Pakistani Intelligence Services (ISI), clearly did not fit with the plans of the Cheney-Bush administration which required Osama bin Laden to be the sole instigator. Since bin Laden and Al Qaeda were protected by the Taliban in Afghanistan the country had to be taught a lesson.  Yet, even nearly 10 years later we don’t know to what extent bin Laden had personally been involved in the planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks because there has never been an international inquiry into the events of that day. The 9/11 Commission report simply accepted bin Laden’s guilt without providing evidence which would hold up in a court of law. The Bush administration’s response to 9/11 was most revealing. If one were certain that bin Laden was the mastermind one would not have needed to invade the whole country of Afghanistan to capture about 50 or so people. That is what we have the CIA and our vaunted special forces for who have no compunction over capturing and/or killing undesirables wherever they may be found. The invasion of Afghanistan, ostensibly in retaliation of 9/11, had ulterior motives as has been previously discussed here (One Year later; October 1, 2002) .

While the fate of Afghan women, who had to be liberated from their burqas, was a good propaganda tool, a more powerful reason was the desire for a pipeline from the Caspian area through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea, south of the Strait of Hormuz. This would have bypassed Russia as well as Iran and thereby secured unhindered flow of oil to the Western world. Nine years later there is still no pipeline, Burqa clad women can still be seen even in Kabul, the only city we have some control over, the Taliban remain undefeated, Al Qaeda has moved to Pakistan and is training new recruits from all over the world including our own country. And what has become of the arch-villain bin Laden who had to be brought back dead or alive in 2001? The $25 million reward is still looking for someone to collect it and it is difficult to believe that, if the U.S. had really made a concerted effort, he would not have been found by now. David Ray Griffin, in Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive, advanced the thesis that the man is in all probability dead because he was reported to have had serious kidney disease requiring dialysis already in the summer of 2001. Politics demand, however, that he be kept alive, not only in memory but in fact, to provide a rationale for the continued War on Terrorism which is so vital for our some of our Republican perpetual warriors.

We are told that America’s security would be in serious danger if the Taliban were to succeed. They would create havoc in Afghanistan; allow Al Qaeda again a safe haven in that country and that would be the end of the U.S. as we know it. Let us stay with Afghanistan a moment longer because of last week’s events. The commanding general of the Afghan war, McChrystal, and his staff had made a fundamental mistake earlier in the year when they regarded a reporter as a drinking buddy with whom they could “spill their guts.” Their unvarnished opinions about how the war was going, which were essentially correct, appeared in Rolling Stone magazine, of all places, and thoroughly embarrassed the general. Now it was up to President Obama to deal with this problem, which came on top of the uncontrollable oil spill in the Gulf for the handling of which he continues to get hammered in the media on a daily basis.

General McChrystal had neglected the unwritten 11th commandment which governs our society and states: Thou shalt never speak the truth as you see it in public. This had gotten him into hot water with the Obama administration last year but did succeed in providing him with at least thirty of the forty thousand troops he had asked for in order to order to bring that war to a successful conclusion. The Petraeus counterinsurgency “surge,” on the Iraq model, which I must admit I had not believe in at the time, was to be the key to victory and the capture of the town of Marjah earlier in the year was to have been the prelude to rooting out the Taliban in Kandahar during the summer. Well, the Taliban don’t play by our rules; they do what I said in December 2001 (War on Terrorism) they would. They temporarily melt into the civilian population and the mountains from whence they emerge intermittently to harass and frighten not only NATO troops but more importantly all those of their fellow citizens who show an inclination to side with the foreigners in their country.

The fact that the Karzai government has not succeeded in gaining the respect of the people and allows lawlessness as well as rampant corruption to exist undermines, of course, the basic premise of counterinsurgency. When the government is ineffective, people will accept any kind of order even if it is tyrannical. This has been the lesson of history and ignoring it will not help matters. Since the Marjah problem has not yet been satisfactorily solved the Kandahar operation was postponed to the fall while the rest of the additional 30,000 troops are on their way. Now we have to face another fact of life. I don’t think that any levelheaded person in the administration, including Obama and the Pentagon, believes that the Afghan war can really be won. The real problem for the administration is how to get out without jeopardizing the 2012 presidential election. The goal now seems to be to build and train an Afghan army. But the Afghans have known since time immemorial how to fight people they don’t like and hardly need any training for that. The important point is that they fight when they want to, whom they want, and no foreigner has ever convinced them to be subservient to a regime that they dislike; native or foreign.

Obama is regularly chastised by the Republicans as having no military experience and is now selling out the national security of our country simply to please foreigners. Under these circumstances the president had to show the “leadership” which his critics said he lacked. McChrystal was unceremoniously fired, General Petraeus was persuaded to take that thankless job, which he accepted, probably against his better judgment, and the whole country including FOX news applauded. Now comes the irony of the whole situation in form of a comment Petraeus had made earlier this year in a Pentagon briefing and which was reported by CNN in March to the effect that “America’s relationship with Israel is important but not as important as American lives.” This led to headlines such as “Israel’s intransigence is endangering American lives.” While we are paying lip service to the phrase that the world has become vastly interconnected the influential Jewish leadership in our country vehemently denies any linkage between America’s unquestioning support of any and all of Israel’s policies with the success or failure of our War on Terrorism.

When Obama took office there was again, briefly, the hope that America might now at last assume the honest broker role which the previous administrations had failed to carry out. He gave conciliatory speeches trying to please both sides, which also called for a stop of new Jewish settlements in Palestinian areas. It is obvious that any resolution of the conflict requires this as the first step. Even President Bush had asked for it from Prime Minister Sharon but when this was not forthcoming he quietly accepted “realities on the ground.” The same fate now befell Obama when he tried earlier in the year to convince Prime Minister Netanyahu that the settlements are a major obstacle to peace efforts and that before anything else can be achieved at least new settlements must no longer be allowed. But just like in previous years the plea fell on deaf ears and was ignored. Yet, unless this condition is met even the “proximity talks,” which Senator Mitchell has valiantly been trying to get going for the past year, are an exercise in futility.         

To understand the depth of the quandary we have to recognize that we are dealing with an identity problem which especially the Ashkenazi segment of the Jewish people has been grappling with since the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century when they emerged from the shtetl culture into the ferment of budding European “enlightenment” and nationalism. As mentioned in Whither Zionism? the modern impetus for Jews to regard themselves as a nation, rather than a religious-cultural ethnic community, did not originally come from a supposed ancient Jewish yearning for Jerusalem, as expressed in Psalm 135. Only verses 5 and 6, “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy,” tend to be quoted to signify the eternal yearning of Jews for the lost homeland. The ending of this psalm, verses 8 and 9, “O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed, happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dashes thy little ones against the stones,” are not in the repertory of Christian, at least Catholic, worship services. It is obvious that the psalmist got a little bit carried away by his rhetoric because only a minority of the exiles felt that way. A larger number was quite content to remain in the cosmopolitan climate “by the rivers of Babylon” where they had grown roots and felt no need to move back to the intellectual isolation and harsh physical conditions of Judea.

Paradoxically the modern impetus to nationhood had come from the Christian community, especially that segment which takes the Bible literally as the inerrant Word of God, and was intent on hastening Jesus’ second coming. In their view this event is predicated upon the Jews’ returning to the ancient homeland and the rebuilding of the temple. Initially Jews were not intrigued with this idea since it is not particular good news for them. In case this were to happen as envisioned by these believers the Jews would be confronted with the stark choice: convert or be killed. 

Continental European nationalism started with the Napoleonic Wars. In the name of “La Grande Nation” Napoleon, or “Bonie” as the British sailors affectionately referred to him, smashed the moribund multiethnic Holy Roman Empire and created a variety of mini-States as well as duchies. But the idea took hold. If the French could be a nation, why should this not apply to Germans, Italians, Spaniards and Jews?  Napoleon was aware of this problem and, therefore asked the Jewish elders: are you a nation or a religion? They answered with: we are a religious group and good Frenchmen. Although it is clear that this was the only permissible answer they could have given, I am inclined to believe that they were sincere. The reason for this opinion is that throughout the 19th and even the early part of the 20th century those Jews who were socially and professionally integrated into their respective countries had no wish to jeopardize their hard won positions of influence in them. As Vienna’s Chief Rabbi Moritz Guedemann told Herzl who tried to convert him to the Zionist cause:

 

“In the Talmud it is written: ‘Vengeance is great; since the word ‘vengeance’ appears between two names of God, ‘A god of vengeance is God.’ You do not seem to be aware of this at all. I am to go away from here and clear the way for our enemies, who constantly abuse and curse the name of Jew and all those who bear it, in order to grow vegetables in Palestine. No, ten thousand horses could not drag me away from here, until I have the satisfaction of seeing the downfall of our enemies.”                            

 

This is not some anti-Semitic invention but was reported in Fraenkel’s book, The Jews of Austria.

The influential Jews of Herzl’s days, regardless of what country they lived in, were nearly unanimously opposed to the idea of a “Judenstaat” and I have excerpted portions of Guedemann’s Nationaljudenthum in War&Mayhem, as well as Whither Zionism? Since the latter can be downloaded cost-free from this website I shall limit myself here only to the first sentences and the last,

 

“The word Nationaljudenthum and the movement which is associated with it suffer from an inherent inner contradiction. Judaism on account of its historic mission, does not have the task to support let alone worship the addiction to or hankering after nationalism, but much rather to work towards the removal of the individualism of all nations and the unification of all human beings in one family. If Judaism would awaken in all its members the desire to become once again a nation, it would commit suicide.”

 

As a rabbi Guedemann ended his pamphlet with a quote of Zechariah 14:9, “And the LORD shall be king over all the earth: in that day there shall be one LORD, and his name is one.” While this quote was for public consumption his private view, expressed to Herzl as noted above, was probably more in line with verse 14:12 of Zachariah, “And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.”  

             This was written in 1897 when the word Zionism, coined by Nathan Birnbaum a few years earlier, was not yet en vogue. Herzl was undeterred, and pointed to the anti-Semitism of Europe as well as the dismal living conditions of the Jews in Poland and Russia which required redress. He felt that the Jewish race (Rasse) needed to be improved but this could only be achieved when the Jews had a country of their own and under those circumstances the Maccabees would rise again. Unfortunately he had not read the real history of the Maccabees because otherwise he would have known that his dream, even if it came to fruition, would end in a nightmare in the short span of about a hundred years. This is the tragedy of our era. We profess to have learned the lessons of history when in fact we live by myths which are regarded as facts and literally defended to the death. The best example is of course the Bible. It is mistakenly read as factual history rather than as a collection of documents from various periods with the purpose of edifying the populace so that it might lead to improved conduct. While the New Testament, apart from the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse), is relatively benign because it orders Christians to accept secular authority and promises a posthumous reward, this is not the case for the Old Testament, which has decided chauvinistic features. But this is the document upon which Israeli recruits take their oath of duty in front of the Western Wall of the Temple Mount, in spite of the fact that a great many of them no longer believe in the God of the Bible.

The Zionist enterprise was entirely secular and operated originally on Marxist principles where religion was tolerated as a necessary evil one had to make compromises with. Jews were a nation which required Lebensraum and religion was optional. I have deliberately used the German word because there are some eerie parallels to German policies between 1933 and 1937 in regard to how to deal with undesired minorities. People don’t want to be reminded that Zionist policies and those of the Nazis coincided. Hitler wanted to be rid of Jews and Ben Gurion was only too happy to accept them because he needed numbers to justify the creation of the State. Unfortunately for Ben Gurion and his successors most Jews were of the Guedemann persuasion and preferred to move to one of the Western countries when life in Germany had become intolerable. That Hitler would catch up with some of them in 1940 could not have been foreseen. The same reluctance to move to Israel was observed when the Soviet Union was forced to open its borders for Jewish emigration. Although a substantial number did arrive in Israel many relocated, however, to one of the Western democracies, especially the U.S. 

The majority of the American Jewish power elite still sees Israel in the idealistic terms of its founders: a secular democracy with equal rights for all, which provides a model for stability in the region that deserves emulation by its neighbors rather than their enmity. Furthermore, the hostility which actually exists is totally unfounded and purely grounded on ill-will and anti-Semitism. These groups, which still influence America’s policy toward Israel, have not come to grips with the changes the country has undergone in the past forty years as a result of the victorious 1967 war. While American policy makers have come during the past decade to the reluctant conclusion that the “two state solution” is the only viable one, facts on the ground have shifted to an extent that make it quite improbable. It is obvious that the Palestinians do not want to indefinitely live under military occupation and hanker after their own independent state. But it is equally obvious that Israelis do not want to grant them this privilege, unless conditions are met which are incompatible with genuine sovereignty. They suffer from what is called the “burned child syndrome” and regard themselves surrounded by implacable enemies. Under these circumstances, the prevalent idea is that only brute force, which strikes fear in the heart of the adversary, will provide security. While Netanyahu may verbally agree to peace talks he neither has the interest nor the ability to make the concessions which would result in a peace accord.

We know that our own government is currently stalled because Republicans and Democrats are at each other throats in order to win the November midterm elections, a goal which overrides everything else. The situation is even worse in Israel. In the aftermath of the 1967 war the religious parties have gained influence to an extent that they have a virtual veto over the government. They are the genuine successors of the Maccabees who feel that the land was given to them by God and no man has the right to give up even a portion of it. To secular nationalism religious fervor has been added which bodes ill for the future. The average Israeli, just as the average American, deplores the situation but is powerless to effect any change because emotions run high and the country is seriously politically fractured.

This is actually a replay of 2nd century BC. All we have to do is to change the former name of Hellenists to secularists while the “pious” or “faithful” represent the current ultra-orthodox segment. We know that the Maccabean era ended in civil war between two contenders for the High Priesthood, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus. They then appealed to the Romans for help, which they did and in due time even gave them a puppet king, Herod the Great. But when the country exploded again after his death the religious authorities asked that Rome take over the government. The Romans complied but since some of the procurators were rapacious and not attuned to local sentiments sporadic rebellions persisted, which eventually led to all out war in 67 AD. The destruction of the temple, which had been turned into a military fortress, occurred three years later. As if this totally avoidable tragedy had not been enough, Jewish nationalists rebelled again in 132 and after another fruitless three year struggle the country was so devastated that nobody wanted to live there any more. It is a myth that the Jews were exiled by the Romans and were never allowed to return. The historical truth is that there was no incentive to return. But this little piece of historical unpleasantness goes counter to the heroic myth of a downtrodden always victimized people, who have now at long last found freedom which they will defend to their dying breath. The outcome of this type of thinking is likely to be the same as nearly 2000 years ago but unfortunately on an infinitely larger scale.

Some of us, Jew and Gentile alike, who see this coming, can write books and articles as warnings but the influence is likely to be meager. America is the only country which can prevent this looming disaster but her citizens by and large don’t read much any more and don’t want to be bothered by topics which they regard as peripheral to their lives. But by the time these events reach center stage it will be too late. Since books and articles are no longer the prime medium, the only effective way would be through the cinema and especially Television. What would be needed to dispel the myths, which propagandists on either side live by, would be genuine historical dramas that show how, for instance, the Maccabean wars had come about, what really transpired during them, why the Romans ruled the country and why the temple was destroyed. Josephus has already written the script, which can be corrected from Roman sources for some inaccuracies. If this were shown in living color in all of its blood and gore, especially the final siege of Jerusalem, some people might come to their senses. TV is the most powerful medium but unfortunately its content currently is so mediocre and biased that it is hardly worth watching but if it were properly used it might yet be able to stave off disasters. 

The problem of Jewish self-identification: nation, people, race (DNA), religion, or ethnicity is currently hotly debated in Jewish circles with considerable differences in opinions. The ground is beginning to shift and thoughtful members of the Jewish people are recognizing that to close ones eyes to the new realities which are emerging is no longer advisable. Zionism as it has been practiced in the past is coming under increasingly critical review and some Israeli citizens are beginning to speak of the post-Zionist era. These are important developments for the US and they will be explored on basis of recent books and articles in the next installment.







August 1, 2010

DER JUDENSTAAT

            In last month’s installment I mentioned that Jewish self-identification is a problem under hot debate in Israel. It goes to the fundamental issue: who and what is a Jew? This leads in turn to the question what is Herzl’s Judenstaat supposed to be? The word comes from his programmatic pamphlet which he published in 1896 and laid out the means to achieve statehood for Jews. Unfortunately Judenstaat, like so many other words, is ambiguous when an attempt is made to translate it from the original German into a different language and this has bedeviled the state of Israel since its recognition by the UN in 1947. Herzl’s vision was a secular democratic state where Jews are the majority but with a constitution which guarantees the minorities within its borders equal rights as full-fledged citizens of the state. This is one interpretation of Judenstaat. The other is a state of Jews, by Jews, for Jews and non-Jews are, in case they should decide to remain, second-class citizens with limited rights and privileges. It is the latter vision which the founders of the state subscribed to. Only the methods differed between the radical ideas of expulsion of minorities, as proclaimed by Jabotinsky (Is Zionism Moral? May 10, 2007), and the more gradual encroachment on the civil rights of native non-Jewish Palestinians, as adopted by the Labor party under Ben-Gurion and his successors. The Likud party which is currently in charge of Israel’s government is psychologically the successor of the Jabotinsky nationalistic program to which has been added biblical fervor with the emergence of religious parties which can make or break any government coalition.

            One can now raise a legitimate question: why should Americans care what type of government is in charge of the state? The dominant view in our country is: Israel is a democracy, our friend, and most trusted ally whose security is threatened by hostile neighbors and, therefore, deserves our unstinting support regardless of its internal policies. Anyone who raises a question in regard to any aspect of this statement runs the risk of being labeled an anti-Semite or self-hating Jew as the case may be. This would, of course be irrelevant if it were not the view which governs our foreign policy and has led us into unwinnable wars against the Arab and Muslim world. One may wonder whether I am exaggerating but this is why this article was written. It provides some documentation, mainly from Jewish sources, why American foreign policy cannot succeed in the Middle East at this time, regardless whether Republicans or Democrats control the White House.

            When President Obama reacted with annoyance to Israel’s defiance in regard to the settlement freeze, Republican fury descended upon him. Ex-governor Sarah Palin, who is already running for the presidency in the 2012 elections, proclaimed that Obama was “selling out our ally Israel” and was treating Prime Minister Netanyahu “shabbily.” Instead of standing up for its ally, Obama was kowtowing to Russia and China. “So while President Obama is getting pushed around by the likes of Russia and China, our allies are left to wonder about the value of an alliance with our country any more. They’re asking what is it worth.”

But Palin’s newfound love for allies was actually an echo of a more serious discussion between Roger Cohen (former foreign editor and columnist for the New York Times), Rashid Khalidi (professor of Arab studies at New York University), Stuart Eizenstat (former US ambassador to the EU and undersecretary of state) and Itamar Rabinovich (former Israeli ambassador to the US and professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University). The topic for the discussion, moderated by John Donvan of ABC News, held at New York University and reported by Newsweek in February of this year was: Should the U.S. step back from its special relationship with Israel? Roger Cohen and Rashid Khalidi argued in favor while Eizenstat and Rabinovich opposed the idea. Here are some excerpts,

 

“Cohen: In life, when we fail, we call it stupidity to burrow deeper into failure. Measured by that standard, American policy toward Israel has failed. We are no closer to peace. Israelis and Palestinians are farther apart than ever. What makes America’s relationship with Israel special is its uncritical nature, even when U.S. interests are being hurt, and also the incredible largesse that the United States shows toward Israel – over the past decade, almost $60. . . . ‘Two states for two peoples’ is the declared objective [but] the U.S. is bankrolling the very Israeli policies that are dashing these hopes by making two states almost unimaginable. . . .  America’s perceived complicity in Israeli violence carries a heavy price. It is a potent terrorist recruitment tool. . . . America should be ready to speak openly and critically of Israeli mistakes when needed. . . .

 

Eizenstat: For the United States to stand back from its special relationship would betray the very principles of morality upon which U.S. foreign policy is based. It would mean abandoning the only democratic reliable ally in the region. What message would this send to other allies? America has to stand behind its allies, or it will not have many left anywhere. . . .

 

Khalidi: Let me list a couple of problems that result from this special relationship. One is an almost total deafness to public opinion in Palestine and in the Arab world. Everybody knows there is a big fat U.S. thumb on the scales when the U.S. acts as mediator. . . .

 

Rabinovich: What does special relationship mean? It does not mean the tail is wagging the dog. . . . [Our] very close military and strategic alliance is defined, among other things, by the fact that Israel does not want American troops in Israel. Not having to station troops in that part of the Middle East because Israel is there is a huge advantage to the United States. Remember, when Al Qaeda attacked the world Trade Center, the first reason they cited for attacking the U.S. [was] that the U.S. had troops on sacred Muslim soil.

 

Eizenstat: . . .  Israel would be completely alone. I can tell you, it would send a chill down the spine of every ally we have in Europe and around the world if the relationship were abandoned. Because they would say, we will be next.

 

Cohen: Nobody is arguing that Israel should cease being an ally. We are just saying that when President Obama says he wants settlements to stop, and settlements continue, and Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu declares that some settlements are Israel’s for all eternity, there should be consequences. . . . Our policies up to now have failed. But any adjustment in U.S. policy toward Israel is extremely difficult. There is a state called Florida with a large Jewish community, a calculation not lost on America’s leadership. President Obama, I understand has been told by some Jewish congressmen, if you want your health bill, step back on Israel.

 

Eizenstat: American policy toward Israel is supported by a bipartisan majority because the American public recognizes that Israel and the United States share common interests and common values. And those are always counterbalanced by the oil interests, [and] major business interests.”

 

This document is remarkable on several counts. First of all, the fact that this discussion was not only held but reported in a mainstream weekly journal is important in itself because it is part of what I have called the “shifting ground” in last month’s installment. Even two years ago one might have found it on the Internet but not in Newsweek.

The Eizenstat-Rabinovich defense of the status quo remains official policy although its reasoning is faulty. If America were to become an impartial arbiter of the conflict our allies would not be dismayed, as we are being told, but in all likelihood they would say, “What took you so long?” The argument in regard to Israel not wanting U.S. troops on its soil is also specious. The real reason is not the desire to save us time, money and effort but having our troops in the occupied territories would reveal the ugly side of the occupation for all to see. Photos would flood to relatives at home, reporters would film the “facts on the ground” and instead of one having to rely on the Internet for the facts, reality would sweep across our TV screens into our living rooms. This is the last thing any Israeli government would want and I am reasonably sure that Ambassador Rabinovich is aware of this eventuality. It is true that bin Laden’s first goal was to get American troops out of Saudi Arabia, but the real mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and his nephew, Ramzi Yousef, freely admitted after the first WTC bombing in 1993, that it was an act of revenge for U.S. collusion with Israel in the occupation of the Palestinian territories. They had also vowed to do a better job next time. This is not a secret but common knowledge as has again been documented in last month’s installment. It is unlikely that Ambassador Rabinovich was not aware of this information but since its acknowledgement would have strengthened Mr. Cohen’s and Professor Khalidi’s case, it must not be admitted to.

Two more aspects need to be discussed: “morality,” as well as “common interests and common values.” The human rights abuses against the Palestinian people in the occupied territories as well as in Israel proper and especially Jerusalem do not correspond to what the civilized world regards as moral conduct. This is recognized by the peace movement and numerous volunteer groups in Israel who protest against the arbitrary behavior of the government. These are the Jewish people who want our help and we let them down because of our electoral politics. The “common interests” fall apart when the Israeli government engages in what is regarded by the world community as unacceptable behavior and this fact cannot be simply wished away by labeling everyone who voices disagreement as anti-Semitic. Ambassador Eizenstat was correct when he said that if the U.S. withdrew its support “Israel would be completely alone.” But under those circumstances it would behoove clear thinking people to wonder why this would be the case and as mentioned above the excuse of world-wide anti-Semitism is not a convincing argument. Self-inspection, as a segment of the Israeli public is engaged in, would be called for but as yet finds no resonance here.

Before discussing “common values,” which are indeed the most pervasive propaganda tool, it needs to be mentioned that the audience was polled before as well as after the discussion in regard to their views. In the first poll 33 percent favored a pullback in American relations with Israel, 45 percent were opposed and 25 percent undecided. After the debate 49 percent favored a pullback, 47 percent were opposed, with 4 percent undecided. It is obvious that the discussion did sway some minds; a sharper polarization had taken place and the audience was essentially split in the middle. Why should this be the case? One of the most likely reasons is that the American Christian community is largely dominated by various Protestant denominations which, especially in the South, prefer the Old Testament and its vengeance exerting Yahweh over the forgiving Jesus. Although the “Evangelicals” profess Christ with their lips, their hearts are largely with Moses and the chosen people. A good example is the ex-governor of Arkansas and former as well as possible future contender for the presidency: Mike Huckabee.

In June of this year Ariel Levy published an article in The New Yorker entitled, “Prodigal Son. Is the wayward Republican Mike Huckabee now his party’s best hope?” In it Levy describes how Huckabee sees himself and the views he expressed while leading a group of one hundred and sixty evangelicals on a tour of Christian holy sites in Israel, which by the way, was his fourteenth trip. Below are some of the most relevant excerpts.

 

‘“I worship a Jew! I have a lot of Jewish friends, and they’re kind of like, ‘You evangelicals love Israel more than we do.’ ‘I’m like, Do you not get it? If there weren’t a Jewish faith, there wouldn’t be a Christian faith.’ . . .  In recent weeks Huckabee has defended the Israeli attack on a Turkish flotilla headed for Gaza, in which nine people were killed. He does not support a two-state solution, or at least, as he told numerous reporters in the course of the trip ‘not on the same piece of real estate’­­– which is to say he thinks that coming up with a place for Palestinians ought to be an Arab problem. In fact, Huckabee does not believe that Palestinian is a legitimate nationality. ‘I have to be careful saying this, people get really upset –  there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian,’ Huckabee told a rabbi in Wellesley, Massachusetts, at a kosher breakfast on the campaign trail in 2008. ‘That’s been a political tool to try to force land away from Israel.’ In a speech to the Knesset on our trip, Huckabee said, ‘I promise you, you do not have a better friend on earth than Christians around the world, who know where we have come from and know whom we must remain allies and friends with.’ The members of his tour group who were seated in the audience applauded vigorously, several rose to their feet and shouted, ‘Amen!’

Huckabee was being paid to lead the tour, and, like everything he does now, the trip provided fodder for his television show. But he was also building credibility with Zionist Christians and right-wing American Jews, which will be valuable should he decide to run for president again. ‘There’s a lot of Jewish money on the right that’s got to go some-place, especially if Obama continues to be perceived as unfriendly to Israel,’ Zev Chafets, an American journalist and Menachem Begin’s former communication’s director, told me. . . .”

          

The mentioned television show has a prime time slot on FOX News (Saturdays, 6 pm) and thereby reaches a wide audience, especially since the other cable networks have largely written off this precious time slot and do not present national or international news. To his credit one must admit that Huckabee is not abrasive, as is common with pundits on that network, and he presents himself instead as a guitar playing folksy man of the people; an image which is lapped up by his adoring audience. Yet, as the sentences above prove his views are malignant and misinformed. For instance, he is unaware that during the British mandate period from 1922 to 1947 the people who lived in the country were officially called Palestinians regardless of religion or ethnicity. Jews emigrated from Europe to “Palestine” and they had no problem referring to themselves as Palestinian nationals. Jews created the Palestine Post, the Palestine Brewery, the Palestine Brigades and their musicians toured the world as the Palestine Symphony Orchestra. It was established in 1936 and only after Israeli statehood was it renamed to Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Is it really too much to ask of a contender for the Presidency of the U.S. to know the rudiments of the history of a country that has such a profound and unfortunately divisive influence on the rest of the world?  

The ignorance of the average American citizen (Huckabee, as well as Palin likewise fall into this group) in regard to history is appalling and since people no longer read to any appreciable extent, but prefer to get their  information from television, American public opinion can readily be molded by “special interests.” Everything is for sale including Congress and the Presidency. Under these circumstances is it any wonder that Obama converted to the Israeli point of view. Earlier last month he provided Prime Minister Netanyahu with a red carpet treatment which was distinctly different from what he received in March. “What rift?” was the headline of an article in The Salt Lake Tribune on July 7 and added “President says U.S. bond with Israel is ‘unbreakable.’” The article also stated,

 

“Netanyahu emerged with a pile of promises from Obama that the U.S. is both committed to Israel’s security and a believer that the prime minister wants peace with Palestinians. For his part, Netanyahu showed the urgency that Obama wants in boosting peace efforts, though he didn’t say in public just what he might have planned.

The last time Netanyahu visited in March, amid a moment of deep tension over Israeli settlements in disputed territory, reporters were not even invited to see the leaders shake hands. This time, the media got to see them talking, smiling – even Obama escorting Netanyahu off to his waiting limo.”

 

The accompanying picture showed them walking side by side. This was a modest improvement over a picture from the Bush years where Sharon, the “man of peace,” was walking several steps ahead of a rather crestfallen George W. What has happened in these few months? The Christian Science Monitor of June 21 provided the answer. In “Decoding Netanyahu” Ilene R. Prusher wrote,

 

“But the ‘tough love’ – a term many veteran Middle East policymakers in Washington have come to use as a catchphrase for taking a firmer hand toward Israeli ambivalence and foot-dragging – got perhaps too rough and backfired. Members of Congress, and pillars of the American-Jewish community such as Elie Wiesel, began to chastise the administration for taking too harsh an approach and alienating Israel. . . .

Then, in mid-May, Mr. Obama told members of Congress that he’d made some missteps entering the Middle East minefield and, he joked, might have lost a few fingers.” 

 

            Ambassador Rabinovich in the above mentioned discussion at New York University had denied that “the tail wags the dog,” but here is the evidence to the contrary. The tail does wag the dog and the implications for our country and the world are enormous. Obama is hamstrung. Netanyahu can continue to build settlements wherever he pleases and evict Palestinians from their ancient homes in East Jerusalem. Of course, Netanyahu wants peace with the Palestinians and is willing to talk to their leadership but on his terms as the superior, who holds all the cards, to the inferior who has to comply. The Palestinians responded, according to a small blurb in the Tribune, that there was, “No point in talks with Israel.” The fine print stated the reason, “Mahmoud Abbas sounded determined not to return to the table unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commits to an internationally mandated settlement freeze and agrees to pick up talks where they left off in December 2008.” But Abu Mazen, as he is referred to by his friends, has apparently not yet realized that Obama has capitulated and last week there was a short article in the paper headlined, “U.S. warns Abbas on talks.” The article read in toto,

           

“A senior U.S. envoy warned the Palestinian president that he must move quickly to direct talks with Israel if he wants President Barack Obama’s help in setting up a Palestinian state, according to an internal Palestinian document obtained by the Associated Press on Monday. The 36-page memo sent to senior Palestinian officials, advised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to resist growing U.S. pressure, warning that rescinding conditions for face-to-face negotiations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be ‘political suicide.’”

 

            Thus we are witnessing a replay of the events that had led up to the Camp David II debacle, which has been discussed in extenso in previous installments, and is bound to lead to the same result – failure and more bloodshed. Abbas cannot enforce his views on Hamas and Netanyahu cannot condone a viable Palestinian state, even if he wanted to, because his coalition government with ultra-orthodox and settlers parties would collapse. A two-state peace agreement is at this time out of the question, regardless how much Obama would want it to justify his premature Nobel peace prize. The Knesset would never ratify it and the lost years of the Bush administration’s failure in regard to the Middle East cannot be made up any more.

            In the conclusion of the previous installment I mentioned that “The ground is beginning to shift and thoughtful members of the Jewish people are recognizing that to close ones eyes to the new realities which are emerging is no longer advisable.” In Israel the divisions between right and left have hardened. Even its democratic bulwark, the Israeli Defense Force has become politicized by an increasingly religious outlook and some units have refused to evict Jewish settlers from illegal outposts. The extent of the problem was discussed by Eyal Press in The New York Review of Books under the title, “Israel’s Holy Warriors.” The fact that an article like this and two others, which will now be mentioned, are examples of the beginning concern Jewish authors feel about the situation, although it has not yet reached the leadership in our country. Press quoted “a military Torah college head,” stating, “that in a few years, religious soldiers will make up the majority of brigade commanders in all areas.”  The significance lies in the fact that strict Torah believers regard the entire land of Palestine as their country. For them, just as for Huckabee, there are no Palestinians and to evict a Jew from any of the settlements is sacrilege. Since there are by now about 516,569 settlers in widely dispersed areas of the West Bank and East Jerusalem a viable Palestinian state may well be impossible to create because the army may refuse to follow orders for removing the settlers. That is one of the “facts on the ground” which American administrations have fostered by not only allowing the settlement movement to proceed but having even provided the money to the tune of $60 billion over the past decade. Naturally this sum was officially to go for defense spending. But this is eye-wash because the money the Israelis saved themselves by these means went to build the separation wall and settlements. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settlement provides a picture of the situation.

            Another article in the same journal entitled, “Eyeless in Gaza,” by David Shulman pointed to,

 

“The depth of change that Israel has undergone since the present government came to power in the spring of 2009 . . . Under conditions of escalating national hysteria, Israeli dissent is harshly dealt with. Ezra Nawi, one of the heroes of Israeli nonviolent resistance to the occupation is now in jail. . . . The villages of Bil’in and Na’alin where nonviolent protest against the route of the security fence was pioneered and has continued without interruption for over four years are now a closed military zone, off limits to Israeli peace activists. More important still is the attempt to break the back of nonviolent grassroots protest in Palestine by arresting and sometimes prosecuting, on trumped-up charges the leading activists. . . .”

 

            While these articles dealt with the shifts in attitudes which have occurred in Israel the one by Peter Beinart, in an article published on June 10 likewise in The New York Review of Books, highlights aspects of the domestic scene. The title is, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” and the author voices his concerns that official Jewish leadership is out of step with especially the younger generation of Jews in our country. Key aspects are,

 

“Among American Jews today, there are a great many Zionists, especially in the Orthodox world, people deeply devoted to the State of Israel. And there are a great many liberals, especially in the secular Jewish world, people who are devoted to human rights for all people, Palestinians included. But the two groups are increasingly distinct. Particularly in the younger generation, fewer and fewer American Jewish liberals are Zionists; fewer and fewer American Jewish Zionists are liberal. One reason is that the leading institutions of American Jewry have refused to foster – indeed have actively opposed a Zionism that challenges Israel’s behavior in the West Bank and Gaza strip and toward its own Arab citizens. For several decades, the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door, and now, to their horror, they are finding that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead.

Morally, American Zionism is in a downward spiral. If the leaders of groups like AIPAC and the Conference of  Major American Jewish Organizations do not change course, they will wake up one day to find a younger orthodox-dominated Zionist leadership whose naked hostility to Arabs and Palestinians scares even them, and a mass of secular American Jews who range from apathetic to appalled.”

 

The author’s warning was very personal because the future of his own Jewish children is at stake. These are some of the stirrings within the Jewish community in regard to the policies of the state of Israel but they have not yet reached the leading Jewish circles and thereby our mass media, especially television. But unless and until this happens no U.S. president, regardless of best efforts and political party affiliation, can harbor a realistic hope of influencing Israel’s conduct and thereby bring peace to the Middle East. Since this problem affects all of us, Gentile as well as Jew, in some form or another, the next installment will demonstrate how we have reached this impasse and what might be done about it.           







September 1, 2010

MYTHISTORY

            In the previous installments I have pointed to some of the differences between popular U.S. perception of what the state of Israel stands for and the actuality as experienced by the people living in the country and the occupied territories. I also showed that the Jewish leadership in our country, which has significant influence on our domestic and foreign policy, is beginning to be out of step with factual developments both here and in Israel. The purpose of this installment is to further explain How Moses Shaped America. I have capitalized the initials because this is actually the title of an article which appeared in Time magazine last year (October12). The subtitle was, “From the Revolution to the Cold War, the Old Testament hero has been the country’s defining religious symbol. What we can learn from Moses today.” Bruce Feiler, the author, is best known for his book Walking the Bible in which he described his 10,000-mile trek retracing the journey of the Hebrews from Egypt to the Promised Land as described in the first five books of Moses, the Pentateuch. Feiler’s article was an adaptation of his latest book, America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story, which, as yet, I have not read. Thus, the subsequent comments are limited to the Time magazine article.

            Feiler’s point was to exhort President Obama to persevere in the face of adversity, just as Moses did when confronted with difficulties from the Egyptian authorities and rebellions by his own people. Although he did not enter the “Promised Land” himself, he had paved the way by constantly emphasizing the vision of a land of “milk and honey,” which they would soon be able to enjoy. Feiler was correct when he pointed out that ever since the first pilgrims entered these shores, who regarded King James as their “pharaoh,” the Exodus story has been the guiding light for Whites and Negroes alike, who used it for their respective purposes. The title “pharaoh” was subsequently bestowed on King George, while the spiritual “Go down Moses . . .  tell Ole’ Pharaoh Let my People go,” could be regarded as the “Battle Hymn” of the Civil Rights Movement. George Washington was regarded as America’s Moses and so was Brigham Young by Mormons. Presidents from Lincoln on down to Obama have consistently emphasized Moses’ greatness as leader and lawgiver. The biblical fact that the “milk and honey” vision was accompanied not only by threats but physical destruction of opponents tends not to be mentioned by Moses’ admirers. Neither is the fact that although Canaan was reached, it did not yield the expected benefits, and that Moses has provided the Hebrews, later Israelites and now Jews, with a great deal of trouble ever since they left the “fleshpots of Egypt.”

            The Moses phenomenon is a classic example which demonstrates that human beings do not live by facts but myths. Moses never wrote the books, which later generations have ascribed to him. There are no historical data about him, and that the Exodus ever took place in the manner the Bible reports it. The only information we have comes from the Bible and a comment by Manetho, as related by Josephus (37- c.100 A.D.), who describes Moses as an Egyptian renegade priest. But this piece of information was regarded by Josephus as “slander” and only the biblical version was propagated by the faithful. I have discussed these aspects of the Moses story in The Moses Legacy and since it can be downloaded free of charge from this site they need not to be discussed further at this time.

Originally these were stories which had been orally transmitted and embellished by gifted storytellers. Their purpose was to serve not only as entertainment and educational tools by the nightly campfires, but also to instill awe as well as fear in the audience. Later on these stories solidified under the leadership of priests; they were put into written form and further modified to serve a religious and/or political purpose. With the passage of time some of these myths, such as the stories about the Greek gods, fell by the wayside and became relegated to “mythology,” while others which fulfilled a more direct political purpose at a given time were adopted and became the foundations of organized religions. Under these circumstances the line between story and historical fact becomes blurred. When myth is regarded as history we end up with “mythistory,” a term used by Shlomo Sand in his book on, “The Invention of the Jewish People.

            The author is a Professor of History at Tel Aviv University and a typical product of the turbulent second half of the past century. He was born in 1946 in Linz, Austria, where his Jewish Polish parents, who had survived the atrocities of the war, lived temporarily in a DP (displaced persons) camp. In 1948 the family moved to Jaffa. Early on, like many others, he became enamored with communist ideology, joined its youth organization but also proved himself to be sufficiently non-conformist to be expelled from high school. After military service he did receive his matriculation certificate which allowed him to go to university. In 1975 he graduated with a BA in history from the University of Tel Aviv but his PhD (1982) was earned in Paris where he first studied, and subsequently taught, French history until 1985 when he returned to Tel Aviv. These bare-bone facts came from Wikipedia. The rest of the information, which is recounted below, was obtained from his mentioned book which also carries on its cover page, a quote from the New York Times, “Extravagantly denounced and praised.” It was originally published under the title Matai ve’ech humtza ha’am hayehudi? and it is noteworthy that the Hebrew title had a question mark at the end. A faithful translation, as it appears in the English version, would have been, “When and How was the Jewish People invented?” 

            To understand the furor the book has created it is useful to first look at the meaning of the word “people.” In English it is derived from populus, as for instance in Senatus Populusqe Romanus (SPQR, the Senate and the people of Rome). The term referred to the people under Roman authority, in the sense “of forming a political community,” but did not necessarily convey an ethnic status. In contrast, the German corollary Volk, when used in a political context, is largely identical with ethnicity. These are not academic distinctions. They can have very practical and in fact lethal consequences. When Hitler issued his decrees in the name of “das deutsche Volk,” a distinction was drawn from other Voelker, such as the French, British etc. Inasmuch as Zionists proclaimed that Jews are also a Volk, a people or nation, they were automatically foreigners and could never be “real” Germans. All of the disasters which befell the Jews of Germany flowed from this interpretation of one word.

            Closely connected with the idea of Volk in this narrow sense is that of Heimat, a concept which has little meaning in America. Since it is a concept, rather than simply a six letter word, it cannot be properly translated but must be described. Although the term “homeland” could be used, it is not merely the country where one happened to have been born. The concept includes: place of birth, the language one is raised in, and most importantly the identification with the history of one’s place of birth. These aspects together form the emotional attachment to, and responsibility for, that place which was the first “home” in one’s life. Let me make this quite concrete. I was born in Austria and at first had Austrian citizenship; when Austria disappeared from the map through Hitler’s annexation, I became officially German, albeit of inferior status because of my Jewish grandfather. In April 1945, after the Soviet Union had “liberated” Austria and established a government in Vienna I became Austrian again. When I left Austria for the U.S., married Martha and subsequently obtained citizenship, I became and have remained an American. While living in this country Martha and I have resided in four different states of the Union: so where is my Heimat? Well, I still happen to have an official legal document which is called Heimatschein. This is a certificate that was issued in 1933 by the City of Vienna which guarantees me “Heimatrecht” in Vienna throughout my lifetime.  

            This excursion into German language and thought might seem totally irrelevant to Americans, but it is in fact the essence of our current problems in the Middle East. One tends to forget that the early Zionists spoke, thought, and wrote mainly in the German language rather than English, French, Polish or Russian. The official language of the First Zionist Congress (Basel 1897) was German and Wikipedia shows the first page of the “Programm.” The first handwritten sentence reads, “Der Zionismus erstrebt fuer das juedische Volk die Schaffung einer oeffentlich [in insert] rechtlich gesicherten Heimstaette in Palaestina.” This might be translated as: Zionism strives toward the creation of an official, legally guaranteed, homeland in Palestine. As such, Volk and Heimat were the concepts they operated with. Zionists did not feel “at home” in the countries where they happened to have been born and raised, because regardless where they lived they were in a minority and as such liable to discrimination as well as outright persecution.

For assimilated secular Jews all of this was dangerous nonsense because they did identify with the country they were born in: Germany, France, England, America etc. They knew that instead of anti-Semitism magically disappearing, when the Jews moved to Palestine from the countries they lived in, their troubles would not be over but new ones would follow in their wake. Although sporadic anti-Semitism was a nuisance it was not a danger in Central and Western Europe. They, therefore, had no intention of packing up and leaving. The well-to-do had come to identify with the country of their birth, although this was not the case to that extent in Poland and Russia where the largely poor majority of Jews resided.

Hitler’s policies changed all that because he took the Zionists at their word and applied their aspirations to all Jews. The logic was: If you are a Volk and your Heimat is in Palestine please go but leave the major portions of your property here. Germany is for Germans and if you wish to remain you will no longer have the right to full citizenship, but only residency with limited professional opportunities. These policies were codified in the Nuremberg laws. In 1938 the annexation of Austria added a sizeable Jewish minority to the Reich and brought new chicaneries. But systematic state sponsored, rather than sporadic, murder of Jews did not occur until WWII and especially the campaign against the Soviet Union. Although the November 1938 Kristallnacht could be regarded as foreshadowing the future. When one is aware of these historic facts, of which I happen to be an eye-witness, the current Israeli policies towards its non-Jewish citizens, and especially in the occupied territories, evoke eerie memories. The official stance of the state is that all of Palestine is Heimat solely for Jews, just as Germany was only for Germans during the Hitler years. Non-Jewish citizens in Israel proper (within pre June 1967 borders) have limited rights and the Palestinians in the occupied territories are currently stateless, although the Palestinian authority does issue them passports for travel abroad.

This is the situation, which is deplored by Israelis who are guided by history and the light of reason. It has, therefore, given rise to numerous articles as well as books. The mentioned one by Professor Sand has struck at the root of the problem and this is why his book is both praised and vilified.  His intention was to expose the voelkisch, nationalistic and chauvinistic interpretation of the word “people,” and that of a common national origin, as a myth which is taken for actual history.  This is why he used the word “mythistory” to define the thinking which has given rise to the current tragedy.

            The Introduction lays out the absurdity of Israel’s nationality law. Every person living in Israel has to have an official identity card which also states the individual’s “nationality.” Those who are Jews by birth or conversion, regardless of the country they were born in, are designated as “Jewish;” all others carry the names of the country of their birth. But since the state of Israel does not recognize “Palestine” as a country the Palestinians who had remained after the nakba (the events surrounding the founding of the state which led to the massive and as yet unsolved refugee problem), are referred to as “Arabs.” As Sands pointed out Israel has thereby become the first country in the world which recognizes Arab nationality and unity, which, by the way, even Nasser had failed to accomplish. He described the situation as,

 

“Dominated by Zionism’s particular concept of nationality, the state of Israel still refuses, sixty years after its establishment, to see itself as a republic that serves its citizens. One quarter of the citizens are not characterized as Jews, and the laws of the state imply that it is not their state nor do they own it. The state has also avoided integrating the local inhabitants into the superculture it has created, and has instead deliberately excluded them. Israel has also refused to be a consociational democracy (like Switzerland or Belgium) or a multicultural democracy (like Great Britain or the Netherlands) – that is to say, a state that accepts its diversity while serving its inhabitants. Instead, Israel insists on seeing itself as a Jewish state belonging to all the Jews in the world, even though they are no longer persecuted refugees but full citizens of the countries in which they chose to reside. The excuse for this grave violation of a basic principle of modern democracy, and for the preservation of an unbridled ethnocracy that grossly discriminates against certain of its citizens, rests on the active myth of an eternal nation that must ultimately forgather in its ancestral land.”

 

The book then demonstrates that Jews have never been one unified people, who resided more or less continuously in Palestine until they were “exiled” after the Jewish wars in the first and second century of our era. Instead, they were characterized by what Arthur Koestler called in his book, The Thirteenth Tribe,Wanderlust” (desire to roam the world) which established large Jewish Diaspora communities within the various empires of their day. Koestler’s book, published in 1976, with the subtitle, The Khazar Empire and its Heritage was the first one which popularized the theory that the large Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewish population might not have originated, as commonly assumed, from German Jews of the Rhineland. Instead, Koestler argued, they might have come to a large extent from a westward movement when the Khazar Empire, which was ruled by Jews for some time, collapsed in the tenth century AD.

This is not the place to enter into the pros and cons of this theory, which is the basis of Koestler’s book and was also discussed by Sand as well as by Kevin Alan Brook in The Jews of Khazaria.  Suffice it to say that this kingdom covered an extensive area between the Caspian and the western shore of the Black Sea, including the Crimea. To the North it reached up to Kiev, and Georgia in the South was its tributary. A map is available on  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chasaren.jpg. The relevancy for now is that at some point in time Judaism became the state religion. The empire was ruled on a hereditary basis by a “Kagan” who held the supreme authority although the military commander could also have that title. Since Judaism was the state religion it should not be surprising that a Muslim traveler in the tenth century wrote, “In Khazaria, sheep, honey and Jews exist in large quantities [Koestler 1976].” But when Khazaria lost its independence, in the latter half of the tenth century, the people did not vanish; instead a gradual westward migration took place into what is now Southern Russia, Poland, Lithuania and Hungary.

From an etymologic point of view it is of interest that Kagan has become a relatively common Jewish name as for instance of the recently appointed Supreme Court Justice. In Russia the better known Lazar Kaganovich (son of Kagan) was one of the early leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution and co-author of the decrees which led to the famine in the Ukraine (1932-1933) for which he has recently been accused of genocide. In Brook’s book there is also a legend about the origin of the Khazars. They consisted of several Turkish tribes and the most powerful of these was called: A-shi-na. It may not be too far fetched to relate this to Ashkenaz, also spelled Ashenaz, although Brook did not make this connection. Yet, it may not be totally unfounded. In Genesis 10:2-3 Ashkenaz was the great-grandson of Noah via Japheth and Gomer. In Jeremiah 51:27 where the Lord vents his anger against Babylon, the kingdoms of “Ararat, Minni and Ashenaz” were to assist from the North while the Medes were to join in the destruction from the South. In addition it might not be irrelevant that Noah’s ark supposedly came to rest on “Mount Ararat,” which is in southern Turkey.

Furthermore, in The Moses Legacy I have pointed out that Abraham’s original name was Abram and since Indo Europeans were already present during the second millennium B.C. in what are now Turkey, Syria and Iraq, some of the biblical names need not be thought of as originating within Semitic languages but could have counterparts in Sanskrit, from which most European languages were subsequently derived. In that language the verb “bhram” means “to rove” or “to wander” and the prefix “a” indicated the imperfect tense. Abhram would have meant “wandered.” Is this suggestion totally uncalled for? Well, in Deuteronomy 26:5 Moses exhorted the Israelites to say at the time when they bring the first fruits as an offering to the Lord, “A wandering Aramean was my father . . . [The Soncino Chumash].” The King James Version substituted the word “Syrian” for Aramean, which is more modern but less historical. Abram’s father was Tera, and in Sanskrit Thera means “Elder.” Abram’s grandfather as well as his brother was called Nahor and the root nah means “to bind,” Sarah has numerous meanings in Sanskrit of which “precious” is one. Furthermore, the Ur from which father Tera supposedly migrated need not be the Ur in southern Mesopotamia but could have been Urfa, as Gordon and Rendsburg in The Bible and the Ancient Near East have pointed out. Urfa was close to Haran as well as the city of Nahor, where Abram’s clan resided and from which Jacob brought his wives: Leah and Rachel. These places were to the east of the Euphrates in what is now southern Turkey. Thus, a case can be made that Jewish ancestry is more closely associated with the northern portion of the Levant and its eastern extension, rather than the “Land of Zion,” which is considerably further south.

In the eyes of confirmed Zionists this is, of course, rank heresy because the title to the land and with it the expulsion of the locals in Palestine, who relish their orchards and are not gripped by “Wanderlust,” loses its justification. This is why Sand’s book has been so vigorously attacked in official circles. Since the entire moral justification for the Zionist enterprise resides in the Bible, archeology has a political dimension in Israel. Jerusalem is the key flashpoint in Palestinian-Israeli negotiations and Prime Minister Netanyahu has recently reaffirmed that “Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people.” This allows him to bulldoze Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem in order to create space for Jewish settlers. Unfortunately, there is no evidence, apart from the Bible, that Jerusalem was the seat of a powerful kingdom in ancient times. Sand referred to this lack of evidence and it is further documented in the book by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman (published in 2002) The Bible Unearthed. Archeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts.

The authors, who are professional archeologists, reaffirmed that the stories about the patriarchs, Moses, the Exodus, the conquest of Canaan by Joshua are legends rather than facts, but Chapter 6 was the bombshell which galvanized Sand. Its title, “One State, One Nation, One People?” immediately brought memories of Vienna during the Ides of March 1938 to my mind. In those days the masses cried themselves hoarse with the slogan: Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuehrer to celebrate that Austria had again joined Germany as had been the case prior to 1866. “Heim ins Reich” was the slogan, but in 1945 “Heim aus dem Reich” was more popular because Austrians had found out that the neighbors to the North were not their Heimat after all.  In the mentioned chapter, which clearly influenced the title of Sand’s book, Finkelstein and Silberman presented evidence that the most hallowed belief in the powerful united monarchy under David and Solomon was an invention by Jerusalem’s priesthood during the reign of Josiah in the 7th century B.C.

Contrary to poplar belief archeological discoveries suggest that the northern Kingdom of Israel was the more densely settled and prosperous, while the southern Kingdom of Judah was sparsely inhabited and economically backward. In the tenth century (supposed time of David and Solomon) “the built-up area of Jerusalem covered an area of no more than one hundred and fifty acres. . . .  Its population of around fifteen thousand would have made it seem hardly more than a small Middle Eastern market town. . . . ” Instead of the Davidic kingdom having been the glorious one it was the line of Omri in the North which achieved international importance in the ninth century. The kingdom of Judah only entered the larger scene in the eighth century, when it was flooded by refugees from the north after the Assyrian conquest, and especially in the seventh under the reign of Josiah (639-609). It was under his rule that the “book of law,” which is commonly regarded as having been Deuteronomy, was “discovered.” A strict monotheism with a single place of worship, the Jerusalem temple, was instituted and enforced. In addition History was rewritten from the point of view of the Jerusalem priesthood which resulted in the “historical” portions of the Bible as we know it. The tribe of Judah and its descendants became the heroes and the Northerners had received their just desert for having hankered after false gods. A second editing and embellishment of the Bible had taken place after the fall of Jerusalem (587), which was likewise blamed on the waywardness of its inhabitants towards Yahweh. Nevertheless, the supposed promise of the messianic kingdom under a descendant of David and centered in Jerusalem, has remained intact to this day and provides the excuse for Israeli policies.

Since archeology has failed to deliver the expected results attention has now shifted to genetics to bolster the idea of the “One People.” While “race” was a bad word that had to be avoided after Hitler, it has now resurfaced under the more scientific term, “DNA.” A few years ago a “Cohen gene” had been found but it made no appreciable impact. Earlier this year, however, two scientific papers appeared, which were reported in the New York Times (June 9, 2010) under the title “Studies Show Jews’ Genetic Similarity.” The two Jewish communities of Europe, the Ashkenazim and Sephardim, were found to have been genetically close and the studies “refute the suggestion made last year by the historian Shlomo Sand . . . that Jews have no common origin. . . . Jewish communities from Europe, the Middle East and the Caucasus all have substantial genetic ancestry that traces back to the Levant; Ethiopian Jews and two Judaic communities in India are genetically much closer to their host populations.”  

When I read the article another headline from the Times sprang to mind, “Tests Show King Tut Died from Malaria [February 16, 2010].” When one reads the fine print of the actual paper in JAMA it becomes clear that the malaria parasite had not been found only in Tut’s tissues, but it was also present in other royal mummies from that period and the precise cause of his death still remains a matter of speculation. The article on Jewish genes was based on two papers. One, “Abraham’s children in the genome era: major Jewish diaspora populations comprise distinct genetic clusters with shared Middle Eastern ancestry,” was by Atzmon and co-workers; while Behar and his group had published, “The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people.” For me the key sentence from Behar paper was that “Most Jewish samples form a remarkably tight subcluster that overlies Druze and Cypriot samples but not samples from other Levantine populations.” The major population center of the Druze is, however, not in southern Palestine i.e. Jerusalem and the former Kingdom of Judah but further north in Lebanon and Syria. When one goes from Cyprus to the east and a tad north one arrives in Haran from where Abram is supposed to have set out on his journey. From there to Khazaria is just the proverbial “hop, skip and jump.” This particular paper, therefore, hardly lends itself to support a claim to Jerusalem on a genetic basis.

The Atzmon study is very complex and for me somewhat difficult to interpret but here are the key points. Principal component analysis (a statistical technique which allows separation into major contributing elements) showed, “that the Jewish populations clustered with European groups.” This result was, of course, not particularly desirable so the data were milked further; subclusters were identified and not surprisingly “Europeans were closest to Ashkenazi Jews.” It can, therefore be concluded that genetics are likewise a poor tool to claim the land of Palestine as the birthplace of the Jewish people, rather than its religion.

This brings us back to America and its Jews who currently hold the fate of the world in their hands. Since one may regard this as an exaggeration I shall refer for now only to the book by Elliott Abrams, Faith or Fear, which he published in 1997 while temporarily out of office. During the Reagan administration he was intimately involved in the Iran-Contra Scandal, indicted by the Senate for withholding information, but pardoned during the presidency of Georg H W Bush who elevated him to the post of “Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs.” On June 25, 2001, during the Bush-Cheney presidency he became “Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations at the National Security Council.” On December 2, 2002 he became “Special Assistant to the President and the NSC's [National Security Council] Senior Director for Near East and North African Affairs.” In this capacity he was the major American player in Fatah’s military attempt to gain power in Gaza after Hamas’ unexpected success in the Palestinian elections. The coup, instigated by the U.S., not only failed, but consolidated Hamas’ rule in Gaza with the consequences all of us are aware of. Although temporarily out of office again he still is a person of  considerable influence whose views one should listen to.

His book carries the subtitle, “How Jews can survive in a Christian America” and is remarkable for its candor. Had a Gentile written about how the Jewish leadership has conducted itself during the past century, he/she would have been summarily drummed out of court for blatant anti-Semitism. Abrams noted that, haunted by fears of past persecutions, they decided that religion was the major problem and secularism with a strict separation of Church and State had to be enforced. To this end numerous lawsuits were instigated and we know the result. The social fabric was rent asunder, personal gratification rules and “love thy neighbor” is obsolete in the circles which shape public policy.Yet, this and the other mechanisms the Jewish leadership has employed to overcome this primal fear, such as the promotion of identification with the land of Israel and devotion to the holocaust, will, according to Abrams, not succeed in the long run.

Abrams’ noted that Christianity has changed over the past several decades. It no longer bedevils Jews but respects them, therefore, they have nothing to fear from Christians. The greatest current danger to Judaism in America is intermarriage, because about fifty percent of Jews marry partners from other belief systems. Assimilation will lead to loss of identity unless Jews return to Judaism i.e. the Torah and its teaching. Abrams obviously failed to recognize that those Jews who do obey the Torah – the orthodox and ultra-orthodox segment – have to be in perpetual conflict with the rest of the world because it demands separation and “otherness.”

The Torah myths are the basis of the Middle East wars and as long as policymakers subscribe to them there can be no peace.  Given these facts the “peace talks” which are supposed to begin again in Washington in the middle of this month have hardly any chance for success and, as in the past, the Palestinians will likely be blamed in the American media for the failure. Inasmuch as the popular media dispense myths rather than facts, as an excuse for political decisions, the topic will be continued in next month’s installment, with further documentation of the vital role Jewish individuals and organizations play in shaping the policies of our country.







October 1, 2010

SEASON OF DISCONTENT

            When President Obama won the election on November 4, 2008 most of the country and people around the world breathed a sigh of relief. This was based on a threefold hope: America would abandon its quest for unilateral imposition of its policies on the rest of the world and thereby bring about cooperation rather than more strife to the world at large; the impending severe economic depression brought about by the collapse of Wall Street would be prevented; and a more equitable system of social justice would be inaugurated in our country. These were the hopes and the promises of the incoming administration at the end of January 2009.

            When a fair minded person looks at today’s situation one must admit that there has been some progress in regard to the first two hopes but utter failure in regard to the third one, which threatens to undermine the other two accomplishments. The fact that the Obama administration has not been able to create the private sector job growth, which had been hoped for, has given rise to a widespread spirit of disenchantment around the country. Added to the frustration was the “bailout of the banks,” (which was actually initiated by the outgoing Bush administration) and Obama’s “stimulus program” which have significantly increased the federal deficit. To top it off there is the fight whether or not the Bush tax cuts should be extended beyond December 31, when they are slated to expire. It is a season of discontent, with outright anger by some, and the current new hope resides in next month’s mid-term elections and beyond that for 2012 when the Republicans believe that they will not only regain majority in Congress but also the presidency. 

            Leaving propaganda and assumed reasons for the country’s problems aside this is the real goal of the anti-Obama forces to which everything else which smacks of cooperation with the Democrats has to be subordinated. There is, of course, a massive irony in the current situation, because the reasons which led to the current problems, namely lack of oversight, are now advocated as the solution. As mentioned in earlier installments some Republicans under the banner of Rush Limbaugh had already declared in January of 2009 that Obama’s presidency was not to be allowed to succeed. Republicans in Congress heeded the call and systematically delayed or sabotaged major legislative proposals. One of the key promises of the Obama campaign had been the misnamed “healthcare” reform bill, which was intended to provide affordable health insurance to every American. It had actually little to do with “health care” per se but everything with insurance coverage. One might think that the idea that nobody should have to mortgage one’s home or go bankrupt because of unaffordable insurance premiums could be agreed to by everyone, including politicians, but it was not to be.

            The health insurance question had to become the litmus test for success or failure of the Obama administration and the strategy to thwart a reasonable piece of legislation was to threaten with filibuster. This revered American institution goes back to 1851 and allows a given senator to hold the floor until he either collapses or gives up, as so beautifully depicted by Jimmy Stewart in the movie, “Mr. Smith goes to Washington.” To quote from Wikipedia, “The rules permit a senator, or a series of senators, to speak for as long as they wish and on any topic they choose, unless ‘three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn’ (usually 60 out of 100 senators) brings debate to a close by invoking cloture under Senate Rule XXII. This means that 41 senators, which could represent as little as 12.3% of the U.S. population, can make a filibuster happen.” Thus, legislation which affects the vital interests of a given political party can no longer be enacted by a simple majority vote, but now requires the supermajority of 60 votes.

Although the Democrats had during 2009 the needed 60 senate votes to push their insurance legislation through, they wanted to avoid the appearance of partisanship and tried to get as many Republican votes as possible. This attempt at bipartisanship was unsuccessful. The Republicans stalled throughout 2009, valuable time was lost, unsustainable compromises were made and the insurance lobby wasted no time and effort to defang the legislation. For good measure the companies also started to immediately raise their rates for some private plans, thereby making the situation worse than it was in 2008. The final piece of legislation signed by Obama on March 23, 2010 was a monstrosity of a 2400 page document which our “lawmakers” who voted on it had not even had time to read since it was prepared by staffers anyway.

The major goal “affordable rates for everyone” had been scrapped while some benefits were mandated. Among these were that insurance companies could no longer deny insurance on basis of a “pre-existing condition” and could not arbitrarily terminate it. Furthermore there was a clause that required for everybody to buy some insurance regardless whether or not they wanted it. In addition, while some of the provisions are going into effect today, October 1, others will not become active until 2014. But since all insurance programs – apart from Medicare and Medicaid which cover some of us to some extent – remain in private hands they are geared to maximize profits for the companies. Rates can be raised to whatever the competition will allow and the four year interval provides further incentive for the insurance industry to raise rates in the meantime to potentially astronomic levels. These are not abstract thoughts because last week I received a notice that Martha’s and my premium will go up by 15% for 2010-2011. What happens next October is anybody’s guess. Thus, the insurance legislation is another classic example of “the way to hell is paved with good intentions” and it has now become fodder for the Republicans who have vowed to repeal it once they regain control of Congress.

In addition to effectively blocking reasonable legislation, Republicans have also succeeded in their propaganda campaign against Obama’s person. On September 6 the Newsweek cover featured, “The Making of a Terrorist-Coddling Warmongering Wall Street-Loving Socialistic Godless Muslim President,” although a small asterisk indicated that Obama did not fit into any of these categories. The fact that these epithets are non sequiturs because you can’t be a socialist and love Wall Street, just as you can’t be an atheistic Muslim doesn’t matter for some of our citizenry. These slogans exist, are dutifully chanted by some crowds and for good measure the so called “birthers” also insist that Obama’s presidency is illegitimate because he was really born in Kenya. A recent article in Forbes Magazine by Dinesh D'Souza explained Obama and his policies. Based on Obama’s book “Dreams from my Father” (reviewed in the April 1, 2008, Hillary versus Obama, installment) D’Souza asserted that our president is an anachronistic anti-colonialist who aspires to fulfill what his father never accomplished. Here are some key excerpts:

“Obama is a socialist--not an out-and-out Marxist, but something of a European-style socialist, with a penchant for leveling and government redistribution. These theories aren't wrong so much as they are inadequate. Even if they could account for Obama's domestic policy, they cannot explain his foreign policy. The real problem with Obama is worse--much worse. But we have been blinded to his real agenda because, across the political spectrum, we all seek to fit him into some version of American history. In the process, we ignore Obama's own history. Here is a man who spent his formative years--the first 17 years of his life--off the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia and Pakistan, with multiple subsequent journeys to Africa. … If America is going to remain on top, we have to compete in an increasingly tough environment. But instead of readying us for the challenge, our President is trapped in his father's time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.”

 

One might say, ok so what, there has always been nonsense written, but Dinesh D’Souza is currently the president of the King's College in New York City and the author of the forthcoming book The Roots of Obama's Rage (Regnery Publishing). We are also told that he is from India, a non-practicing Catholic and was an adviser to President Reagan. It is, therefore, small wonder that these opinions are taken on face value especially when they are repeated and endorsed by some prominent individuals such as former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. In an interview with National Review he was quoted as having said:

 

"What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]? That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior…. This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president. I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating -- none of which was true.” (http://www.whorunsgov.com/politerati/uncategorized/newt-gingrich-rips-obama-as-kenyan-anti-colonial-thinker-sunday-reading).

 

At this point we must remind ourselves that Newt Gingrich is not some “has been” but is seriously considering running for the presidential nomination in 2012. Opinions of this type which express and fuel anger on the political scene have now found an even larger forum in form of the “Tea party” or more correctly the “tea parties.” This group of people is as yet not a political party, in the commonly used sense of the word, but consists of disenchanted individuals who hanker after an imagined past where America was a tax free haven of free enterprise with no or minimal government regulatory oversight over key aspects of industry and commerce. The core belief is American “exceptionalism,” which can be summarized as, “We make our own rules and need not bother with those which apply to the rest of the world.” One of the battle flags is a coiled rattle snake poised to strike, with the lettering “Don’t tread on me.” While another consists of the American flag which contains instead of the 50 stars a ring of 13 stars with the Roman numeral II in the center to signify the start of the second American Revolution.

This hearkens back, of course to the events of December 16, 1773 in Boston, when the colonists had gotten tired of “taxation without representation” and dumped a shipload of tea from the Dartmouth into the harbor. This “Boston Tea Party” was the forerunner of the War of Independence but few people know that there was an irony in the whole situation. The so-called “Tea Act” of 1773 had allowed the East India Company, to export tea directly to the colonies thereby abolishing the middle men which lowered the actual price of tea in spite of the retention of the 3 pence duty. This little morsel of good news, i.e. cheaper tea, was drowned out by the clamor against any and all taxes unless the colonials were given seats in Parliament.

This brief excursion into history is not irrelevant for our current tea partiers. King George has been replaced by “Washington”(the city rather than president) and they believe that by electing candidates who will support less government oversight, lower taxes and American supremacy in the world, they will create prosperity and the good life.  As mentioned, the current Tea Party is not a single organization but started as Internet blogs and Facebook entries by unhappy citizens who felt that the country was on the wrong track. Different organizations such as the “Tea Party Express,” the “Nationwide Tea Party Coalition” and “Tea Party Patriots,” to name just a few began to organize rallies. This populist movement, which as yet has no Fuehrer, gathered steam earlier this year when candidates for the November 2 elections who were supported by tea partiers, who also include for instance Sarah Palin, were successful in primary contests around the country. Even an arch-Republican as our very own Bob Bennett fell victim to the even more “conservative” Mike Lee. Since Democrats and Independents are a small minority in Utah, Mr. Lee is bound to be elected on November 2. Patriotism, “taxed enough already” (another reason for Tea as an acronym) and “taking our country back” are the key slogans and some of these worthies cannot get enough of the American flag as shown later in a picture from another Newsweek edition.

Although the tea partiers may well get their wish and the next Congress will be more “conservative” in its composition, their hope and belief that the newcomers are going to be able to show true independence of mind is ill founded. One reason is that money will continue to control their votes, because they obviously want to be re-elected before they have even warmed their seats and the second is the rules which govern the Senate. As mentioned above 41 members can effectively block any piece of legislation and to change this rule would require a supermajority which is not likely to come to pass. They are also quite deluded in their assumption of where the money is coming from which funds the various organiziations which have “Tea” as their common denominator. While the people reflect “grass roots” the money is provided by ex-establishment figures in Washington and private finaciers who hate Obama for any and all of the reasons which have been mentioned above.

There were two articles in The New Yorker which shed some light on how America is really run. One was by Connie Bruck (May 10, 2010) under the title “The Fixer,” which deals with the rise to fame and fortune of Mr. Haim Saban. Hardly anyone of the general public has probably ever heard his name but there is not a politician around, including the good Mormon Harry Reid, current Senate Majority Leader, who doesn’t obey “his master’s voice.” But before documenting this statement let me summarize the article. Saban was born in Egypt of Jewish parents and soon came to experience anti-Semitic taunts. The family moved to Israel where the boy took on a variety of odd jobs. He then gravitated into show business and with his friend Yehuda Talit became a promoter. After the Yom Kippur war they found themselves seven hundred thousand dollars in debt and Haim promptly removed himself to Paris. They stayed friends and Talit told the interviewer, “’There was something about him. He was not just smart. He had an unusual character. He never had shame. What others were afraid of he would do.’” I’ll skip over the details how he subsequently moved to New York and made an estimated $3.3 billion. Instead, I shall concentrate on how he uses them. As a dual citizen of Israel and the U.S. his avowed goal in life is to strengthen the U.S. Israel relationship. He told the interviewer “’I am an one issue guy and my issue is Israel.’” He described the method to achieve this goal to an Israeli audience last fall as follows, “’There are three ways to be influential in American politics: make donations to political parties, establish think tanks, and control media outlets.’” He has done this to perfection. He contributes generously to the Democratic Party and has established the “Saban Center for Middle East Policy” at the renowned Brookings Institute. Although he has not yet been able to buy the LA Times, The Washington Post or the New York Times, this was not for lack of trying and he is still hard at work on these projects as well as the acquisition of a major cable network.

With all that money one might assume that he pays his fair share of taxes. But the super-rich don’t pay taxes; it’s below their dignity. When Saban received from Morgan Stanley $11 million in a settlement, he asked his accountant how much tax he would owe. When told by his tax advisor, Matt Krane, “’27 percent state and federal combined,’” Saban grew livid, “’Are you fucking kidding me? Are you fucking crazy?’ He was shouting, ‘I’m not paying that.’” Krane was ordered to fix that little tax problem. He did, but went to jail for cooking the books. The article does not tell us how much if anything Saban, who disputes this account and says he was hoodwinked by Krane, had to pay.

When you have friends in high places none of this matters and most prominent among them are Bill and Hillary Clinton. In 2002 Saban donated $5 million to Bill Clinton’s Presidential Library and he has given more than five million dollars to the Clinton Foundation. According to the article Bill  Clinton’s assessment of Haim was, “’… a loyal supporter, and a trusted adviser to Hillary and me. … He is a fascinating, generous, and profoundly good man, and I’m glad to count him among my closest friends.’” Saban told Bruck that he had begged Hillary to run for the presidency in 2004. In 2007, even before she declared her candidacy, he had already begun preparing a list of prospective donors. Thereafter, he put his heart and soul into her campaign and her defeat was “’my biggest loss – and not only mine.’”

His relationship with Obama seems to be cool to say the least and is determined by the latter’s attitude to Israel. When Obama had won the primaries against Hillary in June 2008 he called Saban for his help. Saban related, “’Obama was asked the same question Hillary was asked – if Iran nukes Israel, what would be your reaction?’ Hillary said, ‘We will obliterate them.’ … Four words it’s simple to understand. Obama said only three words. ‘He would ‘take appropriate action.’ I don’t know what that means. … So I had a list of questions like that. … But Chicago wasn’t able to deliver the meeting, so I couldn’t get on board.’”

Now back to Harry Reid of  Nevada who is fighting for his political life against Sharron Angle, who is supported by tea partiers. Saban described how to deal with recalcitrants: “’I hosted the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, in my home. I was informed that he refused to sign a letter to Obama, which was signed by most of the senators, supporting Israel, before the speech in Cairo. … I got the message on Saturday and he was at my house on Sunday. I asked him, ‘Why didn’t you sign?’ So he said, ‘Because I don’t sign other people’s initiatives, as the leader, as head of the Democratic Party.’ I said, ‘So send a letter of your own.’ And Saban added, smiling, and with hesitation, as though he didn’t like boast, ‘He did,’” This is how politics works in our country.

While Saban’s dislike of Obama stems from the latter’s stance towards Israel, the Koch brothers have a different motive to ruin his presidency via the tea partiers. The following  information comes from the article by Jane Mayer under the title “Covert Operations. The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama,” which appeared in The New Yorker on August 30, 2010. The brothers, David and Charles Koch, own a variety of industries including oil and are “ranked by Forbes as the second-largest company in the country. … Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.” “… Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group said, ‘The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.’”

The political outlook of the brothers is libertarian i.e. unfettered free enterprise with no government oversight of any kind. As such they are the natural enemy of the “socialist” Obama and prime sponsors of the tea partiers. At a training session for “tea party activist” an advertisment proclaimed “’Today the voices of average Americans are being drowned out by lobbyists and special intersts. But you can do something about it.’ The pitch made no mention of its corporate funders. The White House has expressed frustration that such sponsors have largely eluded public notice. David Axelrod, Obama’s senior advisor said, ‘What they don’t say is that, in part, this is a grassroots citizen’s movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.’” 

Let me now engage in a little futuristic fantasy. There is no love lost between Saban and Obama but Saban still smarts from Hillary’s defeat. He is, therefore, likely to undermine Obama to the best of his ability in order to make him a “one-term president,” and urge Hillary to run against whoever the Republican candidate will be. Obama has already been compared to Jimmy Carter as a “failed president” and his policies have alienated not only many of the Independents but also some of his base. The African-American community has not reaped tangible benefits, neither has the homosexual lobby, Jewish donors are in part turned off by his insistence on a fair deal for the Palestinians as well as the Israelis, the middle class is suffering and for Wall Street he is, of course, anathema. So where is the money for re-election going to come from? The grassroots of popular good-will? Hardly.

Chances are that the 2012 election campaign funds of a presidential candidate will approach, if not exceed $1 billion, by the time the votes are tallied. If this sounds fantastic it is, but not unrealistic when one considers the cost of the 2008 election. In that year the combined fundraising of McCain and Obama exceeded $1 billion with Obama’s share an unprecedented $659 million. This was more than double of both John Kerry and George W. Bush in 2004, according to ABC. In the coming election cycle the situation is bound to be worse because of the Supreme Court decision in January of this year which struck down laws that banned corporations from using their own money to support or oppose candidates for public office. This has opened the floodgates for unlimited spending, although not on an individual candidate but on the groups which lobby for him/her.  What was the reason the wise justices gave for their decision? Free speech! Corporations were regarded as persons who enjoy the constitutional right of free speech and can, therefore, buy themselves whomever they wish. Do the tea partiers realize that they are just puppets in the hands of the real powers who pull the strings?

Below are two pictures, side by side, from Newsweek covers which highlight today’s American scene. On the left is a what one might call a prototypical “tea partier,” while the right one deals with the contentious issue of the so-called “Mosque on Hallowed Ground.”

 

 

The worthy gentleman on the left hardly needs any comment, but the picture on the right does. The articles by Fareed Zakaria and Lisa Miller which are listed were constructive, and mentioned several aspects which tend to be drowned out by the media circus around that “mosque.” The building, in downtown Manhattan, two blocks from “Ground Zero,” has been in existence since the 1850’s and Muslims from the neighborhood have regularly used part of it for prayer. The neighborhood itself is rather unimpressive. Nicolaus Mills, who had recently toured it, wrote an article for the Christian Science Monitor on August 24, 2010 under the headline:  Sex shop and strip clubs near ground zero show double standard over Park 51. He noted that, “This kind of commercial mix is typical of New York. Most of us who have lived in the city for any period of time take it for granted. But for those who have based their opposition to the Muslim Center on their concern for the sensibilities of the 9/11 families, places like the New York Dolls and the Pussycat Lounge present a moral dilemma.”

            It should also be emphasized that the Imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, belongs to the Sufi sect of Islam, rather than Sunni or Shia. The Sufis represent the spiritual mystical aspects of Islam and are, therefore, the most tolerant in regard to other religions. I have discussed Sufism in a previous installment in regard to Pakistan where the major Sufi shrines are located (January 1, 2008; 2008 Outlook). Needless to say, some of Imam Rauf’s comments have been taken out of context and Bill O’Reilley spent evening after evening on the Imam’s radicalism and anti-Americanism. Furthermore, the ancient current building is supposed to be replaced by a modern one, modeled after the Jewish community and cultural center, the 92 St. Y, rather than a mosque with minarets. The envisioned building, which can be viewed on Wikipedia under “Park 51,” “includes a 500-seat auditorium, theater, performing arts center, fitness center, swimming pool, basketball court, childcare area, bookstore, culinary school, art studio, food court, September 11 memorial, and prayer space that could accommodate 1,000–2,000 people.”

The whole situation reminded me of the Carmelite nuns who had to be evicted from Auschwitz because Christian prayers for the souls of the killed and that crimes like these should never be allowed to happen again, were regarded as blasphemous. Never mind that not only Jews died there but Russians, Poles, Gypsies, Germans and others. The current gift shop and cafeteria are obviously better suited to attract tourists and revenue than quiet dignified prayer.

            The Newsweek cover as depicted above reveals, however, some additional information which ought to provide food for thought. We are told that the Twin Towers had collapsed as a result of damage by the planes and subsequent fires. Yet, when one looks at the picture above, one is struck by the fact that only twisted steel structure residues remained and the rest of the buildings had literally been pulverized. I have discussed these anomalies previously and that those of us who have difficulty believing the official version are ostracized, relegated to the lunatic fringe, and at least one physicist has lost his job (October 1, 2006, the 911 Cover-Up; October 1, 2009, Crisis of Trust). Yet, the full truth about what I call “the original sin of the 21st century,” namely the events of 9/11, must come out if our country is to live up to its ideals of being a beacon for freedom, truth and justice. The fact that the Obama administration has shown absolutely no interest in investigating the claims made by responsible scientists, that the Bush administration’s assertions defy the principles of physics, was one of my dashed hopes. I readily admit that I am not an engineer and have to defer to the judgment of professionals but their voices are not allowed to be heard by the media. For instance, I did not know that the group which calls itself “Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth” held a Press Conference at the National Press Club on September 9, at which time evidence was presented to indicate that the three WTC buildings could only have collapsed in the manner they did as a result of preset explosives. The group called for a grand jury investigation of NIST (National Institute for Standards and Technology) officials and circulated a petition signed by over 1,270 architects/engineers from this country as well as 10,000 from around the world calling for a new investigation. This was given to every government representative in Congress. http://www2.ae911truth.org/downloads/congressionaloutreachteam/PRESS-RELEASE-DC.pdf.  

     The topic was also taken up by President Ahmadinejad in his speech at the UN on September 23 where he “proposed that the United Nations set up an independent fact-finding group for the event of 11 September so that in the future expressing views about it is not forbidden.” Unfortunately Ahmadinejad lacks the moral stature, especially after the bloody suppression of the opposition after his re-election, for his call to be heeded. It would need a person of the stature of President Nelson Mandela for instance to attract the attention of the media to the serious questions which have been raised about the events of that fateful day.

We are told over and over again that we live in an open society with a government “by the people for the people,” so let us have “transparency” and let the transcripts of the phone conversations which went on between President Bush and Vice-President Cheney on that day be made available to the media. Obviously, the universal excuse of “National Security” will be hauled out to prevent their publication. But the only security which we will ever have will be when our government opens the books and demonstrates that it has nothing to hide from its citizens. It will be 10 years next September and people are getting killed and maimed on a daily basis in a “War on Terrorism,” which is based on the events of that day but have never been satisfactorily explained. We have been told, “The truth shall set you free,” so let us at long last give it a chance!

The November installment will not appear, as usual, on the first of the month but on the 8th because of professional obligations during the end of October. This postponement will also allow for a discussion of the election results.







November 12, 2010

IMPRESSIONS FROM ASIA

            As mentioned in last month’s installment this issue was delayed for professional reasons. Last year I received an official invitation from the organizers of the 29th International Congress of Clinical Neurophysiology to present some of our data on infraslow electrical activity as recorded from the brains of epilepsy patients while they were undergoing evaluation for the possibility of surgical treatment. The Congress was to be held in Kobe, Japan, and due to my advanced years as well as the potentially precarious health of my spouse, I wasn’t sure whether or not I should accept. I, therefore, told my Japanese colleagues that I would be happy to come provided circumstances allowed it and in case I were unable to appear in person I would supply the PowerPoint presentation to be shown by someone else. The Congress organizers agreed and also apologized that due to the economic problems, which still beset Japan, they could not cover the transportation expenses but I would receive an honorarium.

            The family was not keen on my going because they watch on a daily basis my labored ambulation and wondered how this would work out in such a distant country. But I really wanted to go and told the kids to regard this as a dress rehearsal, because after all I am not going to be around for much longer and they will then have to take care of their mother. I had been to Japan twice before but wanted to go this time because the work which was to be presented was dear to my heart, quite controversial at this time among my peers, and this was an opportunity to suggest to my colleagues from around the world what they should look for in the data which they are currently accumulating.

            Since Martha’s health was stable I ventured on the trip but curtailed it to the minimum of one week. Inasmuch as the presentation did arouse the expected interest I had to spend considerable time, after my return, corresponding on scientific matters with some old and new-found friends. This lasted longer than anticipated and the previously announced date of November 8 had to be postponed. It didn’t matter because the November 2nd election results are still a hot topic for TV pundits and can likewise now be discussed.
            For flying across the Pacific I had used my Delta frequent flyer miles to upgrade to business class in the hope that this would allow me to stretch out and get some sleep. From Salt Lake we have a direct connection to Seattle and from there a direct flight to Osaka from where a limousine takes you to Kobe. Anybody who still assumes that business class is what used to be first class will be in for a surprise. The hype is there, but the facts differ. In former years first class seats were spacious, with two on each side of the isle, and you had room to move. Those days are gone. Now there are an additional two in the center which obviously has to be compensated for by narrower seats. It’s not quite as bad as in coach where they now cramp four seats into the center of the plane, but in business class it amounts to about the space that you used to have in coach when I first started flying in the fifties.

            There are other innovations. The pamphlet in front of the seat assures you that Delta has restructured the seats so that you now can stretch out horizontally during the night and enjoy restful sleep. This may be true but whoever designed these foot brackets had either midgets in mind or more likely was limited by the profit motive which insisted on shorter space between rows. Although I am of average height the leg support ended at mid-calf which is not a good idea. It was further complicated by the fact that it was only slightly padded. Under these circumstances you compress the venous return from the legs and doing so for 10 hours, which is about the flight time across the Pacific, could be an invitation to form blood clots which may then send off some little bits of emboli to the lungs or the brain. The seat next to mine was open and in former years you might have lifted the arm rest and made use of the extra space. This is no longer possible in our electronic age. The armrest is firmly anchored because it contains numerous gadgets which take time to figure out. Most importantly you can push a variety of buttons to change seat positions and hidden somewhere in front is a small video screen which allows you to watch a variety of DVDs or listen to whatever music you desire. That was nice but, although of normal weight, I was so squeezed into the seat that I had a hard time reaching the remote control system which was also lodged in the side of the armrest. The flight attendants were, however, quite helpful and solved this problem. I have no idea what a 250 pound person would do because even if he/she were to buy two seats it wouldn’t do any good.

            The flight across the ocean reminded me of the movie The Longest Day because literally the sun did not set throughout the flight. We left Seattle in the afternoon and arrived at Kansai International airport next day in the afternoon with 15 hours time difference from Salt Lake. Since I no longer can manage the distances which one has to cover in airports I had asked for a wheel chair and that aspect functioned flawlessly. One is whisked through immigration where not only a photo is taken but you also leave them two of your fingerprints as a permanent souvenir and banners in English proclaim that they take terrorism threats very seriously. The limousine bus starts right in front of the airport exit doors and has a frequent schedule which reduces waiting time to a minimum.

On the highway from the airport to Kobe the meaning of the 1930’s propaganda slogan Volk ohne Raum (people without living space), which had such disastrous consequences, was literally driven home to me. There were indeed hardly any open spaces on that journey. From Osaka to Kobe one encounters essentially a strip city and the highway, which consisted of two and sometimes three rather narrow lanes for each direction, was not on the ground but elevated. There was hardly room for a curb and if there were to be an accident, especially on the two lane stretches, it would take quite some feats of engineering to remove the dead or wounded as well as the impacted vehicles. But the Japanese have no choice in this respect and one has to admire their ability to overcome adversity.

            Kobe, like most other Japanese cities, was severely bombed during WWII and its architecture is typical for post WWII functionalism, which now dominates the world. If one would not see Japanese people on the street and Japanese signs on the buildings one would have no idea where one was in the world. The convention hotel, Portopia, was an ultramodern structure with ultramodern features, some of which were clearly not appreciated by this traveler. You no longer turn lights on but you place the card which serves as a room key into a receptacle by the door and presto the entire room, including bathroom, light up. This is nice but you have lost individual control. If you would like to read in bed before going to sleep, you then have to get up and take the card out from its habitation which in turn, for good measure, shuts off the bathroom light which might be needed later on. Forethought provided the traveler with a tiny flashlight by the bed which was intended to serve as a guide to that facility in pitch darkness.

            There were two more surprises. The toilet seat was pleasantly warm and on its side were several explanations. I didn’t read them but apparently the facility has a variety of functions including that of a bidet. I abstained, because I didn’t want to flood the place. More important, however, was the air conditioning. It was set at 25 degrees Celsius which corresponds to 77 degrees Fahrenheit. Opening a window is no longer possible because it is firmly shut in place or else weary, depressed, travelers might be induced to jump from this considerable height. Now one would think that it should be no problem to reset the panel to 20 degrees, because no one wants to sleep in that heat. Yes, you can dial down but nothing happens and after about 20 minutes or so you can see the number 25 pop up again. Well, at that point you turn the thing off but this is likewise not to its liking and it obsessively returns to the magic number, apparently the only one which exists in its mechanical brain.

            If one were to call room service to fix this little problem you might have another surprise coming. Hardly anyone on the staff spoke English and my Japanese is limited to arigato (thank you). It was impossible to get a straight answer to simple questions which was the major frustration encountered. But this lack was made up for by good cheer. The hotel personnel, especially the young ladies, had obviously been selected for good looks as well as charm and must have been born with a smile on their lips. Bowing courteously and warm smiles were the order of the day so you really couldn’t complain that they had no idea what you wanted when a question was asked.

            As mentioned I had been to Japan twice before. Once as a result of an invitation for a lecture tour in the 70s, which I have briefly alluded to in Living with Duhkha (June 1, 2005) because it provided me with the first opportunity to get somewhat closer acquainted with the Teaching of Buddha and the second time in 1981 for the Kyoto International Congress. During the lecture tour I had been provided with a guide who was fluent in English and at the time of the Kyoto Congress I was with Japanese colleagues who had worked in the West and were likewise fully conversant with the English language. This time was different, I was alone and this drove home the difficulties one encounters when there is no common language.

            I shall skip over the scientific aspects, which were of high quality, and just relate the highlight of the Congress: the Gala dinner. My previous visits to Japan had shown that my Central European stomach did not appreciate Japanese food and I was, therefore, not particularly keen on attending. But as part of the official invitation there was a ticket supplied in the bag which held the rest of the Congress material, and I wanted to mingle with colleagues from other parts of the world whom I had never met before. The dinner was held at a different hotel to which we were transported by bus. But when I presented my ticket the lady at the counter couldn’t find my name on her list and told me with the habitual smile that I can’t stay. I tried to tell here that there must have been some mistake but as mentioned above English was not her forte. Somewhat annoyed I said mentally a well known Americanism to myself and was ready to leave, but an Australian colleague, who apparently had heard my presentation the day before, told the lady in no uncertain terms that I was an invited guest and had to be admitted. The supervisor was called and after about 10 minutes or so I was told that I was indeed eligible to partake of this feast.

            On the other hand, the waiting time was not wasted because a colleague from one of the Persian Gulf Emirates had approached me and our conversation drifted from science to politics. When I asked him what he regarded as the major problem in the Middle East the immediate answer was: Israel. He had heard Obama’s Cairo speech and was encouraged that a new tone was being set in Washington but could not understand, why the U.S. continues to support Israeli policies in spite of their blatant disregard of Obama’s wishes. He told me that they are regularly seeing the plight of the Palestinian people on their television screens and that Jerusalem is the flashpoint. The city is holy not only to Jews but also to them and they will never abandon their claim to the Arab portion. What Arabs want from the West is respect! They want their dignity as human beings recognized and not simply be regarded as pawns in a power play between the great nations.

After we were seated at the table a colleague from India joined us and here I was in the middle between a Muslim and a Hindu which should have led to an interesting conversation, but this goal was only partially fulfilled because of official events. First the host, Professor Shibasaki, dressed in traditional Japanese attire gave a welcoming speech and then he introduced a young lady, Nozomi Miyanishi, who was to entertain us with traditional Japanese music played on the Koto. A little note which had been supplied to each one of the guests explained that this instrument had come from China via Korea about 1300 years ago but may have existed in Japan even before that time. It is a 13 string instrument plucked with three fingers and the expert can produce beautiful soothing sounds. After having listened to the expertise of Miss Miyanishi, Professor Shibasaki returned, this time in Western clothes, gave another speech and announced that dinner would now be served. An orchestra emerged which played Western music à la Japonaise at the current inappropriate sound level which effectively inhibits conversations, while a host of waiters and waitresses descended upon our tables from all directions.

For the sake of my brother who dutifully reads these epistles and loves the French language I cannot resist to treat you to the menu which was printed in French and Japanese. The only English words were ICCN 2010 Gala Dinner at the top and October 31, 2010 Heian Ballroom at the bottom. Here goes:

 

Palette des Saveurs Charmantes à la Japonaise

Crevette, ShushiTemari”, Poulpe, Canard et Tôfu Sésames

 

Soupe Chinoise aux Aileron de Requin et les Oeuf de Crabe

 

Granité SAKE de “NADA”

 

Fillet de Boeuf Grillé aux Hakureidake,

Sauce aux Graines de Moutarde et Legumes

 

Mousse aux Agrumes, Seroie avec Marron, Fruits frais et Glace Rouge.

 

Café

 

Well, that was it! What I got out of it was that we would get a variety of appetizers, which I didn’t need, followed by a Chinese soup which one might try. Sake was understandable but nada has a different connotation in the Spanish speaking American West. Nevertheless, the fillet de Boeuf Grillé readily translates into our Filet Mignon of which I am quite fond and the dessert description as well as coffee was also quite clear. The problem was that we could hardly talk above the noise level created by the musical entertainment and I did want to hear from my Hindu colleague what he regarded as the major problem in his neck of the woods. He works in a city North of New Delhi, has modern equipment and is content with how things are going professionally. As far as the larger problem the country faces, the immediate answer was: Pakistan.

While the Palestinian hardships are the prime political problems for Muslims, the plight of the people in Kashmir and what is regarded as Pakistan’s continued fomenting of unrest with terror attacks in the area as well as India proper, receives top priority in his country. When I, naively, suggested that the best solution might be if India and Pakistan were to agree for a united Kashmir to become an independent state he told me that this would not be allowed to happen. The reason given was important and although he did not mention it, this also applies to China and the Tibetan problem. My colleague explained that India consists of several major ethnic groups and numerous different languages. If the Indian portion of Kashmir were to be separated from the mother country all the other ethnic and language groups would clamor for independence and that would be the end of India. China also is not homogeneous, hardly any nation is, and when ethnicity and regionalism begin to dominate, countries begin to fall apart in civil strife.

In this connection I have a hunch, although not yet reported on Wikileaks, that our CIA is currently busy promoting ethnic unrest in Iran, Russia, China and Pakistan to remove these countries from being able to play a major role in world affairs. This is not pure fantasy because the book See no Evil by Robert Baer, an ex-CIA operative, explains how he worked with Kurdish independence fighters in the 1980s to topple the Saddam Hussein regime, but was abandoned by Washington at a crucial moment. The same happened with an earlier uprising in Tibet and from other sources I have heard that the Chinese believe the Dalai Lama to be on the CIA’s payroll. The truth of the matter is unknown but people operate on perceptions and our government does not give us a chance to find out the facts, although we are paying for them and will be held responsible. The obvious reason for secrecy is the most sacrosanct aspect of our republic “National Security.”

This brings me to the midterm elections and the re-emergence of ex-President George W Bush who is currently on a book tour where he defends the decisions he has made. The most blatant aspect is the assertion that his major achievement was that he has kept America safe from another 9/11 attack. The fact that 9/11 should never have been allowed to happen on his watch in the first place and that the response i.e. two wars against countries which did not commit the act was totally inappropriate, is ignored. Mr. Bush did not tell us in his book what he did to protect our country while vacationing on his ranch during the month of August and especially on August 6, 2001, when he was told that Osama bin Laden was preparing to strike “the homeland.” Apparently there is also no mention in the book that the Taliban government of Afghanistan had not just simply refused to hand over bin Laden, but had demanded proof of his complicity in the attack before doing so. This was not provided by our government and remarkably enough Osama is not even wanted by the FBI for the 9/11 attacks. Although he shows up on the FBI’s Most Wanted poster it is “in connection with the August 7, 1998, bombings of the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. These attacks killed over 200 people. In addition, Bin Laden is a suspect in other terrorist attacks throughout the world.” http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/usama-bin-laden.

Although the FBI poster is dated June 1999, it also carried the comment, “Poster Revised November 2001.” This was after the attack on Afghanistan had been started. The lumping of 9/11, the most significant event of the 21st century, under “other terrorist acts throughout the world,” surely strikes one as strange. To the best of my knowledge no evidence has ever been provided which could be placed before the International Court in regard to bin Laden’s responsibility for the 9/11 attack. I know that this goes counter to accepted wisdom but we deserve to see facts which stand up in court rather than suspicions and questionable statements on a videotape.

There is no hope that our ex-President will ever own up to these facts but some of us had hoped that our current office holder would not shy away from investigating what had led us into the current military and economic difficulties. According to an article by Leslie Gelb in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, the two wars have cost by now “almost $3 trillion and counting,” and there is no end in sight. The economic disaster was also initiated by the Bush administration and we now have the paradoxical situation where the neglect of measures which could have prevented the Wall Street collapse in October 2008 is regarded as the cure for our economy by the newly elected Republican majority in the House as well as a significant portion of the American public at large.

The expectation that Obama would shine light on the 9/11 catastrophe which lies at the heart of all that followed militarily and economically was too much of an “Audacity of Hope.” The president revealed himself as a person who didn’t want to rock the boat and sought compromise where none was forthcoming. As mentioned in last month’s installment, as well as earlier ones, the prime voice of Republicans is the radio commentator and author Rush Limbaugh who had announced after Obama’s inauguration that his presidency must fail. His inflammatory rhetoric, ably assisted by other TV personalities such as Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and others who are utterly opposed to any government program which strives to bring some relief to poor and middle class Americans as well as more equity to the tax code, was taken up by Congress. I well remember O’Reilly’s vendetta against Obama’s “redistribution of wealth” because the candidate had pledged to let the Bush tax cuts expire in December 2010 and return those households with a net income of more than $250.000 from the current 35% to the 39.6% tax rate which existed under Clinton’s presidency.

The November 8, 2010 issue of Newsweek listed under “Power 50” the annual earnings of America’s most influential political figures. The first 5 persons on the list are talk show hosts while number 6 is Sarah Palin with a meager $14 million. I am calling it meager because the list is headed by Rush Limbaugh with $58.7 million, followed by Glenn Beck $33 million, Sean Hannity $22 million, Bill O’Reilly $20 million and John Stewart $15 million. Mind you these are annual incomes. With exception of John Stewart all of these individuals promote “conservative values” and regard themselves as good or even exceptionally good – as is the case with Sarah Palin who got baptized twice – Christians. Yet what may be called a “social conscience” seems to elude them. John Stewart is the exception because he makes his millions by exposing the gaffes and hypocrisies of the people mentioned above as well as politicians in general. When one considers these income levels one really must wonder how much the lifestyle of these people who day in and day out proclaim that the federal deficit must be reduced, would be cramped if they had to pay not quite 5% more of their annual income in taxes and thereby contribute their share to deficit reduction.

Smaller government and cuts in spending were the slogans under which the election was won. But the winners never explained which programs they would cut to achieve savings and they made it clear that the defense budget is not negotiable. This leaves the “entitlements” of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the new Health Care Reform Act and contributions to individual states of the Union. Furthermore, the budget cutters ignore that by lowering federal tax rates, local taxes on the state and county level will have to go up because essential services must be maintained. In contrast to the federal government they cannot print money and have to operate within a balanced budget. To what extent the Republicans will continue to play the role of obstructionists, as they have already vowed, will become apparent early on next year.

When one reads the papers one finds various reasons why the Democrats lost as badly as they did. Obviously the major aspect was the economy with the high unemployment rate and the uncertainty created by poorly thought out legislation with the health care act a prime example (September 1, 2009, Obama’s Reality Check; October 1, 2010). But the election was also a referendum on Obama’s first two years in office and the Opinion page of the Salt Lake Tribune of November 6 was instructive. Paul Krugman the recent Nobel Prize winner in economics, who leans to the left, published an article under the headline, “Obama’s mistake: Being too timid on economy.” His thesis was that the economic “stimulus package” had been too small in order to have the desired effect. On the same page was another article by Rich Lowry, editor of a conservative news magazine and syndicated columnist, with the headline, “After election: the shellacking that hubris wrought.” So what is it? Was Obama too timed or too arrogant?

While I don’t necessarily agree with Krugman’s advice and as mentioned previously, different economists have different views (April 1, 2009; Uncharted Waters), there was one sentence which was correct. It was in connection with the charge that Obama had lacked “focus” and this is why he suffered this defeat. Krugman wrote, “So where in this story, does ‘focus’ come in? Lack of nerve? Yes. Lack of courage in his own convictions? Definitely. Lack of focus? No.” This goes to the character issue of a president, which is always the most important aspect. Obama had tried to please all and thereby pleased no one. There is a German proverb which was proven right again: Allen Menschen recht getan, ist eine Kunst die niemand kann (to do right by everyone is an art possessed by no one). I sensed that this attitude of putting political expediency above conviction might become a problem for Obama, after he had won the primaries, in the way he had handled the problem his Pastor, Jeremiah Wright, had created for him (July 1, 2008; Barack Obama’s Problems). Obama had neglected Malcolm Xs advice: never let the adversary dictate the rules of the game for you. Instead of sticking to his guns and using his eloquence to explain to the American people why he did what he did, he tried to placate his adversaries and, as the prime example, the health care act grew into a monstrosity, which even he could not defend during the campaign.

I still believe that Obama means well, wants to end the current wars and prevent another one from erupting which really ought to be the number one priority. Under those circumstances, given time, the economy will improve. But he cannot achieve this goal unless he finds his authentic voice and sticks with it. The recent 60 minute interview, last Sunday, showed him as hesitant, weighing each word, because it would be taken out of context and turned into a millstone around his neck. Therefore, I shall be sending this letter to the White House:

 

Dear Mr. President,

 

In order to achieve success during the next two years please forget politics and concentrate on domestic as well as foreign affairs. Unless you have not done so previously, read and learn by heart Kipling’s “Ifs.” In your present situation the verses: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you but make allowance for their doubting too . . .  If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools . . . ,” are the most important ones.

 Do not concern yourself about a second term because you have no control over election results. Act as if these were the last two years of your presidency and you will leave the White House with a clean conscience. We have read that your wife is not enamored with her current domicile and as you well know there is a colloquial saying: When mama ain’t happy, nobody is happy.

Give us a programmatic speech like you did in Philadelphia two years ago and then stick to its points. Foremost, in order to avoid another war in the Middle East listen to the Israeli Peace groups and do not let yourself be blackmailed by the Netanyahu government with threats of “nuking Tehran” in case you were to cut off some aid if the Likud government continues to build new housing for Jews in the Arab section of Jerusalem, thereby displacing current inhabitants. Tell the Israeli government instead, that if they bomb Iran they are on their own; the action will not only be condemned but all further aid will be cut off and the U.S. will support a vote of censure in the Security Council.

Mr. President you now have a choice to make. You can decide to justify your premature Nobel peace prize or run for re-election. These are mutually incompatible goals because the former course is bound to alienate a significant donor element and you will be vilified by segments of the media. Working towards justice for Palestinians is, however, the only way to demonstrate to the Muslim world that you meant what you said in Cairo as well as Jakarta and America will thereby regain the trust of the rest of the world which she currently lacks.

 

With best wishes also for your family

 

Sincerely,

 

Ernst Rodin MD

 

In all probability the delete button will be activated immediately upon arrival of this letter, but when one lives by Kipling’s Ifs this is of no concern. The outcome of our actions is beyond our influence. We are only responsible for their initiation and for failure to act when it was required.  







December 1, 2010

CHRISTIAMITY

            Attentive readers might immediately jump to the conclusion that I had been somewhat careless and hadn’t recognized an obvious typographic mistake in the title of this essay. But you must wait, it wasn’t, and the reason for this neologism will become clear later.

            December is what used to be called the Christmas season, but this is no longer the case in our country. We now have the “holiday season,” although the vast majority of our citizens are still, at least nominally, Christians. Last week’s Thanksgiving holiday, which traditionally ushers in the season, was overshadowed by what is called “Black Friday.” This term has to do with the frantic shopping for bargain prices at chain-stores, some of which open at 3 or 5 a.m. on Friday after Thanksgiving and are supposed to put the ledgers of the stores into “the black.” Thursday’s newspaper contained nearly twice as many ads for bargains as the “news” pages, and some eager shoppers, we were told, had camped out in the cold for 48 hours prior to the 3 a.m. event when doors would be opened and they could descend upon all the “stuff” that could be bought. Less ardent souls started their vigil at 7 p.m. as we were told in Saturday’s newspaper. The traditional family dinner has apparently given way to commercialism, which is running rampant and the spiritual aspects have become the loser.

            Emphasis on shopping is, however, only one aspect of our changing society, the other is that wishing somebody a “Merry Christmas” is no longer politically correct. We might offend Jews who don’t want to hear the word Christ. This is not fantasy but merely shows how far our country has gone down the road towards “Separation of Church and State” and progressive secularization. Stephen Feldman’s wish has been granted but whether we are better off as a result is not at all certain. In 1997 Mr. Feldman, a professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Tulsa, published a book which received rave reviews. Some from the back copy state: “Clearly a superb work of scholarship;” “Feldman marshals a persuasive body of evidence, most notably legal cases, to demonstrate that the separation of church and state is invoked to further Christian domination of American society;” “At a time when debate rages around issues associated with the establishment clause of the First Amendment and at a time of resurgent anti-Semitism, Feldman’s carefully reasoned and meticulously documented case is particularly welcome.” The title of the book was: PLEASE DON’T WISH ME A MERRY CHRISTMAS, A Critical History of the Separation of Church and State.

            I have discussed the book in considerable detail in the chapter “The Talmudic Way of Thinking” of The Moses Legacy and since it can be downloaded from this site, free of charge, I can be very brief here. Mr. Feldman felt that there was pervasive antisemitism in this country, cited several legal cases and ended his book with: “I ask for one small political act. I request each reader to make a simple and direct statement questioning Christian imperialism. My idea: next, year, when someone wishes you a ‘Merry Christmas,’ just say, ‘Please don’t! Don’t wish me a Merry Christmas.’”  When I typed this, Microsoft’s automatic spell-check informed me that I have committed another faux-pas because I spelled antisemitism in the way it was spelled originally and as a matter of fact used in Feldman’s book. This change in spelling had also upset one of our Jewish acquaintances who had been interested in my experiences during the Nazi era and to whom I had sent a copy of War&Mayhem. Whereupon he wrote a one and a half page letter stating that the correct spelling should have been anti-Semitism, because unless there is a capital S the word degrades Jews and is by itself anti-Semitic! Well, I told him that one need not get flustered over spelling; he should read on and let me know what he thought about the substance of the ideas which were contained in the book. This was too much for him and there was no further reply.

            So let us ask what is this American anti-Semitism Feldman complained about, and what had upset him to the point that he felt he had to express his views so vigorously in the mentioned book? In the Introduction he stated, “I am Jewish. In the fall of 1993, my four year old daughter began a prekindergarten program in an experimental public school in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when my wife and I learned that the school, called the Mayo Demonstration School, had displayed and decorated a Christmas tree during the previous year.” To avoid a repetition of this event he wrote an extensive letter to the school authorities in which he requested that this practice should be abandoned because it places minority children in a situation where, “a child will, at a minimum, feel a distance and exclusion from the Mayo community, or worse, the child might risk overt ostracism from peers and a loss of self-esteem.” Yes, it is true that children who belong to a minority are likely to be ostracized and bullied but this can be dealt with in the home and turned into a learning experience. I shall return to this aspect later.

            Feldman defined antisemitism as follows,

 

Unlike someone with a more typically modernistic conception of antisemitism, I do not limit the definition of antisemitism to intentional or conscious anti-Jewish actions and attitudes. Instead, in this book, ‘antisemitism’ refers broadly to the intentional or unintentional, conscious or unconscious, hatred, dislike, oppression, persecution, domination, and subjugation of Jews qua Jews for whatever reason or motivation, whether it is religious, cultural, ethnic racial, or political.  

 

            Since this definition is rather broad I wrote in The Moses Legacy that one really can’t fault Louis Farrakhan for having defined the term anti-Semite as, “anybody whom Jews don’t like.” The definition also brought to mind a lecture I had attended in the late 1960’s by an Israeli psychiatrist who had examined Adolf Eichmann during the latter’s trial in Jerusalem. His name carried no particular meaning for me and I have forgotten it but he was originally from Hungary and his physical stature, demeanor, as well as fine sense of humor reminded me of my grandfather. During the discussion after the lecture he was asked whether or not Eichmann was antisemitic to which he replied, “If you define an antisemite as someone who hates Jews more than is necessary, then, no he wasn’t an antisemite.” If this definition were uttered by someone else it would nowadays by itself be regarded as antisemtic and this is how far the road we have gone because you can’t speak your mind any more, even in jest, when it comes to Jewish concerns.

            Feldman’s views have carried the day and although he decried the term Judeo-Christian tradition it is now the accepted norm. In public life those of us who have been baptized into the Christian faith are now mainly hyphenated ones. Although this fact of American society has been decades in the making the last ten years have clearly been a quantum jump in that direction. In the same year, 1997, that Professor Feldman published his book, Professor Peter Schäfer (Jewish Studies at Princeton and Director of the Institut für Judaistik at Freie Universität Berlin) published Judeophobia, which deals with The Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World. The book is, likewise, very well researched and is a valuable balanced resource to understand the plight as well as the resourcefulness of Jews during Egyptian, Greek and Roman times. The last paragraph of the book is highly à propos.

 

On the whole, however, the peculiarity of the Roman attitude toward the Jews seems better expressed by the term ‘Judeophobia” in its ambivalent combination of hate and fear. One may argue, of course, that ‘anti-Semitism’ also carries, and always carried with it, an element of fear. This is certainly the case, but the Roman fear is peculiar not only in that it projects onto the Jews an irrational feeling of being threatened by some mysterious conspiracy but also, and mainly, in that it responds to the very real success of the Jews in the midst of Roman society, that it is the distorted echo of sympathy.

As the course of history shows, this [italics in original] fear was well-founded. The vanquished did succeed in giving laws to their victors: at first as Jews and later, and most effectively, in the guise of Christianity.”

 

            This conclusion is important because it pertains to the current American scene where Jewish lawyers have imposed their views on how the Constitution should be interpreted. But the legal changes are not restricted to the Constitution; they pervade all aspects of our society. Christians have largely abandoned the Hellenistic aspects of their heritage and embraced the Jewish ones. While Protestantism, and especially its evangelical and Mormon segment, has always looked with great favor upon the Old Testament and are in part more fervent Zionists than some Israelis, the Catholic Church had in the past been more circumspect. Up until Vatican II it had regarded God’s Covenant with Moses and the Hebrew people as having been rendered obsolete by Christ’s sacrifice and only acceptance of Jesus Christ as Savior would lead to heaven. This “supercessionism” was abrogated and Jews can now go to heaven even if they don’t believe that Jesus was the Messiah. Equality of these two belief systems was established, while the inferiority of all other religious beliefs was retained. As such we have in fact a Judeo-Christian country and dedicated Jewish lawyers no longer need the “guise of Christianity” to enforce their views. As such, a book called Judeophobia, although the word is certainly more accurate than anti-Semitism, whichever way one may want to spell it, could hardly be published today in regard to American society. Judeophobia has now been replaced by Islamophobia because it was Muslims after all, as Bill O’Reilley keeps reminding us, who were responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

            This brings me to the evening prior to Thanksgiving. Our daughter had come to visit with us and she had found a DVD at Redbox entitled “My Name is Khan,” which we viewed on that night. The film was made by “Bollywood” and featured an Indian-Pakistani view of America’s post 9/11 scene towards Muslims in our country. The film clearly has flaws: the subtitles of the Hindi dialogue are too small and difficult to read; the movie is also rather long and requires oriental patience, rather than America’s drive to “get to the bottom line.” But it does highlight the problem of intolerance some Muslims are subjected to, simply for being Muslims. As expected the amazon.com reviews are mixed ranging from ridicule to praise. In spite of its flaws I would recommend that you view this film because its message is of such importance especially during the Christmas season when the spirit of good will towards all ought to predominate.  

            As mentioned, genuine Christianity has fallen on hard times. My book, The Jesus Conundrum, which highlights the current situation and was intended to provide our educated classes with an appreciation why his life and teaching ought to be taken seriously, has been a commercial failure. There has not been a single review, although I had sent copies far and wide, and even some of my colleagues at the university to whom I gave the book, have begun to look askance at me. I had ventured into a field which one shouldn’t be talking about in academia. The comment by the chairman of our department will remain unforgettable. I had sent a copy for review to The Salt Lake Tribune and thought that our chairman should know what I really had written in case some reviewer would take aspects out of context and distort my views. Since we are not close friends I felt a little uncomfortable giving it to him but didn’t want him to be surprised if a review were to appear. I explained the situation and then said, “It’ll be good for your soul.” To which he replied, “A Chairman has no soul.” I was taken aback by that statement because it had come so spontaneously, but subsequent events revealed that what may have been irony was correct. The chairman of an academic department, regardless of what faculty and of what university, is currently so hemmed in by regulations and the need to procure money for the department that human considerations have to give way to the needs of the moment. Well, I am grateful for being as old as I am, retired from official duties, and not receiving money for my work. Otherwise it would carry obligations to the source of the funds and thereby automatically limit my hard-won freedom of thought and speech. I had never intended to make any money on the Jesus book because I felt that it would have been inappropriate and had promised that any possible income would be donated to the Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity in Huntsville Utah, where a small group of elderly monks live in poverty and are praying for our souls.

            Since my Jesus Conundrum had the subtitle Searching for Truth beyond Dogma I was fascinated when I came across a book by Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Tulane University) entitled The Physics of Christianity. I had deliberately shied away from dogma because I felt that Jesus – whom I regarded as a rebel against Jewish dogma – was now being imprisoned in another set of dogmas. New wine was put into old wine-skins. But Professor Tipler tried to convince me and others who feel that way, that we were mistaken and that the Christian dogmas as well as the miracles of Jesus are perfectly understandable because they conform to the laws of physics rather than contradict them.

            This remarkable assertion is based largely on quantum physics, which I do not pretend to understand and have briefly mentioned in regard to Truth and Reality in these pages (July 1, 2009; Faith and Science) as well as in the Jesus book. Professor Tipler does his level best in his book to make us not only understand the major aspects of “The Standard Model of Particle Physics” but also provides the mathematical underpinnings, which unfortunately, because of my limited understanding, I cannot check for veracity. In spite of its complexity, and detractors on amazon.com, the book can usefully be read as a glimpse into the future which may or may not happen. Let me state at the outset that I don’t believe that Tipler has proven his points scientifically and that, in my opinion, the book should be regarded as scientism rather than science. While science refers to hard data obtained by measurements which are independently reproducible by others, scientism is an unwarranted faith in generalizations derived from specific scientific data. The most glaring example is global warming. There is no doubt that glaciers are melting, the oceans are warming and general temperatures are rising. Even the rosebush in front of my window has lost its good sense because it started sprouting buds in November! Clearly something is happening but the cause(s) is open to speculation and this is where scientism comes in.

            We are confronted with a fundamental problem of human existence, which in my field of specialization, is called the search for “the inverse solution.” The direct solution for a cause and effect event would be the experiment where we know all the conditions which went into the experiment and then judge the outcome accordingly. While this can work to a considerable extent in the laboratory, the process breaks down in daily life. At all times we see only effects from which we then infer cause(s). From observable facts we develop ideas which might explain them. Scientists nowadays employ computer models from which the likelihood of future events is predicted. This is fine, as long as one remembers that we are dealing with models rather than facts and that everything depends on a) what factors went into the model and b) how the results are interpreted. The general public needs to realize that everything we “know” is a result of an interpretation of events by our brains and that a full understanding of all the causes that went into them eludes our understanding. The non-recognition of this fact has led and still leads to a great deal of tragedy in our world.

            Professor Tipler had this in mind when he wrote in regard to evil: “All evil acts can ultimately be reduced to a violation of one and only one ethical rule: Thou shalt not impose thy theories on other living beings by force [italics in the original].” On the other hand he tried hard to persuade us to believe a number of statements of which I shall mention only some to provide a flavor of his thoughts.

In his opinion Quantum Physics demands the existence of parallel universes. Our universe and the total multiverse originated in a “Singularity,” which is beyond the laws of physics and not bound by them although all of creation is. The universe(s) heads towards an Omega point, its annihilation, which is another Singularity and the intervening period is governed by a third Singularity, which spans the time between beginning and end. This physical trinity corresponds to the Christian one where the Holy Spirit was the first Singularity, the Father is the Omega point and the Jesus Christ Singularity acts in the present. The Omega point will be reached within the next forty years and is accompanied by the resurrection of all human beings who have ever lived but as computer generated identities whose every wish will automatically be granted because we will have unlimited power. Technology will have produced quantum computers which will make all of this possible. The “baryon annihilation process” with “quantum tunneling” will be the means and provide the ultimate energy source with which we can move among the stars. Jesus’ miracles, such as walking on water and the resurrection, resulted from his ability to use this process and we will also learn how to do it. The Virgin birth was necessary and Jesus was an XX male. Evil is genetic, it came into this world when bony structures developed and is located on the X chromosome.

All of this reads, of course, like science fiction and reminds one of The Matrix and the Star Trek series with “Scotty” doing the beaming of people to and from the starship Enterprise, while the holodeck provides the wished for entertainment. As such, the natural inclination is to dismiss the entire book; but that would be unfair. I believe that Tipler wanted us to think and abide by the difference between a critic and a cynic. The critic says, “I don’t believe it because your proof is inadequate and needs to be reworked,” while the cynic says, “hogwash” and is done with it. I prefer the stance of the constructive critic and here are some of the reasons why I cannot subscribe to Tipler’s explanations. To discuss all of the statements listed above would require several articles.

His fundamental assumption is based on Quantum Mechanics, which in his words, “asserts that every object in the universe–an electron, a chair, you and me, the planet Earth, and the entire universe itself–is simultaneously both a particle and a wave.” He agrees that this is counterintuitive but regards it, nevertheless, as true. But is it? I can’t argue with the physics of the statement, but I can raise one critical question. I agree that under certain laboratory conditions a human observer can see that at the quantum level a particle can behave like a wave and vice versa. But to extrapolate from that limited observation to your and my behavior, as well as to that of the universe, seems to me a mental quantum jump which may or may not be permissible.

There exists a trite statement that “the sum is always greater than its parts.” This is such common knowledge that it evokes immediately a “so what” response. But think about it. 2+2 make 4 but 4 is not only 2+2; it is also 3+1, 9-5, the square root of 16, in addition to numerous other possibilities. The question but what is it “really?” is, of course, meaningless. It is all of the above and more, but what all of the “more” is we can’t fathom. Tipler’s book promotes the idea that we are already basically computers because the brain is “a wet computer.” I agree that the brain computes, but is this its only function? The answer is clearly no; it does a host of other things some of which we know others we have no idea of. In regard to behavior we know that a nerve when sufficiently excited responds in an all or none fashion; it is digital: either-or. But the brain gives graded responses; some weak others strong. Tipler seems to subscribe to a mechanistic view where parts make up wholes and that from the behavior of a given part we can judge that of the whole. The biologist, on the other hand, sees an organism, which is a whole entity. It can be split into parts but in so doing we have fundamentally altered the totality. This is a basic question, and I shall discuss this with Professor Tipler via e-mail because both of us are interested in what’s called “the truth.”

As mentioned, I cannot argue about the math or physics but when it comes to biology and the proof that Jesus was an XX male, Tipler ventured into my field. The proof for that assertion is supposed to reside in the Shroud of Turin. It has an image of a person who is regarded as having been crucified and many believe that it is a picture of Christ. Although the Catholic Church has not formally stated so it leans towards that interpretation and the Shroud is venerated as possibly the holiest of all relics. An unbiased observer merely looking at the image (which can be viewed on the Internet) has, however, considerable difficulty seeing all the aspects which are attributed to it by others and I now specifically refer to an article by Dr. Robert Bucklin who examined the picture with the eyes of a forensic pathologist http://www.shroud.com/bucklin.htm.

The shroud also contains reddish spots, which have been regarded as human blood of the AB type but there was not enough material to establish the Rh factor. Tipler told us that Dr. Garza-Valdes had sent a sample for DNA analysis to a laboratory in Texas and a male genotype with an XY chromosome was found. Since this did not conform to Virgin Birth dogma, Tipler was then happy to find an article by Dr. Lucia Casarino, published in Italian, which provided DNA data from a different shroud sample. But since she apparently could not make definitive sense out of the data she only published raw numbers. Tipler put these in tabular form and stated, “But I was able to interpret the data at once. They are the expected signature of the DNA of a male born in a Virgin Birth [italics in the original].” 

Since I am not a geneticist I had not known about XX males prior to reading Tipler’s book. They do exist, although their occurrence is quite rare. The tables upon which Tipler based his evidence for virgin birth are, however, what we call “hard data,” which could be evaluated by professionals. I, therefore, digitized the tables and sent them separately to two colleagues who are internationally known for their DNA work. Prior to doing so I removed the captions and simply stated in my e-mail that these are DNA data and I would tell them their origin after they had given me a blind interpretation of the numbers. This is the way I do all of my EEG/MEG work. I look at the data first, then get the clinical information and correlate the two because in that way I am least biased. The answers came back the same day. The blind responses were essentially identical and stated that the DNA material was apparently processed by a technique used in former years (Casarino’s paper was published in 1995) and contains DNA fragments with multiple markers, but without further information they are uninterpretable. After I had told them the provenance of the sample they did not agree with Tipler’s conclusion. One colleague’s comment was uncomplimentary, while the other stated that the material could have come from a perfectly normal XY male.

In my opinion the search for Jesus’ DNA on the shroud is useless because a) we don’t know what the image really is; b) if it was indeed a person whose image appears, it need not be Jesus; c) the shroud has been handled throughout the ages by numerous individuals who may well have left portions of their DNA on it. But reading Tipler’s book also acquainted me with the one by Leoncio Garza-Valdes (former adjunct Professor of Microbiology at the Health Sciences Center of the University of Texas), The DNA of God? which deals exclusively with Shroud data. Just as Tipler, he is a devout Roman Catholic, but in contrast to Tipler he does not let his religion interfere with the interpretation of objective data. This admirable trait has brought him, however, considerable grief from the Catholic hierarchy, for whom he has become persona non grata and he is no longer allowed to examine shroud tissue.

Garza-Valdes does believe that the blood on the shroud contains an XY chromosomal pattern but more importantly he found that carbon 14 dating can be influenced by a previously unknown artifact. Microbes thrive on ancient material, of whatever sort, providing a “bioplastic coating” and their carbon 14 can lead to an artificially higher date than is necessarily the case. The shroud material has been dated to between 1260 and 1390 A.D. and it was assumed that it could, therefore, not be Jesus’ burial cloth. Garza-Valdes who examined some shroud fibers microscopically found, however, bacterial and fungal colonies which add their carbon 14 to that of the shroud material. The linen of the shroud itself could be considerably older than the current dating suggests. One might be able to prove this theory by removing this coating and perform another radiocarbon test, but since this involves tissue destruction, the Church will not allow it at this time. Inasmuch as Garza-Valdes reported that he and his co-workers had cloned from this tissue sample the betaglobin gene segment from chromosome 11 the Church became alarmed. The Vatican power structure jumped to the conclusion that one could now clone Jesus and demanded that all samples be returned. The cardinals need not have worried because the shroud tissue is so degraded that, even if it were the original burial cloth, complete cloning of the individual, whose DNA was left on the shroud is impossible.

While all of the foregoing comments deal with various aspects of Christianity and, therefore, the Christmas season, I still have to explain the title of this essay. The thought came from a book which our daughter had given me as a Christmas present last year. It was written by Paramahansa Yogananda – who is also the author of Autobiography of a Yogi – and carries the titles The Second Coming of Christ; The Resurrection of the Christ Within You. It is a massive tome of two volumes and harmonizes the gospels with Hindu philosophy. I was, of course, pleasantly surprised that, although we came from completely different cultural backgrounds on separate continents, our mental outlook was the same. Both of us believe that the Christian dogmas do not unite us, they divide, but that the message of Jesus is universal and can be resurrected in our minds. Once this is done, behavior will follow and we will create a better world. In the Jesus book I mentioned that Hindus or Buddhists will have no problem with Jesus as Christ because they will recognize him as an avatar; the incarnation of the Spirit of God. This is also the central thesis of Yogananda. He has great respect for Christianity but no use for “Church-ianity” into which Christ’s ideals have degenerated. To denote the difference he regarded “Christ-ianity” as a better way to express the thought. When I saw this I felt that this is not necessarily the best way to get the message across and therefore changed the n to an m which leads to “Christi-amity.”

The essential message of Jesus was: if you love each other then you are my disciples (paraphrased from John 13:35). Christian love, agápē, as has been repeatedly mentioned, is parental rather than erotic love and even if we cannot muster love towards others we can be amiable! This is how Jesus Christ wanted us to behave and it should not be too hard, although some effort will be required. We are intermittently told that we ought to put Christ back into Christmas and in this spirit I will not wish you a “Merry Christmas” but as some say in German speaking countries: Gesegnete Weihnachten (Blessed Holy Nights). For Spanish speaking people of the world who wish each other Felice Navidad I would suggest to invert “Christmas” and to wish each other “Más Christ.” Let there be more of Christ’s spirit in and for each other. There are sufficient natural disasters; we do not need to add human made ones and if we were to work on the Resurrection of Christ’s Spirit within us the future would be considerably brighter than it looks at present.

Finally since I never intended to make any money on the Jesus book I will put it on this website from where it can be downloaded for free. Inasmuch as I could not keep my promise to give the proceeds to the monks, because there were none, here is their website in case you feel it in your heart to help a few genuinely worthy people: http://www.holytrinityabbey.org 







January 1, 2011

AMERICA'S KARMA

            When people use the Hindu concept of karma in conversation they tend to think of individuals and how their current actions may lead to desirable or undesirable future results. In the Orient, where reincarnation is an additional commonly held view, karma extends even beyond the current life of the person into the next one until sufficiently good karma has been accumulated to make further reincarnations on this planet unnecessary.

            We in the West tend to be disdainful of reincarnation and the idea that current actions have unavoidable future consequences also tends to be unpalatable. Nevertheless we use expressions such as “what goes around comes around” or the “pigeons are coming home to roost,” which are just another way of recognizing the basic truth of karma. As mentioned in earlier issues, even the ancient Egyptians were aware of it and under the concept of Maat (truth, justice, order) used to say that “the deed returns to the doer.”

            On the other hand, the idea of a “national karma” still seems strange. Especially in America we see ourselves mainly as individuals with relatively little connection to the larger forces which govern our lives, although the Wall Street collapse in the fall of 2008 should have taught us better. A handful of greedy speculators managed to bring financial disaster to hundreds of millions around the globe from which it will take years if not decades to recover. Nevertheless, Americans since the early 19th century have adhered to the idea of a “Manifest Destiny” which provided the moral legitimacy not only for the expansion of the country across the continent but subsequent military interventions around the world.

According to Wikipedia, the historian William Weeks noted that the concept of “Manifest Destiny” rests on three pillars: 1.) the virtue of the American people and their institutions; 2.) The mission to spread these institutions, thereby redeeming and remaking the world in the image of the U.S.; and 3.) the destiny under God to accomplish this work. When this notion is combined with that of “American Exceptionalism,” which dates back to the Puritans, and John Winthrop’s sermon about the “city on a hill,” re-used in the recent past by President Reagan, we have the potential makings of hubris and national karma. Inasmuch as some of our leading citizens still subscribe to these ideas and try to force them on other nations, we should not be surprised when some of them do not see our “virtue” but rather perceive a grab of power, which conflicts with their national interests and needs to be resisted.

Each rising nation is convinced of its own goodness and the 19th century slogan: am deutschen Wesen wird die Welt genesen (the German spirit will heal the world), which had such disastrous consequences in the next one, immediately springs to mind. Germany’s and England’s karma played itself out during that time in the form of two World Wars, so let us look at where their inheritor on the world stage is headed. The idea for this investigation was born during the recent trip to Japan where the German slogan of the first half of the 20th century “Volk ohne Raum” was exemplified. I knew that Karl Haushofer was associated with the idea that people need Lebensraum, sufficient room to live in, and that it was, therefore Germany’s destiny (should we add “Manifest?”) to acquire it in the vast reaches of the East, because the West was obviously already chock full of people. This was, of course, the reason for Hitler’s war and its initial extension to England and France was, at least in Hitler’s view, due to the machinations of the Jews in these countries who could not tolerate their having been excluded from influence in Germany through racial legislation. This much I knew from having lived during that era and having read Mein Kampf later in life in the attempt to understand what drove Hitler. But since this was the end of my information, I was curious who Karl Haushofer (1869-1946) really was, and how he had arrived at his concepts.

As usual Wikipedia came to the rescue. For the present purpose it is sufficient to know that after having finished Gymnasium in Munich Haushofer became, during his required tour of duty, so enamored with the military that he remained in the Imperial army. In 1908 he was sent to Tokyo to study the Japanese army and serve as an artillery advisor. In this capacity he had the opportunity to meet with the most influential people of the time, including the emperor, and to travel extensively not only in Japan proper but also Manchuria and Korea. He spent somewhat over a year in the Far East and after his return home in 1910 was given a leave of absence from to army to write his PhD thesis at the University of Munich which was based on his experiences in Japan. It was published in 1913 under the title: Dai Nihon (Das grosze Lichtursprungland; The Great Country where Light Originates) which is the name the Japanese use for their islands. The subtitle was: Betrachtungen über Grosz-Japans Wehrkraft, Weltstellung und Zukunft (Reflections on Greater Japan’s Military Strength, World Position and Future). During WWI he rose to the rank of General, but after Germany’s defeat left the army and became Privatdozent for Geopolitics at the University of Munich where the young Rudolf Hess (who later became “Deputy to the Fuehrer”) was not only one of his students, but a friend and assistant. During Hitler’s imprisonment in Landsberg, after the failed “Beer Hall Putsch,” where Mein Kampf was written with Hess’s help, Haushofer spent about half a day with the two of them but was not impressed with Hitler’s simplistic ideology. Hess remained, however, a friend and used his position to protect Haushofer’s wife, who was half-Jewish.

For me the interesting aspect was his doctoral thesis and I wondered if it had survived the devastations the U.S. Air Force had wrought on that city. To my great surprise it had not only done so but was even digitized by the University of Michigan and is available on amazon.com. The 377 page book reflects Teutonic thoroughness and provides a detailed picture of the changes Japan was undergoing as a result of Commodore Perry’s “opening the door” and its subsequent victorious wars first against China (1894-1895) and then Russia (1904-1905). The key aspects of the treaty of Shimonoseki, which China had been forced to sign, were: China had to recognize the full autonomy of Korea (which had hitherto been a dependency; paying tribute), had to cede “in perpetuity” Formosa (Taiwan), a smaller island group, and the eastern portion of the Bay of the Liaodong Peninsula along with its fortifications. In addition, the Chinese had to pay a considerable war indemnity, open several harbors to the Japanese and grant Japan favorite nation trading status. This was obviously a disaster for China but Japan’s joy over the treaty, which was signed on April 17, was short-lived. By April 23 the Europeans: France, Russia and Germany got into the act and forced Japan to relinquish the Liaodong Peninsula. This in turn became the cause for the Russo-Japanese war as well as Japan’s fury against Germany which vented itself by joining the Allied side in “The Great War.” This Triple Intervention, as it has been called, did not endear the Westerners to China either because the three powers thought that the Japanese would be satisfied if they just forced prostrate China to give more money to the Japanese.  That money for blood was an insult to Japanese honor did not occur to them.

The reason for Russia wanting the peninsula was obvious. The battle for the Pacific was on. Russia had built the trans-Siberian railroad and needed an ice-free harbor because Vladivostok was useless for about half the year. This led to the drive through Manchuria to the Liaodong Peninsula as home of Port Arthur, Russia’s future base for control of the Eastern Pacific. That Japan would not tolerate this situation for any length of time should have been obvious to anybody, but the court at St. Petersburg was pursuing its “manifest destiny” and “civilizing efforts” in the East. The French had no choice in supporting the Russians because they were bound to do so by treaty but why the Germans joined the two of them in humiliating Japan is inexplicable. They had nothing to gain and thereby ruined the good relations which had previously existed between the two countries. Since the Westerners were used to dealing with the Chinese and other Asiatic people as racially inferior, they probably did not even give a second thought to how they felt. Life was good and continued European dominance seemed assured. As mentioned, Haushofer’s book was published in 1913 and if anyone would have told him that a year later Europe would embark on collective suicide and that by the end of the decade the German empire, the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Russian empire and the Ottoman empire would be gone he would have regarded the fellow as ready for a lunatic asylum.

            While Haushofer failed to foresee the looming WWI, his prognostications in regard to the Far East, especially Japan, were accurate. He genuinely appreciated Japanese culture and since Russia had lost the battle for the Pacific at Tsushima, where its fleet was thoroughly demolished, the obvious next adversary was America. In the chapter Pazifische Ausblicke (Views across the Pacific) he wrote: “does the historic development indeed go from the Mediterranean, via the Atlantic in our days to the Pacific?” He then went on to quote from the minutes of a meeting at Clarke University: “It is not a question whether or not the United States want to be the dominant power in the Pacific, they have to be on account of their geographic situation, their numerical, industrial and cultural strength.” This excerpt was attributed to Harvard’s Professor Albert Bushnell Hart, which in turn led me to examine the latter’s writings. This effort was quite rewarding because several of Hart’s books are available. The Foundations of American Foreign Policy (1901) and The Obvious Orient (1911) are the most relevant for this essay. The first one can be downloaded from the Internet while the second one can be obtained from amazon.com. On the potential eve of WWIII we, therefore, have an opportunity to see how the Chinese, Japanese, Germans and Americans saw the unfolding of the 20th century and if we are not totally bereft of good sense might even draw the appropriate lessons.

            Let us stay for the moment with Japan because Haushofer, as well as Hart, agreed on the fundamental cultural difference between that country and the U.S. Haushofer wrote that two contrary currents clash in the Pacific: America’s wave of unbridled individualism and Japan’s Altruism [limited towards its own citizens one must hasten to add], and State socialism. He quoted Hart as having said that: “No country has ever developed according to its own laws to the extent Japan has, none is more homogeneous. Unity of language, love of country and national desires, have deep roots. It is the best governed country on earth for rallying its resources towards a specific goal. … We now have the anomaly where a proud self-reliant people which possesses a thousand year old culture is being drenched with ideas which are utterly foreign to their innermost being. Portuguese, Dutch and English influences couldn’t gain a firm foothold only Commodore Perry, with a typical American bluff, opened the way to diplomats, traders, missionaries, educators and journalists.” If anyone had told Perry that his 1854 braggadocio would lead not quite a hundred years later to Pearl Harbor he would not have believed that either.

            Yet karma, like the Fates in the ancient Greek dramas, is inexorable because human behavior has so far proved itself to be remarkably immune to change. ‘My way or the highway” has always been the rule or as a Bavarian drinking song has it: Und willst Du nicht mein Bruder sein, so hau ich dir den Schaedel ein (If you don’t want to be my brother, I’ll just smash your brains out). So how did America look to a concerned Japanese politician a hundred years ago? Haushofer explained: Perry forced foreign trade upon Japan and thereby brought about the demise of feudal power. In 1900 over the protest of Japan, Hawaii was being fortified. In 1898 the Philippines, always a goal of Japan’s secret ambitions, were being cashiered inspite of promises to the contrary. Manila was being heavily fortified. Russia was given money to wage a proxy war against Japan, and the treaty of Portsmouth made sure that Japan wouldn’t get any further money to build up their navy. Teddy Roosevelt’s “Great White Fleet” trip around the world was seen in Japan as a reminder of America’s mailed fist, lest they get uppity. In 1910 Secretary of State Knox tried to “neutralize” the Manchurian railroad which had the opposite effect by reconciling the former enemies, Russia and Japan, against that intruder into their bailiwick. In 1912 the “progressives,” who had been educated in America, overthrew the Chinese monarchy and thereby “liberated” [quotes are in the original] it not only from its dynasty but also its border regions of Mongolia and Tibet, and in addition brought the Manchurian question from its latent into the acute stage. 1915 would see the completion of the Panama Canal and with it a massive highway for world trade from the powerful resources of the United States via Panama and Pearl Harbor to Manila. 

            This assessment was essentially correct apart from the financing of the Russo-Japanese War. An article from The New York Times archives (1906) lists the war loans for Russia and Japan. Russia had received a total of $280 million from Paris and Berlin, while Japan obtained $360 million from London and New York. For reconstruction after the war Paris loaned Russia another $50 million, while New York and London continued to be more generous to Japan with $125 million. The reason for this uneven distribution of money was discussed in War&Mayhem, which can now be downloaded from this site.

In conclusion: Haushofer felt, from personal observations, that the desire for friendly relations with the great neighbor to their East existed only in a minority of the Japanese people while the majority was convinced that America had the firm intention to dominate the Pacific as their private ocean; Japan was the major obstacle to this desire and, therefore, would have to be rendered harmless.

The events of the 20th century proved this notion to have been correct. The Japanese thought that their Lebensraum lay in the southeast with the natural resources of French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies, while they had to protect their flank in Manchuria and thereafter the coastal regions of China. Franklin Roosevelt objected, demanded that they withdraw their troops from China, which was regarded as America’s exclusive sphere of influence, and just in case they didn’t understand he embargoed steel and oil imports in the summer of 1941. Since Japanese honor could not tolerate what was not only regarded as arrogance but as a threat to their livelihood December 6, the “Day which will live in Infamy,” had become inevitable. The Japanese knew that they couldn’t win a drawn out war against America but thought that by replicating the 1904 Port Arthur surprise they might be able to forestall disaster. With America’s Pacific fleet out of commission they hoped to gain enough time to obtain South East Asia’s resources and if worst came to worst they might even have to rely on a replay of Tshushima. Yes, history repeats but not exactly in the same way! The battle of Midway in June of 1942 crushed the Japanese navy and the A bomb made a forceful invasion of the main islands unnecessary. Japan had lost the battle for the Pacific and now serves essentially as our aircraft carrier to keep China at bay. There is an additional irony. Initially we forced the Japanese to write a Constitution which forbids the country to establish a major military force, but now, since our priorities have changed, we insist that they repudiate this article and build up their strike forces again so that we can use them against the Asian continent in case of need.

            With Japan, not only out of the way as an adversary, but “our trusted friend and ally,” we can now turn to China where the next battle is shaping up. For that it is helpful to know what Professor Hart found on his trip to the Far East during the fall, winter and spring of 1908-1909.      But first a few biographic notes and his general views on American foreign policy as outlined in the previously mentioned book are appropriate. He was a nearly exact contemporary of Haushofer (1854-1943), a friend and classmate of Teddy Roosevelt and a member of Harvard’s faculty for 43 years. In 1909 he served as president of the American Historical Association and in 1912 of the American Political Science Association. As such his views on American history and potential future deserve to be listened to. He was a prolific writer and the previously mentioned books are only a small fraction of his literary output. Another one which is most important for this website is The War in Europe Its Causes and Results, which was published soon after its outbreak in 1914. It can likewise be downloaded from Google and in view of its obvious interest I shall discuss it in detail on another occasion.

            When one reads The Foundations of American Foreign Policy it becomes immediately apparent that Hart was a scholar and patriot who had no use for Jingoism. He reported the facts as he found them and limited himself only to a few editorial comments. The book is actually a series of articles published between 1896 and 1901 mainly in Harper’s Magazine but also the Bond Review and the American Historical Review. Since the material is quite extensive I shall limit myself here to two main aspects: America’s military expeditions and the origin of the Monroe Doctrine. In regard to the first aspect I was amazed to read about the military role the U.S. has played on the world stage from its very beginnings. As Hart pointed out even the Revolutionary War was not strictly defensive but Canada was also to be conquered. Later on President Buchanan (1857-1861) had intended to create

“’a temporary protectorate over the northern provinces of Mexico;’ he even tried to arrange with one of the factions to invite his intervention. Mexican steamers were captured; he thought he ought to have general authority ‘to enter the territory of Mexico, Nicaragua, and New Granada for the purpose of defending the persons and property of American citizens;’ he negotiated a treaty for the Isthmus of Tehuantepec [southwestern part of Mexico of which I have fond sailing memories because wind speeds commonly exceed 50 mph, which results in extremely choppy seas and makes life miserable for sailors]. The scheme of Buchanan would have made the President the dictator of Latin America, backed up by the army and navy and resources of the United States; it marks the high tide of the policy of intervention. Though there was but one foreign war in the period 1836-1861, there were about twenty-five cases of armed intervention: The United States was rapidly becoming the policeman of the Americas and the terror of the Orient.”

Nothing came of Buchanan’s plans because the Civil War got in the way, but this was just a glitch in America’s expansionism and the high tide was really reached after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But to return to the mid 1800’s, here is a list of armed interventions as presented by Hart: Japan 1849-1852, 1863; China 1854-1856; Lobos Islands 1852; Nicaragua 1851, 1854, 1857, 1884; Paraguay 1858; Syria 1858; Trent case 1861; Colombia 1862; Canada 1864, 1881; British Northwest 1864; France 1865; Austria 1866; Cuba 1873; Bering Sea 1886-1890; Mexico 1874-1886; Chile 1881, 1891,1892; Venezuela 1895; Hawaii 1889, 1893; Samoa 1877, 1878, 1886, 1893; Crete 1867; Armenia 1895; Greece 1896; Korea 1871. Hart noted that “many of these incidents … have no great significance in themselves but they enable us to judge the progress and methods of armed interventions … and to make some generalizations as to causes, geographical distributions, methods and results.” He listed the causes as: “the desire to take the territory or damage the defences of a public enemy; border difficulties; the protection of Americans and their property.… For another group of interventions the only explanation is the desire of administrations or of our ministers or consuls to increase the area and prestige of the Union, as in the cases of Samoa and Hawaii.” To these causes one might add the current ones namely the quest for oil, gas and other mineral resources from the Middle East and Central Asia.

As far as the Monroe Doctrine is concerned it has also proven itself extremely malleable. Hart pointed out that the document was probably written by John Quincy Adams and the basic idea was Jefferson’s: “Our first and fundamental maxim should be, never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe. Our second, never to suffer Europe to meddle with cisAtlantic affairs.” We have adhered to the second part but keep ignoring the first one which will continue to cost us dearly during this century. The doctrine as proclaimed in Monroe’s December 1823 annual report stated in essence: “The American continents, by the free and independent conditions which they have assumed are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European power… It is impossible that the allied powers [European] should extend their political system to any portion of either continent without endangering our peace and happiness.”  Over the subsequent years the Monroe Doctrine has been cited as grounds for a variety of interventions which led Hart to quote an Oxford’s “undergraduate’s account of a football game: ‘It would have been just as good a fight without the ball; the ball was only in the way.’”  Jefferson’s warning against foreign “entanglements” was, however not the only piece of advice our politicians have steadily disregarded the other was on state finances to which I shall return later. 

When Hart entered Shanghai he immediately noted that there existed two Chinas side by side. One where the weak imperial authority held sway, and the other where Westerners ruled the roost as a result of the British Opium Wars of 1839-1842 and 1856-1860. The Chinese had forbidden the smuggling of opium into their country because it was deleterious to the health of the nation, but when money is to be made and you have the power to enforce your will over a weaker opponent morality has always been the loser. China was then forced to open a number of “treaty ports” where foreigners enjoyed complete extraterritoriality, unimpeded by Chinese laws, and where they could in essence behave as if they were at home. In addition, over the protests by the Chinese authorities, European and American missionaries were spreading far and wide over the land bringing their “values,” and when trouble arose on the local level they were not satisfied with relying on God’s help but enlisted the military aid of the foreign power they were nationals of. As such Hart found a country in ferment; Western culture and education was acquired as well as resented. The then recent so-called Boxer Rebellion (1898-1901; the Chinese called the organization: The Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists) was the first organized attempt to re-assert national self esteem and although it failed its goals became reality half a century later under communist rule.

Let me close this section with an excerpt of Hart’s final conclusion: “Whether China is westernized or not, it is certain to be great. The people are humiliated by the weakness which has made other nations look upon China as a cow to be milked…. The more China knows the West, the stronger will be the cry of ‘China for the Chinese.’... Think of what a nation of three or four hundred millions may do to the world? When once the railroads are built China could put into the field every year an army of a million men, and if it were lost, could furnish another million the next year, and so on indefinitely. Such a force, seated in the midst of Asia, on a splendid sea coast, is bound to react on the history of the Eastern hemisphere.”

One hundred years later we can now talk not only about millions of Chinese but a force of 1,331,460,000 hard working, industrious and largely educated people with a strong sense of their national history and culture. Do Americans really believe that we can still enforce our wishes upon them as we did 100 years ago? If we follow the trodden path of the past there will be a rude awakening and even Hart knew already that a war with China would be disastrous. This is why he wrote: “…it is a wise nation that seeks by fair treatment to hold the friendship of such a mighty weight as the empire of China, for the most populous, richest and powerful people in Asia are certain to affect the destinies of both Europe and America.”

Knowing, what we now know about the course of America’s past conduct in the affairs of the world, where the mailed fist was hidden under a façade of pious do-goodism, can we deduce an inkling of our conduct in the next year or decade? One aspect is obvious: if we continue to behave as if we were “the lone superpower” which practically owns the world, we shall come to grief. We have neglected not only Jefferson’s first rule, as mentioned above, but also another equally important one, which was also mentioned by Hart: “No people has a legal right to incur a national debt to be paid by the next generation.” To quote from Wikipedia: “As of November 30, 2010 the ‘Total public debt outstanding,’ was $13.9 trillion and was approximately 97% of 2010’s fiscal year-end GDP of $14.4 trillion.” How this astronomic sum can be amortized is a mystery, but one thing is sure: more wars will not solve this problem. Anyone who is seriously concerned about the future of our country in light of its present conduct should go to www.usdebtclock.org which gives a running account of our financial situation.  

When one looks back at the America of 1911 and compares it with that of 2011 it appears that karma is catching up and that the wave of American unilateral superiority has crested. The overriding question for the nation is: Will we start to acquire some good karma, by truly selfless, cooperative actions, and thereby begin to remove some of the bad we have allowed to accumulate? Individuals do it, but can the aggregate? For that to have a chance to happen we would, however, first have to agree that this is how the world really runs.

At this time it is customary to wish each other a happy New Year and I shall certainly do so, although for the majority of us it is likely to require more belt-tightening. The outlines of 2011 will become clearer at the end of the month when Congress is back and we know the reception President Obama’s State of Union speech has received by the media and our politicians. This will be discussed in the next issue which also will review in more detail the major decisions of the past decade which have led us to our current unenviable situation.







February 1, 2011

TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY

From John Ashcroft to Jared Loughner

 

            When I started this website 10 years ago the initial purpose was to acquaint a potentially wider public  with my first non-scientific book, War&Mayhem, because I felt that contemporary Americans  were receiving a one-sided view about the events which surround what is now called “The Greatest Generation,” or “The Good War.” This goal has, as yet, not been achieved because only a few copies have been sold and this is the reason why I have now placed the book on this site from where it can be downloaded free of charge. The beginning of 2001 coincided with the inauguration of George W Bush as the 43rd president of our republic and after the disgraceful personal conduct of President Clinton in the Oval Office a fair number of us had hoped that Bush the younger would step into his father’s shoes and bring decency as well as statesmanship to the presidency. Although ex-president Clinton has today achieved the status of elder statesman, which allows him to travel the world giving lectures for considerable fees, we should not forget why he had been impeached by the House of Representatives in 1998. The reason was not necessarily that he had his personal sexual needs serviced in the Oval Office by an all-too willing female intern, but that he had lied about it on public TV while wagging his index finger at us. Furthermore, in the deposition, under oath, he provided his personal definition of what “sexual relations” meant, by artfully excluding oral sex, and insisting that in order to judge his testimony one needs to consider “what the definition of ‘is’ is.”  As it has it been said in regard to President Nixon, it wasn’t the malfeasance itself but the subsequent cover-up which created the problem because people just don’t like a president who openly lies to them. The mitigating factor in Clinton’s situation, as advanced by his proponents, was that he had “just lied about sex and everybody does that.” But a statement of this type tells us more about our society than what we should expect from our president.

            The beginning of the Bush administration also coincided with the failed Camp David II summit, in the summer of 2000 where the Palestinians were again portrayed as having been inflexible, in spite of Clinton’s assurance to Arafat prior to the talks that if the discussions failed the Palestinians would not be singled out as the culprits.  Nevertheless, negotiations continued between Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat at Taba during January 2001 and it seemed that in spite of what became the second Intifada, the “peace process” might still have been salvageable.  This prompted me to publish an excerpt of my second book, The Moses Legacy, under the title Whither Zionism?. I had hoped that if the history and facts around political Zionism were put into simple language in a brief brochure, that any politician or media pundit could read over a weekend, a more even-handed approach to the Palestinian struggle for self-determination might ensue. As mentioned on other occasions I had then sent the booklet to all the members of the incoming Bush administration as well as the members of the Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees of the House and Senate. This attempt to influence the course of events was, of course, also useless because, with one rather strange exception (April 1, 2002; Palestinian State or Israeli Protectorate), there were no acknowledgments of its receipt. The only personal satisfaction was that I had “put my money where my mouth is,” and that I had taken one small step towards assuaging personal “metaphysical guilt.” The concept was coined by Karl Jaspers and covered in the June 2001 issue. It refers to the guilt the German people were expected to feel for allowing Hitler’s atrocities. Although the Israeli policies towards the Palestinians clearly do not rise to that standard, they nevertheless involve serious human rights abuses and behavior which is illegal under the United Nations charter. Yet, the U.S. as the self-appointed apostle of freedom and democracy throughout the world not only turns a blind eye towards them but actively supports the state financially and with high-tech weapons.  This, of course, turns us into hypocrites in the eyes of the Arab world but this fact still fails to get acknowledged.

            The first Hot Issue article dealt with the nomination of John Ashcroft for attorney general of the U.S. because he was pilloried in the press for having called Jesus the “king of America” in a speech at a religious college.  As usual, the headline was more inflammatory than the context but the first sentence of that quote is worthwhile recalling in regard to the historical developments of the past decade, “Unique among the nations, America recognized the source of our character as being godly and eternal, not being civic and temporal. And because we have understood that our source is eternal, America has been different. We have no king but Jesus.” This was and still is the self-image of a large segment of America’s evangelical Christian population which makes the foreign policy of the Bush administration such a sham. Although I readily agree that Mr. Ashcroft meant what he said, when he said it, his subsequent conduct was, however, not commensurate with that sentiment.  Under his auspices the so-called PATRIOT act was devised, submitted to Congress and passed by Bush, which gives the federal government wide latitude to intrude into the private lives of its citizens. He also had no problem condoning torture by the CIA and joked about it later on.

            While Ashcroft and his idea of America’s divinely ordained exceptionalism can be regarded as one bookend of this decade Jared Loughner is its fitting other. I shall return to him later, for now it suffices to say that during his shooting spree at a political rally in Tucson last month he killed six people and wounded 14 others. Among them was the prime object of his wrath, Representative Gabrielle Giffords. The media have labeled him “schizophrenic” and they cited as part of the evidence his conduct at a political rally in 2007. At that time Giffords had brushed off Loughner’s question, “What is government, if words have no meaning?” This left Loughner incensed because she had not taken him, a citizen and voter, seriously and he vowed vengeance.  Yet, was the question, although poorly expressed, indeed nonsensical? If words lose their common sense meaning we have arrived in what I have called the Humpty Dumpty Society (February 1, 2010). When politicians, in the style of Ashcroft or Bush, pronounce lofty ideas which are contradicted by their actual behavior, trust in government disappears and eventually chaos threatens.

            As mentioned above I had welcomed the incoming Bush administration and was full of hope that America was on a course for becoming a constructive force in the world. Little did I know that the cards were stacked against this idea because the real government was in the hands of what subsequently became known as the neoconservatives or more aptly the neocons because they did behave in a criminal manner and “conned” us into the Iraq war under false pretenses. This fact dawned on me only as a result of the Bush administration’s response to the 9/11 disaster. The events of that day became not only a turning point for the country but also led to a personal growing skepticism about the conduct of American policy. This change from an unquestioned belief in the moral goodness of our actions is clearly documented in the Hot Issue installments from October-December 2001. What I had regarded as a crime by Arab hijackers was turned into a “War on Terrorism,” which has remained open-ended from that moment on and allowed the government to enact increasingly stringent measures ostensibly designed to “ensure our security.”  With the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Hot Issues segment of this website assumed further meaning because they document history as it is was made, at the time it was made, and reported by a professional student of human behavior.

As mentioned in last month’s installment, the future is not entirely unpredictable because it builds on actions which are taken at any given point in time and the consequences of which can be foreseen to a certain extent by an unbiased observer. World history is human history and the conduct of a small number of human beings who are in position of power has far reaching consequences for the current and long-term future of all of us in a world which is as interconnected as the present one. The ostensible key player of the naughts (Fareed Zakaria’s term for the years which contained two zeroes) was, of course, President Bush and his legacy will haunt us for years to come. When he came into office he had no definite idea what he would do. He promised to be a “uniter and not a divider” as well as becoming the “education president.” Beyond that he seemed to be willing to let others run the government and he spent more time away from rather than in the Oval Office. During the critical month of August he was in Crawford and warnings that Osama bin-Laden was planning an attack on “the homeland” did not deter him from spending his time cutting underbrush and pursuing other hobbies on the ranch. When disaster struck he was mentally unprepared and let others, the neocon group around Vice-president Cheney, dictate the course of events. Although the ultimate decisions were his the climate which led to them was prepared by others. Most important of all was the idea that he now would be a “War President” and would follow in the footsteps not of his father, but his hero Winston Churchill who had stood up to evil and saved the British empire. This flattered his imagination but the analogy was profoundly mistaken.

Not only was Osama bin-Laden, Mullah Omar of the Taliban leadership, and Saddam Hussein of Iraq no Hitler, but the Second World War merely hastened the end of the British Empire which had become unaffordable. Instead of regarding Churchill merely as a war hero Americans would be well advised to look at the reasons why the British voted him out of office in the summer of 1945, why Attlee had to pick up the post-war pieces, and eventually liquidate the empire. Nevertheless in the American mind the image of Britain’s finest hour stuck and for the neocons it was the time for America to assert her stature as the “lone superpower” which could impose its will upon whoever was regarded as an adversary. If you are not with us you are against us became the slogan. Any adversary was automatically defined as a “terrorist,” which put him beyond the pale of international norms. This rendered aspects of the Geneva Conventions “quaint,” as well as “obsolete,” as Alberto Gonzales counsel to President Bush and future attorney general put it. Although there was a “war” on terrorists there were no “prisoners of war” because whoever was taken on the battlefield or, as was common especially in Afghanistan, denounced for money, was labeled an “unlawful combatant” and thereby deprived of all human rights. America established a concentration camp at its Guantanamo base in Cuba, thereby claiming that since it was not on American soil, American laws did not apply. This ruse did not cut any ice with the rest of the world because it was and is, the American flag rather than Castro’s which flutters in the trade winds over the camp. The unnecessary invasion of Iraq was even by our own definition, ever since the Nuremberg trials, a war crime. German generals had been hanged for carrying out Hitler’s order to prepare invasion plans, yet Tommy Franks, his Pentagon superiors and the president, did not see any parallels. The administration’s view was that due to “American exceptionalism” international norms of conduct did not apply.

The apparently easy initial success first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq bolstered national pride and all of it was seen as just retribution for the 9/11 attack, although neither of those country’s citizens had been involved. I shall never forget a T-shirt worn by a clerk at the State liquor store (Utah’s laws are “quaint,” in regard to alcohol. You have to buy your wine at State stores so that the State can level a higher “sin tax” on consumption of alcoholic beverages) which depicted the burning Twin Towers and underneath the caption, “9/11 Proud to be American.” Pride in America’s apparently unlimited power became the hallmark of the day. The president kept the returning aircraft carrier, Abraham Lincoln, waiting off San Diego’s shore so that he could arrive on a fighter jet and under a banner “Mission Accomplished” declare that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” May 2003 was the high water mark and the situation got steadily worse from then on. Civil war between Sunnis and Shiites, and to a lesser extent with Kurds, erupted. The inadequate number of American troops was unable to deal with it and the real combat with steady increase of lost American lives began. The scandals of Abu Ghraib, a direct outcome of the policies regarding interrogations of “terrorists,” revealed to the rest of the world that America’s ostensible campaign for human rights and decency to have been nothing but propaganda slogans. 

While the US was preoccupied with Iraq the Taliban regrouped and re-entered center stage by 2008. Although I had correctly predicted in October 2001 that an invasion of a Muslim country would only serve Osama bin-Laden’s goals; in December of 2001 that the Taliban would likely melt into the mountains in order to return at a more opportune moment and throughout 2002 that an Iraq invasion would simply further complicate our problems, these opinions were not shared by the media and events took the course all of us know by now. There was one aspect, however, where my prognostications were wrong. I had little faith in the “Petraeus troop surge” of 2007 because this was after all a civil war. Our troops would be forced to favor one side which would inevitably alienate the other. We now know that fighting between Sunnis and Shias did indeed subside but recently documents have appeared which show that “religious cleansing” in Baghdad was the major reason. Sunnis were driven out from previously religiously integrated neighborhoods, especially in Sadr City, and Shia militias on the one hand; Sunni militias on the other began to patrol their neighborhoods. In addition the major Shia rabble rouser Muqtada al-Sadr had fled to Iran after the defeat of his troops in Basra and this allowed for a relative calm to descend on major portions of the country. An Iraqi government began to take shape and all American military forces are supposed to leave the country by the end of this year.

We may now ask what has really been accomplished with the Iraq invasion. Yes, Saddam Hussein has been hanged and instead of a secular dictatorship there is now a fragile elected government, which may or may not have the power to sustain itself once American troops have gone home.  This is a question which cannot be answered at this time but we can look at the price that has been paid for this achievement. As far as American losses are concerned they have been tallied at somewhat more than 4,400 killed and somewhat over 32,000 wounded; 20% of whom had serious brain or spinal cord injuries and an additional 30 percent of veterans have developed serious mental health problems upon returning home. Yet, this needs to be compared with Iraqi casualties of the war: nearly 10,000 Iraqi police and military service personnel were killed and so were about 55,000 Iraqi insurgents. These numbers are, however, dwarfed by civilian casualties for whom accurate figures are not available. An ABC report in October of last year, quoting secret American documents, placed the death toll at well over a 100,000.

To these casualties one needs to add that over 4,700,000 people have been uprooted from their homes (more than 16 per cent of the total population)  of whom about 2 million have fled the country, while the rest are internally displaced. Western countries, including the U.S., did not show themselves charitably disposed because they accepted only 1 per cent of those who had left the war-torn country, with the U.S. having accepted a meager 1,608 refugees. The numbers are even starker for the future of Iraq when one learns that about 40 per cent of Iraq’s middle class have fled. These figures are readily available on the Internet but are not reported by the official media. There was, however, an article on December 25 of last year in The Salt Lake Tribune headlined, “U.S. troops in Iraq celebrate Christmas” with the byline, “Those on repeat deployments are pleased with the progress in the country.” The article concluded with a quote by Captain Diana Crane, “The fact that (Iraq) is starting to be a country on its own again, makes many realize that all the work and sacrifice has not been in vain.” Neither Captain Crane nor the Tribune inquired, however, how the Iraqi Christians felt. The New York Times, on the other hand, did carry a report on December 24, which is excerpted below,

Throughout Iraq churches canceled or toned down Christmas observances this year, both in response to threats of violence and in honor of the nearly 60 Christians killed in October, when militants stormed a Syrian Catholic church and blew themselves up. Since the massacre, more than 1,000 Christian families have fled Baghdad for the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq, with others going to Jordan or Syria or Turkey. Though the exact size of Iraq’s Christian population is unclear, by some estimates it has fallen to about 500,000 from a high of 1.4 million before the American-led invasion of 2003. Iraq’s total population is about 30 million…. Churches in Kirkuk, Mosul and Basra canceled or curtailed services for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and warned congregations not to hold parties or mount displays. In Baghdad, decorations were seen in stores, but many churches scaled back or held only prayer sessions. While Our Lady of Salvation, the church attacked in October, was among those that canceled services for Christmas Eve, it planned to hold services on Saturday. The Epiphany Dominican Convent canceled midnight Mass and then early Mass on Christmas morning so worshipers could avoid risky travel at vulnerable times. During the week, the church moved one Mass to a convent, so the nuns would not have to travel in religious dress. “People are lost,” said the Rev. Rami Simon, one of five brothers at the convent. “They don’t know where they live now. Is this Iraq?” For those who dare to attend services, he said: “I say, you must accept to live like the first Christians. They celebrated in a cave, and no one knew about it. So we are not the first to live it.” But he added: “If I wasn’t a priest, I would not stay one minute in Iraq. As a priest, I find myself a missionary in my country. And some stay because we are here.”

Is this what the “born-again” President Bush and his evangelical followers who cheered the war had intended? Hardly; but that is what happens. Once you start a war you lose control of its outcome. In a famous quote Condi Rice remarked in a somewhat flippant manner that we are witnessing “the birth pangs of a new Middle East” to which I commented, that the baby may arrive with a turban on its head (December 1, 2006; The People Have Spoken).  The future of Iraq is still undecided especially since Muqtada al-Sadr has returned last month from exile and is now part of the new government. His negative views on America have not changed and it is unlikely that he will agree to an extension of the American presence in his country beyond this year. But our politicians have a Plan B; they are simply going to “privatize” the situation. Instead of the defense department and the military being in charge the responsibility will be transferred to the Department of State. Private contractors will guard the remaining bases as well as the expanded embassies throughout the country. Does anybody think that Muqtada will be fooled by this ploy? Furthermore, since these private companies work for profit rather than out of patriotic duty we can expect higher costs.

The situation in Afghanistan, nearly ten years after our invasion, remains likewise fluid and when I wrote in 2004 that Karzai is simply mayor of Kabul rather than president of a country this is also still true (February 1, 2004, Retrospection and Introspection). While I have in part covered the human cost of these wars in the preceding paragraphs, the financial one has not yet been fully accounted for and will continue long after we have finally withdrawn because the injured veterans will require long term care. At present, cost estimates range from $350 - 700 billion because there are no official figures available from the government. A private website shows a number of over 1 trillion dollars (http://costofwar.com/en/) which keeps climbing. Wikipedia noted that their figures need updating but a 2007 report by the Congressional Budget Office indicated that by 2017 the wars will have cost at least $2.4 trillion.  Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner in economics and former chief economist of the World Bank, estimated that more than 3 trillion dollars will have been spent and this refers only to the U.S. rather than costs incurred by other countries around the world. The problem is compounded by the fact that we are financing these wars with borrowed money for which we have to pay interest. All of this misery in lives and money is a result of revenge for the 9/11 attack, where not quite 3000 lives were lost and a few buildings were destroyed. We should now ask ourselves: Is this a record to be proud of? Yet, ex-President Bush has shown no insight, no guilt, and he defended his decisions in a recent book which brings him millions in revenue. By falling into his trap Bush has fulfilled Osama bin-Laden’s most cherished hope, involving our country in unwinnable wars and thereby bankrupting it.

For the neocons the response to 9/11 wasn’t about revenge but the security of the State of Israel and they have successfully managed to delude our country into believing that Israel’s security is identical with ours. Although responsible people have pointed out the fallacy of this idea (October 1, 2007; The Israel Lobby) it has made no impact because nowadays a president’s prime goal is re-election and for that he needs the Jewish vote. This is also the reason why America has consistently failed in its role as “honest broker” in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and why nothing can be expected even from the Obama administration in this respect. The Israelis hold all the cards and with America sidelined the Palestinians have nothing to negotiate with. The Bush years presented us with an additional disconnect between words and actions. First the administration insisted on democratic elections in the West Bank and Gaza but when Hamas, instead of Fatah, won fair and square we declared the elections illegitimate and subsequently instigated in Gaza a civil war between Fatah and Hamas. When it was won by the latter group we colluded with Israel in isolating Gaza and essentially starving its population into submission. Up to now this policy has likewise failed and contributes to Israel becoming a pariah state among the rest of the world’s nations (July 1, 2007; Saving the Bush Legacy. New York Review of Books February 10, 2011: Who’s Afraid of the Palestinians). The country’s only remaining “friend” is the U.S. We keep supplying Israel with an annual $3 billion arms subsidy and when in view of our current massive budget deficit Representative Rand Paul suggested that this largesse should be terminated he was promptly shouted down.

At the time of writing these lines the Middle East is in turmoil again with popular uprisings in Tunisia, Lebanon and Egypt. The outcome is still uncertain, but other North African and Middle Eastern countries with autocratic governments are likely to follow suit. One aspect is becoming clear: young people are disenchanted with their governments and demand that their voices be heard. They are taking American propaganda about freedom and democracy to heart without realizing that we prefer pliable dictators to popular rule which may tilt towards Islam. Although thousands of miles away and a completely different culture this does bring us back to Jared Loughner and his question, “What is government, if words have no meaning?” As mentioned the media have called him schizophrenic and we can be grateful that he wasn’t Muslim because then he would have been labeled a terrorist, for the same offense, and further stringent methods to curtail our liberties might have been passed. We don’t know as yet to what extent hallucinogenic drug abuse was responsible which may have aggravated an underlying mental illness but we can and should address his 2007 question because there are tens of thousands potential Loughners walking our streets with some of them carrying firearms. He is a product of our culture and this aspect needs to be taken to heart.

In former years a deranged individual with a grievance would fire one shot from a pistol at a political figure or head of state because that was the extent of its magazine. Today the same person has the capability of emptying a magazine which in Loughner’s case contained 31 rounds. These handguns and other assault weapons are readily available, sold over the counter, and if questions are asked it’s easy to lie. In addition our popular culture glorifies violence because there is hardly a TV program where mass shootings do not occur. To say that these pictures, as well as the constant portrayal of bedroom scenes, have no influence on young minds is nonsense. We are visual animals and these images seep into our minds from where they may be difficult to dislodge. Why is this state of affairs allowed to persist? Money and elections! The National Rifle Association is one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington and any attempt to limit the distribution of assault weapons is met with vehement resistance. The country’s love for guns is perhaps best exemplified by a report that since the Tucson shootings the sale of Glocks, Loughner’s weapon, has skyrocketed and Utah’s House of Representatives has passed a bill last week to make the Browning handgun the official state firearm.  The reason given was to honor the long deceased Utahn Moses Browning who had created that pistol. Is this really what our “lawmakers” should spend their time on?

The abundance and ready availability of firearms is, however, only the means to create havoc. The root causes, including drug abuse, go deeper. Many of our young people feel spiritually clueless. With God dead, as Nietzsche and his forerunners had declared, reason was supposed to reign supreme. Freud declared religion to have been a delusion and substituted the superego for a conscience which had been responsible to God. In addition the notion that “what feels good is good” grew roots, especially in the 1960’s. Since religious dogmas not only do not satisfy the intellect, but frequently conflict with it, church attendance continues to fall and there has been no satisfactory substitute. Yet, young people are idealistic, they instinctively know and want to do what’s right but when their elders fail to provide guidance the popular culture, which hardly deserves this name today, takes over. At this time we know too little about the mental stages Jared Loughner went through before the shootings but the major cause seems to have been wounded pride. Not only did Giffords ignore his question but when he got the one purpose suits all formal “thank you” note from her for his attendance, he wrote “die bitch” on it. The note probably contained the usual platitudes which bear no relationship to the concern the citizen had expressed, demonstrating again that all the high sounding phrases politicians utter are just that and no more. As such it is easy to conclude that no one pays attention to the real problems individuals are confronted with. In addition, Loughner had problems with the local community college he had been enrolled in for some time. Apparently he came to conclude that the “education” which was offered was likewise a sham and it would be important to know what his real grievances in regard to that college had been. We don’t know when he shaved his head to indicate his break with society but what can only be called a satanic smirk on the photo of his arraignment says everything, “You ignored me; well you can’t do that any longer! If I can’t build I shall destroy!”

Yet, thoughts like these will not be pursued by the official media. Instead they will be content with pinning a label on Loughner, which is supposed to explain his actions. They are thereby doing us a disservice because, as mentioned, Loughner is simply only one example of a rootless generation which has seen through the lies it is confronted with on a daily basis and wants to be heard. The “post-God” world is stirring; people want “the rights” they have been promised and we should not be surprised when these “birth pangs” are accompanied by violence. Looking back at the past decade and its disastrous response to a limited calamity it is obvious that this karma will not allow the next decade to be more peaceful.  The dams Western-Christian civilization has erected against the evil inherent in man are leaking and when they fail turmoil is bound to follow.







March 1, 2011

EGYPT'S EXAMPLE

            February 2011 was a month for the history books. In last month’s installment I wrote that Jared Loughner’s shooting spree in Tucson was triggered by the lack of respect he had experienced from a Congresswoman who wanted his vote. This was the same emotion which gave rise to the revolt in Tunis. It subsequently spread to Egypt and from there to other North African and Middle Eastern countries. Ordinary people cried out: we are not your pawns, we are human beings and we want our human rights, which have been promised to us in the Charter of the United Nations and, let us not forget, were to be supported by America in Obama’s speech at the University of Cairo on June 4, 2009!

            Let us now back up and re-visit the early 1960’s and Viet Nam. For those of us who were adults at the time this is not history one reads in books but something we read in newspapers and saw on TV. In 1963 the U.S. had only a small contingent of “military advisors” in that country which propped up the unpopular dictatorial Diem regime. We (Eisenhower and Kennedy) thought we had to do so lest South Viet Nam were to be reunified with the North under the Communist rule of Ho Chi Min. Unfortunately the Catholic Diem did not live up to his faith, which required charity and love thy enemy, but persecuted the Buddhists who formed at least 70 per cent of the population, as well as other groups he didn’t like. While most of the people who wanted reunification, regardless of the flag under which it was achieved, quietly or openly supported the Viet Cong, Hòa thượng Thích Quảng Đức, a Buddhist monk, born as Lâm Văn Tức, took his master’s parting words, “Make of yourselves a light!” literally, and publicly immolated himself on June 11, 1963 in one of Saigon’s busiest intersections. Others of his order followed the example, and the TV pictures of burning human beings in saffron robes outraged the world. Washington decided that Diem had to go and conspired with that country’s military leaders to topple his regime, with the understanding that they would be better able to deal with the menace from the North.

The generals succeeded, but for good measure also killed Diem and his brother. Mrs. Diem was outraged at Washington’s betrayal and cursed Kennedy whom she made responsible for the death of her husband, although the murder had not been in the original plan. But as our former Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, so nonchalantly said in regard to the Iraqi chaos he had helped unleash in 2003, “Stuff happens!” Five months after the murder of her husband the Catholic Kennedy was assassinated and I am sure that Mrs. Diem regarded this as an example of divine justice. She also predicted that her husband’s removal from power and murder would only produce more bloodshed, which was correct. Twelve years later, with millions of people dead and wounded in that country, the last Americans were evacuated by helicopters from the roof of the Saigon embassy on April 30, 1975. For the situation which unleashed Lâm Văn Tức’s self-sacrifice, and of which Americans had been kept in the dark please look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%90%E1%BB%A9c.

            But the match which lit the gasoline soaked monk remained in memory and the example was followed in January of 1969, in Czechoslovakia by Jan Palach who felt that he could not tolerate any longer the demoralization of his country under Communist dictatorship. Well, when Buddhists – “Asiatics” – do that it’s rather sad but for a Central European to publicly set himself aflame was totally unheard of. Communism had to go and it did, although it took another 20 years. First in the CSR, then in Poland; East Germany followed and eventually the Soviet Union. The march for freedom in Europe, which was achieved without bloodshed, did not go unnoticed in the rest of the world.

Our president, George H.W. Bush, to his credit, intended to seize the moment in 1991 and dragged the reluctant ex-terrorist Yitzhak Shamir, then Israeli Prime Minister, to a conference table in Madrid to settle the Palestinian problem once and for all in a peaceful manner. Shamir came but the Palestinians were not allowed to plead for their country and had to be part of a Jordanian team. Arafat, who was the only one who had the power to negotiate on behalf of his people, had to stay in Tunis. Since he had no country, but wanted one, he still used Shamir’s previous tactics and was, therefore, a terrorist with whom one does not negotiate. Shamir had no intention to follow up on the recommendations of the conference and knew that whatever document the conference produced would remain just a piece of paper. His group of loyal followers in our country would undermine any enforcement of the concessions which Israel would necessarily have to make. This power lay in the hands of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee. http://www.aipac.org) which I have previously discussed here in several essays and can be consulted with the “edit find” function when the entire documents are downloaded. Some of the most important ones are, in alphabetic order, Annapolis Déjà Vu, December 1, 2007; The Israel Lobby, October 1, 2007; and Whither Zionism? Revisited, March 1, 2009. When Bush, the Elder, insisted that the loan guarantees Shamir had wanted would not be given unless the latter stopped settlement building, he had sealed his fate. In spite of the joy over the victory during the brief 1991 Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, reelection had become out of the question. He would have needed Jewish money but that went in overwhelming amounts to Bill Clinton. The latter learned the lesson and stayed away from the troublesome Middle East until the end of his second term when he thought he might be able to duplicate Jimmy Carter’s feat. Instead of peace with Egypt there would be peace with the Palestinians and the Nobel Prize would be his. It was not to be because the Israelis then, now, and ever had absolutely no interest in making any deal with the Palestinians which, by necessity, would force them to make territorial concessions. The conquered land in the West Bank and Jerusalem is being tenaciously held and settled because, according to the Bible, God had been promised it to them about three thousand years ago, although He is irrelevant for most other day to day activities. That this claim would be laughed at if any other religious or national group were to advance it does not matter.

The Palestinian problem was allowed to fester. The Israelis built more settlements, partly with our tax money, erected a virtual apartheid wall from the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and when we complained they acted on the principle enunciated by Moshe Dayan, “The Americans give us money, they give us weapons and they give us advice. We take the money and the weapons but ignore the advice.” This stance reminded me of words our grandmother told us and had been told to her by our grandfather, “Wenn man dir gibt, so nimm, wenn man dir nimmt so schrei.” Whenever someone gives you something take it, but whenever someone takes something from you then yell bloody murder! This maxim has worked marvelously for the Israelis, especially after the 1967 war, but is likely to come to an end in this century because another match has been lit.  

On December 17, 2010 an obscure young Tunisian in an obscure little town decided he couldn’t take it anymore. Mohamed Bouazizi of Sid Bouzid was 26, unemployed, and tried to support his family by selling produce on the street. The authorities asserted that he did not have the proper permit and when a female law-enforcement officer slapped him in the face this was the proverbial straw which broke the camel’s neck. Not only was the slap itself intolerable but for a woman to do this to an Arab man was twice the insult. He went to the governor’s office to complain but was turned away without being listened to. He then vowed publicly that he would set himself on fire, and when that had no effect he followed through on the threat an hour later in front of a government building. In former years the episode would have gone unnoticed but no longer; we are “wired.” The Internet and cell phones have connected us to remote parts of the world and when something dramatic happens to one of us the rest of the world instantly knows about it. We have become one huge organism although we, as yet, don’t want to draw the consequences from this fact. News of the self-inflicted Auto da fé, first sparked local riots, which were brutally responded to, but they subsequently spread to the capital. When huge crowds of unemployed and underemployed people appeared in the streets President Ben Ali got frightened and left the country for safer pastures. Tunisians celebrated their Jasmine revolution, although the freedom they had temporarily achieved is still on shaky ground.

The spark lit by Bouazizi jumped across Tunisia’s neighbor, Libya which initially remained calm, to Egypt plagued by similar problems as Tunisia. These consisted, apart from the dictatorial regime, of a well-educated citizenry which had no possibility to use its talents. Let me now digress and relate a few personal experiences from the middle1980’s when I had been invited by my colleague Dr. E. Reynolds of London, England, to participate in a week-long epilepsy training seminar for Middle Eastern physicians in Kuwait. The Iran-Iraq war was on and we could hear cannon fire from the Shatt el-Arab. The local organizer was originally from Iraq and since I knew that the next International Congress for Epilepsy was scheduled to be held in Jerusalem in 1987, I asked him naively if he would come and we would meet again there. He looked at me astonished and asked, “Would you, as an American, have gone to Berlin in 1942?” It had totally eluded me that, apart from Egypt and Jordan, Israel is still at war with the rest of the Arab world. 

Since the Kuwaitis not only paid for the trip and all its attendant expenses but also gave me a handsome honorarium I thought I might as well take the opportunity and spend it in Egypt, a country I had long wanted to see. The flight over the Sinai was impressive. I was especially struck by the ravines in the mountains which in earlier millennia must have carried water and while admiring the view I was served with an excellent goulash accompanied by Viennese waltzes on the speaker. The relevant aspects of the Egypt visit were twofold. In War&Mayhem I described my visit to a “pharaonic village” which immediately reminded me of gypsy huts I had seen and photographed at the outskirts of Nyiregyhaza, Hungary, during my stint as a Wehrmacht soldier. The point here is my conversation with the cab driver. By the way wherever I am I always talk with the drivers because they represent the genuine voice of the people. He was trained as an engineer, had continued his studies in America but had subsequently gone back to his family. Since there was no job for him, he resorted to taxi driving which occasionally earned a reasonable baksheesh. This was my first inkling that all was not well with the Mubarak regime. In Luxor I admired not only the magnificent temple and Karnack as well as the Valley of the Kings, with the obligatory visit to Tut’s tomb, but also had a hankering to go for a sail on the Nile.

I stayed at the Winter Place Hotel which is famous not only because Lord Carnarvon as well as Howard Carter had stayed there, but the first skulls X-rays of Tutankhamen, obtained by Prof. Harrison’s team of Liverpool University, were developed in one of its bathrooms. Thanks to the generosity of the Kuwaitis I could afford it. Falluccas were docked near the hotel and after lunch one day I engaged a late middle aged Egyptian to take me on a brief sailing trip. Initially all went well but then Shu, god of the wind, decided to take a nap and the man with his boy, who was about 10 or so, had to paddle. Fortunately Shu felt their plight, woke up after a while and we got safely back to our shore. But in the interval a brief conversation took place which burdened me with guilt for the rest of my life. It consisted only of two sentences because his English was limited and my Arabic non-existent.

As usual every conversation starts with, “Where are you from?” When I said, “America,” he asked, “Take my son to America.” The request was utterly sincere because he saw no future for the boy in his country. I felt that it was impossible for me to grant his request but was so ashamed that I remained mute. Contrast this with another conversation I had with a cab driver in Rhodos which I visited a few years later, courtesy of Saudi Arabia’s money, where I had likewise been invited to participate in a course on epilepsy. Next to Egypt, Greece had always held a special attraction for me and in Rhodos I even found Rodini Park, which established some kind of kinship.  The cab driver asked the usual question of “where are you from?” and I said America; he replied, “America is good, Rhodos is better!” He was right because a life like in Rhodos is indeed worthy to be lived. The island has a long history. According to the Iliad it had supplied some ships for Agamemnon’s fleet when he went to Troy; it was known for its philosophers in Greco-Roman times and the Colossus of Rhodos, which guarded the harbor, was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. A third taxi cab ride, this time in the current century and in Vienna was likewise relevant. The driver was Egyptian and vented his fury on Mubarak and his regime. At the same time he castigated America for perpetuating that dictator simply because we want to make the Middle East safe for Israel, while at the same time guarding our oil supply, which largely has to travel through the Suez Canal. Although the cab driver knew that I was from America we talked in German and that may have loosened his tongue.

This was the Egypt America did not want to see and which exploded on February 11.To this must be added that the average American has only a very limited interest in history, which at times even extends to that of his own country. When George H.W. Bush announced at the beginning of the Gulf War that he would “bomb Iraq into the stone age,” I was appalled. Iraq is just the modern name for Mesopotamia which, together with Egypt, had laid the foundations for our civilization and this was to be obliterated! One really wonders if a country, which is led by such ignorance and disrespect for others, can retain its pre-eminence in the world.

As far as Egypt is concerned the main mental image the average American tends to have is of “Ol’ Pharaoh” who refused to let Moses and his people “Go” as it says in the Negro (dare I still use this word?) Spiritual. Protestant America reared on the Bible’s Old Testament has a thoroughly distorted view of ancient Egypt. Social justice was not invented by Amos and the other biblical prophets in the first millennium BC. They were latecomers who had cribbed from the then proverbial “wisdom of Egypt.” I have discussed this to some extent in The Moses Legacy (which can be downloaded from this site) and would like to encourage readers to familiarize themselves with the contents of the chapter on Moses. Jewish writers also have belittled the Egyptians for not having had a written book of law, thereby implying that it was a lawless or autocratic society with a thin upper crust and a fearful, ignorant slave population on the bottom. When one reads ancient Egyptian literature this was far from true and I would encourage whoever reads these pages to familiarize themselves with The Dawn of Conscience by James Henry Breasted. Unfortunately the book is out of print but available in major libraries and ought to be digitized.

The Egyptians didn’t need law books and their concomitant curse, lawyers whose job it is to twist words. Their laws were written, as the Bible recommends to the Israelites, into their hearts. They had a conscience and the hallmark of the society was Maat: the goddess of truth, justice and order. I have discussed the concept previously (Our Need for Maat; August 1, 2007) as well as in The Moses Legacy and The Jesus Conundrum and will, therefore, use only one example which bears a direct relationship to Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation. It is the story which has been called “The Eloquent Peasant,” and can be found in Breasted’s book as well as in Ancient Egyptian Literature by Miriam Lichtheim.  The original papyrus was dated to the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2040-1640 BC) but the oral version may well have been older. At any rate: Khun-Anup was a poor peasant from an equally poor village whose family was on the verge of starvation. He, therefore, loaded some donkeys with the meager products of his village to trade them for barley at Heracleopolis. But on the way he had to pass the house of Nemtynakht, a greedy rich man, who devised a plan to rob the peasant of his goods. He made the passage for the peasant and his donkeys so narrow that he had to trespass on the edge of Nemtynakht’s grain field. Donkeys tend not to be aware of property rights and one of the animals helped itself to a mouthful. This was the pretext for Nemtynakht to claim the legal right to confiscate the donkeys including their wares. For good measure he also gave the peasant a sound thrashing when he complained about the theft. But Khun-Anup knew his rights and sharply criticized the rich man for his disrespect of Maat. When this proved fruitless the peasant betook himself to the local governor, Rensi, who had a reputation for justice. The governor put the situation before his council but, as cronies do, they favored Nemtynakht and opined that the peasant was probably lying. When Khun-Anup was told of this outcome he went before Rensi himself with a discourse on the duties of good government and an appeal to Maat. The governor was impressed but did not immediately act on the peasant’s request. Instead he informed pharaoh who advised that Rensi should play a little game and pretend not to hear. Now we need to know that “not to hearken,” was one of the most severe offenses a public official could commit. Khun-Anup was aware of this major sin but did not know that a game was being played and his pleas became increasingly sharper including the words, “Do justice [Maat] for the sake of the Lord of justice … For justice is for eternity. It descendeth with him that doeth it into the grave when he is placed in the coffin and laid in the earth. His name is not effaced on earth, but he is remembered because of right. [Breasted’s translation]” Since this speech was also of no avail another similar one followed. Rensi then betook himself again to Pharaoh who ordered a complete inquest into the matter. It revealed that the peasant’s claim was just and not only his property, but also that of Nemtynakht was restored to him.

Obviously this was a story and real life may well have been different but the concept of how one ought to conduct oneself including officials, as well as pharaoh himself, clearly existed. Had there not been justice in the realm, the Egyptian dynasties could not have existed for the thousands of years they did. The story obviously also reminds one of the hard headed judge who initially refused to listen to the plight of a poor widow but eventually relented as told in the gospel of Luke. Dignity and justice are what people want from their governments and when they are consistently refused, they will rebel. In a way Khun-Anup’s plight of bygone millennia, was quite similar to that of Mohamed Bouazizi, but when the governor of his province refused to listen to his complaint it was not a game, and it led to the known fatal outcome. Yet, when officialdom does not listen to the just complaints of its people it invites retribution and that is what we are currently seeing in the Middle East and North Africa.

We must now ask: what is America’s role in all of this turmoil? Our administration officials are currently thoroughly confused and have no idea what to do because the concept of Maat eludes them. They preached human rights for all but when they are taken at their word they don’t know what to do because their friendly dictators are under siege. President Obama, the latest champion of freedom and dignity for all, has now also been exposed in the Arab world as a windbag who says the right things but when the chips are down does the opposite. I am referring to his actions on February 18 which showed to the Arabs that America does not really care for them but only for the Israelis. I am referring, of course, to the infamous veto of the Security Council Draft Resolution to condemn Israeli settlements on occupied territory in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Susan Rice, who vetoed it, obviously only did what she was told, was embarrassed, but had to follow orders. It is Obama who has to shoulder the blame.

Let us take a closer look at that Resolution. All it really said was that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for the resolution all final issues within one year should be resumed and stressed their urgency; it reaffirmed the illegality of settlements on occupied territories and that they constitute a major obstacle to a just and lasting peace; both parties were to behave according to international law and act on previous agreements and obligations. It also stated that “Israel, as the occupying power, immediately and completely ceases all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory; including East Jerusalem and that it fully respect its legal obligations in this regard.” There is nothing in this resolution which American administrations have not subscribed to in the past but yet it had to be vetoed. Support came from 130 countries and 14 Security Council members with America the lone dissenter.   

Why did Obama act the way he did? The answer is simple, he put re-election above justice and thereby violated the pledge he gave to the Arab world in his speech at Cairo University in June of 2009. This cost him the trust of the Arab and Muslim world who will henceforth disregard his words and we may have to brace ourselves for more anti-American feelings, which may well translate themselves into official policy by newly elected leaders in the Muslim world. Apart from Palestinians, Pakistanis are especially incensed. Ask yourself how you would feel if a member of your innocent family: wife, husband, son, daughter, brother, sister were to be regarded as “collateral damage” in a war against the Taliban which is none of your concern. When the killing is done by a drone which is operated by someone who sits in Virginia, Nevada or some other State of the Union at a video-console and with his joystick unleashes death and destruction your anger would be even greater. Is this what America really stands for? Would you be satisfied if you got some money for your loss, as tends to be the practice? The fact that there are aspects of life, such as respect and dignity, which cannot be bought, has yet to sink in. But it may well be brought home in a rather painful manner in the not too distant future when Pakistan’s U.S. friendly government falls victim to the fury of its people.

There exists a misconception in our country. The people who demonstrated and are demonstrating today in the various Middle Eastern countries and Libya do not necessarily want democracy. They want a government which is honest, provides essential services and justice which are all encompassed within the one word MAAT. If we look at our own country, the beacon of democracy, we can readily see that we are falling far short of this mark. Although we elect our “leaders” the election process is deeply flawed and the two major parties have only one main goal to gain and then stay in power. Cooperation between Republicans and Democrats in the solution of the vast problems the country faces is as rare as the proverbial blue moon. This is not a model which should be advertised for the rest of the world to follow.

As long as a country has a Constitution which guarantees equal rights to all of its people and not only abides by it but also listens to, and acts, on the legitimate concerns of the citizenry it doesn’t matter if the titular head is a king/queen, as for instance in Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, the Scandinavian countries and others, an Emir as in the Gulf States, or a President as is the case in Democracies and Republics.

 As far as Egypt is concerned we can only hope that its current military government will respect the lessons of its own history; hearken to the voice of the people, and re-establish Maat in their country. In so doing it would set a powerful example not only for Arab and Muslim countries, but for the rest of the world which so sorely needs it.







April 1, 2011

THE MARCH OF HISTORY


In last month’s installment I wrote that February 2011 was a month for the history books. It is now apparent that the same can be said for March 2011 and the next upcoming months. The popular uprisings or rebellions, the word one uses for the same events depends entirely on one’s point of view, are continuing in ever widening circles. The fire the young Tunisian, Mohamed Bouazizi, with which he immolated himself in December of last year, has spread to Central and Eastern North Africa as well as Arab states in the Middle East such as Yemen, Bahrain, Jordan and Syria. While the Palestinians have, so far, largely shown restraint it is doubtful that they will do so for much longer because they also have profound grievances.

            The West, and foremost the U.S., is now confronted with a dilemma which is hard to resolve. Ever since Wilson we have preached freedom and self-determination as the desired goal for all people of the world but have found it inconvenient when some emerging nations took us at our word and created governments which were inimical to their former colonial masters; our most trusted allies such as Great Britain and France. Instead they looked for help to the Soviet Union whose interest it was to foster these independence movements because “socialism” could be advanced and the West’s access to the emerging markets thwarted. That was in essence what the Cold War was all about. The Kremlin had its proxies and we had ours in form of military dictators. When one of them stepped out of line a CIA sponsored coup, such as in Viet Nam, Chile, and other countries, could readily rectify the situation although it might need several years as for instance in Nicaragua, or fail as in Viet Nam. But the situation changed drastically in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The bipolar world had disappeared; America had emerged as “the sole superpower” and felt itself free, especially under George W. Bush, to bring “democracy” to the rest of the world. That there is a potential inherent conflict between self-determination, i.e. establishing a nation of one’s own and the form of government this nation subsequently creates was not under consideration.

Our idealistic Wilsonianists, as we might called them, assumed that the emerging nations would choose a democratic form of government but that ignored reality. Nations are born in chaos; various individuals vie for power and whoever gains the most followers at a given time will become the autocratic leader and suppress the losers of the struggle. The winner may or may not legitimize his power grab by elections, after the opposition has been muzzled, until the latter has become strong enough to start a civil war and turn the tables on the ruling circles. Everybody promises democracy, but with few exceptions this promise is hardly ever kept. The situation was compounded in Africa because the colonial borders, with which the new nations were supposed to have been satisfied, frequently bore no relationship to the tribal distribution of the new country. In addition, tribes which for various reasons had been at war with each other for decades if not centuries and had only been held together as a colony by Europeans now felt free to pursue their own goals with the inevitable result of mass slaughter. Although the “developed world” decried these human rights abuses they had no problem selling arms to the various factions because there was money to be made. Individual “merchants of death” were prosecuted, but when the Western world or the Soviet Union did so, no one objected. It’s obviously not the fact that “rebel” groups should not be armed but who does the arming makes the difference. An individual becomes a criminal; a state can do so for “humanitarian” causes or in the “national interest.”

As long as these events happened in sub-Saharan Africa, apart from the southernmost portion of the continent, the West usually paid scant attention, but the situation differs in the Middle East where not only oil and gas are at stake but where there is the additional problem of a Jewish state in the midst of the Arab world. That peace in that area will never be achieved until the Palestinians have at long last obtained their “human rights,” as enshrined in the UN Charter, is obvious even to our governing circles in Washington. But the will, which would be required is lacking because, as has so frequently been pointed out here, domestic elections are at stake. The Jewish vote counts and the Palestinian vote is negligible. These are the realities behind our foreign policy in that part of the world which is at such variance with our professed ideals that it opens us up to the charge of hypocrisy. 

When the Ottoman Empire was dismantled after WWI religious and ethnic communities were thrown arbitrarily together, with Iraq as one prime example. The Kurds in the North are not Arabs and their desire for nationhood has been steadfastly denied because it would mean territorial loss for Turkey, Iraq and Iran. Sunnis and Shiites hated each other for religious reasons and only British occupation held these factions together. Installation of a monarchy under British protection was tried thereafter, but it soon gave way to a military coup with eventually Saddam Hussein grabbing the reins, which were only taken from him recently by the American invasion. We know all this too well but I mention it now because the same situation is playing itself out in Libya where we find ourselves entangled in another military experiment for “regime change.”

Last Monday evening President Obama explained to us why we intervened in what was obviously a local uprising which had developed into a civil war. The cause was noble, he said. We had to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe because Gaddafi was killing “his own people,” a phrase which is a left-over from the “Butcher of Baghdad’s” behavior. The latter had the gall to use the poison gas, which we had sold him, on the Kurds when they sided with the Iranians during the Iraq-Iran war. Since we wanted Saddam to win, rather than the Ayatollah, we did not object at the time, although we complained about it later when it suited our purposes. Yet, it needs to be said that the Kurds were not “his people” in the tribal sense some Middle Eastern and Africans are still caught up in. They were rebel subjects which had to be put down by any and all means. Saddam is gone and apart from the old standby Ahmadinejad, as the bête noir of American-Israeli policies, Gaddafi’s sins of the past are now being resurrected to paint him as a danger to the world which has to be eliminated.

True enough Col. Mouammar Gaddafi is indeed a rather strange person and his unpredictable antics have earned him the epithet of “the mad dog of the Middle East” by President Reagan during a 1986 Press Conference. When one of the reporters then pointed out that this was rather strong language, Reagan smiled and said he had only used the words he had heard from another reporter. Since our hate-love affair with the colonel goes back at least thirty years and I never believe the noble phrases which are given to justify military adventures, I tried to educate myself about the man toward whose political, if not physical, demise we are now spending our tax money.

As a physician and behavioral neuroscientist I am not swayed by propaganda, especially since I had more than my share in adolescence under Hitler, but instead am always looking for motives in human behavior. The fact that I tried to do so even with Hitler in my book War&Mayhem, has earned me some epithets by not so well meaning others, which do not deserve repeating, but failed to deter me from subsequent efforts. The usual way politicians and media pundits deal with someone who stands in the way of one’s own desires is by declaring the adversary as either devoid of morals and thereby no longer belonging to the human race, or providing a psychiatric label which is usually schizophrenia. Every so often the two aspects are combined as is currently the case with Gaddafi. There is no doubt that the man’s behavior is strange, to say the least, but whether or not he is legally or medically insane is another question. In addition, when I read up about him an old German proverb, which again hits the nail on the head, came to mind: Kinder und Narren sprechen die Wahrheit; children and crazies speak the truth. Since the purpose of this website is to discern whatever truth may be gleaned from the wealth of disinformation which is spread, let us now look at Libya and its colonel in more detail.

When one studies the history of the country it is immediately apparent that it has always consisted of two major portions: the Cyrenaica, with Benghazi as the major port and capital in the East, and Tripolitania, with Tripoli as its head, in the West. The Cyrenaica had been settled by Greeks in pre-Roman times while Tripolitania was colonized by the Phoenicians. Eventually they were integrated in the Roman and subsequently Ottoman Empire, but their tribal composition remained relatively distinct. When the Italians came in during the early 20th century, following the example of the British and French in the quest for colonial glory, they combined the Cyrenaica with Tripolitania plus a swath of southern tribes and thereby created Libya; the country whose people’s freedom we are now defending.

The Italian dream of empire ended with the Second World War. For a while the British took over and then in the true and tried fashion of imperial policy they appointed the Emir of Benghazi as King of Libya and went home. But they were pursued by what has been called Wilson’s Ghost. The Egyptians next door had gotten tired of their King, who had likewise been appointed by the British to keep the Suez Canal out of the hands of undesirables, and the military under Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser deposed him in 1952. The fact that kings can be made to disappear with relatively little effort was not lost on neighboring Libya where another young colonel our Mouammar Gaddafi followed the example in 1969. While King Idris was in Italy for some medical condition Gaddafi led a coup at home and installed himself as the leader of the country. Nasser was his hero and role-model. When the latter had created the United Arab Republic by uniting Egypt with Syria the dream of a secular Arab Umma seemed close to realization and Gaddafi wanted to join the fray. Unfortunately for him, Nasser overreached. First there was the inconclusive war with Yemen and then came the crushing defeat by the Israelis in 1967. It seems that if there was one life-changing event in the political thoughts of Gaddafi this was it. Nasser had failed and it was now up to him to take up the burden of his legacy.

Gaddafi then made several efforts to achieve Union with other African countries (e.g. Egypt, the Sudan, Tunisia, and Morocco) but all came to naught. When he invaded Chad his troops got a bloody nose which was the second major wake-up call. Nasser had failed and now his own troops were worthless. To overcome the problem of personal security he created his private mercenary army and in order to annoy the West he would liberally fund a variety of terrorist organizations. The intent was to destabilize the existing political order which would elevate him to a hero’s position in the eyes of emerging Africa. He was rather indiscriminate in his largesse and even the IRA profited from it. A great deal of money also flowed to the revolutionary Palestinian cause with Abu Nidal as a major beneficiary. That this would bring the ire of the Israelis and thereby America upon him was, of course, a given. The Mossad spared no effort to discredit Gaddafi in the eyes of the West and there is some suggestion of “false flag” operations where Mossad whose motto is “by deception you shall win” was actually responsible for the terror acts.           

            After the bombs which went off at Vienna’s and Rome’s airports as well as the Berlin discotheque, where two American off duty soldiers were killed, Reagan decided to put a stop to these actions and sent some bombers to teach Gaddafi a lesson. Whether or not he learned it is another question because terrorist activities continued with the Lockerbie disaster having been the most egregious example. But after the 2003 Iraq invasion, Gaddafi who is, regardless of what is said about him, at times also a realist felt that his position vis á vis the West was sufficiently precarious and he voluntarily renounced his nuclear ambitions. This, as well as his acceptance of responsibility for Lockerbie and the payment of $1.5 billion to compensate the relatives of the Lockerbie bombing, led to his rehabilitation in Western eyes. Condi Rice paid a visit to Tripoli in September of 2008 and money was again to be made by the West with Libyan companies.

            Under these circumstances one wonders why Gaddafi should all of a sudden have evoked again the ire of the West and especially of the French who were the first to send their aircraft over Libyan soil in support of the Benghazi rebels. We don’t have the definitive answer as yet but some suggestions have been published by Stratfor which will be discussed later. According to Wikipedia the seeds for the uprising itself were sown in Benghazi and other cities in the Cyrenaica during January of this year in a dispute over government housing projects and corruption in general. This was temporarily squelched by providing a $24 billion investment fund. But there were other grievances. The families of prisoners, who had been killed at the Abu Salim prison in 1996, staged a demonstration and when YouTube showed videos they were blocked by the government. Calls for greater freedom then went up and the serious uprising began on February 15. A crowd of 500-600 protesters had gathered in front of the police station in Benghazi chanting slogans to which the authorities, as is common in dictatorships, responded with force. The demonstrators were dispelled and thirty eight were injured. In other towns hundreds of protesters set fire to police and security buildings while calling for an end to Gaddafi’s regime. It should surprise no one that under these circumstances the colonel would send his tanks and aircraft to quell this rebellion in the eastern part of his country. At this point it is noteworthy that the uprising had originated in the Cyrenaica and was largely based on local grievances because Gaddafi’s policies had favored the western part of the country to the detriment of the eastern.

            Gaddafi had, of course, been fully aware of the popular revolts in Tunisia and Egypt but he obviously thought that this would never happen in his country because he regards himself as the friend and liberator of his people. On February 13 Reuters reported a speech by Gaddafi, which was also reprinted by Haaretz, but not in our media. It is noteworthy because it reveals his mindset. The speech was given the previous day in honor of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday and the major points were: “This is a time of popular revolutions . . . We need to create a problem for the world. This is not a declaration of war. This is a call for peace . . .” Nevertheless he went on to say that the movements in Tunisia and Egypt were a response to Western arrogance and “its hegemony of the Islamic world.” The “green color” should unite against the “white color.” He also stated that while he could understand the reason for the emergence of militant Islamists “the violent acts committed by Osama Bin Laden’s al Qaeda network went against Islam because they killed innocent people.” In regard to the Palestinian exiles who seek a return to their homeland he suggested that “a fleet of boats should take Palestinians … and wait by the Palestinian shores until the problem is resolved [ellipsis in the original].” Furthermore, “All Arab states which have relations with Israel are cowardly regimes.” What is important to note is that he agreed with the revolts because they were in his mind directed against Western supremacy. Three days later reality intruded but since he firmly believes in the love of his people towards him, the rebels must have been, as he declared, on hallucinogens or paid by the West.

The rebellion was initially quite successful. By February 25 most of Libya except for Tripoli, Sirte and Sabha was in rebel hands, and the flag of the previous kingdom, rather than Libya’s current one, fluttered in Benghazi’s breeze. Although Gaddafi was momentarily confused as to his options he had recovered his wits by March 6 and counterattacked. Since the rebels did not have an army, in the true sense of the word, they were soon pushed back and on March 12 or 13, dates vary, his troops had retaken the important oil port of Brega and the road to Benghazi was wide open. Since its fall was regarded as imminent the West sprang into action.

France had already unilaterally recognized the Benghazi government on March 10 as the only legitimate one for all of Libya, and Sarkozy had to do something to prevent a fatal loss of prestige. The UN was mobilized and with U.S. support a no-fly zone was established under the ostensible reason to prevent a massacre of the civilian population in Benghazi. Whether or not such a massacre would have taken place can be questioned because Gaddafi had offered amnesty to all who laid down their weapons, but he also promised “to show no mercy” for those who did not. But the real goal was to get rid of Gaddafi, and since a no-fly zone could not accomplish it, the mission was enlarged to attack all of Gaddafi’s military installations with bombs and rockets. The Security Council had approved the no-fly zone on March 17 but with the abstentions of Germany, Russia, China, India and Brazil. Inasmuch as the entire rationale for the no-fly zone was to protect innocent civilians the UN soon began to have second thoughts how this could be accomplished by bombing, which inevitably would bring about civilian casualties. To pre-empt such concerns the Western powers decided to take the matter out of the UN’s jurisdiction and turn it over to NATO. After Gaddafi’s military forces had been to some extent degraded by air strikes, the rebel forces gained some ground again but came to a grinding halt in the vicinity of Sirte, Gaddafi’s home base. At present the situation on the ground is fluid because the revolutionaries have once more been driven back towards Benghazi.

I have already mentioned President Obama’s speech which tried to explain why we are involved in Libya and what our goals are for that country. In sum and substance: we are to protect the rebels (civilians?) and if possible get rid of Gaddafi. How this can be accomplished by air-power and diplomatic pressure but without putting boots on the ground was left open. Time Magazine of April 4 (for reasons that are not entirely clear, the issues are always predated by a week which means that the dates don’t necessarily match events) asked: Why are we in Libya? The explanations given fell short of substance because they confined themselves mainly to the military operations and left the question how to get rid of Gaddafi open. Furthermore there was no mention of any aspects which Stratfor had reported on March 25.

Stratfor, http://www.stratfor.com, is a somewhat unusual website because they want your Email address to download the articles and they also encourage you to subscribe to their reports. On the other hand the site does provide a great deal of useful information, which is supplemented by charts and tables. The series of articles is headlined as “European Intervention in Libya,” which immediately places the responsibility where it belongs, and then deals with the separate interests of the various European countries. For now I shall deal only with France and the UK because they have been the most active to drag a reluctant President Obama to their side.

As far as France is concerned there are domestic as well as international reasons for its interventionism. On the domestic side Sarkozy experienced a major embarrassment in regard to the Tunisian uprising. The foreign minister Michele Alliot-Marie had initially offered the Tunisian government official help in dealing with the protesters but three days later President Ben Ali had fled and France was discredited in Arab eyes; especially by the large Tunisian minority in that country. The foreign minister had to be replaced and for “Super Sarko,” as he is known at home, it was time for dramatic action to rehabilitate his image towards his Muslim countrymen and the Arab world at large. The presidential election is less than a year away and his prospects for re-election are not exactly bright. But there are also international ramifications which may bode ill for the future. As a result of the European debt crisis austerity measures had to be put in place and these were enforced by Germany, which was supposed to bail out all the debt ridden countries. France was not in major difficulties but as a member of the Euro zone it had to agree to Berlin’s demands. This upset Gallic sense of honor, although Chancellor Merkel had consulted with the French on every step of the way. But France had seen itself, ever since WWII, as the foremost military power in Europe and to have to take a backseat to the solution of Europe’s economic problems by Germany, was hard to swallow. To counter the Germans economic and political power, London and Paris concluded on November 2, 2010 a military alliance. Since France lags behind Germany in economic power she now tries to use her military strength to impress the Arab world with her leadership for liberté and egalité. Fraternité has never lasted longer than a few days anyway.

None of this has been reported by our major media and it is obviously an ominous development because the economic and political rivalry between the Entente Cordiale (France and England) of April 1904, which was directed against Germany, was one of the major causes of WWI. What influence this new “Entente” will have on NATO is now an open question. The reasons for the British to enter the fray were more financial in nature. Just as in France the first weeks of the Middle East uprising were dominated by vacillation. But as it became clear that public opinion in the UK would no longer tolerate making profits through supporting Arab dictators, official policy began to crystallize. This was helped to a considerable extent by BP’s interests. As we well know the Gulf Oil spill has cost the company billions which it now seeks to recoup somehow. This is where Lockerbie comes in again. In order to be able to start drilling in Libya a deal had to be made with that government for the release of Abdel Baset al Megrahi, one of the convicted Lockerbie bombers, from a prison in Scotland. This was achieved for ostensibly humanitarian reasons in August 2009 because the man was regarded as having suffered from terminal prostate cancer although as of now he still seems to be alive. At any rate BP announced that it planned to invest $20 billion in Libyan oil production over the next twenty years. As such, the free access to the development of Libyan energy resources, vast quantities have supposedly as yet remained untouched, is important for the UK’s economy.

How will this play out in terms of an “exit strategy” from the European point of view? France and England would settle for a partition of the country between east and west, keeping the east with its oil and gas, while Gaddafi in Tripoli would no longer have the money to create serious harm. For the Italians the situation looks different since an angry Gaddafi could be a serious thorn in their side. Although the Obama administration has, to use a colloquialism, “no dog in this fight” and would have liked to leave Libya at the earliest opportunity, the Republicans would not allow it. American prestige as the “Leader of the Free World” is at stake and they are already chiding the president for letting others do the heavy lifting. Furthermore, while the Republicans complain about the budget deficit, and insist on spending cuts they seem to have no problem underwriting the future cost of this war. On March 30 it was reported that Obama had signed a “presidential finding,” several weeks ago, which allows the CIA to train and arm rebel forces in addition to providing other logistic support. While military “boots on the ground” have been ruled out, we are now allowing what has been called “shoes on the ground.” This identifies us with the rebel forces and undercuts the legitimacy of the entire operation. It goes counter to the UN Mandate as well as its arms embargo and provides fodder for Gaddafi’s propaganda in the Arab world who had insisted all along that the CIA had instigated the revolt in the first place.

As mentioned earlier the conduct of the war has now been turned over to NATO, which can be regarded as another “mission creep.” The intervention in former Yugoslavia could be justified as having been on European soil. Afghanistan was already a stretch because the Afghans had not attacked us and the justification of the country having “harbored the terrorists” was not in line with the initial goals of the organization. These were spelled out in admirable simplicity by Lord Ismay, the first Secretary General of the alliance: To keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down. Inasmuch as this was accomplished by 1991 one wonders what NATO’s future role should be, especially in light of the separate British-French alliance mentioned above. This brings up the question if NATO, rather than existing alongside the UN should become the enforcer of decisions made by the UN? That the latter organization is also in urgent need of overhaul was brought to the attention of the membership of the General Assembly by none other than the centerpiece of this essay: Colonel Gaddafi.

Although the man certainly sounds incoherent he does not seem to be totally devoid of reason. I am basing this opinion on the speech he gave at the UN in 2009, which has been ridiculed by the media rather than accurately reported. One can watch it on YouTube and a Pakistani group which calls itself MetaExistence Organization has published the transcript. The speech was supposed to have lasted 15 minutes but autocrats don’t follow rules. He rambled on for about 96 minutes, literally tore up a copy of the UN Charter, and threw a copy of his “White Book,” which spells out his proposed solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem, into the face of the President of the General Assembly. This buffoonery even exceeded the famous shoe pounding of Nikita Khrushchev and one can readily understand why the man is regarded as crazy. But what were the reasons for denouncing the UN, albeit in an uncalled for manner?

            Leaving all rhetoric aside Gaddafi made the following points: The Preamble of the Charter of the UN which calls for equality of all nations, big or small, is vitiated by the subsequent Charter provisions. These were made by the victors of WWII who sought to perpetuate a then existing order. The General Assembly is merely a sounding board with no executive power and as such similar to Hyde Park where orators stand on their soap boxes, give speeches and go home again. The Power resides in the Security Council which serves, however, the interests of the big countries and with their veto they can nullify the just complaints of the weak. Under these circumstances the UN has failed in its primary mission to keep the peace in the world and 65 wars have occurred either with its collusion or in disregard of the organization. The UN is necessary but needs to be reformed. The power should be vested in the General Assembly which should be the decision making body. These decisions should then be referred to the Security Council which will enforce them, instead of just having veto power. The mentioned White Book, published in 2003, declares that only the creation of a bi-national Jewish-Palestinian state called the “Federal Republic of the Holy Land” can solve the conflict. Equal rights are to be guaranteed to all its citizens, there would be free and fair elections, weapons of mass destructions would not be allowed and the Arab League would recognize the state. He also suggested a relocation of the UN since the U.S. cannot be regarded as neutral soil and foreign diplomats can currently be denied entry visas.

            These are not the thought processes of any schizophrenic patient I have known. They are rational and factual but, of course, Gaddafi is the wrong messenger and the way he presented his plan is bound to hurt the cause rather than help it. The “One State” solution for the Holy Land is also no longer as outlandish as one might think because it is under consideration even by some Israelis who prefer peace over the endless state of war. Having said all this there is one more aspect which has until recently not been stressed by our media. Gaddafi is a secularist who heartily disliked al Qaida and all it stands for. He denounced the 9/11 attacks as un-Islamic and has jailed and killed former jihadists when they returned from Afghanistan. But whether or not he will retain this commitment after having been the recipient of Western bombs only time will tell.

While uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa were one focal point of the news, March 11 was a day of catastrophe on the other side of the world in Japan. An earthquake triggered tsunami devastated the northeastern portion of the main island causing serious damage to the nuclear reactors stationed in that part of the country. We don’t know yet the full extent of the damage and the consequent radiation leakage but one aspect is clear. The Japanese have shown outstanding behavior in the face of catastrophe, which can serve as a model for the rest of us. There were several factors which contributed to the absence of riots and looting and that everybody pulled together to help everybody else. In addition to the natural human instinct to do so, which can be seen in all disasters, there were two specific aspects in Japan. One of which is the ethnic homogeneity of the country where what befalls one hurts everyone. The other is the remarkable blending of its religions: Shintoism and Buddhism. Shinto teaches reverence for all of nature. It also includes worship of ancestors and thereby establishes unity between past, present and future. Buddhism teaches the transitory nature of all creation and its concomitant of suffering when one tries to hang one’s heart on a given possession such as home or even family. Since suffering is unavoidable compassion is needed to ameliorate it and in this instance the U.S. military stationed in Japan has been put to good use earning the respect and gratitude of the survivors.

This is what our role in the world should be and in this Easter season it would be useful for our politicians and media pundits to consider what Jesus has really tried to teach us. The key towards a successful overcoming of current difficulties lies in that badly translated admonition: Love your enemies.” As mentioned in these pages and The Jesus Conundrum, the word for “to love” in the original Greek is agapete and in the Latin translation diligete. Both mean the same thing: esteem your enemy! Why should we do so? Because he has a truth to tell us about ourselves, which we frequently don’t want to hear. We need to listen to our enemy and learn from him about “the beam in our own eye.” As the Chinese said: What is a good man? The teacher of a bad man! As long as we teach by bombs and economic sanctions, which hurt the innocent, we can expect payment in the same coin. This will be a hard lesson to learn but learn we must if we want to survive this increasingly dangerous century.

History is on the march again; tectonic plates are shifting. This is not only literally true in the physical world as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis testify to, but it pertains equally to the mental world. The “Spirit of 1776” which had made its way to Paris in 1789 has reached Africa, the Middle East and is likely to unleash revolts in other parts of the world. In the past most revolutions have had serious long term bloody consequences and there is no reason why it should be different now. To adequately assess the challenge America is confronted with, would first require truthful introspection into the complexities which underlie the current turmoil. Thereafter measures should be taken which preserve our neutrality, but at the same time provide genuine help to the victims of these man-made tsunamis with the example having been set in Japan.







May 1, 2011

POST-EASTER REFLECTIONS

            Nearly 2000 years have passed since the “Prince of Peace” died on the cross and the firm belief of some of his followers in his physical resurrection has made precious little impact towards the prevention of wars. There exists a story of a tumult in the streets of Jerusalem on that first Easter Sunday and when a rabbi asked what it was all about he was told that “the Messiah has come!” The rabbi looked around, shook his head, and said: “I see no change.”

When one contemplates the state of our world today one is bound to agree with him. Lip service is paid to love thy neighbor and Christians are exhorted in church services to joyfully await the return of Jesus. Yet, when one views the representatives of the Church marching in solemn procession through St. Peter’s Cathedral, on festive occasions, one sees mainly old men some of whose faces seem to reflect bitterness rather than the joy they are supposed to demonstrate. Deep down they know that the Master’s teachings are incompatible with worldly success and they have made their compromise. Dostoyevsky, who has looked deep into the heart of man, was right in his appraisal of what would happen if Jesus were indeed to return to this world. In The Brothers Karamazov he recounted a dream of Ivan to that effect. The people flocked around Jesus but when hauled before the Holy Inquisition he was told to please go away because an image has been created in which he no longer has a place.

Sad to say this is true. If Jesus were indeed to come back and visit the Vatican, the Pope, who is trying to meet his dual obligations of serving God and the Institution of the Church, would probably welcome him.  But the same cannot necessarily be said for the Curia and certainly not for the State. Since he would draw huge crowds, indict our cherished democracy as a sham and say things such as “woe to you hypocrites” he would create uproar. For speaking out against the three wars we are currently conducting the good Catholic Bill O’Reilly from Fox News, who divides the American people into “pinheads” and “patriots,” would surely put him in the former category. Sooner or later the authorities would step in. Jesus would be arrested again, there would be a trial and since he hasn’t murdered or defrauded anybody, but regarded as dangerous to the established order, he would be declared legally insane, remanded to a State Hospital and supplied with a hefty dose of tranquilizers to cure him of his delusions.

Yet, what he would say would be the truth. The fact is that we are lying to each other and are being lied to by our government on a massive scale. Take the latest and most glaring example: our intervention in Libya. We are currently sending drones with “precision guided rockets,” to support one side of a civil war in order to “protect civilians.” Although the goal of the enterprise is to get rid of Qaddafi we deny it and when we bomb his headquarters in Tripoli this is not in order to kill him but merely to attack the “command and control center” from which he terrorizes the country. I have no use for the Israelis’ “targeted assassinations” but at least they are honest about it, something that cannot be said for our leadership. We try to imitate the method but do it safely from the air with unmanned vehicles so that nobody gets hurt except the people on the ground. Since “precision guided rockets” can’t distinguish between civilians who don’t carry a weapon from those who do it is hard to see how this method advances the cause of “protecting the civilian population,” which is supposedly our sole reason for engaging in these practices.

I have tried to find out what is really behind our Libyan involvement but to date information is rather sparse and we may have to wait for Wikileaks to provide us with the  true answer. As mentioned last month President Obama was only reluctantly dragged into the fight which the French President had, for reasons of his own, gotten involved in. Human rights abuses and potential civilian massacres were clearly only the excuse rather than the reason. If this had been the case Sarkozy, as well as we and the Brits, would have had ample opportunity to intervene in any of the numerous African tribal wars of the past and present. We would also have done away with the North Korean regime long ago. But since Kim Jong Il knew us quite well he got himself the bomb which produced the respect we denied to Saddam Hussein as well as the Afghans. Qaddafi probably now rues the day in 2003 when he gave up on his atomic ambitions and tried to enter into the good graces of the West. The message is obvious: if you are in charge of a poor country you are relatively safe from Western intervention, especially if you have the bomb, but if you are sitting on oil and gas better watch out.

Although the real cause of the Libyan involvement is still unknown two aspects have come to attention since last month’s installment. They have not been properly aired by our media but can be gleaned from the Internet. One is Operation Mistral and the other Libyan money. Ask anyone here what Operation Mistral was all about and you’ll get blank stares, but Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who blasted our involvement in Libya in the House, knew about it. As such it is neither a secret nor a fantasy but a fact which has been hushed up. It is indeed a curious affair and here is the gist of it as it can be found on the Canadian site http://www.globalresearch.ca.

Under the title, “When War Games Go Live” one can read that on November 2nd 2010, more than four months prior to the onset of Operation “Odyssey Dawn,” France and the UK announced the conduct of war games called “Operation Southern Mistral" against an imaginary country "Southland", living under a dictatorship, which allegedly was responsible for an attack against France's national interests. It was to be carried out as a Franco-British air operation pursuant to a UN Security Council Resolution 3003. The war games were scheduled to start on March 21, 2011. They never took place, instead we got the real war on March 19, 2011, two days prior to the scheduled date in accord with Security Council Resolution 1973. Our media never told us anything about these “games” but, as mentioned, they were known to Rep. Denis Kucinich who said on the floor of the House:

 

"While war games are not uncommon, the similarities between ‘Southern Mistral’ and ‘Operation Odyssey Dawn’ highlight just how many unanswered questions remain regarding our own military planning for Libya.

Scheduling a joint military exercise that ends up resembling real military action could be seen as remarkable planning by the French and British, but it also highlights questions regarding the United States’ role in planning for the war. We don’t know how long the attack on Libya has been in preparation, but Congress must find out. We don’t know who the rebels really represent and how they became armed, but Congress must find out.” (Kucinich: President Had Time to Consult with International Community, Not Congress? | Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich, Press Release, March 29, 2011).”

 

      

Has Congress stepped up to the plate and started an inquiry? Of course not. Democrats and Republicans are much too busy to win points for re-election by debating how to cut the deficit without raising taxes.

In regard to money, Libya had considerable foreign assets which were seized and are “held in trust for the Libyan people” by the US and Western European countries. The sums are sizable; at least $ 30 billion were taken by the US and additional billions by various countries of the EU. But who are the Libyan people for whom we ostensibly hold this money? Obviously, only when they are represented by a government of which the West approves. At this time we have no idea who is in charge of the rebel forces. As we were told last week at least one of the commanders is an ex-Guantanamo jihadist who had been released to Libya and whom Qaddafi, who had no taste for these ideas, had promptly imprisoned again. Since Col. Qaddafi obviously had his uses in the “War on Terror” it is difficult to see what our motive is for removing him all of a sudden, unless we were forced into this adventure by the French and Brits which seems increasingly likely.

            While the theoretical Operation Mistral never took place, the real “Operation Odyssey Dawn” soon presented a problem for NATO when the US tried to stay aloof. They ran out of “precision guided” missiles and instead bombed the civilians they were supposed to protect. That’s when the plea for help and the request for the drones arrived in Washington which forced Obama, probably against his better judgment, to comply. But all this mendacity, which hides the real causes for a given war, is nothing new and has been the rule throughout history.

It is, therefore, instructive to read an honest book written by Francis Neilson on “The Makers of War.” Neilson was a Member of Parliament in 1914 but resigned his seat in 1915 when he found out how his country had really been maneuvered into entering the war against Germany. We may regard this as “ancient history” and irrelevant but as noted in a previous installment nations also are subject to the law of Karma from which there is no escape (January 1, 2011). The way the book is written indicates that Neilson had been thoroughly fed up with the lies the Parliament as well as the public were told and he was eager to expose them for posterity. He was an exceedingly colorful person of whom more will be said on other occasions, mainly because of useful quotes from knowledgeable personages. When one looks at the dust cover of the Second Edition of the book, which was published in 1950, one is immediately impressed with a quote which substitutes for a subtitle,

 

“We are in the hands of an organization of crooks. They are politicians, generals, manufacturers of armaments and journalists. All of them are anxious for unlimited expenditure, and go on inventing scares to terrify the public and to terrify Ministers of the Crown.”

 

If this sounds like Eisenhower’s warning in regard to the “military-industrial complex,” it simply shows that mankind is immune to change, especially when it comes to greed. The quote came from Lord Welby (former head of the British Treasury) who said it in relation to the 1908 panic, precipitated by Austria’s annexation of Bosnia Herzegovina, which nearly led to war as described in War&Mayhem and in the January 2008 issue (2008 Outlook). Although papered over at the time, it paved the way for WWI, the aftermath of which we are battling with today in the Middle East. The “War to end all Wars” had spawned the “Peace to end all Peace.”

Neilson’s book is of interest because he looked “Behind the Scenes,” one of his chapter headings, to find reasons for the war rather than the common excuses. He dates the beginning decay of the British Empire to the now practically forgotten Boer War which started in 1899. Its obvious aim namely to seize the gold and diamond mines from the Dutch settlers, the Boers, was hidden under the pretext that the British miners, Uitlanders, were oppressed and had not been given a vote. No one in Europe believed this ruse and when it became known that in their fight against the Boers the British had installed concentration camps where the women and children of Boer fighters were kept under inhumane conditions, there was universal revulsion. For a time Britain became a pariah among nations; a situation which reminds one of how the US was viewed in 2003 after the Iraq invasion and which was compounded by the Abu Ghraib scandal.

In the first decade of the twentieth century Britain found herself in a precarious position. Not only because of the drawn out war, which ended in 1902, but her industrial base had been shrinking, while Germany’s had been growing. The British Empire was about to lose its role as the primary world power and German ship building even began to cast doubt on the proud slogan of “Britannia rules the waves.” While everybody acknowledges that the German Hochseeflotte (military navy) was a thorn in the British side, it is less well known that Germany’s commercial fleet, which carried the transatlantic traffic, was also in ascendance. For instance, the passenger liner Deutschland had made the crossing from Cherbourg in the then unprecedented time of five and a half days. For Britain to retain the leading role in Europe, Germany had to be fought and an ally on the Continent was needed. Since France, wanted revanche for her defeat in 1871, centuries old enmities against the “Frogs” were set aside and the “Entente Cordiale” was signed in 1904. The public portion settled their colonial differences in Africa but a secret addition divided the military responsibilities between the two countries. This became the real reason why Britain had to enter the war regardless whether or not Germany invaded Belgian territory. The German violation of Belgium’s neutrality was the excuse for Britain’s entry into the war rather than the reason. Germaniam esse delendam; Germany was Carthage in British eyes which had to be destroyed. Not necessarily because of its potential military threat but because of its industrial success. The destruction was realized in the Versailles treaty, which as everybody knows, was not a treaty between partners but only signed by the Germans under extreme duress.

Poor President Wilson had no idea as to the rats’ nest of secret diplomacy and treaties that had been made among the Allies during the war, when he went to Paris to preside over what he thought would be a just settlement of all grievances. The Memoirs of the Peace Conference by David Lloyd George give us an official British view how the current Middle East and its troubles came about. Lloyd George was British Prime Minister at the time and the chapter on Palestine is most revealing in regard to our current predicament. Although I have referred to it previously (January 1, 2007; The Year of the Middle East) more extensive direct quotes are important in view of the situation we find ourselves in today. The first one provides the mindset,

 

“The intentions of the Allied Powers regarding the future of Palestine up to the end of 1916 are practically embodied in the Sykes-Picot agreement. The country was to be mutilated and torn into sections. There would be no more Palestine. Canaan was to be drawn and quartered. But 1917 saw a complete change in the attitude of the nations towards this historic land. . . . It was a historic and sacred land, throbbing from Dan to Beersheba with immortal traditions, the homeland of a spiritual outlook and faith professed by hundreds of millions of the human race and fashioning more and more the destinies of mankind. . . . In 1915 and 1916, Britain massed huge armies to check the menace of the Turk on the Suez Canal. At first they crawled drearily and without purpose across the desert towards the land of the Philistines. But in 1917, the attention of her warriors was drawn to the mountains of Judea beyond. The zeal of the Crusaders was relumed [sic] in their soul. The redemption of Palestine from the withering aggression of the Turk became like a pillar of flame to lead them on. The Sykes-Picot Agreement perished in its fire. It was not worth fighting for Canaan in order to condemn it to the fate of Agag and hew it to pieces before the Lord. Palestine, if recaptured, must be one and indivisible to renew its greatness as a living entity.”

 

This was the view of the devout Protestant and I don’t doubt that he was sincere in holding it. It is also, without doubt, today’s view not only of the major portion of Israel’s Jewish citizens but of a highly influential segment of US evangelicals, including former, and possibly future, presidential contender Mike Huckabee. Finally, it is, also without doubt, the major stumbling block towards genuine peace in the Middle East. But in addition to the high flown rhetoric we must ask ourselves what had changed in 1917 that roused the British army, which was bogged down in Gaza, to its “crusade.”

Ever since the start of the war the British were eager to enlist the help of the Arabs in evicting the Turks from Syria-Palestine thereby safeguarding the Suez Canal. There were a series of promises made in the so-called McMahon correspondence with the Sharif of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali. In it the latter was given to understand that he would be recognized as king and sovereign over Arab lands up to somewhere north of Damascus and in the East Mesopotamia. This was an example of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing because the mentioned Sykes-Picot agreement had parceled out the Middle East into five zones. The northern portion of Syria was to go to France; Mesopotamia to the Brits; while the Arabs were to have received two zones in the middle; one under French and the other under British tutelage. The Mediterranean littoral between Haifa and Gaza extending to the East to include Beersheba and Jerusalem, but not Amman, was regarded as a “Brown” zone for which some form of international administration was envisaged. This understanding between the British and the French was a closely held secret and the British administration in Cairo may or may not have known of it when it negotiated with the Arabs. Hussein, who ruled over the Hejaz (the major portion of the Arabian Red Sea Coast from south of Mecca to Aqaba in the north) under Turkish suzerainty, initially dragged his feet but was subsequently galvanized by Captain Lawrence to throw in his lot with the British against the Turks.

Who can forget the dashing Peter O’Toole as Lawrence of Arabia who practically single-handedly forged an Arab striking force to harass the Turks? After taking Aqaba from them he crossed the Sinai essentially by his lonesome to bring the news to his superiors in Cairo and begging for money to pay his troops. Well, it wasn’t quite that way because he did have a party of eight to accompany him, but his bedraggled entry into British headquarters in Arab garb was factual. It was Lawrence’s good luck that the former rather ineffectual Sir Archibald Murray had just been replaced by the more seasoned General Sir Edmund Allenby who now saw the potential of a breakthrough with his forces going north from Gaza and Lawrence’s Arabs doing so likewise in parallel from Aqaba. The plan worked and by December 8 of 1917 Allenby was in Jerusalem.

The year 1917 was, however, otherwise a rather grim one for the Allies. The fate of the war seemed to hang in the balance and at this point the thought of enlisting the help of the Jews became official policy. Lloyd George had previously met Chaim Weizmann, a Manchester chemist and leader of Britain’s Zionist movement, “one of the greatest Hebrews of all time,” who had provided a valuable service to the British munitions industry by developing a better process for cordite production. Not only did the Prime Minister feel gratitude but since he and Weizmann’s goals for returning the Jews to their ancient homeland were in full accord, he introduced the latter to the leading members of the War Cabinet including the Foreign Secretary, Sir Arthur James Balfour, after whom the Declaration, which proclaimed the establishment of a “national home” for Jews in Palestine as one of Britain’s war goals, is named. But apart from religious motives there were more substantial ones. To quote from Lloyd George’s Memoirs,

 

“The Balfour Declaration represented the convinced policy of all parties in our country and also in America, but the launching of it in 1917 was due, as I have said, to propagandist reasons. I should like once more to remind the British public, who may be hesitating about the burdens of our Zionist Declaration to-day of the actual war position at the time of that Declaration. We are now looking at the War through the dazzling glow of a triumphant end, but in 1917 the issue of the war was still very much in doubt. We were convinced–but not all of us– that we would pull through victoriously, but the Germans were equally persuaded that victory would rest on their banners, and they had much reason for coming to that conclusion. They had smashed the Roumanians. The Russian Army was completely demoralised by its numerous defeats. The French Army was exhausted and temporarily unequal to striking a great blow. The Italians had sustained a shattering defeat at Caporetto. The unlimited submarine campaign had sunk millions of tons of our shipping. There were no American divisions at the front, and when I say at the front, I mean available in the trenches. For the Allies there were two paramount problems at that time. The first was that the Central Powers should be broken by the blockade before our supplies of food and essential raw materials were cut off by sinkings of our own ships. The other was that the war preparations in the United States should be speeded up to such an extent as to enable the Allies to be adequately reinforced in the critical campaign of 1918 by American troops. In the solution of these two problems, public opinion in Russia and America played a great part, and we had every reason to believe that in both countries the friendliness or hostility of the Jewish race might make a considerable difference.” 

 

The Prime Minister then acquainted us with the difficulties the proposed Declaration had met in the Cabinet. I have covered these in Whither Zionism? but one of the objections of Lord George Curzon (notable to this day for defining the Eastern border of Poland, the Curzon line), who was familiar with the East bears repeating:

 

“I spoke earlier of the dreams of a Jewish state, with possibly a Jewish capital at Jerusalem. Such a dream is wholly incapable of realization by the conditions of Jerusalem itself. It is a city in which too many peoples and too many religions have a passionate and permanent interest to render any such solution even dimly possible. . . . next to Mecca and Medina, Jerusalem is the most sacred city of the Mohammedan faith. The Mosque of Omar, on the site of the Temple of Solomon is one of the most hallowed shrines of Islam. . . . it is impossible to contemplate any future in which the Mohammedans should be excluded from Jerusalem. Hebron is a site scarcely less sacred to Islam. . . .

 

His recommendation was to give Jewish immigrants full equality with the current population but one should not expect that Muslims will tolerate to be governed by Jews. This was also the opinion of the King-Crane Commission (likewise reviewed in the January 1, 2007 essay) which had been sent to Palestine after the Peace Conference in order to assess which country, Great Britain or the US, should become the mandatory power. Hands off, was the advice for America and it was heeded until after WWII when the US assumed the inheritance of the British Empire. The British had nothing but grief when they tried to administer the country. Eventually they threw up their hands in despair and left in 1948. We thought that we could do better by providing unquestioned support for highly questionable Israeli policies. It has not worked and cannot work because Arabs are telling us now that they will no longer tolerate regimes which do not have popular consent. The failure of British policy in regard to Palestine was pre-ordained. The British wanted to win the war and in order to do so vague promises i.e. a homeland instead of a State (although that was always implicit) were made to the Jews, while at the same time promising full sovereignty over Arab lands, which obviously included Palestine, to Hussein and his sons. Since neither Jews nor Arabs, then or now, wanted to live under the dominion of the other the ceaseless wars since 1948 had become inevitable.

There is one more point in the Memoirs which is worth recalling because it has direct bearing on WWII and the resultant Holocaust. It deals with Jewish help after the Declaration had been issued,

 

“Immediately the declaration was agreed to, millions of leaflets were circulated in every town and area throughout the world where there were known to be Jewish communities. . . . In Russia the Bolsheviks baffled all the efforts of the Germans to benefit by the harvests of the Ukraine and the Don, and hundreds of thousands of German and Austrian troops had to be maintained to the end of the War on Russian soil, whilst the Germans were short of men to replace casualties on the Western front. I do not suggest that this was due entirely, or even mainly, to Jewish activities. But we have good reason to believe that Jewish propaganda in Russia had a great deal to do with the difficulties created for the Germans in Southern Russia after the peace of Brest-Litovsk. The Germans themselves know that to be the case, and the Jews in Germany are suffering to-day for the fidelity with which their brethren in Russia and in America discharged their obligations under the Zionist pledge to the Allies.” 

 

 

            Lloyd George thereby validated part of the Dolchstoss Legende, that Jews were at least co-responsible for Germany’s defeat. The campaign against Hitler launched in the US with a call for a “Holy War,” already in 1933, aggravated the situation further and helped him to portray “the Jews” as the real culprit for Germany’s difficulties, which culminated in the war with the West, which he didn’t want. The measures taken, including the attempted extermination of European Jews, were from that point of view nothing else but a “Strafgericht [deserved punishment handed down by a court for offenses].” The topic is more fully covered in the installments on Understanding the Holocaust (February 2006).  

The revolts we are currently witnessing in North Africa and Middle Eastern countries are a belated echo of Europe’s 1848 and 1917-19 revolutions. They will pass, just as those in Europe did, but the Palestinian-Zionist problem will remain and require a constructive solution. The Israeli government prefers the status quo but it will become increasingly untenable. They banked on the disunity of the Arab world and especially that of the Palestinians but the latter have now adopted a new and better strategy. They have realized that armed struggle, while useful to attract the world’s attention to their plight, is now counterproductive and have opted for achieving the good will of the world through demonstrating that they have an organization in place which provides for a viable state. They intend to ask the UN General Assembly in September of this year to recognize their state within the 1967 borders, regardless of the expressed wish of the Israeli government to the contrary. It is now show-down time for the US, and the Obama administration knows it. Are we going to stand by our professed principles, i.e. freedom for the oppressed, for which we are supposedly carrying on all these wars, or will we cave in to the power of money, which controls our elections? This is the question current events force upon us and staying with principle over expediency would be the only correct answer.

Neilson’s book ended with a recommendation how to avoid future wars. Remarkably enough he found it in the Old Testament. “Perhaps if we take up the Bible and study it afresh, we shall find it is the most comprehensive work on political economy that was ever compiled. The whole basic problem which confounds politicians and trade unionists of every State is presented by the prophets of Israel, all the way from Deuteronomy to Malachi.”

It is surprising that a person with Neilson’s insights has not realized that the Old Testament is a book written by Jews for Jews and he has completely neglected the political doctrinaire problem which promises world government to the Jews. “… for out of Zion shall go forth the Law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem [Is. 2:3];” and “Thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people: and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried on their shoulders. And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers: they shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt know that I am the LORD; for they will not be ashamed that wait for me [Is. 49:22, 23 King James translation; italics are in the original].”

The Christian world needs to fully realize the political dimension of the Old Testament which has no use for “the nations – goyim” except as servants of their god, whose will only Jews can interpret. I realize that this is not the stance of all Jews. As a matter of fact there is even in Israel a “Struggle for Israel’s Soul,” which is the subtitle title of a book published by Yoram Hazony. I shall return to him on another occasion, for now the important point he makes is that ideas and ideals, rather than armed forces, move this world and this is correct. It is, therefore, of utmost importance to study each other’s’ ideals for their compatibility with the modern world and when one does so the political legacy of the Old Testament will no longer do. In order to survive we will have adopt that of the New with the guiding light of the “Good Samaritan.” Once we Christians take that mental jump we will be in synch with the aspirations of the rest of the world’s people. Fear will be banished, greed limited, and the kingdom of God, which we have been told is within us, can be realized. Obviously this is a utopian fantasy at this time in history but unless it is regarded as a program to be worked towards it will never happen. What is required now is what the Greeks called metanoia and which has been inadequately translated as “repent.” Its original meaning could be regarded as “think again,” rethink what you are really doing and what the likely consequences of your acts will be. “The Deed returns to the Doer,” said the ancient Egyptians; or “As you sow will you reap.” The choice is ours: If we sow bombs we will get bombs! If we bring good will accompanied by good deeds the resulting harvest will benefit everyone. A preoccupation with the physical Resurrection of Jesus, on that first Easter Sunday should no longer concern and divide us; the Resurrection of his Spirit is the task for our time.           







June 1, 2011

BIBI’S FINEST HOUR

            The past month was again one for the history books. On May 1 our president startled the nation with the news that Osama bin Laden had been found in Abbottabad, Pakistan. He was killed while resisting arrest in a nocturnal raid by a Special Forces team, which included Navy Seals. His body had been taken to the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson in the Arabian Sea where it was given up to the waters in order to avoid his burial place from becoming a shrine. We were also informed that DNA tests had identified his remains with 99.7% accuracy and “justice has been served.” While one may have questions about some of the specifics which we have been told, the main fact that the man is now officially pronounced dead can be regarded as good news. Whether or not this will benefit the ill-conceived “War on Terrorism” remains to be seen and so does what the lasting effects on our relationship with nuclear armed Pakistan will be.

This piece of good news was, however, more than offset by the shameful conduct of Congress which bodes ill for the future. At some time during the past months our Republicans had, for unfathomed reasons of their own, invited Israel’s President Benyamin Netanyahu, fondly referred to as Bibi in the media, to address a Joint Session of Congress on Tuesday May 24. In order to pre-empt any misunderstandings and to assure the country who is in charge in regard to our Middle East policy the president gave a speech on the day prior to Netanyahu’s arrival which also touched briefly, very briefly, on the Palestinian issue. There needs to be a “two state solution” he declared, where the Jewish state lives peacefully alongside a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders and mutually agreed land swaps to account for some of the settlements. When Bibi read “1967 borders” he became apoplectic and vowed “Never Again!”

Next day’s meeting in the Oval Office with Obama was frosty. Although Obama pledged all of America’s might to the security of Israel this fell on deaf ears and “1967 borders” became a battle cry. Inasmuch as it was known that Netanyahu would give a talk not only before Congress on the following Tuesday but also to the major Israeli lobby group, AIPAC, on Monday, Obama decided to present his own version to AIPAC on Sunday. It brought no news but tried to reassure the Jewish leadership of our country that our heart is with Israel, come what may, and that the dispute is really a tempest in a teapot. The Palestinians will be made to see reason and any attempt on their part to unilaterally declare a state in September before the UN will not be viewed with favor here. He then promptly left town for Ireland and the UK where he found a warmer welcome than he nowadays receives in Washington. 

Netanyahu’s AIPAC speech was merely a dress rehearsal for next day’s before Congress and I must say that the latter was masterful. Dr. Joseph Goebbels could not have done better. But let me start with the pomp and circumstance as I saw it on CNN that morning. In last year’s February issue (The Humpty Dumpty Society) I mentioned the ceremony which accompanies our presidents’ annual State of the Union speech and this event was an exact replica. The only difference was the missing herald who would have announced, “Mr. Speaker: The Prime Minister of the State of Israel.” But everything else was there: the thunderous applause, handshakes and embraces as he made his way to the podium. There was more applause when he was officially introduced and at least 26 standing ovations during the 45 minute speech. One lone heckler was promptly removed from the scene and what has been called the “Lovefest” continued unabated.   

The substance of the speech was: Israel wants peace and needs peace! He welcomes the changes in the Arab world where the people are demanding democracy and this is completely in line with Israel’s aspirations, “an epic battle is now unfolding in the Middle East between tyranny and freedom. A great convulsion is shaking the earth from the Khyber Pass to Gibraltar. The tremors have shattered states and toppled governments. And we can all see that the ground is still shifting. Now this historic moment holds the promise of a new dawn of freedom and opportunity. Millions of young people are determined to change their future. We all look at them. They muster courage. They risk their lives. They demand dignity. They desire liberty.”

But Israel as the lone nation in the Middle East has already achieved this goal. “Israel is different. As the great English writer George Eliot predicted over a century ago, that once established, the Jewish state ‘will shine like a bright star of freedom amid the despotisms of the East.’ Well, she was right. . . . Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights. This startling fact reveals a basic truth: Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East. Israel is what is right about the Middle East. Israel fully supports the desire of Arab peoples in our region to live freely.”

He then proceeded to castigate Iran’s leadership for their quest to obtain nuclear weapons and after this brief detour ended up with what is on everybody’s mind: the Palestinians. “We must also find a way to forge a lasting peace with the Palestinians.” In order to achieve it “I am willing to make painful compromises . . . this is not easy for me. I recognize that in a genuine peace, we will be required to give up parts of the Jewish homeland. In Judea and Samaria the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers. . . . This is the land of our forefathers . . . . But there is another truth: the Palestinians share this small land with us. We seek a peace in which they will be neither Israel’s subjects nor its citizens. They should enjoy a national life of dignity as free, viable and independent people in their own state.”

What should this state look like? There was no word in regard to what the painful compromises would consist of but a return to the pre June 1967 armistice line with minor corrections was clearly out of the question. Furthermore, the Palestinian state must be demilitarized and the Jordan River valley must remain under Israeli military control. The major settlement blocks must be incorporated into the Israeli state and Jerusalem “must remain the united capital of Israel.” Furthermore, “Hamas is not a partner for peace . . . So I say to President Abbas: Tear up your pact with Hamas! Sit down and negotiate! Make peace with the Jewish state!”   

As mentioned, our “lawmakers” were ecstatic and another scene of more than half a century ago came to mind. It was Goebbels’ speech in the Sportpalast in February of 1943 where he raised the rhetorical question: “Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg? Wollt ihr ihn, wenn nötig, totaler und radikaler, als wir ihn uns heute überhaupt erst vorstellen können? It received frenetic applause and can be rendered into English as: Do you want total war? Do you want it, if need be, to be more total and radical than we are even able to imagine today? The analogy is not altogether inept. The war was already going badly at the time with the Wehrmacht in retreat on all fronts and a massive effort by the homefront would be required to prevent the expected Bolshevization of Germany and Europe. The folks who enthusiastically clapped at the Sportpalast can be excused because their lives were literally at stake. Israel today feels itself likewise beleagured and under existential threat, at least in the minds of its leading politicians. If Netanyahu had given this speech at the Knesset and it had received this welcome it would, therefore, also be understandable, but for our lawmakers to act in this manner is simply inexcusable. Were they really so bereft of all good sense not to realize that hey had applauded the death of any lasting Middle East peace and thereby fostered further wars in which we are bound to be inextricably involved?

May 24, 2011 is likely to have been Netanyahu’s “finest hour, to use Churchill’s phrase, who didn’t realize when he uttered it that it was also the beginning of the end of the British Empire as he had known it throughout his life. But Netanyahu is no fool. He knew precisely what he was doing. As an apostle of peace and praising Obama ever so often, while playing the role of the previously eternally victimized who is now at long last standing up for freedom and democracy, he sounded all the notes Americans love to hear. Even when they were pure propaganda. To claim solidarity with freedom loving Arabs and at the same time exempting the Palestinians from their right to self-determination is the height of hypocrisy. To state that Abbas must disavow approximately half of his people who had voted for Hamas, while at the same time his coalition in the Knesset includes equally radical  elements, is disingenous. To state that Only a democratic Israel has protected freedom of worship for all faiths in Jerusalem is equally dishonest. Jews were forbidden to enter the city only after the disastrous Bar-Cochba revolt during the 2nd century of our era and it was the Muslim Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab who granted the Jews unhindered access into the city after he had conquered it in 638. Religious freedom was also granted to Christians who lived there at the same time, although they had fought against him while the Jews had been his allies. Access to the Western Wall was denied to Jews thereafter only from 1948-1967 when the city was divided between Israel and Jordan. Netanyahu knows that observant Jews regularly came to live and die in the Holy Land, especially after the demise of the “Crusader kingdom, and that Muslim rulers had always been more generous to Jews than Christians had ever been. He also knows that, while he was speaking, Muslims from the West Bank have only restricted access to the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, while the inhabitants of Gaza have none at all.   

Some of these glaring discrepancies between fact and fiction were, of course, picked up in the foreign media and even our Christian Science Monitor wrote under the headline, Netanyahu’s real message to Congress: There will be no  peace talks. OK, those words didn’t come out of his mouth. But that’s the practical meaning of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress this morning.” The article also mentioned that an Abbas aide had called it “a declaration of war.” Although one may take exception to that blunt opinion the fact remains, as even the Salt Lake Tribune conceded in an Editorial, that Netanyahu’s insistence that Israel must be able to retain troops on the Jordan River “is a deal breaker. No sovereign state of Palestine can be expected to tolerate Israeli troops along Palestine’s border with Jordan.”  

More significantly there were also Jewish voices raised, both here as well as in Israel, who saw through Netanyahu’s ploy and condemned it. In regard to the vigorous protestations over Obama’s Middle East speech MJ Rosenberg, who used to work for AIPAC in the 1980s, wrote under the headline, “Mission impossible. Keeping Israel happy.” “Trying to appease Netanyahu and AIPAC empowers the right and cuts moderates off at the knees. It’s time for Obama to treat these people as what they are: enemies of everything he aspires to do and be.  Why would the president think that he can possibly find friends on the right? He can’t.” A few days later Rosenberg wrote an article, “Congress to Palestinians: Drop Dead. Netanyahu’s address to Congress demonstrated that he has no intention of making peace with the Palestinians.” In the article he pointed out that “If anyone had any doubt whether the Palestinians would declare a state in September, they can’t have them now.”

This is likely to be correct. Netanyahu, fully supported by the American Congress, has left them no other choice and Palestinian envoys are currently traveling around the world to garner support from abroad. Sandy Tolan, associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC, headlined his article on the problem with “The surreal solution. Following Obama’s weak speeches and Netanyahu’s rejection of any compromise, Palestinians look elsewhere for support.” He pointed out in the article that, “By making a new demand, Netanyahu has moved the goal-posts – insisting that a nation where one in five people is Arab be formally recognized as a state for Jews only. This may make sense for a delusional Congress, but why should any Palestinian leader agree to that?  . . . Obama, who raised genuine hopes in the West Bank with his Cairo speech nearly two years ago, has now utterly lost the Palestinians. As September approaches, and a talk of a third intifada builds, America may find itself virtually alone on the question of Palestine, far less able to influence events in the region.” 

The hour of truth for American Jews is rapidly approaching. They have to come to grips with the fundamental question: Where does my primary loyalty reside? The problem was highlighted by Aaron David Miller in his book on the ill-conceived second Camp David negotiations which had been initiated by the Clinton administration in its waning days (March 1, 2009. Whither Zionism? Revisited). Miller defined himself as “an American who happens to be Jewish” while Denis Ross’ attitude, the chief negotiator for our side, was the opposite. For Israel’s died in the wool Zionists this is a distinction without a difference because as Golda Meir had quipped when confronted with Kissinger’s stance of being an American Jew, “I don’t care. I read from right to left anyway (Kissinger Years of Renewal p.375).”

America’s Jews are now worried because soul-searching is required. This was expressed in print by Jane Eisner who wrote an article in The Guardian with the headline, “Don’t be fooled by the applause, Binyamin Netanyahu. Israel’s PM received a rapturous reception from Congress, but US Jewish opinion at large is frustrated with his intransigence.” In the article one finds statements such as, “Jews in the United States do not like finding themselves in the position of choosing between their president and the prime minister of Israel. . . . Netanyahu’s defiant stance puts us in a heart-wrenching conundrum. We can choose to support his view of the world, in which an aggrieved Israel bears no responsibility for the occupation and for the impasse in negotiations – and many American Jews will. They will side with him and the Republican Congress who offered him this unusual platform without, of course, any reciprocal chance to hear another point of view. But I don’t believe that all or even most American Jews share that position. . . . Most of us dread what will happen in September, if the UN vote is successful and Israel will become even more isolated and demonised. You are making us choose, Prime Minister Netanyahu. Please don’t.” 

This article is important not only for the truth it tells but that it was published in the UK rather than the US. I have yet to see a similar one in the American press where it would make the impact it deserves. Who knows, let alone reads, The Guardian here? The fact that these views by an American Jew could only be published in a major foreign newspaper testifies to the censorship the average American public lives under.

Politicians always like to present their position as the only legitimate one for whatever people they speak for. Furthermore, they always act as if they were speaking for all of the people of the given nation they represent. Zionism’s spokesmen: Herzl, Weizmann, Ben-Gurion, always confronted the Gentile world with an image that their views and desires were those of all Jews, which was never the case. Netanyahu is no exception and he simply follows in their footsteps. But the fact is that he does not speak for all of his citizens in Israel and neither does he for world Jewry at large, although he’d like us to think so. The Diaspora Jews have fundamentally different needs from those in Israel. They want to pursue their personal goals in peace and prosperity in whatever country they live in. They will support their relatives abroad but the Zionist dream of emigrating to that patch of land for which they are supposed to “eternally yearn,” holds little attraction. The limited applicability of the idea was clearly demonstrated after 1948 and especially after the Soviet Union was forced to let their Jewish citizens emigrate. About eighty percent of them chose Western nations rather than Israel, and one must say for good reason.

Zionism’s problem with the Jewish Diaspora is not new and points to what may be called the dual identity of the Jewish soul. Some Jews have always regarded themselves as members of a Jewish nation, albeit in exile, while others have mainly felt themselves as either religiously or ethnically associated by tradition and shared fate with other Jews. The German word Schicksalsgemeinschaft is, therefore, quite appropriate. This duality is the reason why Zionism, which emphasized nation status above everything else, was originally met with such hostility by the majority of Jews in the West. They did not want to go to Palestine and the specter of being accused of dual loyalty was a very real one of which, as we know, Hitler took full advantage. His war was not only against the Allied nations it was also against the “Jewish nation” which had been the first to declare “holy war” on him by initiating boycotts of German goods immediately within two months of his ascension to power in 1933. Subsequently Weizmann promised Chamberlain in September of 1939, that the Jewish people would extend all possible help to the Allies in the war effort. Deliberately inflated fears in March of 1933 as to what Hitler might do as well as attempts to destabilize his regime had turned into a genuine horror when he took vicious revenge during WWII. The German Jews had warned their American cousins before the war not to make life any harder for them than it already was, but these voices remained unheard. The propaganda mills ground on with the well-known disastrous outcome (Understanding the Holocaust Parts I-III).

This is history but what are the “facts on the ground” today? We owe the term to Ariel Sharon in regard to the settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories and it was duly echoed by George W Bush, thereby no longer making them illegal in American eyes. But let us start at home. The overriding aspect which limits Obama’s choices is the election campaign for 2012 which is already in full swing. He cannot alienate major Jewish donors and regardless of what his real feelings are in regard to the Palestinians he is forced to at least pay lip-service to Jewish opinion in our country. Although there are some warning voices in the Jewish community which point out that continued unquestioned support of the Netanyahu government is a disaster, this has not yet reached the mainstream papers such as the New York Times, the Washington Post or the LA Times. This would be a pre-requisite to counter the claim by Republican presidential aspirants that he is “abandoning our most faithful ally.” Mitt Romney has already set the tone, by declaring that “Obama has thrown Israel under the bus.” This is the type of rhetoric we can expect for the rest of this year and up to November of next. It will be a serious hindrance for the conduct of a foreign policy which serves American rather than Zionist interests. A foreign policy which is of “the honest broker type” could only happen if the distinction between Zionism and Judaism were to be fully recognized. But this depends now entirely on our Jewish community. Unless it speaks out and dissociates itself from Likud policies it will bear the responsibility for the disasters which are in the offing. This is America’s current tragedy: we cannot pursue an independent foreign policy in the Middle East because the propaganda of the “Judeo-Christian tradition,” makes Israel for all practical purposes already the fifty first state of the Union. American Jews, who see what the future holds if the current course is maintained, need to muster courage and declare themselves unequivocally on the side of universal human rights which grant equality to Palestinians. If they were to do so they would not be alone but merely be helping the Israeli peace camp which is in urgent need of it.

In Israel Netanyahu, for all of his bravado, is also in a real bind. Even if he wanted to make a viable peace agreement with the Palestinians it is too late for a number of reasons. First of all he would lose his job because his government coalition would never ratify any agreement. Netanyahu has placed emphasis on Hamas as the chief reason why there can be no negotiations with the Palestinians but this is merely a ploy. First it was Arafat who was no partner for peace, then Abbas failed the test, when Hamas won the election there could not be further negotiations with Abbas because he could not speak for all of the Palestinians and when the Palestinians reconciled there can be no negotiations because Hamas is a terrorist organization and as such unqualified to participate. The offshoot is in essence: there can be no serious negotiations although we need to talk about them endlessly. Furthermore, Americans are by and large unaware of what Netanyahu’s coalition partners in government really stand for. This was highlighted by Elliot Spitzer who is a former governor of New York, and now hosts the CNN prime time news slot. Last week he had Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, a well-known Palestinian educator and legislator, for a few minutes on his program. Spitzer, who is Jewish, dominated the conversation with the usual assertion that it’s all the Palestinian’s fault why there is no peace and that they must disavow Hamas. Ashrawi, who happens to be Christian, was not given a proper chance to disabuse him of some of his notions and when she told Spitzer in regard to Hamas that Netanyahu’s government is full of people who want to get rid of the Palestinians he scoffed and broke off the conversation. But Ashrawi had a point which Americans don’t want to recognize.

  Currently Netanyahu’s coalition government consists of six political parties of which Likud is the largest and it has steadfastly refused the establishment of a Palestinian state. The current apparent agreement is a sham because the conditions, before negotiations even start, are unacceptable and everybody knows it. Next comes Yisrael Beitenu (Israel is our Home) under the leadership of Avigdor Li(e)berman (the name is spelled both ways in various documents) whose family emigrated from the Soviet Union to Israel in 1978. He is also currently Deputy Prime Minister and Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs. His party aims to establish an exclusively Jewish state in as much of the conquered territories as possible, including the Golan Heights. Li(e)berman’s attitude towards Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular is largely one of disdain. It has been reported that in 1988 he had called for the flooding of the Aswan dam in retaliation for Egyptian support of Yasir Arafat and in May of 2004 he has been quoted as having said that 90 per cent of Israel’s 1.2 million Palestinian citizens “have no place here. They can take their bundles and get lost.” 

After these comes Labor under Ehud Barak whose views I have discussed previously on these pages (March 1, 2007 Barak in Salt Lake City). Although he would agree to a Palestinian state, the attached conditions would not be accepted by any Jew if the situation were reversed. The other three coalition partners come from the religious and settler organizations. Shas opposes any negotiations over the status of East Jerusalem, and so does United Torah Judaism. The Jewish Home party rejects the return of any of the Occupied Territories.

When confronted with a government of this type, reasonable persons must ask themselves: who is the negotiating partner the Palestinians are supposed to have? Yes, everybody will agree that all Israeli governments, including the present one, want peace. But they want it on their terms. The demand is: give me what I want now and don’t be surprised if I want more later on. This was precisely the tactic Ben-Gurion had successfully used with the British. When partition of Palestine was offered in 1937 the Arabs rejected it but Ben-Gurion wisely decided that half a loaf is better than none and that he would get the rest through military action later. Now that the shoe is on the other foot Israelis have no incentive to give up their conquests unless forced to by world opinion.

As mentioned earlier, for peace negotiations to begin the Palestinians must recognize not merely the existence of the state of Israel but that Israel is a “Jewish state.” What this means precisely is not quite clear. Is it supposed to be a theocratic state based on the laws of the written and oral Torah? Or is it to be a secular state where “Jewish values” govern? How these differ from universally agreed one, has never been defined.  But whatever a “Jewish state” is it cannot be democratic because the non-Jewish minority in the country can by definition never be full-fledged citizens. Inasmuch as any Palestinian government sees itself as responsible for all Palestinians wherever they live it can never agree to this demand unless the rights of Palestinians in the Jewish state are clearly and precisely spelled out. If one were to say that the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have no right to speak for their relatives in Israel and the diaspora a fair minded person would immediately counter with: but this is the right Zionists are appealing to when it comes to Jews anywhere in the world.

Netanyahu and his partners have, however, an additional problem which they know but don’t talk about. The settlements on occupied land after the 1967 War were originally a secular military enterprise to keep the land for “security reasons.” But by now they have acquired an additional religious dimension. The ground is holy, all of it, and no government has the right to give up an inch. To evict a Jew from any part of Eretz Israel is a sin punishable by death. Rabin was murdered for precisely that reason. In the current climate any government which proposes to do so is likely to fall and there is even the danger that the army may refuse to evict the settlers, because it has also been imbued with orthodox religious fervor.   

The facts on the Palestinian side have also changed in the past few years. As mentioned, Jewish settlements have proliferated and bypass roads, which Palestinians are prohibited to use, crisscross the West Bank. Travel within the territory has also been impeded by numerous checkpoints as well as by the “Wall of Separation” which has gone up. Ian Buruma reported in the New York Review of Books that it could take between three and five hours “to get to Bethlehem from Ramallah, depending on the Israeli checkpoints. Normally a trip would take only thirty minutes via Jerusalem. But Ramallah is also now surrounded by settlements and cut off by the wall. Some Palestinians have permits to go to Jerusalem . . . but it can take them three, four or five hours to get there, even though the trip can be made by car in fifteen minutes.” One may ask: how long are people supposed to put up with this kind of chicanery?

During the past two years the Palestinians have largely given up the idea that violence will lead to independence and have charted a different course. Under its Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, the infrastructure has been developed in preparation for independence. Construction is rapidly proceeding in Ramallah and even a sushi restaurant has opened. The Palestinian economy in the West Bank is currently booming and the goal of independence, which was announced in September of 2009 for two years hence, seems now to be in grasp. Add to this President Obama’s statement of last September “that he expected the framework for an independent Palestinian state to be declared in a year [New York Times April 2, 2011].” In this context reconciliation with Hamas was a necessity because the Palestinians have to speak with one voice come September.

These developments including the Egyptian opening of the Rafah border to the people of the Gaza strip puts the Netanyahu government in an extremely difficult position. As the above mentioned New York Times article also reported time is not on the Israelis’ side any longer and they know it. The article quoted Ehud Barak as having told a conference in Tel Aviv, “We are facing a diplomatic-political tsunami that the majority of the public is unaware of and that will peak in September. It is a very dangerous situation, one that requires action. Paralysis, rhetoric, inaction will deepen the isolation of Israel.” What would the consequences be if the UN admitted the Palestinian state with the borders which existed prior to the 1967 Six Day War? Israel would then automatically become an occupying power of another member state of the UN and as stated in the same New York Times article, “Every military base in the West Bank will be contravening the sovereignty of an independent U.N. member state.”

In this light Netanyahu’s triumph in Congress and the enthusiastic reception upon his return to Israel is quite meaningless. He said correctly in Washington that the ground is shifting but he and his followers have not drawn the proper lesson. He had insisted on “security” for Israel which in today’s world is ephemeral. Not even the people in the Twin Towers had security on 9/11, and rockets know no borders. Security can no longer be obtained by “strategic depth” or a powerful military. The bomb, which Israel has, is still the most effective deterrent as the example of North Korea versus Libya as well as Iraq has proven. The optimal deterrence is, however, conduct. If Israel were to give up plans of dominating the Palestinians and instead concentrated its efforts on economic and scientific developments, in conjunction with the Arab world, it would be accepted as a partner and fears of invasion and/or obliteration could be shelved. But this is too much to hope for because emotions, religious as well as political, stand in the way.

September, which bodes ill for Zionists, is only 3 months away. The clock is ticking and if the Palestinians can avoid the temptation of another intifada within this period their statehood might come to pass. But their problem is again the US. Although there is no veto in the General Assembly its president, Joseph Deiss, has already said that membership without approval of the Security Council is out of the question. As such, the ball will again be in Obama’s court. Will the US veto the resolution as we did on the legality of the settlements earlier in the year, will we attempt to have the Brits veto it for us, or will we simply abstain from voting? This is the question Obama faces and no one can answer it for him.

The Arab spring is turning into a hot summer and Netanyahu’s problems can only grow rather than diminish. What politicians have done in the past in situations of this type was to make a war to detract attention. This may take the form of Israel bombing Iran’s nuclear plants or an invasion of Lebanon or Syria. We don’t know what the plans of Mossad and the Israeli Army are but judging from past experience they may well do something to avoid the September tsunami, to use Ehud Barak’s term. I would not doubt that a major “false flag” terrorist attack on the US may also be under consideration. It is a dangerous time and Congress has deprived us of the last hope for a peaceful future. We have squandered our freedom of independent action and are now thoroughly enmeshed in the support of a reactionary regime in Israel, to our and the rest of the world’s detriment.

Most Americans don’t see what’s on the horizon and those who do resign themselves to the notion that they can’t do anything about it. This is not quite true. Currently it is only propaganda which keeps us captive and theoretically it could still be counteracted. But where are the people of stature in our country who would be willing to take up this task? Yet it is urgent because unless the pro Likud stance of our media is reversed we will have a war which will be far more serious than the ones we are currently engaged in.







July 1, 2011

THE GOEBBELS TRAP

            In the May 1 installment (Post-Easter Reflections) I had referred to Francis Neilson’s book The Makers of War which was first published in the wake of his resignation from Parliament in 1915. Thereafter he moved permanently to the U.S., married in 1917 and started writing a series of books as well as becoming a major patron of the arts. In 1940 he published: The Tragedy of Europe. A Day by Day Commentary on the Second World War.  The book was reprinted in 1986 and is a very valuable resource which shows how the American public was once again driven to enter the European war. I will return to the book later but for now the important point is that it contains a reference to H. C. Peterson’s: Propaganda for War. The Campaign against American Neutrality 1914-1917 (University of Oklahoma Press 1939). It likewise is highly informative and as will become apparent has direct relevance to current American domestic and foreign policy.

            Prior to publishing War&Mayhem I read for the first time Hitler’s Mein Kampf which he had written in 1925, while imprisoned at Landsberg for the misfired “Beer hall Putsch.” I remembered that he had praised the British WWI propaganda and thoroughly condemned Germany’s amateurish countermeasures. After having read Peterson’s work, in order to refresh my memory, I pulled Mein Kampf from the bookshelf and saw that he had devoted an entire chapter to Kriegspropaganda. The next paragraph provides the essence.

 There was no effective propaganda from the German side. Everything that was attempted in this respect was from the beginning so insufficient and utterly wrong that at minimum it was useless and at times harmful. Propaganda is the means towards a purpose and has to be adapted to serve this purpose. When nations are confronted with a struggle for their existence, questions in regard to humanity and aesthetics become irrelevant. Propaganda has to be directed towards the masses and the message has to be at the level of the lowest common denominator. It was completely wrong to ridicule the enemy because the soldier at the front knew better. The British and American propaganda was psychologically correct. By presenting the Germans as Huns and barbarians the Allied soldier was prepared for the horrors he would be confronted with in battle. When they eventually occurred they not only reinforced what he had been taught to expect but also increased his rage and hatred against the accursed enemy. The German was told that both sides had to some extent been responsible for the war. But there was no such equivocation by the enemy who declared categorically that Prussian militarism and the Kaiser were the sole culprits. The message that the war was not conducted against the German people but only its ruling class paved the way for the 1918 revolution. Anyone who studied this flood of enemy propaganda which descended upon Germany could learn a great deal.    

Hitler took the lesson to heart and immediately upon ascension to power created the Reichsministerium für Propaganda und Volksaufklärung under Dr. Joseph Goebbels. The term Volksaufklärung has no counterpart in the English language because the words “information,” “elucidation” or “explanations” do not convey the real intent. One can describe it as: clarification of the important issues of the day for the nation. With other words: indoctrination in the party line. Everybody, friend and foe alike, had to admit that Goebbels was a master of his craft and in addition had, what is popularly called, the gift of gab. His strength was that he didn’t just make up stories. He was a true believer who had transferred his earlier faith in Catholicism to National Socialism as incorporated in Adolf Hitler. Unlike others, such as Goering or Himmler, who would have gladly attempted negotiations with the Allies, Goebbels stood by his Führer and followed him into death. He had come to believe his own propaganda to the extent that he was able to convince his wife, Magda, to poison their six children with cyanide before shooting her as well as himself. Such is the power of propaganda people can ensnare themselves in. This Medea like act by Magda was not in order to spite a faithless husband, but stemmed from the firm conviction that she and the children were doomed once the “Asiatic hordes” had taken over.

Let us now return to Peterson and see what he has to tell us about how reluctant Americans were dragged into WWI. This is not an academic exercise because whoever has eyes to see will immediately notice that the same forces are at work today to ensure that America remains entangled in never ending wars. It should be mentioned at the outset that intelligence provides no immunity against the vicious effects of propaganda as the examples of Goebbels as well as President Wilson prove. On the contrary, intelligence merely serves, under those circumstances, to rationalize what propaganda has already instilled in the mind.

I was always puzzled by Wilson’s behavior. He had won the November 1916 election under the slogan, “He has kept us out of the war,” yet entered the war in April of 1917, regardless of the fact that nothing particularly untoward had happened to Americans in the intervening five months. The resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare by Germany was not the cause but an invaluable excuse. The British blockade had become increasingly effective and the German civilian population was dangerously close to starvation. This forced Germany, as countermeasure, to curtail transatlantic supplies to the UK which could have ended the war. Had Wilson indeed been neutral he would have insisted that freedom of the seas applied to the illegal British blockade just as much as to the German measures trying to break it.

The Zimmermann telegram, which was one of the major German blunders, also became a powerful propaganda weapon. Arthur Zimmermann, German Secretary for Foreign Affairs, had anticipated that the resumption of the unrestricted submarine warfare, which would inevitably involve the sinking of U.S. ships once they entered the war zone, would lead to an American declaration of war. It must be remembered that the situation was quite difficult for German U boat captains because British merchant vessels were armed and at times sailed under the American flag. Only at the last moment, when they were already engaged in chasing the submarine, they hoisted the Union Jack.  In search for Allies, Zimmermann authorized the German ambassador, on January 16 1917, to tell the Mexican government that unrestricted submarine warfare would commence on February 1. In case of a declaration of war by America, Germany would provide financial support to Mexico for a Reconquista of New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. The telegram was immediately intercepted and decoded by the British but, because of its obvious propaganda value, they waited to inform the U.S. government of its contents until February 24 and it was not released to the public until March 1. The fact that German help was promised only in case the U.S. had declared war on Germany was downplayed, and the emphasis was on a violation of the Monroe doctrine and the specter of a German invasion via Mexico.

As mentioned, these were, however, only excuses rather than reasons. While Wilson had publicly proclaimed complete neutrality in his heart he had always been pro-British. Even in August 1914 he has been quoted in a private conversation to say, “Let us pray that Germany will not develop a von Moltke.” Wilson apparently didn’t know that Helmuth von Moltke, a nephew of the renowned general, was in charge of the German army. Later in the war Wilson mentioned “that he was ‘heart and soul for the Allies’, as well as ‘that he had been on their side ‘since the first day the Germans moved.’” It was this conflict between his private views and his official duties to the country which made his policies, as Peterson called them, “unneutral” from the very beginning of the war. Peterson wrote,

 

“In order to remove the causes for German submarine warfare, some Americans desired that pressure be exerted on Great Britain forcing her to relax the illegal blockade of the Central Powers. Wilson, however, refused to do anything which would embarrass the Allies. Many Americans wished an embargo on munitions; Wilson objected. Bryan [U.S. Secretary of State] prohibited loans to the warring nations; Wilson lifted the ban. Bryan asked for permission to warn Americans from traveling on foreign ships; Wilson refused. Congress tried to pass a bill preventing Americans from traveling on the armed ships of belligerents; Wilson personally defeated the measure. The President’s partisanship was so apparent that even the British stated: ‘During the period while America was neutral all the issues in dispute between England and America were decided in England’s favor.’” 

 

By January 1917 not only Germany’ situation was precarious, but the Allies had run out of money to pay for their weapons imports from the U.S. Since both sides to the conflict had been virtually exhausted, a truly neutral America could have brokered a peace without victory. But this was impossible. Not only had, as a result of British propaganda, public sentiment begun to swing toward the Allies, but without extracting reparations from Germany the huge war debts the Allies had accumulated in the U.S. could not have been recovered. America’s entry into the war, which assured an Allied victory, had become an economic necessity.

Let us now take a closer look how the British propaganda really operated. There were two aspects: the mechanics and the content. As far as the former is concerned the first act by the British government was to censor the news America was to receive from the continent. This was achieved by simply cutting the transatlantic cable on August 5, 1914 from Germany to the U.S. During the all-important first months of the war the only news even official American government sources had available was what London permitted them to know. As such, what has been called Greuelpropaganda (atrocity stories) in regard to German conduct in Belgium could not be checked for veracity and allowed for the emergence of the mental image of the “Hun.” Even when wireless telegraphy came on the scene later in 1914, its facilities were limited and the German dispatches arrived considerably later than the British. As is well known the first news make headlines while retractions or corrections are buried in small print in the inside pages of newspapers or magazines.

The British also immediately established censorship of the press and mail. The mail censorship office started with 14 persons in August of 1914 and grew to 3700 in London alone by 1917. An official War Propaganda Bureau, under Charles Masterman, was established in September 1914, and different individuals were appointed to head the departments dealing with individual countries. For the U.S. it was Sir Gilbert Parker and one of his first official actions was to arrange a meeting in the offices of J.P. Morgan on August 23, 1914 where “’ it was determined to appoint English editorial writers on forty American newspapers.”’ Since the source for this information was the German military attaché, Franz von Papen, Peterson was skeptical, but “there is every indication that the Morgan firm did engage in propaganda work in connection with the floating of loans.” He also cited a conversation, published by the French historian Gabriel Hanotaux, where a former Morgan partner, Robert Bacon (also U.S. statesman and diplomat), had commented, ‘“In America … there are only 50,000 people who understand the necessity of the United States entering the war immediately on your side. But there are 100,000,000 who have not even thought of it. Our task is to see that the figures are reversed and that the 50,000 become the 100,000,000. We will accomplish this.’” Peterson went on to say, “it would be very interesting to know just what he did to fulfill his promise.”

We know, however, that some of the means were

 

to make an ordinary political power struggle appear to be a fight between good and evil. Beyond this, they must make the Allies’ cause appear to be America’s cause – there must be developed a belief in the identity of interests between the United States and Great Britain. In developing the idea that this new war was a holy war the British were very fortunate. The struggle between weary old England and boisterous new Germany readily adapted itself to the stereotype of virtue versus iniquity.”

 

The biggest aid in this effort was, of course, the common language and as far as molding the content of propaganda messages is concerned the British adhered to the following rules:

 

“(1) they told only that part of the truth which benefited their cause; (2) they utilized background material for which there was no evidence; (3) they exploited to the fullest the emotions and ideals of those being educated; (4) they gave their propaganda an aura of authority by using big names, by quoting their enemy, or by appealing to legality; (5) they made their arguments simple and eliminated all qualifying statements; (6) they used endless repetition. ….

The elimination of all arguments which tended to warrant German entry into the war, and the accentuating of all those which justified French and English participation, aided in establishing the concept of war guilt. … By omitting mention of good Germans or good actions of Germans, these people were made to appear unregenerate. And by omitting reference to evil Englishmen, the Germans, by contrast, were made to appear even worse. This technique of exploiting part-truths is characteristic of all propagandists. At the hands of the British it became high art.”

 

To this one needs to add the previously mentioned Greuelpropaganda which started in the first weeks of the war. It hammered on the statements that not only had Germany wantonly ignored Belgian neutrality but had also been truly barbarous in the conduct of the war in that country. Alleged atrocities included: the poisoning of wells with bacteria, inoculating exchange prisoners with tuberculosis, bayonetting babies, chopping off the hands of a baby, and the manufacture of soap from dead German soldiers. The latter two are of special interest because chopping the hands off children, as well as adults, had actually occurred in the Belgian Congo by Belgian supervisors when certain work quotas had not been met by the locals. The soap story experienced a resurrection in WWII except that it was the remains of Jewish concentration camp victims who were supposed to have served that purpose. The destruction of major portions of Louvain including its famous library also became a cause célèbre, because it was used to prove Germany’s total disregard for mankind’s cultural heritage.  

What the propagandists failed to mention were the reasons for German misconduct. The violation of Belgian neutrality was a military necessity and during the war the British showed no concern in regard to the Greek’s neutral status or about the routine interference with shipping by neutral states. As far as German actions in Belgium were concerned they resulted first from panic and subsequently they represented attempts to deal with a hostile population which took aim at an occupation by means of what is now called asymmetric warfare. When the outmatched Belgian forces resorted to guerilla tactics and sniper fire erupted in the rear of the front from private houses in cities and villages, the ordinary soldier was gripped by fear because he never knew where the next shot might come from. That men would begin to react irrationally under those circumstances should not be surprising, especially when they were at times inebriated from the ever present wine supplies. To what extent commanding officers were involved remains unknown, but that an official policy of reprisals existed is a fact. When culprits could not readily be identified hostages were taken, including at times women and children, and some were executed. When church towers were used, or suspected of being used, as watch towers they were shelled, regardless of their cultural value, as for instance the cathedral of Rheims.

One might think that when a war is finished rational behavior would come to the fore again. Far from it. The propaganda which had been so useful during the war, such as the exclusive German war guilt, was no longer regarded as a means to win the war but had been elevated to historical fact by 1918. It was enshrined in the so-called “peace” treaty. Germany had to be punished and WWII had become, for all practical purposes, inevitable. Niall Ferguson, who also detailed the causes and subsequent conduct of WWI in The Pity of War, concluded not only that it had been totally unnecessary but that “was nothing less than the greatest error of modern history.” He was correct and by deliberately ignoring the causes of that error we have paved the way to the wars we are currently engaged in because all of them are the consequences of what Archibald Wavell had called: the Peace to end Peace. He had referred to the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire but it applied equally to Versailles.

As mentioned the methods perfected in the propaganda war of 1914-1918 were not abandoned in 1919 but reached full fruition during WWII and are still with us today right here in our country. While WWI is gradually being shorn of propaganda this does not hold true for WWII. On the other hand the British, after having lost their empire as a result of it, have re-examined the reasons. Clive Ponting, who has been mentioned in regard to his book on Churchill (President Bush’s choice, July 1, 2003), has also published 1940 – Myth and Reality as well as Armageddon – The Second World War. These paint a far more realistic picture than what Americans are still being told. Moreover, Madeleine Bunting’s The Model OccupationThe Channel Islands under German Rule, 1940-1945 is practically unknown here. Although published in hardback and available on amazon.com it had only one review. The reason is that it has never been reviewed in newspapers and journals. The islanders had made their peace with the occupying force, in part intermarried, and there was no resistance movement to speak of because the occupation was not too onerous. These facts did not fit the propaganda concept of the mortal danger Germany was supposed to have presented to England as well as America and destroyed the notion that all Nazis were evil.

Clive Ponting’s books did not fare better either. 1940 received four favorable reviews, while Armageddon had to make do with one, which actually referred to another book by Ponting with a similar title. Contrast this with for instance The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw or the numerous books by Stephen Ambrose on aspects of WWII which are all best-sellers. The problem with the American literature on WWII is not necessarily in regard to what it says but what it fails to report and thereby fosters the propaganda stereotype.

This is also highlighted by Neilson’s above mentioned Tragedy of Europe. The strength of the book resides in the fact that it depicts, just like these pages, history as it occurred rather than in hindsight, which by that time is influenced by the outcome. It is unfortunate that it covers only the period of May 18, 1939 - 0ctober 29, 1940. It would have been interesting to read to what extent Neilson might have changed some of his views as the war progressed and eventually engulfed his adopted country, the U.S. The Introduction to the book was written by Robert M. Hutchins (Dean of Yale Law School, subsequently President of the University of Chicago and later in life Editor in Chief of The Great Books of the Western World) and a key sentence bears repeating, “The ordinary American reader, who like me, knows nothing of history except the distortions of school texts and nothing of international politics except the distortions of the daily press, will find here a fund of material that will make him stop and reflect.” As mentioned earlier the book is full of insights and the author has authenticity because of his previous service in Parliament where he had occasion to mingle with all the luminaries of the day. He knew and respected Churchill, although having been at odds with his policies at times, and most importantly the fact that some of Churchill’s prescient words prior to the rise of Hitler, whenever he was temporarily out of power, did not match his actions when he had the opportunity to enforce them.

The key message of the book is: the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party was completely preventable had the injustices of the Versailles dictate been addressed in time. Since they were left to fester one should not have been surprised when a person like Hitler subsequently removed them by force at which point the British had to step in to save a treaty they didn’t like in the first place. To bolster his argument he cited Churchill who said in the House of Commons on October 23, 1922,

 

“… I would follow any real path, not a sham or a blind alley, which led to lasting reconciliation between Germany and her neighbors. .. Removal of just grievances of the vanquished ought to precede the disarmament of the victors. It would be safer to open questions like those of the Danzig-Corridor and Transylvania with all their delicacy and difficulty in cold blood and in a calm atmosphere and while the victor-nations still have ample superiority, than to wait and drift on inch by inch, and step by step, until once again vast combinations equally matched confront each other face to face. . . We might find ourselves pledged in honor and in law to enter a war against our will and against our better judgment in order to preserve those very injustices and grievances which sunder Europe today, which are the cause of present armaments and which, if not arrested, will cause another war. ..”

 

I have shortened the comments by omitting another insert prior to the last one to save space because the message is already abundantly clear. Neilson reinforced it with another Churchill quote from 1932, “If the English government really wants to do something for the promotion of peace, it should take the lead in revising the peace treaties, and should open up the question of Danzig and the Polish Corridor.” As we know this was not done until Hitler forced the issue in 1939.

As to pre-WWII opinions on Hitler he also quotes the early Churchill, “One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.” The quote came from Churchill’s book Step by Step which Neilson had been asked to review. The book “purports to be a series of letters” written during 1936-39 but Neilson found a number of anachronisms and wondered if at least some of these letters were written by Churchill to himself as recipient. Neilson’s own feelings on Hitler were reflected in, “The devil may be as black as he is painted; he may be all the Allied journals say he is, but I cannot get away from the fact that he knows thoroughly well what he is saying and what he is doing. He must know that, if the war is to continue [written October 7, 1939], and if he and his forces are defeated for the sole purpose of wiping out Hitlerism, France and Great Britain will be prone at the end of the job.”   

My greatest surprise when I read Neilson’s book, was the absence of a discussion of Jews and their problems. It comes up only once in the 676 pages of text in connection with Hitler’s speech after the victory in Poland [likewise October 7, 1939 entry]. He summarized the main points of the speech as,

 

“(1) a conference of nations;

 (2) disarmament or, failing that an agreement to forbid the use of poison gas in order to reduce the horrors of war; a return of armaments to a ‘sensible’ level as the most important precondition to security and peace;

 (3) a solution to the European Jew ‘problem’ [Judenproblem];

 (4) a possible restoration of a Polish State under German-Russian suzerainty, to contain only Poles;

 (5) the matter of return of the former German colonies.”

 

The West ignored the speech and the war ground on. There are two more aspects of Neilson’s book which are most á propos to our current situation. One is the need for evildoers,

 

“It was the Kaiser then; it is Hitler now. Indeed in all such great imbroglios, it is absolutely necessary to have a Kaiser or a Hitler. The war folks can’t get on without one. Remember the little Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte … It is well known that during the Napoleonic Wars people on the south coast of England believed that the Little Corsican occasionally had a feast of babies.”

 

Truly, nothing changes when leaders want to make war. In the past decade it was Saddam who was a Hitler, afterwards Ahmadinejad filled the role but eventually we became more generic and the Radical Muslim Terrorist now serves this purpose. In addition we haven’t given up on regime change which was likewise commented on by Neilson in relation to the WWII propaganda that the Allies have no quarrel with the German people; it’s just Hitler and his cronies who had to go.

 

“It is a curious world my masters! Suppose the German people had said to the French: ‘We have no quarrel with you at all, but we don’t like your Daladiers any better than we liked your Blums, so we are going to drop bombs on Paris with the intention of giving you the leader we think will suit you [October 6, 1939].”  

 

            All one has to do is to change German people to American people, Daladiers-Blums to Gadaffi, Paris to Tripoli and seven decades have vanished! Churchill’s dictum, "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies," is still the governing principle of our day.

We are again subjected to a relentless propaganda war which will in all probability ensnare us into additional military adventures against Muslim nations. The Israelis have succeeded in convincing major portions of our people that their goals are identical with ours and we have become chained to Israel. This has been a propaganda coup of major proportions as demonstrated by Netanyahu’s reception by Congress in May. It was aided by pounding on the “Judeo-Christian tradition” and the fact that Israeli politicians look like us and speak English fluently, frequently with hardly an accent. The Palestinians on the other hand are the strangers and when they talk in English they are at times hard to understand. Since the appeal is to emotions rather than the intellect it is obvious that Israel is likely to retain the upper hand.

             The current propaganda Americans are subjected to follows all the rules laid down during WWI by the British: censorship of information, deliberate use of the half-truth, picturing the adversary as utterly depraved and instilling fear of what he might do. Although censorship is used for the most part, at present, by the media rather than the government it is no less effective because as Peterson has stated in regard to British efforts during WWI, “the almost complete capture of American newswriters resulted in a press consistently friendly to the Allies.” The only independent information Americans get today is from the Internet and these sources are not always trustworthy either.

            What can individuals do under these circumstances? Obviously not much, but it behooves us to become aware and beware of the propaganda which engulfs us on a daily basis. We need to take a stand, in private as well as public discussions, for truthful information even in the face of its current unpopularity. Among this is that our Christian “Bible-thumpers” need to be informed that the “Good Book” has two parts. It is the second one which ought to be given preference and the first part should be read for its spiritual meaning rather than as a political roadmap to justify 21st century decisions. The mixture of politics with religion has always been fatal and when one turns the clock back to more than 2000 years the same results are bound to be achieved.

We have allowed the injustices perpetrated against Palestinians to fester, just like the British did in regard to Germany after the Versailles treaty. Inasmuch as Israel has misguided public opinion in our country on its side no American president has summoned the courage to take action. This failure will come to haunt us. Propaganda is a powerful sword and when one starts believing in it as being the truth one is liable to be killed by it. This is another lesson of history which we were supposed to have learned.

Our country is in serious financial difficulty. We can no longer afford the wars we are engaged in, let alone new ones. But unless we begin to distinguish between facts and propaganda we cannot expect any progress, in the domestic as well as international arena, to take place.  







August 1, 2011

MISGUIDED ARROGANT INCOMPETENCE

            One may think that this headline refers to the current scandalous behavior of Congress, but although it does apply to it, that topic will be covered in the September installment when we will know what happened on August 2 and its aftermath. The present essay deals with the causes which led us to the brink of default on our debts. Although the Republicans are holding Obama responsible, we have to go back to the decisions of the Bush administrations (Bush 41 and Bush 43) to understand what is happening now. Obama inherited two wars, a national debt which had doubled over the past 8 years, and an impending economic meltdown. None of this was his doing but the attempt to dig the country out of the hole which the Bush administration had dug by creating more debt has not yielded the expected gains. Unemployment is still unacceptably high and the true figure, which includes laid off workers who no longer actively look for employment and those who are underemployed (e.g. MBAs packing grocery bags) is, of course, way beyond the 9.2 % official figure. But, as mentioned, this aspect will be covered in more detail next month when we will know what the power brokers in Washington have inflicted upon us.

            As readers of these essays will readily appreciate, our library is beginning to overflow. The bookshelves in our main living quarters are full and ever so often some have to be relegated to the lower level of the house, where they are still available but not quite so readily. This was the case last month and in sifting what will go into the basement I came across a pristine book by Hans Walter Berg entitled: Das Erbe der GroszmogulnVoelkerschicksale zwischen Hindukusch und Golf von Bengalen, which might be translated as: The Mughal Legacy – Fate of peoples between the Hindu Kush and the Gulf of Bengal. It was published in 1988 and I had bought it in the early 90s during one of my visits to Vienna but never found the time to read it. When I now looked at it I was amazed at how topical the contents were. Had the Bush people read it, and taken the contents to heart the history of the past decade might have been considerably different. President George W Bush himself could not have been expected to know something about the countries he invaded because he had stated openly that “I read only headlines” and that he relies on what others, especially Condi Rice, told him. Responsible officials in the State Department did know, but they were overruled by the neocons who wanted to remake the world in their image.

The author of the book, which unfortunately has not been translated into English, had been since1952 the Asia correspondent for ARD, the major German news network. He was thoroughly familiar with the area and had interviewed the leading political figures of the time in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. He holds a PhD from the University of Munich and also a MA from the University of Michigan for Far East History. He is, therefore, clearly a person one should listen to. For today’s essay I shall limit myself to the essential features about Afghanistan and Pakistan because these are the areas of major concern right now.

            Berg used the Mughal Empire as background because the current states in the area are still influenced by Mughal traditions which form an essential part of their history. The empire lasted about two hundred years (1526-1726) and in its heyday stretched from Afghanistan through the northern half of India to what is now Bangladesh. The rulers were Muslim but managed not to alienate the Hindus to any appreciable extent. As far as the character of the kings was concerned it was a strange mixture of barbaric ruthlessness with a love of architecture, the arts and poetry. The world has to thank them for the beautiful buildings in Lahore and northern India, especially Agra. On the other hand, the rule was that “a king has no friends.” This extended to the king’s sons because their choice was “either kingship or the bier.” Some of them did not want to risk waiting for the father’s death and instead imprisoned him as had happened to the most celebrated Mughal, Shahjahan. He had built the Taj Mahal as the final resting place for his beloved wife but was never allowed to complete the planned identical monument, but of black marble instead of white, on the other side of the river which was intended to house his remains. His son, Aurangzeb, made sure that no more money would be spent on these building projects. Shahjahan had to spend the rest of his days locked up in the Red Fort from where he could view, but never visit, his wife’s tomb.

The Mughal Empire decayed because of constant internecine fights among the princes and this provided the British with the opportunity to expand and eventually consolidate their rule over India. Although they tried to gain possession of Afghanistan they failed in this endeavor. Even after three wars the country retained its independence due to the fierce fighting instinct of its inhabitants. The spirit of the Mughals with constant fights against attempting conquerors, and between the various tribes, extends into our time and only the names change under which the fights are carried out. My initial information came from the book and it was subsequently supplemented from articles on the Internet.

To understand our current problem in Afghanistan we have to go back to the second British-Afghan war which was concluded in 1893 with an agreement between the British Foreign Secretary for India, Henry Mortimer Durand, and Amir Abdur Rahman Khan. Durand drew a line, which has been named after him, which delineated the border between British India and Afghanistan and which is today the major source of our problem in the war against the Taliban (the name means “student”). Although the Amir was forced to accept the Durand line at the time, the people never have because it split the Pashtun tribal area in half. In 1947, with the partition of India, the western portion became Pakistan but the Durand line remained unchanged as the western border.

The Taliban are Pashtuns and they do not recognize the Durand line. For them it is part of the colonial past which has been imposed by infidels and they will continue to do their level best to correct that injustice. Although the fight is carried out in the name of Islam, to counteract Western secular modernity, the underlying ethnic problem is not to be minimized. It has been said that all Taliban are Pashtuns but not all Pashtuns are Taliban, which is correct. What Pashtuns want is a country of their own “Pashtunistan,” (land of the Pashtuns), a term I had never previously heard of. This is the reason why the Soviets have failed in their military effort and why ours is destined to follow that example. It is the same situation as in Vietnam where the Viet Cong and Viet Minh could readily cross the border to Cambodia but we were according to international law not supposed to do likewise. Now the border is with Pakistan but since that one does not exist for Pashtuns our troops are exasperated that when they chase the Taliban they just wave to them from across the Pakistani border. When we hector Pakistan to “seal the border” and aggressively carry out the war against the Taliban we fail to understand that Pakistan is an artificial country cobbled together from various Muslim tribes for the sole reason to prevent Muslim subjugation by a predominantly Hindu India. The separation in 1947 was accompanied by a bloodbath where millions of Hindus and Muslims were killed and it has stained the relations between the two countries to this day. Since, as a result of the Durand line, half of the Pashtuns reside in Pakistan and the other half in Afghanistan it is hopeless to assume that the Afghan war can be won with our current mindset. Quetta in the south and Peshawar in the north are the main supply and refuge bases for the Taliban and these are in Pashtunistan.

            One would think that after 10 years of war between us and factions of the Afghan people our media would have told us something about the aspirations of the locals but that is obviously too much to expect from our “free society.” Yet, Pashtunistan exists not only in the minds of some Afghans but can be found in Berg’s book and on the Internet. Its flag consists of three snow-covered mountain peaks on a red background and the maximal wished for borders are depicted below. The map comes from the Internet and is in the public domain.

 

 

 

The green area represents Pashtunistan and the line delineates the current international border. It is obvious that Pakistan can never be expected to give up more than half of its territory but it is equally clear that nationalistically inclined Pashtuns are not likely to accept their current borders in perpetuity. Looking at this map one can also see why the complaints of our government about the porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan are useless because, as mentioned, the Afghans don’t regard this line on the map as a border and freely travel among members of their tribe, regardless what country Western politicians have assigned them to.

To understand what our troops are confronted with one has to know something about Pashtunwali, the code of honor, or dignity, Pashtuns are to live by. It predates Islam and is still enforced in rural areas where tribal chiefs rule. The hope to replace it with Western values in the short span of a few years is a dangerous illusion. As one Afghan is reported to have said to an American, “you have the watch but we have the time.” Westernization can work to some extent in the major cities but the majority of the people live in rural areas where the ancient rules apply. But as we have seen again in the last few weeks even Kandahar is not safe because first the governor of the province, Hamid Karzai’s half-brother, and then the mayor were assassinated. How long Karzai himself will be allowed to live is another question. 

Islam is supposed to unite all the tribes, but Pashtunwali demands in addition: Nanawati, which guarantees a fugitive asylum; Mehmastyia which orders hospitality even to a mortal enemy once he has crossed the threshold of your house, and Badal which demands “blood for blood.” When a member of your family has been murdered a member of the assailant’s family has to be killed. Americans believe that everything can be solved with money and in the second half of September 2001 the CIA walked in with briefcases literally full of millions of your and my dollars to hand out to the “Northern alliance.” It consisted of Afghan warlords from various tribes who were only too happy to fight the Pashtuns in the south regardless whether they were Taliban or not. A look at the map, shown above, reveals that the area controlled by the Northern Alliance represented a fraction of the northern portion of what is labeled as Afghanistan. Obviously they took the money and with the help of our bombing campaign defeated the Kabul Taliban government. But, this ended their obligation to us. Thereafter they continued with their tribal wars and planting opium to fund them, which had been banned under the Taliban. As our troops found out, “you don’t buy an Afghan; you rent one!” This truth has yet to sink into the minds of our policy makers, especially when they complain about Karzai’s unpredictable behavior. He is a Pashtun after all.

Likewise, the obligation of Badal is ignored by us but honored by the rural locals who make up the majority of the people in the aptly named “graveyard of empires.” We believe that we can win the war by drones, but for every insurgent they kill there is “collateral damage”: fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and children whose death has to be avenged. Badal does not end with one generation but can extend to subsequent ones. The bereaved family will take the money which is offered, but in addition exert some type of blood revenge whenever possible. The fact that these killings of innocents are perpetrated not only by impersonal machines but that they are guided by infidels to kill Muslims is a ready recruiting source for new mujahedeen’s for years to come.

Had the Bush administration known about Nanawati it would not have been surprised that the Taliban did not deliver Osama bin Laden to us when we asked for his extradition into American hands. He was a fugitive in their country and therefore enjoyed the right of sanctuary. While they ostensibly agreed to turn him over to the International Court, provided evidence for his crimes had been presented, they could not hand him to his enemies just because they demanded it. But Bush never wanted bin Laden to be captured alive or handed over, he was merely the excuse for the invasion. The reason was, as we shall see, considerably more mundane and in the spirit of American capitalism.

As far as the personality structure of Afghans in general is concerned Berg quoted from the 1895 edition of Germany’s counterpart to the Encyclopedia Britannica: “they are born warriors, unafraid and courageous in attack, treasonous and insatiable in revenge.” Berg noted that this was an oversimplification and could not be extended to every Afghan national, but as we have seen it does hold true for the Afghan enemy our troops are currently facing. The word treasonous in the statement needs modification. They can be loyal to friends and family but since the code of honor does not apply to foreign occupiers, especially infidels, they have no compunction about disregarding those sentiments.

The American public has also been misled about the goals of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. We were told that they wanted to export communism as part of “World Revolution” and that was all there was to it. Berg documented the reasons in more detail. Suffice it to say that Afghan government leaders had been murdered in rapid succession and chaotic terror reigned in the country. The latest victim, on April 27, 1978, was Prince Daud Khan, who although friendly with the neighboring Soviet Union did not want to establish communism in his country. The military Putsch was carried by a handful of officers who had been trained in the Soviet Union. They wanted to bring communism, although officially they declared themselves merely as reformers who carried out the will of the people. Moscow had been surprised by these “facts on the ground,” but was now placed into the position of having to support this new government come what may.

During a reception at the German embassy in Kabul, Berg met with the information minister of the new regime, Suleiman Laeq, and asked him why foreign correspondents were no longer allowed to enter the country, since he himself had to cross the Khyber Pass illegally. Laeq replied that the country needed to be protected from false propaganda and then went on to explain: “We want a People’s Republic in the true sense of the word, a state in which the hitherto disenfranchised workers, peasants and intellectuals exercise power instead of feudal lords. We want an independent, block-free, foreign policy and finally end 150 years of colonial past, in which Afghan kings were mainly lackeys of foreign powers. We want to free our people from the fetters of an ossified societal order and secure them a socialist one as well as economic progress and freedom.”  When Berg asked how he could reconcile the Islamic tradition of the people with his Marxism, he replied: “Islam is the religion of our land and we are ready to respect its ordinances. This is why all our edicts are issued in the name of Allah, the Almighty, Beneficent and Merciful. Our socialist policies serve only the well-being of the people, and since Allah wants his believers to prosper he will certainly bless our efforts.”

I have mentioned this not because it reflected what was happening under the new regime but for the fact that the rhetoric is the same as ours and all one has to do is substitute the word “socialist” for “free enterprise.” In spite of Laeq’s assurance that the foreign policy was to be “block-free” the Kabul government increasingly used Soviet advisors, and the reforms were resented by the faithful in the rural areas. The mujahadeen movement arose, which began to spread terror throughout the country. They not only became active in 25 of the 29 provinces but also operated in Kabul, Kandahar and Herat, western Afghanistan’s provincial capital. During these terror attacks Soviet assistance missions were also attacked and their people murdered. A major massacre occurred in March of 1979 in Herat where the rebels, aided by deserting troops from the Afghan army, attacked the residential area of Soviet advisers and killed everyone in a most brutal manner. The fighting between government troops and the rebels steadily escalated which eventually left Moscow no choice but to intervene militarily to establish a degree of order in that chaos.

In 1985 Gorbachev called the Afghan war “a bleeding wound,” a term which also characterizes our current predicament. Berg’s book ends in 1988 with the Geneva accord signed between the Foreign Secretaries of Afghanistan, Pakistan, the U.S. and the Soviet Union. In it the USSR committed itself to withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan within nine months. The treaty also regulated the relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan and imposed the obligation upon the US as well as the USSR to no longer interfere in any form or fashion into the internal affairs of Afghanistan. Since the mujahadeen were not part of the negotiations they ignored the agreement and continued their war against the Kabul government with help from their Pashtun relatives in Pakistan. Mohammad Najibullah’s regime survived the withdrawal of the Soviet troops till 1992 when he was forced to resign and make way for an interim government, which in turn was overthrown by the Taliban in 1996. In the process Najibullah, who had not left the country, was murdered.

Before continuing with the post-Soviet history of Afghanistan a few words need to be said about our love-hate relationship with Pakistan which goes all the way back to the Eisenhower administration. In those days we gave the Pakistanis $500 million (1962 value) for military aid and built their intelligence services (ISI) on the model of the CIA. This was to counteract India. Nehru had formed a block of non-aligned nations but was suspected of favoring the Soviet Union over us. Gary Powers’ doomed U2 flight over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960, which wrecked the Paris summit meeting between Eisenhower and Khrushchev, did not start as we had been told from Turkey, but Peshawar Pakistan. When India detonated its atomic bomb, Pakistan felt duty bound to follow suit but while we only admonished India we cut off all aid to Pakistan.

As Berg wrote, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was for Pakistan’s Zia-ul Haq a gift from Allah. Not only could he legitimize his autocratic rule as a response to the danger the Soviet Union might pose to his country, but in February 1980 he was visited by Zbigniew Brzezinski, at that time President Carter’s national security advisor. He offered Zia $400 million of military and economic aid which was refused with the comment, “peanuts.” After some tough negotiating a contract was signed in September of 1981 which guaranteed aid to the tune of $3.5 billion over the next six years. Our largesse waned after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan but was resumed in full force after 9/11 until a few days ago when, after the row over the bin Laden raid, Washington suspended payment of $800 million.

This attitude of on-again, off-again is understandable from the point of view of our lawmakers who feel that they can mete out praise and punishment whenever and to whomever they please, but it is seen by the recipient as America’s unreliability. We also regard Pakistan as a “normal country” with a government that can control its various provinces but that is likewise an illusion. The current civilian government is relatively powerless and within the country there are numerous factions pursuing their various aims independently. Even within the army and the ISI there are circles within circles where the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand does. This situation is actually not all that different from what goes on in Washington especially in regard to the CIA. The major point is that we can demand that Pakistan accedes to our wishes in regard to the war against the Taliban, but the government is simply unable to follow through. Pashtuns are in leading positions in the army as well as the ISI and are reluctant to shoot their tribe members because Americans want them to. It’s literally against their religion.

Leaving Pakistan’s problems aside for the moment it is useful to look at the timeline of our relationship with the Taliban and a major reason for the October 2001 invasion. In the 1890’s Lord Curzon, who has been previously mentioned in these pages for the Curzon line which delineated the borders between Poland and the Soviet Union in 1919, stated that: Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Transkaspia, Persia …[are] for me pieces of a chessboard upon which a game for world domination is played. This was the much cited “Great Game” between the Russian and the British Empire where each side was worried about the intrusions of the other. It was dramatized by Rudyard Kipling in his Kim. With the demise of the British Empire, America stepped into its shoes and is eagerly trying to woo the area into our fold. It abounds with natural resources, which we want, and is in addition a nodal point for traffic from East Asia to the West. 

When we lost “our man in Tehran,” the Shah, Iran became a headache which thirty years of effort have failed to cure. Since the world is in urgent need of oil and gas which abound in that strategic region and since we trust neither the Russians nor the Iranians another way has to be found to gain access to the Caspian’s wealth of oil and gas. This is where the route of a new pipeline enters the field of history. The easiest would be through Iran but that country is hostile and in addition the narrow Strait of Hormuz at the southern end of the Persian Gulf, through which most of the world’s oil travels, could be blocked at any moment. It was, therefore envisioned that the pipeline should go from the Caspian through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea. It was an ideal solution. The ex-Soviet Republics of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan would no longer have to rely on Russia and the Strait of Hormuz problem would also be solved.

The website http://ringnebula.com/Oil/Timeline.htm provides a timeline for some of the negotiations which have been carried out to bring the pipeline to fruition. Unfortunately not all of the information can be trusted and the references which are provided in the text do not appear at the end. I shall, therefore only summarize aspects which are also documented elsewhere.

Unocal’s official quest began in 1995 when the company signed an agreement with Turkmenistan to purchase natural gas rights for transport through the proposed pipeline route. Negotiations continued off and on till 1988 and in January of that year Dick Cheney, the CEO of Halliburton at the time, was quoted as having said, “I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian.” I shall return to this statement later. Also in January Unocal signed an agreement between Pakistan, Turkmenistan and the Taliban to arrange for funding of the gas line project. But in May of the year Unocal announced a delay in finalizing the project due to Afghanistan’s continuing civil war and in December Unocal issued a statement that it had withdrawn from the pipeline project due to “business interests.” The conditions were clearly not conducive to this type of enterprise.

             Nevertheless, the pipeline dream was not dead because the Bush-Cheney administration had exceedingly close ties to oil companies. Although the discussions during the “energy summit meetings” in February of 2001 have never been fully disclosed there are, two articles of importance. One is by George Monbiot of the Guardian under the title “America’s Pipe Dream”, which contains the mentioned Cheney quote. The article was published two weeks after the Afghanistan bombing campaign began and lays out the background, including the relationship to Pakistan, as well as the goal. In regard to the latter the author stated, “If the US succeeds in overthrowing the Taliban and replacing them with a stable and grateful pro-western government and if the US then binds the economies of central Asia to that of its ally Pakistan, it will have crushed not only terrorism, but also the growing ambitions of both Russia and China. Afghanistan, as ever, is the key to the western domination of Asia.”  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/23/afghanistan.terrorism11.  This was the goal, but it has eluded us.

The other report from BBC News was dated May 13, 2002 with the headline, “Afghanistan plans gas pipeline.” The article stated that “Afghan interim ruler Hamid Karzai is to hold talks with his Pakistani and Turkmenistan counterparts later this month on Afghanistan's biggest foreign investment project, said Mohammad Alim Razim, minister for Mines and Industries, told Reuters. ‘The work on the project will start after an agreement is expected to be struck at the coming summit,’ Mr. Razim said.” The summit was indeed held on May 30 in Islamabad and another memorandum of understanding was signed but in view of the deteriorating security situation nothing has come of it since.

Thus, it is clear that Lord Curzon’s Great Game is still in full swing with all of us serving as the pawns. But the era of these colonial enterprises is about to come to an end even for America. Nationalism is still on the rise and we will soon be unable to afford the wars to sustain our global predominance. It is obvious that a military solution to the Afghanistan debacle is out of the question. We have been there longer than the Soviet Union and the accomplishments are as fragile for us as they were for them. Obama is reducing the troop levels with the goal of total removal in a few years. What comes thereafter is the proverbial $64 question. There is no likelihood for peace in the Afghan-Pakistan relationship unless the question of Pashtunistan is resolved and none for peace between India and Pakistan unless the Kashmir problem is removed. The end of Islamic terrorism likewise cannot be expected unless all our troops are withdrawn from Muslim countries and a just settlement has been achieved with the Palestinians.

Let us summarize what has happened since the Soviet Union’s military arrived in Afghanistan to prop up an unpopular regime which was threatened by forces of fanatical Islam. The reason for the invasion was fear because it was felt that militant Islam was about to spill over into the southern Border States. We interpreted it as aggression and as an opportunity to destroy the evil empire. In so doing we supported the mujahadeen thereby creating the instrument of our own problems which would come to haunt us decades later. We supported bin Laden and built the Bora Tora fortress complex with CIA money.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, which had prior to WWI been part of the Ottoman province of Basra and thereby Mesopotamia, we jumped on the opportunity to get rid of his regime although we had supported him in the Iraq-Iran war. The war had bankrupted Saddam; he was in debt to the Kuwaitis who, furthermore, behaved arrogantly when he tried to negotiate the debt. In addition his forerunners had previously tried to regain Kuwait. It is an artificial emirate carved out of the Ottoman province of Basra by the British for their purposes, and which denied Iraq direct access to the Persian Gulf. In our quest to get rid of Saddam, because he was seen as a threat to Israel, we persuaded the Saudi king to allow our troops into his country for his protection. It was claimed that his country was next on the list of Saddam’s insatiable greed, but the evidence was manufactured just as that for Saddam’s possession of WMDs. We simply wanted to station bases on Saudi soil.  For the pious bin Laden this was the ultimate outrage because “Crusaders and Jews have no place in his Holy Land. This event galvanized him to form Al Qaeda to pursue jihad on his terms.

We then used the 9/11 tragedy as the pretext for “just revenge” to first invade Afghanistan and subsequently Iraq. But even the Afghanistan invasion had less to do with our security or bin Laden but was a continuation of the Great Game for natural resources. The war was not conducted in a manner to ensure the capture of bin Laden, and the destruction of Al Qaeda, but to establish a friendly regime in Kabul. It was to give us what had been denied to the Soviet Union. An example for this statement is that the Bush administration failed to provide our marines with the wherewithal, which they had asked for, to take Tora Bora and instead delegated the capture of bin Laden to Afghans, who were known to be unreliable. The validation of this statement is in Bush’s Wars by Terry Anderson. What was the result? The same as for the Soviet Union! Bin Laden, the patsy, is now officially dead but his organization has metastasized. Our troops will come home to glorious speeches about their bravery, just as those of the Red Army as described in Berg’s book, and the people of Afghanistan will have to bear more hardships. The pipeline is not likely to be built by us and the other natural resources the country has, will likewise not be developed by us.

This should really give us pause to think what the human race is all about. Three aspects come to mind. In Goethe’s Faust we can read a self-description of Mephisto: “I am a part of that force which forever desires evil yet creates good.” I believe there is a corollary in the conduct of our politicians: they always desire good yet create evil!  Another aspect is the Taj Mahal, the structural Mughal legacy which should be pondered. A magnificent structure, beautifully adorned with Holy Writ, which houses decayed corpses! Finally the ultimate wisdom of the ages which we also ignore in this hour of national peril: Whom the gods want to destroy they strike with blindness. To this one might add: There is none as blind as he who doesn’t want to see!







September 1, 2011

FOLLOW THE MONEY!

            This memorable advice was given by “Deep Throat” to Bob Woodward in a Washington garage in 1972 which led to the exposure of the illegal activities conducted by the Nixon administration. They included the Watergate break-in and eventually forced Nixon to resign from the presidency. The speculation about the identity of “Deep Throat” had been going on for decades but Bob Woodward, who did know it, followed the journalist’s code of ethics and never revealed the name. Bob Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of Staff, suspected all along that Mark Felt, then Deputy Associate Director of the FBI, was behind the leaks but told Nixon that their hands were tied. If they moved against Felt, he would air all the dirty laundry and the presidency would be finished. Felt’s motives can only be surmised. He did admit that he had wanted the FBI directorship but strenuously denied having been the leaker of information to the press. Only three years before his death in 2008 did he unburden himself of this load and admitted to the truth in public.

There was, however an additional irony to this case. Nixon was brought down, by Felt, ostensibly for having violated the Constitution by authorizing illegal wire-taps, search and seizure of US citizens suspected of having revolutionary plans, and similar malfeasance. But we must remember that these were the days of the Vietnam War protests, the Civil Rights movement and American cities had been going up in flames. As Associate Deputy Director of the FBI Mark Felt was intimately involved in searching out “enemies of the State” and had authorized on his own the search against members of the Weather Underground Organization.  These were “black bag jobs” which included breaking into people’s homes without a search warrant. They had occurred during 1972-1973; the same years when Felt blew the whistle on the Nixon White House activities. After Congressional hearings in 1978 a Grand Jury indicted Mark Felt along with another FBI member (Edward Miller) but he got away with a fine of $5000 and Miller with $3,500. During the trial ex-President Nixon testified for the defense in behalf of Felt and when President Reagan subsequently pardoned Felt and Miller, Nixon sent each of them a bottle of champagne with a note, “Justice ultimately prevails.”

The point of bringing this up now is two-fold. Nixon’s as well as Felt’s defense was: “when the President (the government) does it, it’s legal,” which explains his famous statement on TV “I am not a crook.” His detractors answered: “We are a country of laws, and have a Constitution which Presidents are sworn to uphold.” This is true, but what they fail to mention is that the Constitution has proved to be marvelously flexible and in actual practice we are not a “country of laws,” but one of lawyers and judges who decide at any given time what is or is not compatible with the Constitution. This brings me to the second point and the major topic of this essay: Money, which tends to be on most people’s minds in these debt-ridden days. You may now wonder: but what does this have to do with the Constitution? Until earlier last month I had no idea either but for an essay which deals with the causes of our current fiscal woes I had to educate myself on the source of our money. To my surprise I found out that the latter is actually regarded by some as unconstitutional. This obviously came as a shock and requires a fair amount of explanation.

When the first greenback I ever saw was handed to me by my mother for travel to this country, I noticed that it said on the front in large print The United States of America, but above in small print: Federal Reserve Note. I had no idea what the latter meant but assumed, probably like most everybody else, that “Federal Reserve” is part of the Treasury Department, therefore, the U.S. government, which in my naïve mind of those days could not possibly do anything wrong. After all if you can’t trust the government of the beacon of liberty to which all who want to better their lives are attracted, who can you trust? Obviously the 25 year old had other concerns at that time. He had as the saying goes to, “get a life.” As a fervent anti-communist I defended the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Reagan’s wars in Nicaragua and Grenada, but began to worry that things might not be the way they were presented in the media when we bombed Belgrade and “accidentally” the Chinese embassy. By that time I was about ready to retire from earning a living in academia and began to have the time to inquire into the behind the scenes activities which lead to the historical events that shape our lives. Nevertheless hope sprang eternal and I welcomed President Bush’s appointment, by one vote of the Supreme Court, which actually violated the Constitution, to the Presidency because I thought that after the scandals of the Clinton administration honesty and decency would be restored to the White House. But his response to 9/11, the cover-up of what really happened, and the two wars he launched under false pretenses, put a serious dent in my optimism in regard to how this country is really run. I began to study why things happened they way they did and put the results on the Internet over the past ten years.

For the present search as to why we are in the economic mess we find ourselves, I was aided by three books and Wikipedia, as well as government sources to check some of the assertions that were made in the books. The first one I read was: The Global Crisis. The Great Depression of the XXI Century. It contains a series of essays edited by Michael Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall and was published in 2010. I have mentioned Chossudovsky and his website www.globalresearch.ca on an earlier occasion, suffice it to say here that Chossudovsky is a Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, with a left of center political orientation. The Initial “Overview” section pointed out that, “The 2008 financial meltdown has nothing to do with free market forces: it is characterized by financial warfare between competing institutional speculators.” The major culprits were: the financial instruments known as derivatives, the repeal of some Congressional oversight provisions in 1999; artificially low interest rates especially in the housing sector with the sale of fraudulent “insurance papers” against loss. Banks were overextended, some collapsed while others which were regarded as “too big to fail” had to be rescued by the Federal Reserve Board in order to prevent a repeat of the 1929 Great Depression.

This is, of course, the reason why “The Fed”, as it is popularly known, was created in the first place. The government website explains its functions:

 

“to address the problem of banking panics; to serve as the central bank for the United States; to strike a balance between private interests of banks and the centralized responsibility of government; to mange the nation’s money supply through monetary policy; to maintain the stability of the financial system and contain systemic risk in financial markets; to provide financial services to depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign official institutions, including a major role in operating the nation’s payment system; and to strengthen U.S. standing in the world economy.”

 

These are obviously laudable goals but looking at our current situation it is obvious that “the stability of the financial system and a strengthening of the U.S. standing in the world” have not occurred. On the contrary we have achieved a previously unknown low in the confidence of foreigners in our dollar to the extent that its role as the “reserve currency” of the world is in serious doubt. These are facts but the reasons which are given depend on the political orientation of authors. Those on the left blame lack of government regulation, those on the right too much government regulation and those in the middle are simply scratching their heads.

 Nevertheless, both the left and the right agree that there is something fundamentally wrong with the Fed. The third book I read is entitled: End the Fed. Its author is Ron Paul who used to be an obstetrician but has given up his medical practice for a life in politics because he thought that he could do more good on a wider scale. Although nominally a Republican he is at heart a libertarian who fully endorses the 18th and 19th century laissez faire principle which believes in Adam Smith’s invisible hand that guides the free market economies of the world to ever greater prosperity. Some more sober-minded people might argue that if this had been the case in the mid 19th century Karl Marx would have had no reason to write Das Kapital. Furthermore, since the invisible hand was devoid of a conscience, the social legislation, which has been enacted over the past 150 years in countries around the world, was a necessity to bring a modicum of justice into the economic sphere rather than to reward laziness, as its detractors claim.

Dr. Paul has presidential aspirations and is at this time engaged in his third try towards that goal. I happen to like him because from the current crop of Republican candidates he is the only one (possibly with the exception of our former governor, Jon Huntsman), who speaks the unvarnished truth as he sees it. This includes that we have no business conducting all the wars we are engaged in. The media hailed Michele Bachman’s straw poll success in Iowa, which had no lasting meaning at all, but largely ignored the runner-up status of Ron Paul although he had garnered only 152 votes less than Bachmann out of a total of 16,892. 

In End the Fed published in 2009, Paul, whose official job is a Texas Representative to Congress made the following points: the institution is unconstitutional; as a result of its inflationary policies it has led since its inception in 1913 to a massive drop of the value of the dollar (currently 0.05 of the previous $1); our money is “fiat money” backed by nothing but thin air; the Fed itself has no capital but is simply a lending institution which lives on providing the greatest numbers of loans and thereby becomes the greatest debt creator. Although in theory Congress has oversight, this breaks down in practice because of exemptions. It is a bank created by bankers for bankers which privatizes gains and socializes losses. The bankers get their bonuses, as in the recent bailouts, for which we pay with our tax dollars. 

These are not mere allegations because he documents them in the book and as member of the House Banking Committee he had the opportunity to meet with and asks questions of Fed Chairmen: Volcker, Greenspan and Bernanke. To a particularly incisive question he was told by Bernanke that it would be “counterproductive” to answer it. With other words “bug off, you bother me.” How can this happen when he is by law responsible to Congress for his actions? This is where the government oversight comes in. Wikipedia tells us that the Federal Reserve System,

 

has both private and public components, and can make decisions without the permission of Congress or the President of the U.S. . . . The seven-member Board of Governors is a Federal agency and is the main governing body of the Federal Reserve System. It is charged with the overseeing of the 12 District Reserve Banks and setting national monetary policy. It also supervises and regulates the U.S. Banking system in general. Governors are appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate for staggered 14-year terms. The Board is required to make an annual report of operations to the speaker of the House of Representatives.”

 

Let us look at this statement for a moment longer. The Fed is part of the government but, since it is also private, government can’t tell it how to conduct its business. This strikes one as somewhat strange because it is our money, after all, which is at stake. On the other hand the analogy is with the Supreme Court. The President appoints the judges, the Senate confirms them, but then they are on their own to interpret the law as they see fit. In regard to the Supreme Court “We the People” have to obey and as far as the Fed is concerned, we have to pay. While the Supreme Court has nine judges, which guarantees a majority opinion, the Fed has seven governors (by the way at present only five, because two positions are vacant) and theoretically the 12 District Bank Directors also have their say. But we are not privy to their deliberations and it is obvious that the biggest Federal Reserve Bank i.e. that of New York will call the shots. There is an additional potential ominous aspect in this statement. The Fed not only supervises but “regulates” banks throughout the U.S.. It has a monopoly and can mete out favors or punishment to small banks as it pleases. All it is required to do is to tell Congress once a year what it has already done and there is of course no dearth of excuses that can make even atrocious malfeasance appear perfectly proper. In addition the Chairman of the Fed is intermittently requested to testify before Congress but as mentioned above, he can just refuse to answer when it comes to specifics.

All government agencies are, however, supervised by the General Accounting Office, GAO, and one would think that this agency would tell us if or when the Fed has engaged in improper activities. Far from it, and Ron Paul gives us the details. While title 31 chapter 7 of the Money and Finance section of the Code gives the GAO the power to audit all financial institutions, including the Fed, it carries this proviso 

 

“Audits of the Federal Reserve Board and Federal Reserve Banks may not [italics in the original] include: Transactions for or with a foreign central bank, government of a foreign country, or non-private international financing organization;

Deliberations, decisions, or actions on monetary matters, including discount window operations, reserves of member banks, securities credit, interest on deposits, and open market operations;

Transactions made under the direction of the Federal Open Market Committee; or a part of a discussion or communication among or between members of the Board of Governors and officers and employees of the Federal Reserve System related to clauses (1)-(3) of this subsection.”

 

To put it bluntly: we have a small group, an oligarchy, which decides in secret what to do with our money and when we want to know what they are doing we are told it’s none of our business. This statement is my own but in Ron Paul’s spirit. When I read this and similar information in Chossudovsky’s book I wondered: but what in all the world is the Treasury Department’s role in all of this. So I went to the Internet and now it gets quite Byzantine. 

The government website is rather detailed but abounds in generalities and under Mission we can read:

 

Maintain a strong economy and create economic and job opportunities by promoting the conditions that enable economic growth and stability at home and abroad, strengthen national security by combating threats and protecting the integrity of the financial system, and manage the U.S. Government’s finances and resources effectively.”

 

 Well, that’s nice but not only has the department obviously failed to do so the statement is so similar to that of the Fed that one wonders why two organizations are needed to accomplish these goals rather than one.

Ok, let’s read on and see what else we can find. Under the headline Organization one can read,

 

“The basic functions of the Department of the Treasury include: Managing Federal finances; Collecting taxes, duties and monies paid to and due to the U.S. and paying all bills of the U.S.; Currency and coinage; Managing Government accounts and the public debt; Supervising national banks and thrift institutions; Advising on domestic and international financial, monetary, economic, trade and tax policy; Enforcing Federal finance and tax laws; Investigating and prosecuting tax evaders, counterfeiters, and forgers.”

 

This likewise suggests at least partial duplication of effort with the Fed and we are not much further in our quest towards understanding how these two systems interact. The next step, therefore, was to go to Wikipedia and now it gets “curious and curiouser” as Alice found out in Wonderland. We are told that,

 

 “The Fed serves both as a banker’s bank and as the government’s bank. As the banker’s bank, it helps to assure the safety and efficiency of the payment’s system. As the government’s bank, or fiscal agent, the Fed processes a variety of financial transactions involving trillions of dollars. Just as an individual might keep an account at a bank, The U.S. Treasury keeps a checking account with the Federal Reserve, through which incoming federal tax deposits and outgoing government payments are handled. As part of this service relationship, the Fed sells and redeems U.S. government securities such as saving bonds and Treasury bills, notes and bonds. It also issues the nation’s coin and paper currency. The U.S. through its Bureau of the Mint and Bureau of Engraving and Printing actually produces the nation’s cash supply and, in effect, sells the paper currency to the Federal Reserve Banks at manufacturing cost, and the coins at face value. The Federal Reserve Banks then distribute it to other financial institutions in various ways. During the Fiscal Year 2008, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing delivered 7.7 billion notes at an average cost of 6.4 cent per note.”

 

In other words: Although the Fed is our agent we have no say so in regard to how it uses our money for what purposes. As a “bankers bank and the government’s bank” there are dual loyalties with plenty of room for conflict. With this as background we can now look how the Fed came into being in the first place. This is explained in the second book I read, The Secrets of the Federal Reserve by Eustace Mullins. It can be downloaded for free on the Internet under http://www.whale.to/b/mullins5.html, or purchased through amazon. This book has a fascinating history because it is the only one which was officially burnt in Germany after the Nazi era (while Americans were in charge) and the author lost his job at the Library of Congress. Mullins (1923-2010) had served during the war in the US Air Force and thereafter joined the research staff of the Library in Washington DC. In the Foreword to the book he wrote:

 

“In 1949, while I was visiting Ezra Pound who was a political prisoner at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, Washington, D.C. (a federal institution for the insane), Dr. Pound asked me if I had ever heard of the Federal Reserve System. I replied that I had not, as of the age of 25. He then showed me a ten dollar bill marked ‘Federal Reserve System’ and asked me if I would do some research at the Library. Pound was unable to go to the Library himself, as he was being held without trial as a political prisoner by the United States government.”

 

            This startled me because although I had heard Pound’s name as a renowned poet I didn’t know that we kept “political prisoners” in a mental hospital á la KGB. I, therefore, consulted Wikipedia again about what was reported on his life and here is the essence. Pound (1885-1972) was born in neighboring Idaho but soon moved to England. In 1915 he had become incensed over the senseless slaughter of WWI, which he blamed on usury and international capitalism. He moved to Italy, where he became enamored with Mussolini. He gave regular broadcasts on Italian radio on a variety of topics including the evils of capitalist society, Jews, and the Roosevelt administration. He persisted in doing so even after American participation in the war, and in 1945 voluntarily surrendered himself to the U.S. Army. After initial interrogations he was sent to a detention camp near Pisa on May 24. For about three weeks he was held in what was called “’death cells’—a series of six-by-six-foot outdoor steel cages lit up all night by floodlights. He was left there in isolation in the heat, denied exercise, eyes inflamed by dust, no bed, no belt, no shoelaces, and no communication with the guards, except for the chaplain.” After about two and a half weeks he broke down; was examined by psychiatrists and transferred to one of the officer’s tents. In November of that year Pound was repatriated to America and during his trial for treason his lawyer pleaded insanity. This resulted in his incarceration at St. Elizabeth’s but spared his life. Due to continued efforts of Mullins and highly respected American writers he was finally released from custody in 1958.

            When I read about the “steel cages,” Guantanamo immediately came to mind and it is obvious that little had changed since 1945. Mullins then mentioned that he had originally intended to write a detective novel but Pound had persuaded him to use the Fed book in the manner of a detective story which shows the strands from which the system emerged. Mullins had the background material at the Library, some financial support from Pound, and additional critical input from George Stimpson, founder of the National Press Club. He began his efforts to market the manuscript in 1950, but 18 publishers turned it down. The 19th told him “I like your book but we can’t print it. Neither can anybody else in New York. Why don’t you bring in a prospectus for your novel, and I think we can give you an advance. You may as well forget about getting the Federal Reserve book published. I doubt if it could ever be printed.” Mullins didn’t give up. With the help of some of Pound’s friends, private printings did ensue and in 1955 a German edition was published in Oberammergau. The book was seized by the American authorities and all 10,000 copies burned. The book was subsequently rewritten and expanded. The current edition is dated 1991 and, needless to say, again privately published.

            With this information as background we can now look for what was so subversive in this book that it was not supposed to see the light of day. It contains 14 chapters which begin with the inception of the Fed and end with an August 1976 Congressional Study Report. Since the latter provides the gist of the information I shall give the essentials as presented by Chairman Henry S. Reuss (D-Wis),

 

“As the study makes clear, it is difficult to imagine a more narrowly based board of directors for a public agency than has been gathered together for the twelve banks of the Federal Reserve System. Only two segments of American society – banking and big business – have any substantial representation on the boards, and often even these become merged through interlocking directories. … Small farmers are absent. Small business is barely visible. … In Summary, the Federal Reserve directories are apparently representatives of a small elite group which dominates much of the economic life of the nation.”

 

            The reason why the book was relegated to relative non-existence resides in the fact that Mullins meticulously provided names, their family relationships and dates for how these few members of the “elite group” have created American history as we know it. Since this also involved the financing of political campaigns, including Hitler’s in January of 1933, it is clear that the establishment would do everything to suppress it. The main thesis could be summarized, in analogy to Michael Douglas statement in the movie Wall Street, “Greed is good,” as “War is good.” I shall not go into the merit of this statement but readers are encouraged to look at Mullins’ data and then form their own opinion. The book is meticulously referenced but one may not want to take the author’s conclusions at face value and I shall, therefore, limit myself to the genesis of the Fed.

            It began with a secret railroad trip during the night of November 22, 1910 from Hoboken NJ to Georgia’s Jekyll Island which had been purchased several years earlier by J.P. Morgan and friends as a winter retreat. They called it the Jekyll Island Hunt Club but duck hunting was not the main purpose. Its solitude provided the opportunity for policy sessions away from the prying eyes of reporters. The group consisted of Republican Senator Nelson Aldrich (wealthy senior member of the Senate’s Finance Committee and father in-law to the only son of John D. Rockefeller); his secretary Shelton; Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and Special Assistant to the National Monetary Commission A. Piatt Andrews; in addition to four prominent New York bankers of whom the recently arrived German immigrant Paul Warburg was the most important. Their task was to create a U.S. central bank, but without it appearing to be a central bank, and Aldrich was to push it through the Senate. The term “central bank” was abhorrent to the public because it implied Wall Street control. To put it bluntly: the American people were to be hoodwinked by the idea of a Federal Reserve System which was to be a central bank in everything but name. To accomplish this goal absolute secrecy was necessary. Mullins’ book has been labeled as conspiracy theory but the creation of the Fed was actually the result of a conspiracy by a small group of NY bankers. This was verified a few years later by Malcolm Forbes, grandfather of our current Steve Forbes. To avoid the appearance of one central bank there would be 12 Federal banks distributed over the country. To ensure that only those people are considered for election to one of these Boards who are approved by the club this power was given to the President of the U.S. rather than Congress, where too many questions might be asked.

            There was some urgency to this trip because after the 1907 stock market crash, brought on by ill-advised speculation, the need was felt to create an instrument which would prevent the boom and bust cycles thereby stabilizing the economy. A Monetary Commission had been created and Senator Aldrich was in charge. The final product contained all the elements we know and after some political haggling it was signed into law on December 23 1913 by President Wilson, who had also given us the income tax on February 3rd of that year. There is one more interesting aspect to the Warburg family. While Paul was largely responsible for the vast loans, by the Fed, to the Allies which led to America’s entry into WWI (The Goebbels’ Trap, July 1, 2011), his brother Max who had stayed in the old country financed the war effort in Germany. It reminded me of the Rothschilds during the Napoleonic wars. The Viennese brother financed the Austrian effort; the one in Frankfort, Prussia’s, the one in Paris, Napoleon’s; and the one in London, the British. Regardless who won, the family would make out all right.

Finally three more aspects need to be clarified. Since the Fed controls our money it is the “lender of last resort” and in this manner it can decide which bank is allowed to go under and which one is “too big to fail.” It rewards the giants of industry but for the little guy it’s just “tough luck.” The next one is “fractional banking.” This means that the banks, including the Fed’s banks, retain only a fraction of the deposit and all the rest is loaned out at various interest rates. Now comes the “curiouser” point. Wiki explains,

 

“This means that available funds (called bank reserves) are only a fraction (called the reserve ratio) of the quantity of deposits at the bank. As most bank deposits are treated as money in their own right, fractional reserve banking increases the money supply, and banks are said to create money.”

 

This is a rather neat trick of creative bookkeeping which inflates the bank’s numbers with non-existent assets. The retained fractions range from 2.6-20%. This miracle of “wealth creation” can be examined in detail on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking. We, therefore, have no idea of how much actual asset money, capital, is really out there and its relation to the existing debt.

            The last point is “fiat money.” Our dollar bills have no intrinsic value apart from the paper, which can be used for other purposes. Originally coins or paper were backed by some tangible asset, usually gold and to some extent this was true even here until President Nixon “went off the gold standard” and let the dollar “float.” This was fine as long as the U.S. had positive trade balances and the world wanted some of our goods. But things changed in the 90s when we began to move from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. With the manufacturing economy shrinking, and the dollar “floating” down the river some people now worry that Niagara Falls might not be too far in the distance.

            If all of this strikes you as incomprehensible and/or unbelievable you have plenty of company; even in Congress. Mullins published excerpts of a hearing on September 30, 1941when Representative Patman asked Fed Governor Eccles: “How did you get the money to buy those two billion dollars worth of government securities in 1933?” Eccles: “We created it.” Patman: “Out of what?” Eccles: “Out of the right to issue money.” Patman: “And there’s nothing behind it, is there, except our Government’s credit?” Eccles: “This is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our system, there would be no money.”

            Well, here it is: substitute billions for trillions and we have arrived in the 21st century. With the creation of the Fed the D in Dollar has come to stand for Debt. When individuals follow this example they go to jail but, and here we are back to Nixon and Felt, “When the government does it, it’s legal.” What I have presented here is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg and there are now numerous books which explain the issue further, including an extensive update on Mullins’ book by G. Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island. A Second Look at the Federal Reserve. These books need to be read, taken to heart and the fraudulent system changed.

 Until the recent past the Chinese have bailed us out by buying our Treasury bills, but since short term interest rates are practically 0% and our Fed Chairman has promised us that they will remain there for the next 2 years, they obviously had second thoughts and have started to look for better investments. The reason why Mr. Bernanke keeps these rates at a near-nonexistent level is his study of the Great Depression. He and others concluded that it was prolonged by higher taxes and higher interest rates, which may or may not have been the cause. At any rate the opposite course is now being pursued. Some of the results are: retirees who live on their savings have to eat up whatever capital they have accumulated rather than relying on interest income; gold speculation is rampant; so are fraudulent investment schemes which rob average middle class persons of whatever real assets they still possess. An economy, which depends on buying when wages and savings shrink, is not likely to flourish. Less government income from taxes is probably inevitable and the foundation of our society, the average middle class person, will be facing reduced government services while the oligarchy which is in charge of our money will continue to flourish. 

This is hurricane season and the perfect economic storm is brewing in the oceans of this world. It has to hit us because past policies have led to the failure of multiple systems of our society and when that happens to an individual the physician knows that the patient’s recovery is in jeopardy. This is also election season when politicians promise the blue from the sky. But because of multi-system failure there is no “quick-fix” possible. The causes of this perfect storm will be presented in a subsequent essay which also will include suggestions for genuine positive change.







October 1, 2011

9/11 REMEMBERED

          The ten year anniversary of this disastrous day has come and gone. It was marked by patriotic celebrations, flags on our lawns and memorial services with speeches about heroism and resilience. But for anyone who had hoped that it might also finally bring some clarity into what had really happened on that day there was only disappointment. Among all of the words spoken and printed there was not a single one which questioned the official dogma that 19 fanatic Muslim hijackers under the command of Osama bin Laden had pulled off the greatest security breach of the most carefully guarded airspace of our country without encountering any problem. Three planes reached their goal and only the fourth one was prevented from doing so by heroic acts of the passengers.

          America was at war, our President defiantly declared. But, as he told us, we will emerge triumphant by not only hunting down the terrorists who committed this act but we will also appropriately punish all those countries that “harbor terrorists.” We would get Osama “dead or alive” and in addition relentlessly eliminate evil from this world. Nevertheless, in spite of all sorts of color coded terror alerts and increased vigilance, Americans should go about their business as usual.

          With few exceptions the American public bought this scenario. The people did not object to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and only when the Iraq war began to deviate from the script, as envisaged in Washington, did second thoughts emerge in some segments of the public. Nevertheless, these were not of a magnitude to prevent the re-election of “The President of Good and Evil,” as Bush had been called in a book by Peter Singer. By now most people have finally come to realize that the Iraq invasion had been “a mistake,” although the media pundits still insist that the Afghanistan war was justified. Some responsible citizens have also pointed out that cutting taxes when one is fighting a war is contraindicated and can only lead to economic disaster. Their voices went unheeded and, sad to say, although the day of reckoning has arrived our Republicans in Congress still adhere to the dogma that lowering taxes, while pursuing a number of military actions is the right course.

Some of us who had voted for Bush in 2000, were subsequently sorely disenchanted by his conduct in office, and had hoped that by electing Obama in 2008 the country would finally be put on the right course again. But we had another disappointment coming. Instead of the promised “change,” we got what has been called “Bush-light,” in analogy to the reduced alcohol content of beers on sale in grocery stores. Obama, in spite of nice speeches, has shown himself unwilling or unable to confront the wrong policies of the Bush administration and initiate the promised program of accountability and transparency which would have opened the books on the real reasons behind the Bush policies. At this point it should be unequivocally stated that the Iraq war was not simply a “mistake,” but a geopolitical move to consolidate America’s role in the vital Middle East. Even the invasion of Afghanistan had less to do with bin Laden and more with getting access to the riches of the Caspian basin. But Americans are not supposed to see beyond the ends of their collective noses, instead they are to cherish the idea of injured innocence.

“Why do they hate us?” President Bush asked and I believe that he was probably sincere in his ignorance. The only answer he could come up with, and many Americans agreed with him, was that “they hate our freedoms.” To which one can only say, “No Mr. President, they hate our policies!” Unless and until the American people at large have been given  the full picture of 9/11 in the context in which these catastrophes took place we will continue to pursue unwinnable wars and chase shadows instead of their substance. The events of 9/11were a crime by groups of individuals and should have been treated as such. To immediately, even before an investigation into the perpetrators of the crime had begun, declare the event as an act of war was not a mistake; it was worse than that: a deception of the public for ulterior aims. I fully realize that this sounds harsh but I regard it as a truth which must reach the public because otherwise we will continue to be led from one disaster to the next.

I have previously discussed a number of these aspects on this website, but let me summarize the most puzzling features of the official account and put the event into its historical context. We are urged to believe that the Twin Towers had collapsed due to the impact of the aircraft and the resulting fires. That a third building, WTC7 which had not been hit by a plane, also collapsed later in the day in a similar manner was not taken into account in The 9/11 Commission Report. We are also to ignore that the buildings collapsed neatly into their “footprints,” and that fire cannot destroy simultaneously all of the core steel structures which held up the Towers and pulverize cement. We are asked to believe, furthermore, that this destruction by fire did not merely happen once but three times in the same area within a matter of hours. The most reasonable hypothesis is, of course, that the buildings succumbed to controlled demolitions but this would have required pre-positioned charges. If this were to have been the case the government’s position that the hijackers were the sole responsible agents for the collapse of the three WTC buildings would become untenable.

We are also supposed to believe that an inadequately trained pilot could smoothly steer AA flight 77 at maximum speed from a height of 7000 feet to near ground level into the west wing of the Pentagon. It has been pointed out that this maneuver would be difficult to perform even for a military pilot and that the hole left in the Pentagon was too small to accommodate a 757. Finally we are to believe that a plane which crashes into an open field (UA flight 93, Shanksville, PA) can create only a crater without leaving substantial debris or human body parts. These inconsistencies demand better explanations than we have been given.

In regard to the historical context for the destruction of the Twin Towers we have to go back to about a decade earlier. The plan was hatched by Ramzi Yousef and cohorts with collusion of “the blind Sheik,” Omar Abdel Rahman. On February 26, 1993 a truck bomb was detonated in the underground garage of the North Tower of the WTC which killed six people and injured more than one thousand others. The intention was for the building to collapse and fall on the neighboring South Tower. When this did not occur Yousef vowed that they would do better the next time. According to Wikipedia, Yousef had sent a letter to The New York Times after the 1993 attack which provided the motive: "We declare our responsibility for the explosion on the mentioned building. This action was done in response for the American political, economical [sic], and military support to Israel, the state of terrorism, and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region.”    

   Yousef’s uncle Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), who had contacts with Pakistan’s security service ISI, had purportedly supplied the funds. Yousef as well as KSM have subsequently been captured. The former is imprisoned in Colorado and the latter, who has confessed to planning the 9/11 attack, is currently in Guantanamo facing a military tribunal. Two aspects are important in this connection. The Pakistani ISI role was not emphasized in the official 9/11 report and KSM is to be tried in a military, rather than civilian court. Although Attorney General Holder had initially desired open court hearings, this attempt came to naught because it was feared that KSM would unload a history of events which would be counterproductive to keeping the current 9/11 myth alive.

There exists an additional account of the 1993 WTC bombing in 9/11 Synthetic Terror Made in USA by Webster Griffin Tarpley, which was published in 2006. Tarpley asserts that “The FBI set it up and let it happen.” This is difficult to believe especially since he did not give a reference to documents which could be checked. On the other hand the idea that some people in the FBI did not have entirely clean hands, especially in the post 9/11 cover-up, is documented by the extensive problems a Turkish-American interpreter, Sibel Edmonds, had when she alerted her supervisor to several improprieties in regard to translating important material. Edmonds was fired and the supervisor promoted! The documentation for this event is extensive and can be found on the Internet as well as in Tarpley’s book. While I have reservations about some of Tarpley’s conclusions, the instances where he provides verifiable documentation should not be ignored.

In the Tarpley book one can also find the allegation that “the blind Sheik,” Omar Abdel Rahman, who resided in the New York-New Jersey area had come on a visa which was signed by a CIA officer at the Sudanese consulate. Wikipedia only relates that he was admitted in 1990 on a tourist visa and later on received a “green card,” although he had been on the terrorist watch list and had been incarcerated in his native Egypt in connection with the murder of Anwar Sadat. Having been tortured in prison did not increase his love for the USA, which he regarded as the sponsor of his torturer, Hosni Mubarak - a friend of Israel. In his sermons in our country the Sheik made no bones about his views and in 1995 was convicted of plotting a number of terrorist attacks in NYC, which included: blowing up the WTC, the Holland and Lincoln tunnels as well as a variety of other targets. He currently serves a life sentence without possibility of parole in a Federal Prison in North Carolina.

If the CIA had indeed had a hand in issuing that visa, one wonders why this should have happened. The most likely reason would have been to keep a closer eye on him because he might lead them to sleeper cells in the US. While this is laudable there exist, however, other elements within the CIA of whose activities the official government and even the president have hardly any information. A glimpse into this nether-world was provided by the now-deceased Col. L Fletcher Prouty in his book The Secret Team. The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World. One is likely to immediately react with: oh, another conspiracy theory book, but please hold your emotions and read on. Prouty was the liaison officer between the Air Force and the CIA and had, therefore, first-hand information about what was going on in the years from 1955-1964. As he stated in the 1972 edition of the book he was “Chief of Special Operations (clandestine activities) with the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. These duties involved the military support of clandestine activities of the CIA and were performed under National Security Council Directive No. 5412/2.”

Although published long after the events he describes, the book was clearly unpalatable to the powers and disappeared from bookshelves including those of the Library of Congress, where the author had previously seen it. This, of course, reminds one of the fate of Eustace Mullins’ The Secrets of the Federal Reserve, which was discussed in last month’s installment. But Col. Prouty did not give up and re-published the book in 1997. The current 2011 edition has a Foreword by ex-governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura. The book should be read by everyone who wants to know how our government really works. Perhaps the most important statement is in the first paragraph of the 1972 Preface,

 

“From President to Ambassador, Cabinet Officer to Commanding General, and from Senator to executive assistant – all these men have their sources of information and guidance. Most of this information and guidance is the result of carefully laid schemes and ploys of pressure groups. In this influential coterie one of the most interesting and effective roles is that played by the behind the scenes, faceless, nameless, ubiquitous briefing officer.”

 

Col. Prouty was one of these briefing officers and, therefore, aware how the process works: the person who is being briefed knows only what the briefer wants him/her to know! Prouty saw that there exist, what may be called, “circles within circles” of which only few are aware and which operate entirely outside the law. This was the reason why he felt that he had to go public and to state unequivocally that the major role of the CIA is not the collection of information for policy makers but a government agency whose functions, as well as funding sources, are “off the books.” They are secret and within the agency the decision as to what is secret and what can be divulged is not necessarily made by the Director but by groups within groups who have their separate agendas. No one can tell one’s co-worker what he/she is working on and there are only “cover stories;” ergo lies upon lies. Prouty gives numerous examples and when one reads this information it is no longer surprising that we have not received a straight answer to all the questions raised by 9/11.

In regard to The 9/11 Commission Report one needs to realize that it was a political document for a political purpose. It focused entirely on Al Qaeda and ignored the Pakistani connection with the CIA’s counterpart: the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Yet this aspect is crucial in order to understand the full picture. The ISI was throughout its existence in close contact with the CIA. Since Pakistan’s major enemy, India, was under Nehru flirting with the Soviet Union it was only natural that we would cultivate the Pakistani military regime and the ISI for our purposes. During the Cold War Peshawar was our main base to spy on the Soviet Union (Abuse of Secrecy. August 8, 2008). This relationship intensified during the Soviet-Afghan War when CIA money as well as weapons to the mujahadeen, were funneled through the ISI. Steve Coll’s book: Ghost Wars. The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 which was published in 2005, can be regarded as a sequel to Prouty’s and provides extensive documentation. While we used the ISI to defeat the USSR, the ISI used us to foster militant Islam. These were some of the pigeons which came home to roost on 9/11. At present we are on a diplomatic collision course with Pakistan because democratic India is our friend and militant Islam the enemy. But this enemy, including the current bête noir, the Haqqani network in North Waziristan, was raised with our money!

Currently we are chiding the ISI for having sheltered Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad and the Pakistanis deny it. We don’t believe the denial but the ISI, in all probability, operates just as the CIA with circles within circles where the information is restricted to a “need to know basis.” Since the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand does, plausible deniability is maintained. The President of the country is kept out of the loop and thus can honestly and angrily refute all allegations of collusion. This pertains, of course, also to our country.

While the Pakistani connection to 9/11 is now becoming public knowledge, the Israeli connection is still shrouded in deepest secrecy. There is as yet no reliable documentation in book form, which I have come across, and one has to join bits and pieces together from the Internet where the sources are not necessarily reliable. That there has to be a connection is obvious when one asks oneself which country has the most to gain when Americans become incensed against Arab Muslims. Israel has been in perpetual war with Arabs since its inception and the country cannot survive for any length of time without America’s protection. The Mossad, Israel’s Intelligence Service, likewise operates on the “need to know” basis. Although it takes our interests into account, and shares with the CIA whatever information it wants to share, it keeps the rest of it close to its vest. This aspect was documented in The Niger Forgery (August 1, 2003) with the example of the warning the CIA had received prior to the Beirut Marine barracks bombing in 1983. Although a warning was given it was sufficiently nonspecific so that no action could be taken. A similar situation took place in regard to 9/11. The Mossad had warned the CIA that an attack was imminent but at that point their obligations ended and whatever additional information they had was not divulged.

The Mossad also possesses a unique advantage over all the other spy agencies of the world. While other countries have to either bribe or blackmail their prospective spies, Israel has a large reservoir of Sayanim (assistants) who will give our most guarded secrets to that country. This is done not for the sake of money or out of fear but simply because of a sense of identity beween the goals of the two nations. The documentation is in Victor Ostrovsky’s By Way of Deception The making of a Mossad officer. The book was published in 1990 and I discussed it in the mentioned Niger Forgery essay. The only requirement for these assistants is 100% Jewish ethnicity and an unwavering devotion to the well-being of the State of Israel. If the host country were to find out about the activities of a given sayan the latter would merely take a plane to Israel where he/she would be welcomed home. This is not some anti-Semitic fantasy and I would urge the reader to check whatever I am writing here with the sources which are provided.

Needless to say, facts relating to an Israeli connection with 9/11 are not welcome and efforts are made to suppress them. A case in point is the series by FOX News in December of 2001where Carl Cameron reported on the “Israeli art student” spy ring in connection with 9/11. Sixty Israeli citizens many of whom “stated that they served in military intelligence, electronic surveillance, intercept and/or explosive ordnance units,” had infiltrated a variety of government agencies and were detained in the wake of the 9/11 disaster. Cameron also reported on AMDOCS, the phone system which records every call made by land line in the US, as well as COMVERSE INFOSYS which furnished wiretapping equipment for US law enforcement agencies. These as well as a number of other high-tech firms with defense department contracts are joint American-Israeli companies. The original tapes have been removed from the FOX website but can be viewed among a host of others on “911- the Israeli Connection” and the essential information is also available in Tarpley’s book. There is little doubt that national security computer systems were compromised on 9/11, which required sophisticated inside knowledge as was discussed in The 9/11 Cover-up (October 1, 2006) and Sayanim may well have been in a position to do so.

Where does this leave us in regard to 9/11 Truth? Surely there is a great deal of smoke and equally surely the true facts are deliberately suppressed. Peter Lance’s Foreword to Paul Thompson’s The Terror Timeline quotes the now famous passage by the Roman satirist Juvenal: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes – who oversees the guards? In the current context: who oversees our government? Congress is entirely subservient to Israeli Likud policies, so are the media. President Obama has likewise abdicated his responsibility for an independent foreign policy when he vetoed the UN resolution against Israeli settlements and now threatens to veto a resolution for Palestinian statehood. Let’s face it: we have no standing in the Muslim world at this time and our unquestioned allegiance to Likud policies invites further disasters. Although the bin Laden network has been significantly compromised, the Pakistani and Israeli connections remain and unless these are addressed in a constructive manner we are in danger of further attacks.

What is to be done? As Paul Thompson stated: We the People have to become the guardians of the government and spread the word that there is something seriously wrong with the official 9/11 interpretation from which all policy decisions have flowed and will continue to flow. It is now high time that we recognize the 9/11 events as a crime and proceed with criminal investigations instead of a continued “War on Terror” which will continue to cause infinite harm.

When we remember 9/11 we should not confine ourselves to the nearly 3000 victims who died on that day and the thousands of our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq since then, but the hundreds of thousands of civilians who have died and been maimed by our arrogant military interventions. In addition we have lost some of our civil liberties in the cynically misnamed PATRIOT act and we may well lose the rest of them when martial law is declared in case of another major terror attack on our soil. This is not fantasy but a very real danger to our Republic. A patriot is not somebody who meekly accepts what the government tells one to do but a person who stands up and holds it to account. We in “the land of the free and the brave,” as the National Anthem proclaims, can still do so and this is why we need to seize the moment.

Apart from writing articles for the Internet we should be doing something else which propels the search for 9/11 Truth to our living room video sets and the mainstream press. I am, therefore, putting forth this

  

PROPOSAL

 

To arrange for a two day “INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE 9/11 CRIME,” in New York City, where professionals who have good standing in their respective fields have an opportunity to discuss the inadequacies of The 9/11 Commission Report and issue recommendations. The 2007 book by David Ray Griffin: 9/11 and American Empire Intellectuals Speak Out could serve as blueprint. The major news media would be invited and Michael Moore could film the event as a documentary. The mornings could be given to presentations while the afternoons could be devoted to the public asking critical questions of the invited speakers. Funding would have to be provided from private sources; for instance The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Warren Buffett or George Soros.

An event of this type could no longer be ignored and relegated to conspiracy theories but would open the events of that day to public discussion. Since all of the relevant government documents are kept secret, and whistleblowers lose their livelihood, Wikileaks could be an excellent initial venue to bring some of them to light. Thereafter it might be possible to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court in The Hague for a judicial inquiry. 9/11 was and is not a problem for the US alone it impacted the entire world and the world deserves to know the truth.

We live in extremely perilous times and for the reasons stated above can no longer rely on our government to assure that our children and grandchildren will have at least a peaceful, if not prosperous future. This is our task now and we owe it to them.

Please distribute this essay to your friends and colleagues in the hope that the above outlined suggestion will be implemented and I appreciate your comments via erodin@pol.net. Thank you.







November 1, 2011

A PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES

These well-known words, which Shakespeare placed in the mouth of the fatally wounded Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, reflect the feelings of a great many Americans when they view the state our country is currently in. Our Democrats and Republicans, like the Capulets and Montagues of medieval Italy, can’t stand the sight of each other and although the battles are currently still fought with words, rather than swords, the outcome is equally deleterious to the health of our country.

                In the September installment (Follow the Money) I mentioned that our Republic suffers from multi-system failure. Although the condition is as yet not fatal, it is indeed serious. Unless sweeping reforms at various levels of government were to take place, we might well see a descent first into chaos and subsequently autocracy. Plato was the first to enunciate this cycle from autocracy to oligarchy, to democracy and back to autocracy. The reason why he was correct lies in human nature which has been immune to change over recorded history. Unbridled democracy, where excessive individual freedom trumps the common good has to lead to the Hobbesian fight of all against all. When society can under these circumstances no longer function, a Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler or Lenin will arrive on the scene. Although Caesar and Napoleon have now been hallowed by history this was not the case during their lifetime as can readily be ascertained by reading Cicero on the one hand and British publications from the era of the Napoleonic wars on the other. This literature is important because only contemporaries can see the flaws of the “great man” and the viewpoints of opponents need to be taken into account.

          As far as America is concerned it has so far been able to avoid Europe’s fate, but the country is still young. Before discussing the sad state our country is in at present, it is important to review how we got to where we are. Looking at the America as I have personally experienced it, I believe that its high water mark was the morning of November 22 1963. With the assassination of President Kennedy in the early afternoon of that day the country underwent a fundamental change. Lyndon Johnson meant well but was unduly influenced by a host of “advisors” who had their pet agendas which led us into the Vietnam debacle. It was America’s first defeat (after the Korean stalemate) and has rankled America’s self-esteem ever since. As an example one might mention that the early victories in Afghanistan and Iraq were hailed as having overcome the Vietnam syndrome.

               The rest of the sixties were dominated by the Civil Rights movement including its ugly side of burning cities, more political assassinations (Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X), beginning opposition to the Vietnam War, and above all what one may call hippiedom. This consisted not only of the widespread use of psychoactive drugs but the overall stance of “if it feels good it is good.” Women were promised “you can have it all,” namely a happy family life as well as success in business, and “the pill” provided them with previously unknown sexual freedom. Everybody was “liberated” and draft cards were burned.

          The election of Richard Nixon, a conservative with Quaker roots, was supposed to have been the antidote. The young stopped marching when the draft was abolished and the people at large began to forget about the war. In order to counter the threat posed by the Soviet Union, which by the way was of equal concern to Chou en Lai of China, he responded positively to the latter’s peace overtures and “Nixon in China” even became an opera. But Nixon overreached on the domestic side and Mark Felt, vigorously aided by reporters Woodward and Bernstein, became his nemesis as discussed in the September installment. Both of his successors Ford and Carter were decent people but the toxins of the sixties, which had infected the public, had remained and continued to affect society albeit in a more gradual manner.

          The seventies also accelerated the identification of America’s foreign policy goals with those of the state of Israel, which had begun in 1967 during the Six-Day War. The official American media never told us that Israeli armed forces deliberately tried to sink the USS Liberty in international waters off the Sinai shore. As mentioned in Abuse of Secrecy (August 8, 2008), 34 US sailors were killed, 171 wounded but President Johnson deliberately hushed up the event. This particular war, the aftereffects of which still bedevil us in the current Israeli-Palestinian stand-off, led to a marked rise in self-esteem of the American Jewish population. But the subsequent Yom Kippur war in 1973, which was initially nearly lost by Israel, was the catalyzer for a sense of renewed Jewish victimhood and vulnerability. This in turn gave rise to raising the disasters which had befallen the Jewish people during WWII to new prominence with Eli Wiesel becoming the spokesperson of the newly named Holocaust. A national Holocaust Museum was erected on Washington’s mall and although it was financed originally through private sources its upkeep is now funded by us, the taxpayers. The requested budget for the fiscal year 2012 (the total 2011 budget is still being discussed in Congress) is for $52,694,000, which represents an increase of $3,572,000 over that for FY 2010 (http://www.ushmm.org/notices/budget/2012.pdf). How many of us know these numbers in our cash strapped times? For comparison purposes I might point out that the FY 2011 budget for the Medical School of the University of Utah is $32,164,000. The Holocaust now serves as the means to effectively stifle any opposition to Israel’s policies to the extent that as one of our current Republican presidential hopefuls declared, “An attack upon Israel is an attack upon America.”

          President Carter was and is a decent man who tried to do the right thing under difficult circumstances. But the Arab oil embargo of 1973-1974, in response to our preventing Israel’s defeat in the Yom Kippur war, combined with the budget deficits accumulated from the Vietnam War, had created economic misery. Prices rose so did interest rates on purchases needed for daily living while wages stagnated. The Tehran hostage rescue failed and the media gave us a daily count of how many days the embassy hostages were already in captivity.

July 3, 1979 was another key day in America’s foreign policy and we have to thank President Carter’s foreign security advisor Zbigniew Brezinski for it. Contrary to published opinion of the time, our involvement in Afghanistan did not start in response to the Soviet invasion of that country on December 24, 1979 but six months earlier with Carter’s directive to the CIA for secret aide to the opponents of the then existing Kabul regime which was friendly to the Soviet Union. As Brezinski explained to a reporter from Nouvel Observateur (Paris) in 1998, he had told Carter that this directive would lead to Soviet military intervention which in turn would drastically weaken the USSR. When asked by the reporter, “you don’t regret anything today?” He replied,

“Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghanistan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost 10 years Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.” When the reporter then asked, if he regretted having supported Islamic fundamentalists, the answer was, “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War” (Chalmers Johnson Blowback and also Michel Chossudovsky. America’s War on Terrorism).

Let us pause here for a moment to consider the momentous consequences of that logic from which we have been unable to extricate ourselves. “Some stirred up Moslems” have  presented us about three years later with 9/11, which in turn led us, as successors of the Russians, into Afghanistan where we still remain after more than 10 years and have no prospect of doing any better than they or the British before them. Although our country is not likely to disintegrate into component parts as the Soviet Union did, the war against these “stirred up Moslems” in Iraq and Afghanistan has helped bring us to the sorry state our economy is in. The lesson ought to be that whenever you make a Faustian bargain you have lost your freedom of choice and the devil wins in the long run!

           With Carter’s high negatives, the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 was no surprise. He was literally the man on the horse who would restore America to its immediate post WWII glory. His plan to rescue the country from its doldrums was denounced by his early rival for the nomination and subsequent Vice President George H. W. Bush, or in short Bush 41, as voodoo economics, but this epithet has been quietly dropped by Reagan’s still evolving hagiography. The slogan was that “a rising tide lifts all boats” i.e. massive tax cuts would free the latent ingenuity of the American people and the economy would thereby rebound. This was combined with patriotic fervor to destroy the “evil empire” in all its potential outposts as well as terrorists such as Libya’s Gadhafi whose compound had to be bombed in retaliation for an attack on a Berlin discotheque where two US service personnel had been killed and more than 70 wounded. One might remember now that killing of US sailors while performing their duty on the Liberty had previously elicited no response from our leadership. It seems that it is not the killing of US personnel which matters but who is doing it. But the problem was that lower tax revenues didn’t keep the government solvent and the deficit kept soaring. Although Republicans were in charge they couldn’t care less at that time, and borrowing oneself out of debt was the order of the day.

          Again let us pause. Ronald Reagan is currently the hero and role model for most of our Republican presidential aspirants and they tout “Reaganomics” as the cure for our current economic woes. That the 1980’s improvement was due to fiscal irresponsibility they have as yet not admitted and inasmuch as the deficit has by now skyrocketed they intend to cut services to those people who need them most while keeping the massive defense spending largely intact.

              Bush 41 saw the realization of Brzezinski’s goal and with the emergence of America as the sole superpower there was a brief moment where the country could have been steered into calmer waters for the benefit of the whole world. It was not to be. A second term which would have provided that opportunity was denied to him by the combined forces of Ross Perot and Bill Clinton. The former drew needed Republican votes into his unsuccessful effort, while the latter was able to overcome the questions in regard to his sexual appetite with James Carville’s successful campaign slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid!” Clinton’s campaign advisors also had him constantly repeat the mantra that Bush couldn’t be trusted because he had promised during his run for the presidency, “Read my lips. No new taxes,” but had raised some during his term in office.

          The Reagan-Bush years had an additional impact because they saw the rise of corporations for the sake of corporations regardless of the detriment to their employees. Companies were bought on borrowed money and merged with others while ruining some of them in the process. Employees lost their livelihood and the CEO’s bailed out with “golden parachutes.” The 1987 film “Wall Street” was emblematic and rings especially true in 2011.

          The Clinton 90’s continued to be the “era of greed” and decay of the social mores which had held the country together for over 200 years. Although the country was largely at peace, Madeleine Albright who had been on Clinton’s National Security team and became Foreign Secretary in 1997, was made of sterner stuff. At one point in 1993 she told the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell, in regard to Bosnia “What are you saving this superb military for, Colin, if we can’t use it?” as recounted in her memoir (Read my Pins). Powell, who had seen war and knew what it led to, nearly became apoplectic. Eventually she did get her wish. It resulted in the establishment of an independent Kosovo, which by some is regarded as a “Narco State” (Welcome to Kosovo! The World's Newest Narco State by Tom Burghardt, February 29, 2008 in globalresearch.ca). This is not irrelevant for today’s events because the unilateral decision to declare independence from Serbia has been questioned on legal grounds, but was agreed to by the UN. It can serve as a precedent for the Palestinians seeking recognition as an independent state at present.

                The foreign policy objectives were, of course, declared to serve either “humanitarian” purposes or to fight terrorism. One may question, however, to what extent the bombing of Belgrade and the destruction of bridges across the Danube improved the lives of civilians living there. Especially, since the ostensible goal the removal of a dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, was not achieved until about a decade later. An ulterior motive such as the establishment of a brand new US military base, in Kosovo, Camp Bondsteel, has been swept under the rug and hardly anybody knows anything about it. For that information I encourage the reader to “google” the name of the camp and you will be amazed what you find.

Whoever thought that the demise of the Soviet Union would at last bring some modicum of peace to the world was, of couse, sorely mistaken. The Cold War seamlessly morphed into the “War on Terrorism,” which received a massive boost under Bush 43. Prior to the 2000 election he had promised a “Compassionate Conservatism,” which some of us interpreted that he would pursue a course where private enterprise thrives, but is sufficiently regulated to avoid the excesses of speculation and greed. Well, that did not work out either. His presidency became the greatest disaster in regard to foreign as well as domestic policies the country has seen. This is, of course, well known to most of us, but it shows that the general public by and large knows too little about the character and knowledge base of the person we elect to the presidency.

At this point a mea culpa is in place because I also believed that the son of a competent previous president and sitting governor of a large state would have the experience level which is required for the highest office in the country. I was aware that George W was deficient in regard to foreign policy but thought that competent advisors from the Reagan and Bush 41 era would prevent him from making serious mistakes. This assumption was based on having been ignorant about the fact that these advisors: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice had been hijacked by the Neocons where the “con” stands not only as an abbreviation for conservative but also convict. Since I have discussed this aspect in a number of previous essays on this site, which can be found by downloading the entire issues and then looking for the word “neocon,” nothing further needs to be said to this point at this time.

This brings us to the Obama presidency and 2011. Unfortunately, just as Bush 43, he has not been able to keep the promise upon which he was elected. This was in part due to similar reasons, with the most important one: lack of experience. As mentioned above I thought in former years that a lack of experience in certain areas of government could be made up by having competent advisors, but this was a false hope. Advisors have an agenda and unless the president has a sufficient background of information from personal experience he/she will be unable to sift fact from fancy. This is bad enough on the corporate level but disastrous when it happens to the CEO of the country.

In the beginning of this essay I mentioned that our country suffers from multisystem disease which now affects all levels of government. The framers of the Constitution had tried to avoid this fate. They had followed the advice of Montesquieu and created a system of checks and balances. An independent Judiciary was to watch over an independent Legislature which in turn curbed the power of the Executive. To Juvenal’s question Quis custodiet ipse custodias – Who oversees the guardians? the answer was: a Free Press. None of this is true at present because all four levels have been corrupted by the power of money and fear.

Let us start with the media. The ones which stream into our living rooms have been, to use the Nazi phrase, “gleichgeschaltet,” which might be rendered as “enforced uniformity.” Although they seemingly present different points of view they have to adhere to certain unspoken guidelines. There exists a censorship which is exerted not so much by government, as in authoritarian states, but a tacit understanding of the limits which are tolerated by the editor. These limits exist regardless of whether one deals with the print media or TV. The truth of this statement can readily be verified by consulting the Internet on controversial issues, such as the ones discussed here, and by reading the newspapers from countries other than ours. This is essential if one wants to obtain a reasonably accurate view of the forces governing our world. It is especially wholesome to read the views of those who are regarded as enemies because they can serve as teaching material. We don’t learn from people who agree with our point of view but only from those who disagree. But labeling them with some pejorative based on the political correctness of the time and country one lives in only perpetuates the cycles of fear and hate.

The Judiciary has likewise lost its independence by having fallen victim to party politics. Supreme Court Justices are appointed by the President and have to be confirmed by the Senate. As such, the President will only nominate those candidates who reflect the views of the political party he owes his own position to, while the senators of the two parties will probe the candidate for views which might disqualify him/her based on their own prejudices. The candidates have, of course, seen through this and learned to hide their personal views on such sensitive issues like abortion, and nowadays give bland answers. But a given party needs to fill only five of the nine seats with candidates who reflect its point of view. This leads to the current situation where a five against four vote frequently becomes the law of the land. It can even give us a president as was the case with Bush 43. Although all judges swear to uphold the Constitution, this document is constantly interpreted and re-interpreted to suit the whims of the individual judges. While minority reports can be rendered they have no force behind them.

I have already mentioned the election of Bush 43 by one vote of the Supreme Court which nullified the separation of the three powers, but another egregious 5-4 ruling also needs to be mentioned. In 2010 the Court used the 1st amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees free speech, to rule “that government may not ban political contributions by corporations in candidate elections.” This ruling gutted all previous attempts by Congress to rid the election process of undue influence by big donors with the result that the money spent during the current election cycle is likely to reach $1 billion or more. Is this how we should spend money at this time? Furthermore, are labor unions also to be regarded as corporations? In addition, the individual member of a union or stockholder of a corporation may not agree with the choice of candidate the corporate powers chose to support. So how can the average citizen’s voice be heard in the most important aspect of the democratic process: a free and fair election?

The legislative power of Congress has also been corrupted. Inasmuch as it nowadays takes a great deal of money to be elected, the candidate will be duty bound to pay the piper thereafter. If he/she fails to do so re-election becomes out of the question. But re-election is the goal before the candidate even first sets foot into the Senate, House or White House. One term is regarded as failure and all the effort which should go into governing is diverted to chasing after money for re-election. To this one must add the 24 hour news cycle which focuses on the next election as soon as the new member of government has been sworn into office. Off-year elections are now geared towards the prevention of either party gaining a filibuster-proof majority. This renders Congress ineffective and results in its current dismal approval rating of 9%. But unless the election process is thoroughly revamped, which may actually require another Amendment to the Constitution, no improvement can be expected.

The President, as chief executive, is supposed to simply ensure that the laws passed by Congress are faithfully executed and nothing happens under his aegis which violates the Constitution. Well, this has also become fantasy. The most important aspect, namely to engage in acts of war, is now single handedly decided by the president, and Congress simply gets notified of the fact. Furthermore, presidents have discovered the power of the pen by issuing “signing statements,” which have the force of law. For instance when Bush 43 signed the Bill which prohibits torture, he added exemptions which rendered the intent of the law ineffective. In addition, executive orders can be issued which are to remain secret, such as the above mentioned one by Jimmy Carter in 1979. President Obama has also discovered the joys of wielding the executive pen. He joined the NATO effort to remove Gadhafi in Libya without congressional approval and his aides remarked that it was not taking sides in a civil war but merely a “kinetic military action.” He has also ramped up the drone war and engages in remote-control assassinations of people regarded as terrorists. Most recently he told Congress that he has dispatched one hundred military advisors to Uganda to help quell a rebellion. That the president of that country has engaged in the same atrocities as the rebel chief, and that the area where the rebels operate is also a newly discovered source of oil, one learns not from our free press but only the Internet.

It is obvious that the government as well as our two political parties, which serve as its base, have failed to address the real needs of the people whom they are supposed to represent. There is, therefore ample reason why people are thoroughly disgusted with the current state of affairs and a global climate change, not only in the meteorological but also the political sense, is under way. This aspect and additional reasons which feed the protests that have now reached our shores will be discussed in the next installment.







December 1, 2011

A PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES

Part II

 

          In the previous installment I discussed in part how our country ended up in dire straits with a debt of $15 trillion and unfinished wars. All three branches of government: the Legislative, Judiciary and Executive, as well as the Media which are supposed to expose malfeasance, have become corrupted to an extent that some observers of today’s scene are comparing it to Germany’s Weimar Republic. The major difference is, of course, that America has not (should we say “as yet?”) to deal with the disastrous aftereffects of a lost war and Carthaginian type peace treaty. Nevertheless when one considers the gridlock in Congress on the one hand and the popular “culture,” as presented by the entertainment media on the other, the comparison is not all that farfetched.

          In the past week Congress has again demonstrated its inability to come to grips with a meaningful plan to reduce the staggering deficit, which is beginning to threaten the status of the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. The crisis in September over raising the limits of government borrowing was resolved by the appointment of a Congressional “Super Committee.” Its task was to cut the debt by $1.2 trillion and in case of inability to do so, automatic spending cuts of that magnitude would go into effect, half of them coming from defense appropriations. The committee was made up of six Republicans and six Democrats and from the outset it was difficult to see why these people, who are beholden to their parties, would agree on anything their party leadership opposes.

In addition, the whole process was a sham. The budget cuts were scheduled to be achieved over a ten year period and would not have started until 2013 after a new administration had been voted into office next year. The “automatic cuts” which are now on the table as a result of the committee’s failure to achieve agreement remain empty words because election season is in full swing and, unless some foreign policy disaster intervenes, the entire year from now till November 6, 2012 will be taken up by political posturing on how to rescue the economy.

When one looks at the current scene one gains the impression that there seem to be three separate ideological universes pursuing their goals. As yet they have not met but they will have to collide in the not too distant future. One is what can be called the “Beltway,” the other the “Protest Movement,” while the third one operates in the background with the ruling circles in the various countries of the world deciding on monetary policies and the overarching question of war and peace. In this essay I shall limit myself, however, only to the first one.  

When one talks about the Beltway (Interstate Highway 495, which encircles Washington DC)) one refers to the politicking and lobbying within Washington. The concept deals not only with the people in the government buildings, where decisions are made and executed, but also with what is called J Street and K Street. Although listed in alphabetic order, K Street is the infinitely more important one because it harbors the headquarters of numerous lobbying groups and “thinktanks” which influence the politicians in Congress to pass legislations according to their specific interests rather than those of the public at large.  The people at the J Street address are another lobbying group, mainly composed of Jewish members – although non-Jews are welcomed – who try to defuse the Arab-Israeli conflict through constructive engagement of both sides and are, therefore, in opposition to the more powerful K Street AIPAC lobby, which has no use for the concerns of Palestinians.

The number of lobbyists who operate currently on Capitol Hill has variously been reported as 12,000; 17, 000 and 22,000. There are 2,500 firms and at least 12,000 clients. Expenditures have steadily risen from $1.2 billion in 1988 to $3.5 billion in 2010. The firms represent the interest of every imaginable subgroup of the American people ranging from industry through unions and other organizations of which, in alphabetic order, the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons), AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and NRA (National Rifle Association) seem to be the best financed as well as the most effective. Their Boards of Directors make the decisions what legislation should be pursued and what should not see the light of day. This is accomplished not only through direct contacts with Senators and Representatives but also, what is more important, through their staff members.

The assumption that legislation which carries the name of a given Senator or Representative was also written by that person is, of course, obsolete. Legislation is written by appointed staffers who follow the general guideline of the elected legislator but insert pet projects, for which they tend to get paid by the lobbyists, into every specific act which comes before the House and Senate for a vote. This leads to the absurdity that not only can a given piece of legislation run into hundreds of pages but also the situation that the elected legislators don’t even have the time to read what they are expected to vote on.

The classic example is, of course, the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” It was originally intended to provide universal health insurance to all citizens but has degenerated, prior to passage, into a monstrosity of 906 pages. It had taken about a year of haggling and the final vote was on Sunday March 21, 2010 when after numerous hidden backroom deals the Democrats had enough votes to push it through against the wishes of the Republicans. Obama hailed it as a triumph but the Republicans immediately launched court challenges and are united in their efforts to repeal “Obamacare” the moment they get the majority in both Houses, and possibly the Presidency, next year. Thus, the entire first year of Obama’s presidency was wasted. Lawyers are currently kept busy and the next year will be devoted to electioneering with the intent to either save what is salvageable from this misbegotten bill or eliminate it altogether (see also September 1, 2009 Obama’s Reality Check).

Lobbying is lucrative and has led to the “revolving door” situation where former lobbyists become legislators or staffers and former members of government become lobbyists. Thus, we don’t have “Government by the People for the People,” as Lincoln had proclaimed, but government by some people for some people with mutually conflicting interests. One may naively hope that by voting for a new crop of legislators the situation would improve but this is likewise no longer realistic. The goal of the politician is to gain power and then keep it for years to come. Here is how it works on the state level for instance in Utah where I have the most direct information. The electorate is largely Republican to the extent that of the 29 state senators only seven are Democrats and of the 75 representatives 17 are Democrats. On the Federal level our two senators are Republicans and among the three Representatives there is one Democrat who hails from the Salt Lake City area. But Mr. Matheson, who has been elected several times since 2000, is a thorn in the side of the establishment and just a few weeks ago a second attempt was made to definitively remove his chances for re-election next November by redrawing the borders of his Congressional district. This is popularly called gerrymandering. The term goes back to the Boston of 1812 when its Governor Elbridge Gerry redrew the map for Senate seats and it was thought to resemble a salamander.

When Matheson won the 2000 election in his mostly Democrat district, the legislative powers were disappointed and promptly changed the borders to include Republican dominated areas. This process nearly lost Matheson the re-election in 2002 when he barely beat his Republican challenger. Since it is legal to engage in redistricting every 10 years, based on census data, our current State legislature grasped the opportunity. While they were considering how to draw new borders they thought that it was also time to add a fourth Representative to the current three. But in order to ensure that there wouldn’t be a Democrat elected they changed Matheson’s Salt Lake County district to an extent that it now includes a considerably larger portion of rural Republican areas.

In actual practice this means that Martha and I can save ourselves the time and effort next November to go to the polls because the process is rigged to an extent that with a non-Republican vote one merely registers one’s discontent without having any effect on the outcome. When we used to live in Michigan the opposite situation was the case. Affluent Grosse Pointe, which consistently voted Republican, had no chance for representation in the House because the district’s borders include the East side of Detroit as well as heavily Democratic suburbs. 

Gerrymandering has also very practical consequences on the presidential level. Since candidates have to win their spurs first on the local level the districts they come from is an all-important variable. In the 2000 election Obama challenged Representative Bobby Rush for his African-American dominated district in Congress. After he lost that contest against the incumbent he mobilized his friends in the state legislature, as well as wealthy donors who saw him as a rising star. The district’s borders were then changed to include this white, affluent, liberal constituency. Obama won the 2004 election to the Senate, without having to change his address. The information comes from the Internet and is also contained in a documentary by Jeff Reichert entitled “Gerrymandering.” Both parties participate in this process which, apart from vote buying through campaign donations and outright fraud at the polls, is the third widely underappreciated effort to influence an election outcome.

Voting, every two or four years, is about the only way the public has to express its wishes in a democracy because in theory it allows to “throw the rascals out.” But our two-party system has become so rigged that in essence one only exchanges, most of the time, one “rascal” for another, regardless of party affiliation. A third party candidate does not have a chance under the current system and will only lead to splitting votes from the existing parties without being able to win the election. As examples one could cite Teddy Roosevelt’s attempt to defeat President Howard Taft which brought in Woodrow Wilson who had been given no chance previously. Another more recent example is that of Ross Perot. His failed attempt to gain the presidency helped defeat Bush 41 and gave us Bill Clinton whose sexual proclivities had seemed to make him unelectable.

As mentioned earlier, the upcoming year will be devoted by the Republicans to win the November election, and it is obvious that they will not allow any major legislation to be passed which might give the Democrats, and thereby Obama, a chance to claim success. They and the country are now being held hostage, which needless to say is unconscionable to say the least. We live in exceedingly turbulent times and don’t have the luxury to “fiddle while Rome burns.”

While Obama has no rival among the Democrats, all attention is riveted on the Republicans and after 11 debates there are still eight hopefuls on the scene. Although the debates are highly redundant, and the candidates tend to give scripted answers, it is beginning to become possible to discern what each one of them stands for. All are united in the theme that Obama has failed dismally, that the economic woes are his fault and, with one exception, that Israel must be defended at all costs. Obama’s economic “stimulus” measures were ill advised because government cannot create jobs. This can only be done by private industry. The cure is to cut spending on entitlements: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But since the country’s security is paramount, defense appropriations must not be touched, although they represent 20% of the discretionary budget which is clearly out of line in comparison with our potential enemies. Yet, any tax increase to cover part of the deficit is off limits.When the moderator asked in one of the debates that candidates should raise a hand if they were willing to accept a compromise where for every ten dollars of cuts there would be one dollar of tax increase not a single hand went up.

The media keep conducting polls and declare front runners. The first one to achieve that status was the Congresswoman from Minnesota Michele Bachmann after she won a nonbinding straw poll at the Iowa State Fair in August. That she was ahead of Ron Paul by only 152 votes out of 16,892 was ignored at that time. She became an instant Republican star and was seen as the improved version of Sarah Palin. She is clearly better educated but, like Palin, worships at the Judeo-Christian altar, with emphasis on the first part. In addition she is a firm advocate of “the right to bear arms” by everybody and therefore has the support of two of the three above mentioned major lobbying groups. Her religion, just like that of most of the other candidates is, however, sufficiently flexible so as not to stand in the way of political expediency. It allows her to, as a British observer of the American scene had said in earlier years about Hillary Clinton, be “economical with the truth.” This is, of course, also the hallmark of most of the other candidates.

She was, however, soon eclipsed by the debating skills of Mitt Romney. As mentioned on, another occasion, I liked his father when he was governor of Michigan and I appreciated that Mitt had rescued the Salt Lake Olympics in 2002 when it was mired in debt and corruption. The Olympics were an unqualified success and winter sports enthusiasts from all around the world now enjoy the facilities which were created for that occasion. In addition we, the citizens of Utah, didn’t lose any money but actually came out ahead (The Mormon Olympics. March 1, 2002). But something happened to Romney since then. He became governor of Massachusetts in November of that year and his major legislative achievement was a universal health care bill for that state. He was initially proud of it but when it was pointed out that the bill had actually served as a model for Obama’s, he distanced himself from that success and now insists that it has no applicability to the nation at large. He did not run for re-election because he had his eye on the presidency and the past five years were spent on electioneering. His 2008 bid failed but he learned from the mistakes made, brushed up on his debating technique and now provides very polished performances. The problem is that in the process he has given up on principle and says whatever appears to be politically opportune at the moment. His other major handicap is his Mormon faith which is viewed with suspicion by a significant segment of the electorate.  

The next media darling was the current Governor of Texas, Rick Perry. After initially riding a wave of enthusiasm he performed poorly in the first debate and it got worse thereafter. The low point came on November 10 when he eagerly announced that one of his deficit cutting measures will be to eliminate three federal departments. When he started to list them he mentioned education and commerce but then blocked on the third one. His colleagues tried to help him but to no avail. He later remembered that it was obviously the energy department, but it was clearly too late. Well, mental blocks happen intermittently to all of us, but when a candidate in the full flush of eagerness to convince the public of his prowess succumbs to it, the media take note and won’t let him forget. While the event was not fatal his front runner status disappeared and he slipped into the single digit of approval ratings.

With Perry having flamed out the next great Republican hope was the current governor of New Jersey Chris Christie, whose name surely should appeal to the Evangelical segment of our society. After surveying the field for a few weeks he had the good sense to decide that his current job is better than one he might not get and declined to enter the race.

His place was then taken by the next comet, Herman Cain. As a genuine African-American, in contrast to Obama who as being half white is regarded as not understanding that community’s needs, Cain proclaimed that he knows how to set the country on the right course. The way to achieve it was the 9-9-9 formula, which in mantra like fashion, he kept repeating at every appropriate and inappropriate moment. Everybody agrees that the current tax system is an abomination and if you give the same income data to five different accountants they will come up with five different answers in regard to how much you owe the government or vice versa. People in government can’t even agree how many pages the code contains and one can read numbers ranging from 2,500 to 2.5 million (http://www.trygve.com/taxcode.html). As they say: “Go figure!” So a revision of the code is clearly urgently needed and, as mentioned above, Mr. Cain’s answer is 9-9-9. There would be a universal 9% flat income tax rate, a 9% corporate tax rate and 9% VAT (value added tax) on all purchases. He insists that this formula is fair and revenue neutral (would bring in the same amount of money as the government gets currently). When experts went over the numbers, which supposedly validate Mr. Cain’s assumptions, they found them wanting. In addition to other problems with 9-9-9 it is, of course, obvious that the VAT, which affects consumers most directly, will sit on top of the sales taxes inflicted on us by the state we live in and will rise with inevitable inflation. It will, therefore, hit the poorest segments of our society the worst. Michele Bachmann, showing her Bible proficiency, pointed out that when you inverse the numbers you get 666 – the Antichrist!

While this dented the enthusiasm for the new Messiah somewhat, his complete lack of experience in foreign policy could not be plastered over with 9-9-9 and when it became known that complaints of sexual harassments had been filed against him in the ‘90s, Republican enthusiasm cooled somewhat further. As usual it wasn’t the complaints but the way he handled the issue, by providing different answers on different occasions, that sealed his fate and he lost his front runner status.

This has now been taken up, for the time being, by the former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. In the debates he lent “gravitas” to the situation and assumed the position of elder statesman bolstered by his professional degree in history. But Mr. Gingrich brings a lot of baggage with him which he had accumulated during the 90’s. While being Speaker his unyielding confrontation with Clinton was responsible for the government shut-down. Furthermore, while vehemently arguing for Clinton’s impeachment for the dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, Newt carried on a sexual affair of his own. After divorcing his sick wife he legitimized the paramour with marriage, his third one. These “Christian values” do not endear him with the evangelical segment of the party which any candidate will need to gain the nomination. To make matters worse it has just come to light that he was paid between $1.6 and $1.8 million “consulting fees” by Freddie Mac, which jointly with Fanny Mae was responsible for the subprime mortgage crisis that was a major reason for the 2008 financial collapse. Gingrich’s campaign office denied any malfeasance and declared that he had merely offered “strategic advice.” Knowing these aspects of his personality raises the question whether we really want a person of this type in the White House regardless of all the campaign promises.

Among the other candidates is Rick Santorum ex-senator from Pennsylvania who likewise expounds on his Christian principles and he is in fact an only once married Catholic with the appropriate number of seven children. Having failed to win re-election in 2006 he is currently in full-time campaign mode but fails to excite the public with innovative reasonable ideas. This leaves us with two candidates who differ from the rest. In Follow the Money (September 2011) I have already mentioned Ron Paul who does not fit into the currently expected politically correct Republican mold because he is at heart a Libertarian. It is refreshing to hear him tell us the unvarnished truth that we should get out of Afghanistan, get rid of the numerous bases around the world in countries where they either don’t need or don’t want us and that security begins at home. Instead of telling others constantly what they should do, we ought to put our own house in order. Since his solutions are radical by any standard he has no chance of being nominated and he knows it. He is simply using the forum to serve as our conscience and when, with exception of the next candidate, all the others said they would support Israel if she were to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, he flatly declared that this is none of our business. They have enough nukes to take care of themselves and as far as Iran’s nuclear ambitions are concerned they are no threat to our security. Let the Israelis fend for themselves. These are not words one hears from the establishment.

The final candidate and the only one who has the experience, strength of character and a reasonable outlook on foreign as well as domestic issues, is our former governor Jon Huntsman. Having been born in 1960 he is in his intellectual prime, comes from a highly respected family and his billionaire father, who is still alive, established the Cancer Institute at the University of Utah. Early on Jon worked as a staff assistant in Reagan’s White House and under Bush 41 served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, as well as Ambassador to Singapore. During the Clinton years he held executive positions in the family’s varied enterprises and under Bush 43 became one of the two Deputy United States Trade Representatives. He resigned from that job in 2003 to run for governor in Utah and was elected in 2004 as well as re-elected in 2008. When President Obama picked him for Ambassador to China in 2009 he left Utah with an approval rating of over 80% and Utah was named the best managed state by the highly respected Pew Center on the States. Earlier this year he relinquished his ambassadorship and entered the presidential race.

When one adds to the above that he is fluent in Mandarin, having lived both in Taiwan as well as mainland China, one would think that this is precisely the person the country needs at this time. As a centrist he would appeal to Independents, the mainstream Republicans as well as some Democrats and thereby present a formidable challenge to Obama. Yet, this will in all probability not be allowed to happen by the “Tea partiers” who are in charge of the Republican Party at this time. Furthermore, as a Mormon, although more relaxed about his faith than Romney, he is not palatable to the Evangelicals and in addition he has none of the other major lobbying groups working for him. His is the old-fashioned approach of trying to win the people in New Hampshire’s all-important primary as the stepping stone for subsequent success. But the powers are arraigned against him and the major state-wide newspaper has just announced its support for Gingrich. There is a saying here, “As New Hampshire goes, so goes the nation” and under these circumstances a Gingrich endorsement is typical for the country we have, rather than what we should have but are likely to keep next November.     







January 1, 2012

A TRANSFORMATIVE YEAR?

          At this time of the year it is customary to look back at the past to get an inkling of what might transpire in the future. Although the past is not an infallible guide to the future the latter is to a considerably extent predicated by it, as has been shown in a number of previous issues on this site. There are also some key years in human history which set events in motion which then reverberate for decades and even centuries. For Americans it was 1776 but Europeans have memories which go back considerably further. One could arbitrarily start at 1618 which means nothing here but was the onset of one of the most disastrous European wars. It lasted for 30 years, resulted in the disintegration of the Holy Roman Empire into numerous principalities and thereby allowed the French, British and Russians to dominate European events. The first two, joined by the Dutch, were also put into the position of creating overseas empires thereby challenging Spain and Portugal. The re-creation of a German empire, but without Austria, in 1871 was clearly too late for being welcomed by the existing powers because they only saw a rival whose ambitions needed to be curbed.

          I picked 1618 as the start of this little excursion into history because it was Austrian policies which had started this war, just as Austrian policies gave rise to the next disaster in 1914 and what is hardly known: one of the fatal strikes which killed the monarchy in 1918 was a revenge of the Czechs for 1618. History is not some impersonal force, as Marxists would have it, but also consists of grievances and hatreds which are nourished over a period of decades and sometimes centuries as was the case in the situation that is discussed here. Picking on Austrian examples of bad decisions is not due to some animosity against the country of my birth but simply because I am most familiar with its history. The cause of the 30

Years War, which actually consisted of a series of four campaigns interrupted by some brief armistices, was ostensibly a battle over religion; just as our current “War on Terrorism” is regarded as such. Yet in both instances religion also served as a screen to hide naked power politics. What September 11, 2001 was for the U.S., May 23, 1618 was for Austria.

          In 1609 Emperor Rudolf II had granted religious freedom to the Bohemian Estates (Stände) but this edict was gradually undermined by his successor Matthias II (1557-1619) who prior to his death forbade the Protestant religion altogether. A protest note by the Bohemian nobility in March of 1618 was answered with an edict which not only disallowed a meeting of the Bohemian Estates to debate this question, but threatened military reprisals if it were to take place. On the mentioned day in May an armed multitude appeared before the Castle (Hradschin) in Prague and some members of the Bohemian nobility then confronted the imperial administrative officials with their grievances. The discussions became an argument and when it became fruitless a member of the Bohemian group supposedly yelled, “What’s the use. Throw them out the window in good-old Bohemian fashion.” This advice was followed and the Prager Fenstersturz entered history. Reprisals started promptly and in the subsequent war the Czechs were soundly defeated at the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620. But it was not just the loss of a battle; the estates of the nobility were confiscated, given to loyal Catholics, and all vestiges of Bohemian independence were gone for the next 300 years.

          The Czechs, however, neither forgot nor forgave, and the drama continued into the 20th century. Tomáš Masaryk (1850-1937) a Moravian politician had served intermittently in the Austro-Hungarian Reichsrat (Parliament) but concluded in 1914 that independence for Czechs (who included Bohemians and Moravians) as well as Slovaks could best be achieved by joining the Allied cause. He left the country and his peregrinations took him from Switzerland through France, England and Russia to the United States. Throughout his travels he advocated the formation of an independent Czechoslovakia, and he is credited with having been instrumental with the formation of the Czechoslovak legions from Austrian POW’s who then fought on the Russian side. Masaryk reached America in the spring of 1918 and was given a hero’s welcome in Chicago where he had previously (1902, 1907) lectured at the University. Since his wife was American and had influential friends, among whom was Charles R. Crane, he obtained access to President Wilson who lent a more than willing ear. I have previously mentioned Mr. Crane (January 1, 2007. The Year of the Middle East) as a member of the King-Crane Commission which had been dispatched by Wilson in 1919 to determine as to what role the United States should play in the dispute over Palestine by the Zionists vs. the newly sovereign Arab states in the region. His advice was “hands off” and it was heeded until 1948 when President Truman, within a matter of a few hours, recognized the new State of Israel. This remarkable speed resulted from his being told that he could not win the November election without the Jewish vote which would surely turn against him unless he promptly acted in the recommended manner.

At the Versailles Peace conference Czechoslovakia was established as an independent country and Masaryk became its first president. This was done, of course, under Wilson’s guise of independence for the oppressed people of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Yet, it cobbled together a nation which consisted of Bohemians, Moravians, Slovaks, Germans, Poles as well as some other smaller nationalities. If ethnic uniformity had been the goal it was clearly wanting and this had its brief revenge in March 1939 with the separation of the Slovaks from the Czechs. Hitler is usually regarded as having broken the Munich Accord by annexing rump Czechoslovakia. But what tends to be ignored is that the Slovaks had seceded under Jozef Tiso, and Hitler then took the opportunity to declare Bohemia and Moravia (their ancient names) a Reichsprotektorat. The fact that in so doing he gave the Poles another piece of the defunct Czechoslovak state also tends to be ignored by contemporary historians.

In 1945 Czechoslovakia was resurrected and Jan Masaryk, son of Tomáš, became its first president. Yet on March 10, 1948 history came full circle because he was found dead below the bathroom window of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Prague. The official cause of death was “suicide” but persistent rumor has it that this was another instance of the “good-old Bohemian custom,” defenestration. This time it wasn’t Protestants who were responsible but communists and the people lingered under their rule, which was considerably more oppressive than anything they had to endure under the Habsburgs, for another 40 years until the Velvet Revolution in December of 1949. But the Slovaks were not happy and again demanded their independence. It is to the credit of Vaclav Havel that he let them go peacefully in 1993. In contrast to the crop of politicians we currently have, Havel, although by profession a playwright, was a statesman who knew right from wrong and always had human rights and needs, rather than affairs of state and the nation, in the forefront of his thoughts. He died last month and his memory will be revered by “all people of good will,” which is another reason why I have started this essay with the 30 Years War. Havel put a final end to all the animosities which had started in 1618, then erupted again in 1918, 1939 and 1945 accompanied by untold human suffering.    

I have used this “ancient history” as another example to show the continuity in human affairs and that any arbitrary starting point will always do violence to the truth. This brings me to the current political scene and the question whether or not 2012 will be another year for pivotal events. In last month’s installment I mentioned that one of our Republican aspirants for the presidency is the former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. He is of interest in this context because by profession he is a Professor of History which should qualify him as having a broad outlook on world affairs. But what did we hear from him on the campaign trail? Last month he had this to say to a Jewish audience “Remember, there was no Palestine as a state, it was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs and were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places."

          This is remarkable for the mindset it portrays: Say anything that might get you votes! Hitler could say with the same right: “there are no Czechoslovaks; they are an invented people by the Versailles dictate.” But I guess Professor Gingrich would object to that. Furthermore, Jews are to a considerable extent urban as well as mobile. They can, therefore, pack up their belongings and leave for greener pastures whenever the need arises. This is what Gingrich suggests to the Palestinians without taking into consideration that they are, or at least were, largely rural and that they can’t pack up their olive trees. In addition Professor Gingrich surely knows that Palestinian history did not start in the 20th century. What was the official name for The Holy Land the Crusaders went to? To what land did the Jews emigrate in the late 19th century and up to 1948? They didn’t go to the Ottoman Empire or Arabia, they went to Palestine! The land, of course, regained official recognition after WWI when it was declared a British Mandate. The people living there or coming to it were Palestinians regardless whether their religion was Muslim, Jewish or Christian. Again, this is all so elementary that one is actually ashamed of having to bring it up but this is the level of information upon which the next American President will be chosen and this should give us ample reason for concern. 

          Last month the presidential campaign shifted into high gear and currently the TV news channels saturate the airwaves with the impending Iowa caucus on the upcoming Tuesday as if the fate of the Republic was hanging on it. But let us remember that this is not even a primary where all the voters of a given party and in some states even Independents can cast their votes for a given candidate. No, this is a “Coffee Klatsch” where the various proponents of the candidates meet some citizens and try to convince them to cast their vote for the candidate of their choice. At the last election about 120,000 Republican Iowans cast their votes in this manner which amounted to about 20 percent of registered Republican voters. The winner at that time was Mike Huckabee and we know how he fared subsequently. The arcane process of how America elects its presidents was discussed in more detail in the March 1, 2008 installment (Voting in America).

          The reason why 2012 may well become another year for the history books does not necessarily reside in the end of the Mayan Calendar, Nostradamus’ quatrains, which are continuously milked for doomsday scenarios, or the celestial alignment of December 21, as we are informed about on the “History” channel on our TV sets. It tends to be considerably more mundane and consists of the numerous tensions which have been building up here and abroad. The kettles are boiling and any one of them may explode at any moment.

          Let us start with the fact that the leadership of the U.S., Israel, Russia, Egypt and possibly a number of other nations faces elections in this year. These are not routine because in the current economic climate the issue of war and peace hangs in the balance. The biggest danger continues to emanate, of course, from the Middle East and it is in regard to that part of the world where the decisions by the leaderships of the countries mentioned above, in addition to China, will have the greatest impact. Elections in times like these are fraught with danger because the leadership of any given party, regardless in which part of the world, is intent on retaining its power and will do so even if it were to provoke a war. There are enough examples from past history which could be cited but let it suffice to refer to Niall Ferguson’s Virtual History – What Could Have Been, where he showed that England’s entry into WWI, which turned a continental European war into a global war, was not necessarily foreordained. Party politics, Liberals vs. Tories, had also played a role. This is the point which will be crucial this year.

          At present the Republican Party in our country has come to be dominated by its extreme right wing elements. With one exception all the candidates for the nomination drape themselves in Christian virtues, although some Evangelicals feel that Romney and Huntsman don’t really qualify as Christians because Mormonism is, in their eyes, a cult whose members need to be shunned. Christian charity, one of the hallmarks of the religion, is woefully lacking. In the attempt to win the slogan: all is fair in love and war, seems to be the rule and the candidates outdo each other not only in promises how to set the country on the right course but in attacking each other and obviously, Obama. In ordinary times this would be par for the course but when in these dangerous times promises are made in regard to foreign affairs and specifically towards Israel they cannot be taken lightly.

          In the previous installment I have mentioned that from all of the Republican candidates only Jon Huntsman represents centrist views the country could rally around. Unfortunately even he has succumbed to the seeming necessity to flatter Jewish voters. In the New Hampshire debate with Newt Gingrich he declared last month that we have to stand with our friends and allies and that Israel is “our anchor in the Middle East.” If he truly believes this we have a serious problem because we thereby have “outsourced” our freedom of action to another country. This is precisely the situation George Washington had warned us about in his Farewell Address to the new nation.

          When it comes to U.S. foreign policy one can detect two strands. One is the continuation of the 19th century “Great Game” between England and Russia over the riches of Central Asia which is now pursued by the U.S. as heir to the British Empire. It is explained by Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security advisor, in The Grand Chessboard-American Supremacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. The book is important because of the author’s stature as well as candor and most of all because it was written prior to 9/11. Brzezinski made it quite clear that for America to maintain its dominance in the world it has to have a prominent role in what he called the “Eurasian Balkans.” These consist of: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan; all of which, apart from Afghanistan, are successor states of the defunct Soviet Union.

          While Brzezinski did not advocate American hegemony in the region, especially one based on military might, he did stress its economic importance and a balancing of the interests of Russia, China, Iran and Turkey with those of America. He made it clear that continued antagonism to Iran is not in America’s best interest and neither is a resurgent Russian influence in the region. “It is this consideration that has made the pipeline issue so central to the future of the Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia.” Russia needs to be bypassed and “if another pipeline crosses the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan and thence to Turkey and if one more goes to the Arabian Sea [bypassing the Strait of Hormuz] through Afghanistan, no single power will have monopoly over access.” Thus it is clear that 9/11 was a welcome excuse for the Afghanistan invasion which obviously also served ulterior motives on the “chessboard.” It explains in addition why we have no interest in leaving the country and the current date of 2014 is likely to be postponed if the Afghans allow it. The pipeline “pipedream” has been discussed here on previous occasions especially in the October 1, 2002 (One Year Later) and August 11, 2011 (Misguided Arrogant Incompetence) essays.

          Brzezinski’s book was published in 1997 and Iraq is already treated essentially as an American protectorate while Israel is mentioned only in the context of the Palestinian problem which might lead to a radicalization of the Muslim world. On the whole the book was optimistic in its outlook as to how America might retain its global predominance in the 21st century. But the actual policies pursued after 9/11 brought a rude awakening and led to another book in 2007: Second Chance-Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower. President Bush 41 was criticized for having failed to grasp the moment after the dissolution of the Soviet Empire to enunciate a global vision for America and for not having moved decisively on the Palestinian issue. Nevertheless, Professor Brzezinski rated his overall performance as deserving a “Solid: B.” President Clinton got only an “Uneven: C,” while Bush 43 was a catastrophe and received a “Failing: F.” The reason for the F was, “A simplistic dogmatic worldview prompts self-destructive unilateralism.” Brzezinski concluded the book with these words, “It is essential that America’s second chance after 2008 be more successful than the first for there will be no third chance [italics in the original]. America urgently needs to fashion a truly post-Cold War globalist foreign policy. It still can do so, provided the next president, aware that the ‘strength of a great power is diminished if it ceases to serve an idea,’ tangibly relates American power to the aspirations of politically awakened humanity.”

          Three years into the Obama administration it is obvious that this has not happened. The second chance is gone and the outlook for a third one is indeed bleak when one considers the current state of American domestic politics. This interaction between foreign and domestic issues is the second strand, which has been alluded to above, and has received only scant attention by Brzezinski. In our country the president does not really have the power popular imagination ascribes to him because as leader of his party he is restrained by its wishes and the need to keep the administration in office. There is, therefore, an inherent conflict and Bush 41 became its victim. He could not have achieved the breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Brzezinski chides him for because domestic Jewish interests trumped his foreign policy goals. The same applied to Clinton who could not make major concessions to Arafat while his wife, Hillary, was running for a Senate seat in heavily Jewish New York. These are realities and unless the country comes to grips with them there is no hope for the type of enlightened global policy Brzezinski had in mind. Our Iran policy is dictated by the fear that the “mad Mullahs” would use a nuclear weapon, once they have one, against Israel which would lead to another holocaust. This has to be prevented at all cost, “with all options against Iran on the table.” Translated this means a pre-emptive strike which might produce exactly what one wanted to avoid. Under these circumstances Israel instead of being an anchor, as Huntsman proclaimed, could actually be a millstone around our neck.

          What our domestic friends of Zionism, be they Jewish or Christian neglect to see is that Israel has not escaped from the current protest movements sweeping the world. Shimon Peres, its aged President, warned last week that there is a battle going on for “Israel’s soul.” He referred to the increasing power of the ultra-orthodox segment which now clashes with the secular element of the population. But the metaphor of “Israel’s soul” is inadequate because as Faust complained: Zwei Seelen wohnen ach in meiner Brust (Alas, two souls reside in my breast) and one wants to separate itself from the other. In the Jewish context it goes back to Napoleon’s question to the French Sanhedrin: are you a religion or are you a nation? The answer then was “a religion and loyal Frenchmen;” now in Israel it is “Both.” This, of course, brings up the question what kind of a nation: a theocracy where Talmudic law rules, or a liberal democracy with equal rights for all the inhabitants of the land. A student of history will immediately detect the similarity to the Maccabean era of the 1st century BC and its civil wars, with the only difference that the “Hellenists” are now called “secular” and the “God fearing,” “orthodox” or “ultra-orthodox.” The Israelis must sort this out for themselves and it is a grave error on part of our Zionists, who unfortunately have a great deal of influence on our election outcome, to enforce their idealistic tunnel vision on our foreign policy. Prime Minister Netanyahu also faces an election and whether or not he will try to avoid defeat at the polls by a foreign policy adventure, such as bombing Iran, is another question.

          The Iranian nuclear quest is, however, only one of the many areas of concern. Last month Kim Jong Il of North Korea died and his son Kim Jong Un is an untested unknown individual. His youth and inexperience present a potential hazard. We don’t know what he will do with this impoverished but nuclear armed country and the hope is that older generals will curb his appetite for glory. On the geostrategic level a divided Korea, regardless of the wishes of the population, remains a priority for America because once the two halves are united they may no longer want our troops there. Under these circumstances our “Far East anchor,” as Brzezinski called Japan, would also be in jeopardy because our bases there are officially needed to protect the Korean “tripwire.”

          All of these problems are compounded by the economic woes of the world. Our employment situation is still grim, the gap between the have and the have-nots continues to widen and street protests, with or without violence, are bound to arise again once the weather gets a little warmer. The same applies to Europe where the Euro continues its slide and how long Mrs. Merkel can retain German support for her pan-European policies is another question. The Brits have already bailed out and put their bets on America rather than Europe which does not bode well for the continent. In Russia, Putin is fighting for his political life and the opposition is liberally supported by America’s NGOs (non-governmental organizations) as well as probably the CIA, because the weaker Russia becomes the better for our prospects in Central Asia. Obviously Putin knows this and how he will react cannot be fathomed at this time. But one thing is certain it is not likely to make him more well-disposed to our country.

          In view of the visceral dislike Republicans harbor against Obama it is highly improbable that any meaningful legislation for the public good can be enacted this year. All eyes are on the November election as if this could solve any of the problems which have been touched on here. So what can one say about our prospects? Let’s hope that we can somehow “muddle through,” and avoid the looming disasters so that 2012 will get only a passing glance in the history books rather than becoming another hallmark.







February 1, 2011

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

As part of my subscriptions to journals and magazines I receive Foreign Affairs which is published bi-monthly by the “Council on Foreign Relations.” This is a private nonprofit nonpartisan organization and represents this country’s most influential foreign policy “thinktank.” As such it has also been attacked as a cabal which is out to destroy the United States in favor of a one world government, single currency and economic policy, controlled by a hidden, small, unelected oligarchy. Although anyone can submit an article to the journal only those which come from, what the editors assume to be, authoritative sources are published. As everything else they are not free from bias by the contributors. Nevertheless, since I am curious and like to entertain all viewpoints before making up my mind on a given issue and since it does represent the Zeitgeist among the professionals who shape our present, and thereby the future, it is a valuable resource. After initial semi-retirement I often went to the Marriott library of the University and looked up old issues of the 1930s and 1940s in order to see how events of which I had been an eyewitness in Austria were reported here and found them fairly accurate.

Two weeks ago came the January/February issue which was devoted to the 90th anniversary of the magazine and is a rather hefty tome of 208 pages. Its theme was, “The Clash of Ideas. The ideological battles that made the modern world–and will shape the future.” It was gratifying to see that the emphasis was on “ideas” rather than Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations.” After the collapse of the Soviet Union Huntington had agreed with Fukuyama’s thesis that Hegel’s “End of History” was about to make its debut.  Liberal democracy had emerged triumphant over all its foes in the 20th century and Huntington wrote that ideologies had become obsolete. In his opinion the problem the world faced now was cultural and more specifically the battle lines were drawn between the West and the Muslim world. As a result of this notion we have seen during the past two decades the seamless replacement of “Islamofascism” for Communism, which allows for the perpetuation of wars. But ideologies are not obsolete, because the mental concepts of leading people drive their actions, and if these are supported, for whatever reason, by a large segment of the people in their respective countries, history is made. The anniversary issue gives us a glimpse of how foreign leaders of the epoch making 1920’s to the 1940’s were portrayed.

Since the issue is, as mentioned, large I shall limit myself to portions of the chapter, “How We Got Here” and one contemporary article. In the Preface “Making Modernity Work” the editor, Gideon Rose, wrote: “The basic question of modernity has been how to reconcile capitalism and mass democracy, and since the postwar order came up with a good answer, it has managed to weather all subsequent challenges.” Rose admits that fault lines exist, as evidenced by the current serious economic problems brought about by “reckless and predatory financial practices.” But he also reminds us that in view of the “far greater obstacles that have been overcome in the past, optimism would seem the better long-term bet.” This may be true, but when one listens to the Republican debates as they are shown on our TV screens and the, I must say partly vicious, denunciations of President Obama’s policies which must be reversed at all cost, one can be forgiven for harboring some serious concerns about the immediate future.

The articles in the mentioned chapter could not be printed in full but are excerpts, nevertheless they do provide valuable insights and I shall largely let the authors speak for themselves through extensive quotes. The first one entitled “Lenin and Mussolini,” by Harold Laski (Professor in the London School of Economic and Political Science), was published in September 1923. Some key sections are:   

 

“It is common to both movements that their power is built upon the force they can command. It is common to them, also, that they have rigorously suppressed all opposition to themselves and dismissed as unimportant the forms of constitutionalism.… For Lenin, the state is in fact a method of protecting the owners of property; and the true division of men is into those who do not own possessions other than their power to labor. The life of the state is an eternal struggle between them. They have no interests in common.… The method he advocates…a dictatorship of iron rigor is to consolidate the new regime until the period of transition has been effectively bridged.…

The Italian movement is different in origin, but its ultimate spirit is in no-wise different. Leninism has been the dictatorship of a party, Fascism is a dictatorship of a man.… Liberty, for him, is the parent of anarchy if it implies hostility from opponents and the proof of disloyalty, involving expulsion from the party, if it comes from his declared supporters.”

 

In view of the basic similarity of the systems which differed only in the ruthlessness with which their goals were pursued, Laski wondered why Lenin had received international disdain, including an allied invasion of his country, while Mussolini “has been the subject of wide-spread enthusiasm.” He concluded that this difference “is the outcome of their antithetic attitudes to property.” It is noteworthy that Laski spoke of Lenin in the past, although the latter died only in January of the following year. He was, however, already disabled by a stroke and no longer in charge of the government.

          The next article, written by Victor Chernov (Russian Social-Revolutionary writer; Minister of Agriculture in the Kerensky Government) and published in March 1924, entitled “Lenin,” can be regarded as a summation of this man’s character and achievements.            

 

“Lenin was a great man. He was not merely the greatest man in his party; he was its uncrowned king, and deservedly. He was its head, its will, I should even say he was its heart were it not that both the man and the party implied in themselves heartlessness as a duty.… Nothing to him was worse than sentimentality, a name he was ready to apply to all moral and ethical considerations in politics.… Lenin would undoubtedly have reversed this dictum [war is continuation of policy by other means] and said that politics is the continuation of war under another guise…and as politics is war the rules of war [murder of the enemy is valor, robbery is requisition, deceit is tactics etc.] constitute its principles.… His power lay in the extraordinary, absolute lucidity … of his propositions. He followed his logic unflinchingly even to an absurd conclusion and left nothing diffuse and unexplained unless it were necessary to do so for tactical purposes.… Ideas were made as concrete and simple as possible. This was most evident in Lenin’s rhetoric. … He never rose too high above its [he audience’s] level, nor did he ever omit to descend to it at just the necessary moment, in order not to break the continuity of the hypnosis which dominated the will of his flock; and more than any one he realized that a mob is like a horse that wants to be firmly bestrode and spurred, that wants to feel the hand of a master.… His love of the proletariat was the same despotic, exacting and merciless love with which, centuries ago, Torquemada burned people for their salvation.”

 

After Lenin’s death a power struggle ensued between Trotsky and Stalin. Trotsky believed that the Soviet revolution could not last unless the model was exported world-wide. Stalin opted for the nationalist solution of “socialism in one country” first. Russia had been defeated twice within a span of 15 years and this had to be prevented in the future, regardless of cost. It could, however, only be achieved by rapid industrialization of the entire country. Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP), which was instituted in 1921 and had allowed a limited return of private property, especially for the peasants, was abandoned. The peasants were “collectivized” and resistance punished with death or expulsion to the Gulag archipelago. That this policy led to massive starvation and millions of deaths was for Stalin simply the price that had to be paid to secure the country against the enemies from abroad. The article on “Stalin’s Power” published by Paul Scheffer (former Moscow correspondent for the Berliner Tagblatt and at the time of writing stationed in Washington) in July 1930 described the character of the man.

                  

“Stalin is not a man who appeals to the sympathy of crowds or stirs their imaginations. He is not an electric person. Let us be more blunt: he is frankly unattractive, and all the more so since he knows he is, and shows by his demeanor that he does not care.… You feel at once that he is dangerous. … What worried Lenin in Stalin’s case was the latter’s secret, slinking, anonymous expansion of personal power in the party and his preference for the backstairs to more conspicuous routes. The tactics which Stalin was later to use with such success against Trotsky, first to silence him and then to reduce him to complete helplessness, he used against Lenin, the moment the latter fell sick.… Stalin is the dictator of dictators. Only he prefers not to look the part. He is not Mussolini. Yet he has one trait in common with Mussolini–an extraordinary suppleness and pliancy–and he demonstrates it under a more difficult test.… He understood, without shirking any responsibilities that active socialism and private initiative were incompatible in the same economic area, and he acted resolutely on the perception that the only salvation for the Soviet power lay in the ruthless socialization of the entire country, irrespective of the immediate consequences.… His success is closely bound up with his perceptions of these factors. At the same time his success seems to be inseparably bound up with Lenin’s characterization of him: ‘crude and narrowminded.’”

 

The change of small individual farms to the large collectives was, however, only the beginning. For Soviet society to succeed repression by the government was not sufficient; a complete mental change of the citizen’s role in the relation to the state had to be achieved. This effort was described in “Making the Collective Man in Soviet Russia” and published in January 1932 by William Henry Chamberlin (Soviet correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor).

                  

“The individual human personality is fighting a losing battle against heavy odds in Russia today.… What is perhaps not generally realized is that man himself is the first and most important objective of Soviet planning and that the tendency to replace man, the individual, by collective man, the product of social groups and forces, is one of the most important and interesting currents in Soviet life.… From the cradle to the grave the life and thought of the Soviet citizen are mapped out for him so far as external influences can be mobilized to achieve this end.… From the Young Pioneers [entry at age 8] it is a natural upward step to the Union of Communist Youth with a membership of more than four million young people between the ages of sixteen and twenty-three. Here the clay of human personality that has been given preliminary shape in the Pioneer stage is subjected to further and more vigorous psychologic kneading.… The tremendous pressure of “obshestvennost,” which might be loosely translated as organized public opinion, does not slacken when the Soviet citizen grows out of Communist Youth age and takes up his regular work in life.…When the Soviet citizen picks up a newspaper, no matter which one it may be … he gets precisely the same picture of political and economic events.… The radio, which is entirely under state or public control, broadcasts a vast amount of political agitation and economic exposition.… Even concerts are often accompanied by short explanatory lectures in which the class origin of the composer is analyzed and his music is discussed as reflecting both his origin, whatever it may be, and the general historical problems of his time. … So the individual personality is attacked from every side by forces which are all controlled from a common center and which are in accordance with a prearranged plan to remake the traditional human individualist into a collective man, a citizen of the future communist society.”

 

Stalin was, however, not the only one who pursued this goal he had a counterpart in Italy. Giovanni Gentile, “philosopher and member of the Italian Senate; Minister of Public Instruction in the first Cabinet of Premier Mussolini,” discussed “The Philosophic Basis of Fascism” in January of 1928.

         

“In the definition of Fascism, the first point to grasp is the comprehensive, or as Fascists say, the ‘totalitarian’ scope of its doctrine, which concerns itself not only with political organization and political tendency, but with the whole will and thought and feeling of the nation. …Fascism is not a philosophy. Much less is it a religion.… Mussolini himself has boasted that he is a tempista, that his real pride is ‘good timing.’ He makes decisions and acts on them at the precise moment when all the conditions and considerations which make them feasible and opportune are properly matured.… For Fascism the state is a wholly spiritual creation. It is a national State, because, from the Fascist point of view, the nation itself is a creation of the mind and is not a material presupposition, is not a datum of nature.… The Fascist State … is a people’s state and, as such, the democratic State par excellence.… Hence the need of the Party, and of all the instruments of propaganda and education which Fascism uses to make the thought and will of the Duce the thought and will of the masses. Hence the enormous task which Fascism sets itself in trying to bring the whole mass of the people, beginning with the little children, inside the fold of the Party.… The Fascist conception of liberty merits passing notice.… Freedom can exist only within the State, and the State means authority.… Fascism has its own solution to the paradox of liberty and authority. The authority of the State is absolute. It does not compromise, it does not bargain, it does not surrender any portion of its field to other moral or religious principles which may interfere with the individual conscience.… The Fascist corporative State supplies a representative system more sincere and more in touch with realities than any other previously devised and is therefore freer than the old liberal State.”

 

For space considerations I gave only the essence of Signore Gentile’s article but what comes through loud and clear is that the State, as personified by Mussolini, brooks no dissent and just as in the Soviet Union a new “Uomo Italiano” has to be created starting with little children. We can also see here the first beginning of what later became the “People’s Democracies,” as sponsored by the Soviet Union after WWII.

          Emphasis now shifted to the gathering storm in Germany as described by Erich Koch Weser, “former Minister of Justice if the German Republic, recently leader of the Democratic Party.” His article was entitled “Radical Forces in Germany,” and published in April 1931. It deals with the economic catastrophe which had overtaken Germany at the time and its insights should not go unheeded, especially in the current economic crisis.

 

          “Economic depression and political radicalism go hand in hand. When economic distress reaches a certain point, the individual citizen no longer uses his political power to save the public weal, but only to help himself. His ideal of political liberty pales before his ideal of economic equality. Once this sentiment has eaten its way into the hearts of the majority of the nation, any political system is doomed to failure. It is useless to tell the embittered masses that their political and economic rulers are not responsible for their misfortunes.… Intelligent and orderly as the German people are, patiently as they have borne the sufferings of war and inflation, they are in danger of falling into this reckless state of mind.… Here is a population, well-equipped from the point of health and intellect, which in general is forced to be satisfied with an income barely sufficient for a minimum existence. One-eighth of those who are able and eager to work are unable to find any opportunity to do so. And those who are employed see no possibility of little by little rising to positions where their abilities will have fuller scope. Above all–and this is perhaps the worst aspect of the situation–not only are great numbers of persons forced to abandon any hope of advancement themselves but they must also relinquish the idea of giving their children an adequate education and thus opening up a way for them to better their situation.”

 

By the following year conditions had deteriorated further which prompted the previously quoted Paul Scheffer to write “Hitler: Phenomenon and Portent” in April of 1932. In the article he described the mood and background of the people who attended Hitler’s speeches.

 

          “Hitler is the most successful orator that Germany has ever possessed….  It is an interesting and a stirring experience to listen to Hitler–his bitterest enemies have often fallen under his spell….  The predominant element in the picture [audience at Hitler’s speeches] is what is so aptly described in Germany as the ‘declassed’ middle class: creatures visibly down at the heel, spiritually crushed in the struggle with everyday reality, distraught under a perpetual worry about the indispensable necessaries of life….  They are all people who have had conceptions of life, and conceptions of their personal rôles in life, with which their present situation stands in violent contrast….  Fundamentally it is a question of the hard times which have settled over Germany ever since the war. Great fortunes have come into being, though they are probably more apparent than real. Meantime … [for] the middle classes, which used to be Germany’s backbone, the standard of living is far below the pre-war level. Since 1929 it has sunk to unprecedented depths….  The effects of the capitalist system also weigh down upon them. They hate the ‘plutocrats.’ Their battle cry is what they call the ‘Jewish financial tyranny’….  Hitler’s idea is to give the people a common meeting ground of convictions which abolish all distinctions and in which all share….  Hitler can lay hold on them in their innermost sensibilities when he raises his cry for unity, promises them the ‘respect’ of the world as the fruit of unity…”   

 

The next article, by Hamilton Fish Armstrong (editor of Foreign Affairs) published in July 1933, describes the beginnings of Hitler’s totalitarian dictatorship. Although I lived at the center of these events and my socio-political memories extend to February 1934 I had never seen in the American literature the clear line which led from Marx through Lenin to Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin. In America Hitler is seen in isolation as a “megalomanic madman who wanted to rule the world.” Yet, all of the mentioned four dictators had, whether they admitted it or not, Karl Marx as their Godfather and they were all cut from the same cloth. One does not associate Hitler with Marx because he presented himself as the antithesis but he personified National Socialism and the social anti-capitalistic aspects did result from the writings of Marx and Engels. The same goes for Mussolini. It is remarkable to what extent their two lives paralleled each other and I might write an article, on another occasion, which provides a comparison.

The ideal the four dictators aspired to in their own way were Nietzsche’s “Will to Power” and his “Antichrist.” Regardless of nationality they subscribed to the same basic ideology that human society has to be totally transformed. The individual citizens of a given nation would have to realize that they are only cogs of a vast machine. This can be the State or the Party which will see that their needs, as perceived by the operators of that machine, are met according to Marx’s dictum: “From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs.” Under these circumstances absolute obedience by the individual is the norm. Anyone who disagrees is either insane or a traitor and must be dealt with accordingly. But it must also be admitted that the idea of the totalitarian state would never have taken root without the devastations of the preceding war and the resulting treaties which were regarded as unfair even by the victorious Italians. To the material losses one needs to add the psychological impact which had demonstrated that human life was cheap because millions were killed on the battlefields and additional millions died from disease and starvation. The German word for battle, Schlacht, is actually more descriptive and accurate because it denotes “slaughter.”

I shall return to the fundamental question about the role of the individual in the state and capitalism vs. socialism in another installment and stay for now with the most important issue of war and peace. It is dealt with in the previously mentioned article about current events in Foreign Affairs. The article is by Mathew Koenig (Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations) and entitled, “Time to Attack Iran. Why a strike is the least bad option.” He believes that “Iran’s rapid nuclear development will ultimately force the United States to choose between a conventional conflict and a possible nuclear war.” But are these really the only options? Is there not a third one which removes Iran’s perceived need for a nuclear shield to protect itself from an increasingly belligerent America because the latter feels obligated to defend Israel? There is only one Republican candidate for the presidency, Ron Paul MD, who has the courage to say this in public and he has no chance to be nominated, let alone elected.

When one looks at the remaining four Republican candidates for office one cannot but feel apprehension. Apart from Ron Paul who has Christian values, but doesn’t speak of them, the other three, who tout their Christianity, have no problem with advocating war. When in one of the debates Ron Paul said that it might be time to consider extending the golden rule to our foreign policy, some members of the audience booed. When the moderator then asked the Mormon Mitt Romney what we should do with our enemies the answer “Kill ‘em!” rang out, and the two Catholics Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum heartily agreed. This is serious and it gets worse. In last Thursday’s debate a gentleman in the audience who identified himself by name and as a “Palestinian American Republican,” asked how a given candidate would help the Palestinians in case he were to become president. Romney, as the would-be frontrunner immediately began to lecture the poor man that the impasse in the peace talks is the fault of the Palestinians. The Israelis would be happy with a two-state solution the moment the Palestinians gave up terrorist attacks, as well as the right to return to their previous domiciles, and assure Israel of the right to exist as a Jewish state. Gingrich concurred and added that on his first day in office he would sign an order that the American embassy be transferred from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Santorum also chimed in and in addition lectured us on the danger of jihadists coming to Cuba, Venezuela and Central America.

That the suggested embassy transfer would immediately inflame the Muslim world, create thousands of new Jihadists and make further conflict inevitable seems not to have occurred to these gentlemen. There are alternatives to war and our politicians could learn something from sailboat racers. There exists a set of international rules we have to abide by and in order to win you don’t ram your competitor’s boat but you use tactics within the rules. One of the most effective, for a given situation, is to literally take the wind out of his sails. This is what should and could be done. The forces which prevent us from following this path will be discussed in the next installment as well as other pertinent articles from Foreign Affairs.







March 1, 2012

FOREIGN AFFAIRS
PART II

          In last month’s installment I discussed mainly those articles from the bi-monthly journal Foreign Affairs which dealt with the leaders of totalitarian states who shaped the history of the 20th century. I also briefly mentioned the article by Matthew Kroenig, “Time to Attack Iran. Why a Strike Is the Least Bad Option,” in the context of the current debates by the Republican candidates for the presidential nomination. In view of the importance of this issue the article and its logic behind it will now be discussed in greater detail.

The magazine tells us that the author of the Iran article is “Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations [the magazine’s parent organization] and the author of “Exporting the Bomb: Technology Transfer and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons.” During the year spanning July 2010 to July 2011 he also was a “special Advisor in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, responsible for defense strategy and policy on Iran.” In addition, the Internet informs us that Dr. Kroenig is Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Georgetown University in Washington DC, received his Political Science Ph.D. in 2007, is a frequent guest on various TV programs and has published extensively on nuclear issues. Given his age and CV he is not likely to have experienced war at first hand and may only have a theoretical awareness of the suffering it entails for its innocent victims on both sides of a given conflict.

          Let me give his conclusion first and subsequently deal with its rationale.

 

                   “With the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq winding down and the United States facing economic hardship at home, Americans have little appetite for further strife. Yet Iran’s rapid nuclear development will ultimately force the United States to choose between a conventional conflict and a possible nuclear war. Faced with that decision, the United States should conduct a surgical strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, absorb an inevitable round of retaliation, and then seek to quickly de-escalate the crisis. Addressing the threat now will spare the United States from confronting a far more dangerous situation in the future.”

 

In essence Dr. Kroenig feels that war is inevitable so let’s have a limited one now, rather than a big one later. Yet this was precisely the logic of the German General Staff in July 1914. They were aware that Russia was rapidly building up its military forces in order to avoid another defeat such as they had suffered by the Japanese ten years earlier. It was generally assumed that by 1915 Russia would be fully armed and in view of its massive manpower would inevitably emerge victorious in a European war. Germany and Austria thought they could get by with a limited war but instead lost their empires.

This is a lesson Dr. Kroenig has not yet considered. Let us now concentrate on his major assumption that, “attempting to manage a nuclear-armed Iran is not only a terrible option but the worst.” The purpose of the article was to provide the justification for this statement. In it Dr. Kroenig first set out the points made by critics of a pre-emptive nuclear strike by the U.S. and tried to demonstrate that they are not valid. He then discussed the potential reprisals by Iran which are likely to take place and ended up with the benefits to us and the world if his advice were to be heeded.

The dangers of a bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities were listed as: a raid would fail to stop its nuclear production, would bring about not only retaliation but a global economic crisis and might even lead to full-scale war. While the author did not negate these potential problems he made a determined effort to minimize them. He believed that if the attack were to be carried out by the U.S. instead of Israel its chances of success would be immeasurably increased because we not only have better bunker-busting bombs, but also precision guided missiles and better intelligence information than the Israelis.

Civilian “collateral damage” would be limited by attacking at night. Under these circumstances “the majority of the victims would be the military personnel, engineers, scientists and technicians working at the facilities.” I found this pseudo-humanitarian stance amazing and would like to ask Dr. Kroenig if he would feel the same way if he had been working at Los Alamos in the early 1960s and the Soviets had decided on a surgical strike to obliterate that facility. To further minimize civilian casualties he suggested that the assault should concentrate on the “uranium-conversion plant at Isfahan, the heavy power reactor at Arak, and various centrifuge-manufacturing sites near Natanz and Tehran, all of which are located aboveground and are highly vulnerable to air strikes.” These sites are also supposedly sufficiently distant from built up areas which would limit civilian casualties.

This scenario left him, however, with the problems of the nuclear plant in Natanz and in Qom. But these can be dismissed in his opinion, because

 

“…although it [Natanz] is buried under reinforced concrete and ringed by air-defenses, would not survive an attack from the U,S. new bunker-busting  bomb, the 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator, capable of penetrating up to 200 feet of reinforced concrete. The plant in Qom is built into the side of a mountain and thus represents a more challenging target. But the facility is not yet operational and still contains little nuclear equipment, so if the United States acted quickly, it would not need to destroy it.”

 

Dr. Kroenig assumed furthermore that once the mentioned targets were eliminated it would take years to rebuild them and apparently he thinks that the moment our spies in the sky see something to this effect the bombing would resume. As to the inevitable reprisals by Iran they would be quite limited.

 

          “Tehran would certainly feel like it needed to respond to a U.S. attack, in order to reestablish deterrence and save face domestically. But it would also likely seek to calibrate its actions to avoid starting a conflict that could lead to the destruction of its military or the regime itself.”

 

So let us get this straight. The “mad Mullahs” are such a threat to us and Israel that they must be prevented from getting the bomb by any and all means. Yet once they are being bombed they return to sanity and knuckle down to our demands. This logic defies the facts of nature: a mad dog won’t become docile by repeatedly hitting him on the head. It’s obvious that he’ll just become more furious.

          Among the retaliations against U.S. troops or Allies which we might face under Dr. Kroenigs scenario, are the

 

launching of missiles at military installations or civilian populations in the Gulf or perhaps even Europe. It could activate its proxies abroad, stirring tensions in Iraq, disrupting the Arab Spring, and ordering terror attacks against Israel and the United States. This could draw Israel or other states into the fighting and compel the United States to escalate the conflict in response. Powerful allies of Iran, including China and Russia, may attempt to economically and diplomatically isolate the United States. In the midst of such spiraling violence, neither side may see a clear path out of the battle, resulting in a long-lasting devastating war, whose impact may critically damage the United States’ standing in the Muslim world.”

 

These are indeed dire consequences including the additional one of closing the Strait of Hormuz. In the face of all these disasters Dr. Kroenig remained optimistic that most of them could be avoided if the U.S. were to initially prepare its allies and publicly proclaim “red lines.” The major one would be that we assure Iran that we are only interested in destroying their nuclear capability rather than seeking regime change. In his opinion the mullah’s will believe this and limit their response to a token retaliation. I personally regard this as a dangerous fantasy which totally ignores well known facts about how human beings react when their vital interests or ideals are threatened. The massive outpouring of hatred against us in Afghanistan, which included killings, after the accidental burning of copies of the Koran ought to give those who advocate further acts of war against Muslim countries some second thoughts. The expectation that acts of war elicit reason in the attacked has no precedent in human history. That Israel got by with bombing Iraq’s nuclear reactor and the presumed one in Syria does not compare, because these were single strikes while the destruction of Iran’s program would require a sustained effort.

          While these concerns are, of course, known to responsible people the war mongering continues unabated. On February 18 Naftali Bennett, was a featured guest on the Saturday night weekly Huckabee Show. Mr. Bennett, whose views were fervently endorsed by the host, is a high-tech millionaire Israeli businessman who holds the rank of major in the reserve of the IDF. From 2006-2008 he was the current Prime Minister’s, Benjamin Netanyahu, Chief of Staff and in January 2010 he became Director General of the Yesha Council (an umbrella organization of municipal councils of Jewish settlements in the West Bank), which led the fight against the settlement freeze. In April 2011 he co-founded MyIsrael, Israel's largest national movement, with over 75,000 Israeli members. Mr. Bennett told us that Iran has a “maniacal radical Islamic regime” and is “an octopus of terror.” Furthermore, “We have to stop them, and yes, it is imminent.” While he preferred the U.S. to do the bombing because of our better weaponry, he also stated, “If necessary we’ll do the job for the world but please, please don’t tell us to stand back and just wait and I guess pray for something good to happen. We’ve got to do the job. If Obama won’t do it, please let Israel do the job.”

          When one considers Mr. Bennett’s background these views are understandable but they hardly deserved the fervent applause by Governor Huckabee and his audience. Yet these events must be seen in the context of an intense Israeli propaganda war to convince the American public that Israel would be doing us and the world a great favor if she were to undertake the onerous task of bombing Iran rather than leaving that job to us. This propaganda effort does not stop at the U.S. public in general, as well as Congress, but will extend directly to the White House on March 5 when Prime Minister Netanyahu will confer with President Obama on this issue. The timing is not accidental because it coincides with the March 4-6 annual meeting of AIPAC, Israel’s prime lobbying arm in Congress, which has repeatedly been discussed in these essays. 

Jeffrey Goldberg published an article in Atlantic on February 25 under the title: Coming Up: The Definitive Obama-Netanyahu meeting. The article, which can be found on the Internet under http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/02/coming-up-the-definitive-obama-netanyahu-meeting/253497/, was based on the opinion of Ari Shavit who is a senior correspondent and editor for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz. Mr. Shavit is quoted as having stated,

 

“The Netanyahu-Obama meeting in two weeks will be definitive. If the U.S. president wants to prevent a disaster, he must give Netanyahu iron-clad guarantees that the United States will stop Iran in any way necessary and at any price, after the 2012 elections. If Obama doesn't do this, he will obligate Netanyahu to act before the 2012 elections. The moral responsibility for what may happen does not lie with the heirs of Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion. The moral responsibility will be borne by the man sitting in the chair that was once Franklin Roosevelt's.”

 

The word that immediately came to mind upon reading this was: Chutzpah! Americans have to be made to feel guilty, and lacking in moral courage, if they don’t do Israel’s bidding in a matter that is clearly against our national interest. Even Goldberg, who is Jewish, voiced mild disapproval of this stance but it shows, nevertheless, the tremendous pressure that will be brought upon President Obama to knuckle down under Israel’s demands.

          The views of the three authors Kroenig, Bennett and Shavit which were discussed here and are endorsed by all but one (Ron Paul) of the Republican candidates for the presidency are, however, not unopposed. Although all authors agree that a nuclear armed Iran would change the situation in the Middle East for the worse, there is considerable disagreement about when military action should be taken and even if it is necessary at all. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, has publicly declared that an airstrike on Iran is at this time not in our best interest. He has also recently gone to Israel to convince his counterparts that they ought to abstain for the time being, because it would do more harm than good. Our Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, also shows little enthusiasm for the urgency of a war.

While our warmongers portray the Israeli public opinion as uniformly in favor of a bombing campaign this is likewise propaganda rather than fact. There is a peace movement in Israel, not only with the Palestinians but the region in general, which gets undercut and is not reported on by our media. Readers of the Internet can inform themselves, however, of what other people in that country, albeit currently out of power, really think. For instance ex-Mossad Chief Ephraim Halevy expressed his opposition to Netanyahu’s bellicose attitude by stating last November that “Iran is not an existential threat. … The State of Israel cannot be destroyed,” and that “An attack on Iran could affect not only Israel, but the entire region for 100 years.” This view was echoed by “Retired army general Nathan Sharony, head of the Council for Peace and Security, which includes over 1,000 former high-ranking security officials with dovish views, says the positions of ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan and ex-army intelligence head Shlomo Gazit against an attack on Iran are ‘acceptable’ to him” (http://972mag.com/warriors-against-war-with-iran/34831/). Dagan has also been quoted as having said that an attack on Iran “is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Warning voices are likewise not lacking in our country but they are not getting the attention they deserve because the major TV networks fail to air them. The left of center Jewish magazine Tikun Olam stated in an article on February 17 entitled  Understanding Iran,” that the current bellicose rhetoric can get us “sucked into a military escalation that will likely spiral out of control. Barack Obama ought to ask himself if this is what he wants his foreign policy to look like going into a presidential election?”  

Anthony Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) and is a recipient of the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Medal, published an extensive review on Iran’s nuclear capability and noted that, “Iran will be limited to relatively low yield, non-boosted fission weapons for some years into the future while Israel already has high yield boosted and thermonuclear weapons. … In actual practice, Israel can already deliver an existential strike on Iran, and will have far more capability to damage Iran than Iran is likely to have against Israel for the next decade.”

A more recent well-reasoned article on the issue was published by Scott Peterson in the February 27 issue of the Christian Science Monitor entitled “If they get the bomb … then what?” Peterson carefully laid out the consequences of an attack and also quoted the Israeli military historian Martin van Crefeld in answer to the question raised in the headline: “Absolutely nothing will happen. Israel has what it takes to deter Iran, and the Iranians know it.”

To my surprise even Dennis Ross, who has been called “Israel’s lawyer” by Aaron David Miller (Wither Zionism? Revisited. March 1, 2009) , wrote in a NY Times article on February 14, “But before we assume that diplomacy can’t work, it is worth considering that Iranians are now facing crippling pressure and that their leaders have in the past altered their behavior in response to such pressure. Notwithstanding all their bluster, there are signs that Tehran is now looking for a way out. The Obama administration has now created a situation in which diplomacy has a chance to succeed.”

Finally and equally surprising, while I wrote these pages the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs was delivered to our mailbox which contained an article by Colin H. Kahl “Not time to Attack Iran. Why War Should Be a Last Resort.” The surprise lay not so much in the article itself but in the author. Dr. Kahl is an Associate Professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security.” We are also told that in 2009-11 he was a U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East. It is clearly unusual for a member of the same university to publicly voice his disapproval of the views advocated by a junior member and shows how sensitive and important this issue really is. In the article Dr. Kahl took great pains to systematically refute each of the excuses given for the attack by Dr. Kroenig and the minimization of the adverse consequences which can be expected.

Although most of them have already been mentioned there are some additional specifics which have not been. Among these is the effect on the Arab Spring. This popular uprising is far from over and it is likely that if we or Israel were to attack Iran, Muslim solidarity would overcome the Sunni-Shia divide. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia may promise to pump more oil, as mentioned by Mr. Bennett, but he doesn’t do the pumping! This chore falls on his subjects who toil away on the Western shore of the Gulf and they happen to be Shia rather than Sunni. Will they sit idly by when their cousins across this narrow waterway get bombed, or will they go on strike? Under those circumstances one may also ask how stable the Saudi monarchy will turn out to be. 

Even if the oil workers were to remain on their job the result of their efforts will still have to go through the narrow Strait of Hormuz to reach the Indian Ocean. From there it has to go through the Suez Canal, which is no longer in absolutely dependable friendly hands, in order to get to Europe and the West. In the East there is another chokepoint: the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia, through which about a quarter of the world’s oil-tanker transport passes. If it were to become impassable the economies of India, China, South Korea and Japan would be seriously compromised. I have mentioned that Egypt is no longer the friend it once was when “our man in Cairo,” President Mubarak, was in charge. Anti-American and anti-Israel sentiments are coming to the fore and although the military regime has no interest in reneging on the peace treaty with Israel the street protests may force them to. It would also be wise for our friends of Israel, of the evangelical Huckabee type and AIPAC, to consider that over fifty percent of Jordan’s population is Palestinian. King Abdullah II might likewise find himself in difficult straits once some of his people were to get “spring fever.”

The impact on the fragile economic recovery would, of course, be massive. Gas prices at the pump have already reached unprecedented heights for the time of the year in our country and Bill O’Reilley chastised Obama for having allowed this to occur. It has nothing to do with our president and everything with speculation and uncertainty about the constant banging of the war drums. The mentioned choke points and especially the Strait of Hormuz need not be deliberately closed by the respective governments, the “accidental” sinking of some ships at strategic locations by rogue groups might suffice to render the passage of large carriers unsafe. Under those circumstances insurance premiums will go up and the cost passed on to us in form of still higher prices at the pump. Under these circumstances the Occupy Wall Street movement would really get some wind in their sails and our pundits will wring their hands. 

So where does this leave us in regard to what we can expect from the upcoming Obama-Netanyahu meeting. The Prime Minister will use the occasion for a massive propaganda blitz. He will appear on a great many TV talk shows and do his best not only to frighten us but also to remind us that we are duty bound to support little helpless Israel come hell or high water because it is the only democracy and reliable friend we have in the Middle East, surrounded by an ocean of enemies. That this poor beleaguered country has an estimated 200 nukes at its disposal and is, therefore, in no real danger will remain unmentioned. How our president is going to react to this propaganda effort is as yet unknown. Will he give Netanyahu the “ironclad guarantee,” the latter wants, or will he stand up for America’s and the world’s need for stability in these uncertain times, which cannot be achieved through military means? Time will tell. 

Finally it is sobering to consider that all our talk of individual liberty, democracy, will of the people, government by the people for the people, currently stands exposed as a sham. The fate of the industrialized societies of the world now hangs on the ideas and actions of two men: Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama! Congress is irrelevant because war is no longer declared, it is merely waged. If the Prime Minister walks away dissatisfied, Israel may well commit some provocative act towards Iran, possibly under a false flag, which will result in some type of retaliation and we will be drawn, willy-nilly, into the maelstrom. The situation in the Gulf is already fraught with danger and a Gulf of Tonkin event may happen at any moment.

What should be done? The Cuban missile crisis could serve as a model. A back channel to Tehran should immediately be established which includes a Hot Line between Ayatollah Khamenei, who is the person who is really in charge at this time rather than President Ahmedinajad, and the White House. We talked to Stalin, Khrushchev, Mao, etc. and kept the world from disaster. It is now vital to do so with our current adversary, because unless we talk to each other we will kill each other and no good can come from that.







April 1, 2012

NETANYAHU’S GIFT

          In last month’s installment I mentioned the impending visit of Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to our country and its president. It tends to be common courtesy that guests present the host with a present and this particular occasion was no exception although the papers never mentioned what Mr. Netanyahu might have brought along for the edification of Barack Obama. This omission was up to the astute Fareed Zakaria, one of the few reliable media personalities of our time, who is not only a syndicated journalist and Editor-at-Large of Time magazine but also host to a Sunday morning TV program entitled GPS. The abbreviation does not stand for the usual “Global Positioning System,” which it might as well, but for the “Global Public Square.”

          Dr. Zakaria, who got his political science PhD at Harvard, was born in Mumbai, India, and thereby brings a much needed Asian perspective to the American scene. As Wikipedia informs us “he is a self-described centrist,” which is another welcome difference from our increasingly polarized and vituperative media circles. Furthermore, in contrast to some others who dominate our TV screens he asks polite questions of his guests, doesn’t interrupt them and doesn’t give speeches which expound his point of view regardless of what his guests might want to say. As such he is worth listening to and the transcripts of the programs can be found on  http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com.

             The March 11 Panel discussion (the transcript bears the date of March 12) dealt with, “Iran, Israel and a Palestinian State.” Journalistic etiquette nowadays demands that the public is presented with programs which are “fair and balanced;” a slogan which is much abused by the network (FOX News) who proclaims it. But Zakaria really tries to be and in the introduction of his guests he limited himself to: “Daniel Levy is co-director of the Middle East Task Force of the New America Foundation. Bret Stephens is the foreign affairs columnist for the Wall Street Journal. Rula Jebreal is an Israeli-Arab journalist who has worked as an anchorwoman in Italy and Egypt. Elliott Abrams was deputy national security advisor in George W. Bush's administration.” Obviously, considerably more could have been said especially in regard to Elliott Abrams’ past history (Saving the Bush Legacy, July 1, 2007). Bret Stephens is also an ardent Jewish American Zionist, while the Israeli Daniel Levy represents that country’s peace movement. Ms. Jebreal as the only non-Jew on the panel and an Arab-Israeli citizen seemed to be in a somewhat difficult position. But as the conversation went along it was fascinating to see how our two American Jews were clearly in conflict with what one may call “the views on the ground” as represented by Levy and Jebreal. Before going into the substance of the discussion let me quote the first paragraph of the transcript.

           

“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave President Obama a gift in Washington this week. It was a copy of the book of Esther, which tells the tale of a benevolent king who saved the Jewish people from an enemy who wished to destroy them - a Persian enemy (not very subtle).”

 

          Since most of us, who are neither Jewish nor bibliophiles, have only a fleeting acquaintance with this piece of literature I shall now present its essence. The book comes in two versions, a Hebrew and a Greek one, which differ to some extent because they were written for different purposes. Since our president probably got the Hebrew version, which is also in our Bibles, I shall limit myself at this time to a synopsis of its contents and will discuss in the next installment how it differs from that in the Greek Septuagint, as well as its historical context.

The story starts in the royal residence of Susa with a feast Ahasuerus, king of Persia, had given for his nobles and when in his cups had ordered the queen, Vashti, to come from her quarters to display her beauty. When she refused to do so the king was puzzled and consulted with his wise men what to do about the situation. He was told that that this behavior must not be tolerated because if the king’s wife disobeys orders so would the wives of commoners and this could not be condoned. Vashti should lose her crown and a beauty contest should be held for a new regal consort. The scene now shifts to Mordecai, an exiled Jew. He had a beautiful niece, Esther, who he had raised as his daughter after the death of her parents. He enlisted her in the contest but insisted that she not disclose “her race.” Esther did as ordered, won and became queen. A plot to kill the king was then discovered. Mordecai, who apparently had some minor functions at court, then informed the king - via Esther. The perpetrators were executed and Mordecai’s good deed was recorded in the royal annals but apparently without further reward.

A little while later the king promoted Haman, “an Agagite,” to the equivalent of Prime Minister. All the people at court paid the required honors, which included bowing before the person, but Mordecai refused to do so. When Haman was told that this refusal stemmed from Mordecai’s Judaism he not only became incensed against the individual but the entire Jewish people and approached the king with these words,

 

“There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of thy kingdom, and their laws are diverse from all people; neither keep they the king’s laws: therefore it is not for the king’s profit to suffer them. If it please the king let it be written that they may be destroyed: and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver to the hands of those that have the charge of the business, to bring it into the king’s treasuries.”

 

Kings have never been averse to take money from whatever source but Ahasuerus was even more gracious by supplying the funds from the royal treasury. A decree was sent throughout the empire, “to destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish, all Jews both young and old, little children and women, in one day, even upon the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, and to take the spoil of them for a prey.” Upon hearing this Mordecai was distressed and asked Esther to intercede for her people. After initial trepidations she did and the king relented. Haman as well as his ten sons was hanged and Mordecai advanced to Haman’s position with full authority over the empire. In the king’s name he then issued a decree for the Jews who “were in every city to gather themselves together, and to stand for their life, to destroy, to slay, and to cause to perish, all the power of the people and province that would assault them, both little ones and women, and to take the spoil of them for a prey.”

The Jews were delighted, did as they were told

 

and no man could withstand them; for the fear of them fell upon all people. And all the rulers of the provinces, and the lieutenants, and the deputies, and officers of the king, helped the Jews; because the fear of Mordecai fell upon them. For Mordecai was great in the king’s house, and his fame went out throughout all the provinces: for this man Mordecai waxed greater and greater.”

 

          A slaughter ensued; 500 non-Jewish men perished in Susa and 75,000 in the rest of the empire. Days of rest and feasting followed thereafter and because Haman had determined the day on which the Jews were to be destroyed by lot (pur), the festival received the name Purim, which is celebrated to this day. The Biblical account ends with, “For Mordecai the Jew was next to king Ahasuerus, and great among the Jews, and accepted of the multitude of his brethren, seeking the wealth of his people, and speaking peace to all his seed.” The quotes come from the King James translation, which I have found the closest to other Hebrew-English translation from Jewish sources e.g. the Pentateuch (five books of Moses) published by the Soncino Press.   

Let us now consider the purpose of Netanyahu’s present. It does not take much imagination to recognize that he saw himself as Mordecai and Obama as the somewhat simple-minded king who merely follows the advice he receives without raising any questions or concerns. But the enormity of the idea that American foreign policy of the 21st century should be guided by a fairy tale from about the 5th or 4th century B.C. seems to have completely escaped Israel’s Prime Minister’s mind. He likewise seems not to have appreciated that people who are not particularly fond of Jews might read the message which this story contains in a considerably different way. Nevertheless, “fear of the Jews” is apparently still with us, especially when one considers the actions of our Congress and the state of our media which censor every comment which could be regarded as critical of Israel’s policies.  

I called the book of Esther a fairy tale because there is no historical evidence that a Persian king had ever issued a decree to annihilate all Jews. It is of the same genre as the Egyptians having slaughtered all Hebrew male newborns, a fate from which Moses miraculously escaped. These stories properly belong to Aggadah, which contains Jewish folklore, as discussed in The Moses Legacy. The Jerome Biblical Commentary, from which I gleaned historical information, appropriately groups Esther together with Tobit and Judith. The latter two books are not canonical but exist in the Apocrypha, which also has the Greek version of Esther. All three can be regarded as falling in the category of what in the German language is called Bildungsroman; a novel written in pseudohistorical garb to educate and/or edify the reader. While Tobit is meant to demonstrate how piety and justice can bring about wealth and well-being to Israelites, Judith and Esther are clearly made of “sterner stuff.” Inasmuch as the book of Judith tends nowadays to be even less well known than Esther, but is clearly connected with it, I shall summarize it here.

The book starts out with, “In the twelfth year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, who reigned over the Assyrians from his capital, Nineveh, Arphaxad was ruling the Medes from Ecbatana [The New English Bible with Apocrypha].” Let us pause for a moment. By the time of Nebuchadnezzar, the Assyrian empire had been supplanted by the Babylonian, Nineveh no longer existed and later in the text we are told that all this happened after the Jews had returned from the exile and rebuilt their destroyed temple. The point is that spurious history, by providing names and dates down to the month, was used to bolster credibility for this literary product.

According to the book Nebuchadnezzar then conducted a victorious war against Arphaxad, whom he “speared” for good measure, and then sent an army under General Holophernes, to bring order to the western part of his realm. Most of the Syrian cities surrendered peacefully but little Bethulia, which guarded “the pass” to Judea and Jerusalem, refused to do so. When the populace was on the verge of starvation, due to a siege by Holophernes’ forces, a young widow of extraordinary beauty, Judith, told the elders to be of good cheer because with the Lord’s help she would single-handedly deliver the city and country from the threat. Adorned in her finery she entered the enemy camp and was brought to Holophernes’ tent who was promptly captivated by her beauty. She told him that the Israelites were already in despair and she would show the Assyrian army a path by which to enter Bethulia. She stayed in the Assyrian camp for a few days, refusing all advances upon her chastity, and one night when she had seen to it that Holophernes had drunk more wine than was good for him, decapitated him with his own sword. Mission accomplished she returned home with Holophernes’ head in a satchel to great rejoicing by the people. Next morning when the Assyrians were confronted with the severed head of their leader they fled in panic. The city and the country were saved and, as was pointed out, not by strong valiant men but by a woman’s faith in the Lord.

Why do I bring up these stories? Because, as I explained in The Moses Legacy, they tell us how the minds of some Jewish story writers works. Bible scholars believe that Judith was written in the second century BC during the Maccabean Wars in order to bolster the sagging spirits of the faithful. It is also generally agreed that it is a work of fiction, although attempts have been made to locate Bethulia, and the flight of the Assyrians has been compared to that of Sennacherib’s army after the fruitless siege of Jerusalem around 700 BC. But there is an additional morsel of information in the book which throws some light on its genesis. It was stated that “the approach [the pass to Judea and Jerusalem] was only wide enough for two men.” My immediate thought on reading this was: Thermopylae! Greek history records that this narrow pass, bounded on one side by the sea and on the other by mountains, indeed guarded the passage to Greece and Athens. Xerxes, the Persian king, could vanquish the Spartan defenders only after a spy had shown him a goat path which enabled his troops to attack the defenders from their rear. It is apparent that the writer of Judith had made an amalgam from bits and pieces of Jewish, Assyrian, Greek and Persian history which he then presented as authentic by providing spurious names and dates, even down to the month.  

This is the problem and it must be confronted as such. Judith is not part of the Tanakh, or the official Christian Bible, but the book of Esther is. Unless we recognize that the Bible is not history as we know it from other sources, but contains accounts by Jewish writers for Jewish purposes, we will continue to kill and maim each other in the name of the “Lord.” To reduce God to a killing machine in favor of His chosen people is to my mind blasphemy. This applies also in part to the New Testament where the book of Daniel, which likewise is regarded to have originated during the Maccabean wars, was the model for the writer of its last book Revelation. All of these books were written for the communities of their time to strengthen them in their fight against forces which tried to destroy their belief system and as such were appropriate propaganda tools. It is, however, impermissible to apply them to our era. Even worse, some Evangelicals in our country try to hasten the demise of this world. They assist Jewish national religious fanaticism by encouraging the rebuilding of the temple on its ancient site. If they really want that “the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light …” they can get their wish. It will be in the form of a nuclear winter! Anybody who today promotes ideas of this type, which involve extinction of all life on vast portions of the globe, should really be regarded as criminally insane. If, instead of preaching apocalypse, these individuals would practice the virtues Jesus tried to teach, our world would have considerably fewer problems.

This brings me back to Fareed Zakaria’s panelists. Abrams and Stephens argued that Obama had not done enough to reassure Netanyahu that the U.S. will indeed bomb Iran in the near future. The promise that Iran will not be allowed to develop a nuclear bomb was insufficient. The Israelis on the other hand, Jew and Arab alike, were adamantly opposed to it. Ms. Jebreal pointed out that the Iran issue is used as a diversion from the very real problems their society has at home, not only in regard to the Palestinian issue but also the economic situation. Cost of living has risen and there were protests in the street, of which our media reported nothing. Levy agreed, “This is a fantastic distraction issue - both in terms of domestic, social, and economic issues and, of course, in terms of internationally the Palestinian issue. For an Israeli leader to come to the United States, make a load of speeches, not mention the Palestinians, a dramatic success in his terms for his right wing coalition. This is top-down driven. Not bottom-up inside Israel.” He also stated that Netanyahu’s use of the Holocaust in this context, before the AIPAC audience, was regarded in Israel as “scaremongering” and “shameful” by the opposition to his government.

Zakaria then shifted the topic and asked Levy, in regard to the settlements and the general Palestinian situation, if he thought that “Obama kind of miscalculated” and was “outmaneuvered by the Israeli government.” Levy agreed and pointed out that the current Israeli government does not support a two-state solution and that this will inevitably lead to a South African type apartheid state. He also mentioned that there is no unanimity among American Jews in this regard, because there are also “people who represent the majority of American Jews, who have a liberal predisposition.” These need to be heard, and “We need the help of the American president to do that because there are those of us who won’t support apartheid ….”  The conversation then became somewhat heated with Abrams and Stephens stressing that neither settlements nor the Wall are the issue, but terrorism emanating from a Palestinian state. It became obvious that no agreement would be reached and I believe that Jebreal said it best when she remarked: … today in Israel you have to be – like on this table, polarized and either with or against. You know what, there’s one side. We are all losers here today, all losers.”

Unfortunately this is only too true in the beginning of spring 2012. Let us look at the situation realistically. Netanyahu is trying to keep a diverse coalition together which refuses to accept the two-state solution. In addition sections of his government would like for the Palestinians to simply disappear so that Eretz Israel can be whole. The Iranian threat is blown out of proportion to salvage a domestic agenda. He and Ehud Barak, his defense minister, feel that they cannot trust Obama to keep his promise after his re-election in November but America is the key for a successful operation against Iran. What options are there? Only three come readily to mind. One is to use the American media to discredit Obama by any and all means to ensure his defeat in November, because the only Republican candidate who has any chance of winning the general election, Mitt Romney, has already declared unconditional support for Likud policies. But this is risky because Obama might still manage to eke out a narrow win.

If this were to be the case here comes Plan B. Although Obama believes, as he stated in another context to President Medvedev, that he will have more flexibility after November, this is another miscalculation. In regard to Iran he has already boxed himself in by insisting that he will not allow that country even to obtain the means which could lead to the building of a bomb. This was done to reassure the Israeli government but they are not convinced. Nevertheless, the guarantee exists and in so doing Obama has put himself in the position of Chamberlain in March of 1939. Let us remember what happened at that time. After Hitler had solved his Czechoslovak problem and made noises about Poland, Chamberlain gave the Poles his unconditional assurance that England would not tolerate any aggression against their country. The Poles then felt no need to negotiate any kind of agreement in the Danzig/Corridor question and by September Chamberlain had to honor this pledge with WWII as the result. What did this guarantee accomplish for the Poles? Their country was devastated, millions of their citizens killed, wounded, deported, and although the country was reconstituted with different borders after the war it is doubtful that many people would agree that the price was worth it. As mentioned, the current guarantee to Israel exists and might be regarded by the Israelis as a fallback option which allows them to cash in the blank check next year. As a popular saying has it, “the can got kicked down the road.”

These scenarios neglect, however, the very real possibility of Israeli impatience. Likud circles don’t trust Obama to keep his promise as to what he will do next year. It seems quite likely that they may try to force his hand before the election. This would involve some type of provocation against Iran and in turn would lead to a response, which would then drag us into a major war. I would not even rule out that “false-flag” operations on some of our forces, or terrorist attacks here, are being considered which would automatically lead to war. There are abundant precedents for such a scenario including some home-grown ones as “Operation Northwood” in regard to Cuba documents (Abuse of Secrecy. August 8, 2008). That one was vetoed by the Kennedy administration but the President was also murdered thereafter and the full circumstances of November 22, 1963 are still shrouded in secrecy by our government.

Are any of these possibilities inevitable? No, the future has not yet been written. But unless we were to take a stand, even at this late hour, and say: “Enough of lies, prevarication and fear mongering,” events will overtake us. Since no winners can emerge from this impeding contest it would seem imperative that “the people” here as well as in Israel speak out and hold their governments accountable. The official government excuse for military action will obviously be that of “National Security.” But to insist that Iran is an existential threat to the U.S. is ludicrous. Our forces surround their country not vice versa. Even for Israel, Iran represents no “existential threat” because the retaliatory power of their nuclear arsenal is a sufficient deterrent. That is precisely the reason why Ben Gurion began to develop his country’s nuclear program half a century ago. Seymour Hersh’s The Samson Option why and how Israel’s nuclear arsenal came into being. Although published in 1991 it is exceedingly relevant for the present crisis.

As far as the Iranian government is concerned, contrary to news reports, it has never officially declared its intention to annihilate the Jews in Israel, as Netanyahu wants us to believe with his gift to Obama. In the 1980s Ayatollah Khomeini stated that “the occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the arena of time,and this was later echoed by President Ahmadinejad. With other words, Israel, as an exclusively Jewish state, has no future in that part of the world. But this does not mean that the Iranians had, in the words of the Bible vowed, “To destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish, all Jews both young and old, little children and women.”

Was Khomeini correct in his assumption that the State of Israel would not survive for much longer, as it is constituted at present? Judging by the past conduct of Jewish leadership this may well be the case. As my book Whither Zionism? shows I have previously believed in the two-state solution but as a result of the actions of the Bush and now Obama administration can no longer do so. At present the only question is likely to be: will there be a peaceful transition to a democracy in one state with a Constitution which guarantees equal rights to all citizens, regardless of ethnicity and religion, or a cataclysm which will dwarf that of the Jewish wars of the first and second century of our era? This question and America’s responsibility will be discussed next time.







April 15, 2011

NETANYAHUS'S GIFT
PART II

 

          In the first of the month installment I discussed the gift which Prime Minister Netanyahu presented to President Obama on last month’s visit to the White House – the biblical book of Esther. His intention was to highlight that Jews have been persecuted for millennia, have repeatedly faced the prospect of extinction, and seem to find themselves in the same situation today because of a potential threat from Iran. The purpose of the current essay is to place this story in its historical context and demonstrate why it is necessary today to understand what Jews believe happened to their ancestors more than 2000 years ago. 

          To recapitulate briefly: the story of the Book of Esther takes place at the Persian Court where the King, Ahasuerus, had married a Jewish virgin, Esther, without knowing her nationality. Her uncle, Mordecai, who had been instrumental in placing his niece in this position refused to pay the customary respect to a high court official, Haman. When the latter found out that Mordecai was a Jew he became incensed and had the king order the extermination of all Jews in the Persian Empire. Esther intervened with the king and the verdict was not only reversed but the Jews were allowed to destroy their enemies en masse. Haman and his sons also were executed and Mordecai was placed in charge of the Empire. The Jews rejoiced and the event is annually celebrated as the feast of Purim.

          It seems to have escaped Prime Minister Netanyahu’s attention that when one reads this synopsis it is apparent that Mordecai had brought on that fateful decree by himself because he failed to behave like everybody else at court. Mr. Netanyahu also apparently didn’t make the connection that the story can simply be read as a grab for power over the empire. This seems to be a blind spot in the awareness of some otherwise intelligent Jews and denotes an inability to perceive how others might feel about Jewish conduct.   

          I also mentioned in the previous installment that this story exists in a Hebrew and Greek version. It is the latter which provides more of a historical context and also explains Mordecai’s conduct from a religious point of view. While the Lord is not mentioned at all in the Hebrew version He figures prominently in the lengthy prayers of Mordecai, as well as by Esther, which point to their piety. Mordecai’s refusal to bow to the Persian official was grounded in the commandment that “you shall not bow down to their idols,” and the inflicted punishment was, therefore, totally unwarranted. That his, as well as Esther’s, adherence to the commandments was selective in order to make Esther queen, which clearly violated the commandment that forbids the intermarriage of the Jewish Esther with the pagan king, was ignored.

          The Greek version also allows us to provide some time frame as to when this story entered the Septuagint. It is stated that the document was translated in Jerusalem and brought to Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra. Since there were several Ptolemies as well as Cleopatras bible experts have settled on the second century BC. Its purpose was to stiffen the faith of diaspora Jews in face of all the problems their relatives (Maccabean wars and aftermath) had to endure at home, by making the celebration of Purim obligatory. The actual story itself is regarded as considerably older and is probably related to the troubles the Jews encountered when some of them returned from the Babylonian exile.

          These have been narrated in the biblical Books of Ezra and Nehemiah which, although separate at present, were originally one narration. They are important because this era was formative for Judaism as we know it and for the first time used the name “Jews” for the people rather than Hebrew, Israelite, or the specific name of one of the tribes. I shall not go into detail but limit myself here to two key aspects.

The first one is recounted in Ezra and the other in Nehemiah. After Cyrus had conquered Babylon he allowed the deported Jews to return to Jerusalem, rebuild the temple and also gave them the previously looted treasures. Some took advantage of the opportunity while others stayed, and still others migrated to the new seat of power the capital of the Empire, Susa. When the exiles arrived in devastated Jerusalem and began to rebuild the temple the locals, who had either escaped from deportation or were newcomers from other regions of the Middle East, offered their help. This was refused with, “the house which we are building for our God is of no concern of yours. We alone will build it for the Lord, the God of Israel [New English translation Ezra 4:3].”  This separatism angered the locals and troubles began which during the reign of Artaxerxes led to an official complaint. In this connection it is important to point out that the king in Esther, Ahasuerus, is also regarded as having been Artaxerxes. The historical problem is that there were three Persian kings by that name from 465 to the defeat by Alexander in 331 BC. But the letter which was supposed to have been sent from Jerusalem can be dated to Artaxerxes I (465-423) because the edict which he wrote for the Jews to cease and desist from temple building was revoked by Darius II (423-404).

          The mentioned letter to Artaxerxes is important because it sheds light on how the Gentiles viewed Jewish behavior at that time. The salient excerpts are,

 

“Be it known to Your Majesty that the Jews who left you and came to these parts have reached Jerusalem and are rebuilding that wicked and rebellious city; they have surveyed the foundations and are completing the walls. Be it known to Your Majesty that, if their city is rebuilt and the walls are completed, they will pay neither general levy, nor poll-tax, nor land-tax, and in the end they will harm the monarchy. . . . You will discover by searching through the annals that this has been a rebellious city, harmful to the monarchy and sedition has long been rife within its walls. That is why the city was laid waste. We submit to Your Majesty that, if it is rebuilt, and its walls are completed, the result will be that you will have no more footing in the province Beyond-Euphrates [Ez 4:12-16].” 

 

          This is an interesting document because it accurately portrays why Jerusalem was destroyed in 587 BC.  Zedekiah had refused to continue paying tribute to Nebuchadnezzar and instead relied on Egyptian help. The subsequent destructions in 70 and 135 AD resulted from rebellions against Rome. When Palestine was partitioned by the UN in 1947 it established Jerusalem as a “corpus separatum” under international auspices to avoid the inevitable strife which would ensue if the city had been allotted to either party. The 1948 war voided this hope and Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan. The 1967 war brought about reunification under Jewish sovereignty and we are in a situation which is akin to the fifth century BC. Jewish settlers have again returned from the Diaspora, have claimed the city as their “eternal capital” and are currently busy evicting local Arabs from their homes in East Jerusalem while extending “the wall of separation” to encompass more and more Arab neighborhoods. The city thereby has again become a flashpoint and the ancient epithet of “rebellious” is not misplaced.

          The major take-home point from Nehemiah is that he was “cupbearer” to an, otherwise unspecified, Artaxerxes and as such held in high esteem at court. When he was informed about the troubles the Jews were experiencing in Jerusalem he approached the king for help. His pleas were granted and he was not only given permission for the Jews to rebuild the city and its walls but also the physical means to do so. He might well have served as the “Mordecai model” for the Book of Esther. After the walls were finished, the temple rebuilt and dedicated, it was brought to Nehemiah’s attention that there had been widespread intermarriage. Since all the disasters that had befallen the Jewish people in the past were attributed to this fundamental neglect of what would nowadays be called “racial purity,” the Deuteronomy law of separation from the rest of the population was strictly enforced. That this led to a great deal of personal grief is obvious. But it is equally obvious that the Gentiles would not take kindly to what they must have regarded as snobbery and this became the root of all the problems the Jews have experienced ever since as discussed in The Moses Legacy.

Apparently the recipe how to not only survive but also prosper was: keep yourselves separate, but also always ally yourselves with the dominant political power of the time. This worked well especially during the Maccabean era when Rome’s help was solicited against the Greeks. The example was followed ever since and is still practiced to this very day. The documentation for this statement is provided by non-other than Elliott Abrams who was a participant in Fareed Zakaria’s discussion on Iran last month. During the Reagan administration he was initially Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs and subsequently Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs. He was fined for his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal but pardoned by President George H. W. Bush. He subsequently served in the Bush II administration as “deputy national security advisor for Global Democracy Strategy.” In this capacity he was instrumental in fomenting the Palestinian civil war between Fatah and Hamas, after the latter party had won an electoral sweep in 2006. This victory at the polls was supposed to be undone by force of arms but the strategy backfired. In spite of our support of Fatah, Hamas won and is now entrenched in the Gaza strip.

           During the Clinton administration, while temporarily out-of office, Abrams wrote a book “Faith or Fear. How Jews can survive in a Christian America,” which was published in 1997. When one considers that America had at that time a Jewish Secretary of State and there was no animus whatsoever against Jews in the country at large one really wonders about Mr. Abrams’ mindset. His fears were grounded in the secular Jews’ refusal to obey Nehemiah’s reform edicts. Intermarriage was wide-spread and Abrams feared that the Jewish community is “facing in fact a demographic disaster.” Abrams commented that this is the paradoxical result of the achievement of Jewish goals. America’s Jews sought safety by insisting not only on the strict separation of church and state but also by proclaiming the identity of Jewish and American values. He quoted Supreme Court Justice Brandeis as having said “’America’s fundamental law seeks to make real the brotherhood of man. That brotherhood became the Jews’ fundamental law more than twenty-five hundred years ago.’” Abrams stated furthermore, “Safety through secularism, integration rather than separatism, and life under the new sacred Law of the Constitution rather than the old Law of the Torah, became the American Jewish ideology, and the community pursued it with zeal. By the 1960s the battle to disestablish Christianity as the nation’s public religion had largely been won.”

Yet, this victory was tainted because in Abrams’ opinion the Jews lost their specific distinction of Jewishness. He concluded that “Jews will decline if they are driven by fear of their neighbors, fear of their own traditions, and fear of their distinct identity their covenant imposes on them as an article of faith. They will survive if they cling to their faith–to their Torah. It–and it alone–is for the Jews what the Book of Proverbs calls it: a tree of life.”

Let us try to follow this reasoning. The Jewish Law, the Torah, is emphatic about Jews being a separate nation specifically chosen by the Lord to serve Him, and if they do this faithfully He shall reward them with long life and prosperity in the Land which He had promised them. Yet Mr. Abrams and the majority of American Jews failed to return to the ancestral home when return not only became possible but was ardently desired by the government of the resurrected state in 1948. When immigration to Israel from the Soviet Union became possible the vast majority chose the good life in the West, especially in the seat of power, the U.S., rather than moving to the “promised land.”

Abrams’ use of the term “Torah” as the solution for problems is common in Jewish literature but as I have pointed out in The Moses Legacy, it has no precise definition. Nevertheless, even when one restricts the term as referring to the Pentateuch one cannot in good conscience extol the idea of the universal brotherhood of man and at the same insist on strict separation of laws and customs from the people one is supposed to be a brother to. This conflict plays itself out not only in the diaspora but also the state of Israel. 

Ever since the formation of the state it found itself in an identity crisis. Was this state to be a modern democracy with equal rights for all and brotherhood with its non-Jewish citizens? Or was it to be the biblical Eretz Israel which has finally been redeemed, especially after the 1967 war, where the Lord’s chosen rule according to the Law of the Torah? This fundamental problem is hotly debated in Israel but ignored by our media because a supposed unanimity of Jewish goals and identity with those of America has to be maintained. Furthermore, in order for Israel’s internal problems to remain hidden from public debate, external dangers have to be portrayed in the most lurid colors.

In order to make this point the adversary is always painted as Hitler and Israel is always on the verge of annihilation. Only massive military aid and pre-emptive wars either by Israel itself or its allies will save the day. At present our media propaganda presents Israel again as a country on the verge of extinction by an Iranian nuclear device, which has not even been built. The Iranians are accused of getting ready to acquire the potential to build a bomb and delivery systems simply in order to destroy our “faithful friend; the only democracy in the Middle East.” Furthermore, we are told that they are blatantly lying to hide this goal. It is ironic that this is exactly how Israel behaved since the 1950’s when it first realized the need for a nuclear deterrent. This is detailed in Seymour Hersh’s 1991 book The Samson Option. Israel’s nuclear arsenal and American foreign policy. Since Hersh is Jewish he has considerably more access to Israeli sources than other journalists, but since he is also an honest reporter he pulls no punches. I have mentioned last time that the book ought to be read for its relevance in regard to today’s events. This pertains not only to the nuclear issue but also to how and why our government stifles any possible critique of Israel’s policies.

David Ben Gurion, Israel’s founder and first Prime Minister, had always regarded the state as exceedingly vulnerable and as Hersh wrote, “Ben-Gurion’s private nightmare … was of a second Holocaust, this time at the hands of the Arabs. . . . ‘what is Israel? …. Only a small spot. One dot! How can it survive in this Arab world?’” The final straw which led to bomb-building was the Suez debacle in 1955. Eisenhower had thwarted the intentions of France and the UK to retake the Canal from Nasser, and Israel was forced to withdraw from the captured Sinai Peninsula. As one former Israeli government official told Hersh, “’You Americans screwed us. . . . If you hadn’t intervened Nasser would have been toppled and the arms race in the Middle East would have been delayed. . . . We got the message. We can still remember the smell of Auschwitz and Treblinka. Next time we’ll take all of you with us.’”

Ben-Gurion and like-minded others were now convinced that Israel could not rely on foreign help for its defense and serious negotiations started with the French to build an Israeli bomb. Guy Mollet, the French socialist Prime Minister, had a guilty conscience for having coaxed the fellow socialist Israelis into the Suez War in the first place and was only too willing to lend a hand. Work on the Dimona project started soon thereafter and the first reactor was operational by 1962. Although it proceeded in deepest secrecy it was estimated that by the early 1980s Israel had between twenty-four and thirty warheads. As far as delivery systems were concerned, America had provided Israel with F4 fighter jets, which had bomb carrying abilities as early as the Johnson administration. In addition Israel had started its own rocket program and the first Shavit left the launching pad in 1961. Since that time delivery systems as well as numbers and types of warheads have steadily increased. Currently the arsenal consists of a variety of thermonuclear weapons, estimated in the several hundred, which include neutron bombs, tactical nuclear weapons and suitcase bombs. For delivery there are F15I and F16I Sufa aircraft available, as well as the Jericho intercontinental ballistic missiles. In addition Israel has German made submarines which have been modified for launching nuclear tipped cruise missiles. One of them made a trip through the Suez Canal in 2009, and it is not hard to guess what its likely destination was.

When one adds to this arsenal a stockpile of chemical and biologic weapons as further deterrents against attacks, it is obvious that Iran does not present an existential threat to the state of Israel at this time. The information mentioned above is available to anyone who wants to know and while numbers are in dispute the fact that Israel can destroy not only Iran but do serious harm to other countries, such as Russia and China is no secret. An added touch of not so subtle irony is that Israelis, who are in the know, refer to this arsenal of death and destruction as their “temple weapons.” This designation is probably used in analogy to Samson who brought the temple down on the Philistines as well as himself and Hersh mentioned a 1976 article written by Norman Podhoretz that made the connection. But since these weapons are indeed an “abomination which brings desolation [Mt. 24:15]” believers in the impending biblical apocalypse might see this nightmare come true.

How was it possible that Israel has been able to secretly acquire this arsenal in face of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and potential inspections by the IAEA? The problem started with the Kennedy administration. JFK wanted the NPT and pushed the Israelis to come clean on what they were doing at that time. But, and this is America’s fatal flaw, he needed Jewish money and Jewish votes for re-election in 1964. It was known that he owed his 1960 election to Jews who had not only provided substantial financial support but also given him 81 percent of their votes, while Catholics provided 73 percent. This was the rock upon which Kennedy’s best intentions foundered. For example: when he tried to push the Israelis to accept a UN resettlement version of the Palestinian refugee problem, they demurred and he gave up. Philip Talbot, assistant secretary of state for Near East and South Asian Affairs, confronted him about it but Kennedy replied, “Phil, that’s a great plan with only one flaw–you’ve never had to run for election.” This is the terrible truth about our government which explains why each and every administration has yielded to Israel’s demands even when it was against our country’s best long-term interest.

Kennedy tried to convince the Israelis to accept international inspection of the Dimona facility but they refused on grounds that it would violate their national sovereignty. Eventually they agreed to inspection by an American team but visits had to be announced way in advance, which allowed them to present a Potemkin façade behind which they hid what they were really doing. The Israelis also had their Mr. Fixer in Washington, Abe Feinberg, who would spring into action whenever the American government stalled on one of their periodic requests. Paul H. Nitze, a senior aide to Defense Secretary McNamara, recalled that when he refused to sell advanced fighter aircraft to the Israelis, unless they admitted what was really going on in  Dimona, Feinberg stormed into his office saying, “’ You can’t do this to us.’” When Nitze told him it was already done, Feinberg said, “’I’ll see to it that you get overruled.’” Nitze threw him out of his office, but three days later a call came from McNamara to release the sale of the planes.

This was not an isolated incident; Hersh’s book is full of such anecdotes. When officials either in the State Department or the Pentagon balked at Israeli demands or complained about them they were told, “You’d better be careful. Especially if you have a career.’” When President Johnson was informed by CIA director Richard Helms that the Israelis were building a bomb he “exploded” and demanded that the document be “buried.” Helms was forbidden to talk about it even to the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, or Defense Secretary McNamara. During the Nixon years it was known that, “’whenever you moved an inch in that direction [relaying information on Israel’s nukes], you had to decide whether you wanted to make a crusade or move on with your job.’” But on September 29, 1979 an incident occurred which could not be hushed up and this is when Plan B became operational.

The US had a spy satellite over the Indian Ocean and on that day it detected a flash which in all probability resulted from a nuclear test explosion. The CIA concluded that Israel, jointly with South Africa, had tested a nuclear device and this information was relayed to President Carter. But the president had other worries. The SALT treaty was supposed to go to Congress and proliferation by Israel was the last thing he wanted to hear about. In addition the Shah of Iran had just been toppled and wanted to come for medical treatment. So the solution was to create a panel under Professor Jack P. Ruina of MIT to investigate whether the satellite signal, “was of natural origin, possibly originating from the coincidence of two or more natural phenomena. . . .” Since only technical data were allowed to be investigated, rather than the possibility that Israel might have been involved in a nuclear test, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. “Although we cannot rule out the possibility that this signal was of nuclear origin, the panel considers it more likely that the signal was one of the zoo events [a signal of unknown cause], possibly a consequence of the impact of a small meteorite on the satellite.”

Hersh’s book is fundamental for everyone who wants to understand how our government really functions and why the descendants of Mordecai are still able to instill fear even at the highest levels of our government. Nuclear blackmail by Israel is a potential reality. It has already been used once during the 1973 Yom Kippur war when Kissinger dragged his feet to the request for replacement of arms the Israelis had lost in the first few days of that conflict. Israel’s nuclear missiles were also put on alert during the Gulf War in case Saddam’s rockets inflicted serious damage or carried poison gas, and there is every reason to believe that they would resort to the use of nuclear weapons if they felt the need to do so.

Israel has succeeded in a massive cover-up of its nuclear capability and to this day the country has not owned up to it in public. Our government was involved in this cover-up and the similarity to how the 9/11 events were handled will be discussed in the May issue.  







May 1, 2012

AMERICA'S GALILEO MOMENT

          Although this title sounds cryptic it does convey a fundamental truth about our country which will become apparent when we briefly revisit Renaissance Europe.

Observations of the heavens by Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) and others had shown that increasingly complex mathematical formulations needed to be put forward to support the then prevalent theory that the sun revolves around the stationary earth, which had been advocated by Claudius Ptolemy during the 2nd century AD. Copernicus, therefore, consulted ancient Greek literature and found that a heliocentric idea had been advocated in the third century BC but had never been fully elaborated. When he subsequently did the appropriate mathematical calculations he noted that heliocentricity led to much simpler and more elegant solutions. The results of these investigations, which had also been aided by his pupil Georg Joachim Rheticus (1514-1574), were published in 1543 in a book On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres. It achieved wide circulation, cemented Copernicus’ fame, and started the furious dispute between the geocentric and heliocentric theories which reached its climax under Galileo. 

Galilei Galileo (1564-1642) had initially studied Greek, Latin, logic and medicine, but subsequently gravitated to mathematics and astronomy. He made several fundamental discoveries for which he was rewarded with professorships; first at Pisa and later at Padua. His mathematical studies led him to adopt the Copernican theory and when he became aware of the discovery of the telescope he produced his own in 1609. Initially it had only a threefold magnification but eventually he constructed instruments with considerably larger ones which were sold throughout Europe.

As mentioned above an intense battle was going on at the time between adherents of the geocentric and heliocentric theories. The scientific community favored Copernicus but common sense and the Church was for Ptolemy. By 1611 Galileo assumed, on basis of his excellent reputation, that he could convince the Pope to speak in favor of the heliocentric system. In spite of having been warned by his Paduan friend and colleague, the equally well known philosopher Cesare Cremonini (1550–1631), in regard to the dangers the Inquisition might pose, Galileo traveled to Rome in 1611 where he demonstrated to the most important people the wonders of the heavens by means of his telescope. The positive reception encouraged him to have Macchie Solari (The Solar Machine which dealt with the movement of sunspots) published in Rome (1613) where he advocated the heliocentric position. He thought that he could evade the theological implications by aligning himself with St. Augustine that not every biblical assertion needed to be taken literally. But the Church was not convinced and the pendulum swung definitively in favor of geocentricity. Heliocentrism was officially declared as heretical and Galileo was ordered in 1616 “not to hold, teach, or defend,” the doctrine.

He left Rome for Florence and continued his scientific work. But when Pius V was succeeded by Urban VIII, Galileo published another book in 1623, the Saggiatore, with a dedication to Urban. Since heliocentrism was only hinted at, the book achieved wide acclaim which led him to attempt a revocation of the 1616 decree. This effort was unsuccessful but Galileo, to his credit, was not one to give up easily. In 1632 he published the work which earned him eternal fame, but also the condemnation of the Church.

In the book Galileo thought that he could get around the interdict by publishing his views in form of a conversation between a scientist, a neutral observer and a representative of the geocentric public opinion. Since the latter was called Simplicio in the book, which was immediately translated into simple-minded or simpleton, the resulting furor from ecclesiastic circles is fully understandable. Galileo was forced to "abjure, curse and detest" the heliocentric theory. The Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems was banned and publication of any of his works was forbidden, including anything he might write in the future. But the imposed prison term was reduced to house arrest. He returned to Florence where in spite of the limitations imposed upon him by the Church, and later by blindness, he continued to work until death in 1642. Reviled, denounced, as well as praised in his time, he is today regarded as the Father of Physics and Einstein called him the father of modern science.

You may now ask: but what does this have to do with us in 21st century America? The answer comes from Galileo’s previously mentioned friend, Cesare Cremonini. Theirs was an unusual friendship because Cremonini was one of the most vociferous defenders of the Ptolemaic system and had even refused to look through Galileo’s telescope. It is an example for the fact that people can compartmentalize and opinions on one topic do not necessarily influence the person’s overall character which expresses itself in friendship. Cremonini was “a free thinker;” he did not believe in the immortality of the soul, had doubts in regard to the existence of Satan and even of God. But he realized fully well that if he were to utter these opinions in public he would be executed by the Inquisition. His motto, therefore, was, when loosely translated into colloquial English: Privately you can think whatever you want, but publicly you must toe the line (Intus ut libet, foris ut moris est).

          This is the point where the past becomes the present. Although the Church is no longer in the position to mete out punishment, deviation from accepted thinking is still not tolerated by the State and, unfortunately, also by the official media. In the previous issue I have demonstrated how our government has systematically, over a period of decades, colluded with Israel in the cover-up of that country’s atomic program and also mentioned its potential relevance for the 9/11 events. This cover-up of Israel’s efforts required that complaints by responsible government officials who did not agree with this policy were either ignored or they were threatened with loss of job as related in Seymour Hersh’s book the Samson Option. Israel’s nuclear arsenal and American foreign policy.

Here are some examples which show how the system worked in 1959 as related to Hersh by Dino Brugioni, a CIA analyst who had evaluated U2 photos of the Dimona plant,

 

There was a lot of policy that we didn’t know about–and we didn’t care to know. We weren’t stupid; we could put two and two together. But the hierarchy decided to play it cool–and that’s the way it was. If you’re a senior officer, you learn to read the tea leaves quickly–and keep your mouth shut. Period.”

 

          On the scene in Tel Aviv, Walworth Barbour, the American Ambassador, told his deputy chief William N. Dale in 1964, “I’m here under orders from Johnson who told me, ‘I don’t care a thing what happens in Israel, but your job is to keep the Jews off my back.’ Everything I do is designed to keep the Jews off the President’s back,” Barbour added. ‘To keep them happy.’” These comments go a long way to explain why the attempted sinking of the USS Liberty by Israel’s armed forces in 1967, with the resultant loss of 34 American sailors, was deliberately hushed up (Abuse of Secrecy. August 8, 2008). When during the 1970’s officials in the CIA, the State Department or Pentagon wanted to learn more about the Israeli nuclear program they found out that the subject was “taboo.” As a Near East State Department expert told Hersh, “Whenever you moved an inch in that direction you had to decide whether you wanted to make a crusade or get on with your job.”

With this information as background we can now look at what is happening in our country at the present time. The government’s explanation in regard to the 9/11 catastrophe has become official dogma. Washington has assumed the role of the Church which tolerates no dispute. Individuals who are not satisfied with the officially promulgated explanations, because they stretch credulity, are relegated as “conspiracy theorists” to the lunatic fringe, When they repeatedly voice their concerns in public they lose their jobs. Before providing examples for this statement the enduring importance of 9/11 needs to be mentioned.

The government’s explanation has spawned the War on Terrorism which resulted in the invasion of Afghanistan, as well as Iraq, and since this “War” is open-ended 9/11 is likely to be used as the excuse for military action against Iran when and if it were to occur. On the domestic scene it has given us the PATRIOT Act, which removes several constitutional guarantees, and government spying on private citizens has reached unprecedented levels. The latter shows no signs of abatement even under the Obama administration. Right now a $2 billion complex is being built, less than ten miles from where I am writing these lines, which is dedicated solely to information gathering on potential enemies of the state. It goes under the bland title “Utah Data Center” and I shall devote the May 15 installment to this building complex and its purpose. What is its justification? The War on Terrorism with its increased need for national security!

I have mentioned that the government’s explanations for the events on 9/11 are not necessarily credible and I have dealt with the reasons why this is the case in previous installments (The 9/11 Cover-up October 1, 2006; 9/11 Remembered October 1, 2011). For now I shall limit myself to the collapse of the WTC buildings which, when one accepts the government’s position, defies the laws of physics. It is still not widely known that three buildings crumpled into their “footprints” on that day, rather than only the Twin Towers. The collapse of Building WTC7 at 5:20 p.m., was not even mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report but has given rise to intense controversy. Since it looks to all intents and purposes like a “controlled demolition,” which requires the prepositioning of explosives, it presents a serious problem to the government’s contention that uncontrolled fires and damage from debris of other buildings had been the cause. “Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth” have prepared a short video on it, narrated by Ed Asner, which deserves the widest distribution http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZEvA8BCoBw.

Professor David Ray Griffin, whom I have mentioned in the previously cited articles, has also published a book in 2010 which is devoted entirely to The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7. Why the official report about 9/11 is unscientific and false. In it he mentioned a comment by Danny Jowenko, a controlled demolition expert from the Netherlands, who is featured on the youtube video.

 

“Jowenko also explained why controlled demolition experts in the United States have not stated this obvious fact. When the interviewer mentioned that he had phoned the US company Controlled Demolition Inc., which said: ‘Oh it’s possible it came down from fire,’ Jowenko replied: ‘When… you have to earn your money in the States as a controlled demolition company and you say, ‘No it’s controlled demolition,’ you’re gone.’”  

 

Is this just an assumption or reality? Well, let us look first at the case of Dr. Van Romero who was vice president for research at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Engineering. On the day of 9/11 he was quoted by the Albuquerque Journal: “My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the building to collapse.” As Griffin noted, from whose book the quote is taken, “Ten days later Romero had changed his tune: ‘Certainly the fire is what caused the building to fail.’” There had been no new data in the meantime, but Dr. Romero had adapted to the current wind direction and the Institute thrived on government contracts to combat terrorism.

On the other hand when one fails to do so one engenders dire consequences. Kevin Ryan was laboratory operations manager and then site manager at Environmental Health Laboratories, a division of Underwriters Laboratories (UL). His expertise led him to question the official report on fire having been the cause of destruction of the WTC buildings, but when he expressed his doubts his employment was terminated. His experience is narrated in the above mentioned book as well as Griffin’s 9/11 and American Empire. Intellectuals speak out.

Here are the salient details. Underwriters Laboratory evaluated the “Pancake” collapse theory in 2004 by testing the floor assemblies used in the WTC buildings and could not achieve the hoped for result. When Ryan found out that UL’s CEO, Loring Knoblauch, had been involved in certifying the steel used in the construction of the WTC he wrote to Knoblauch about it and received a note that, “We test to the code requirements, and the steel clearly met those requirements and exceeded them.” Since NIST’s (National Institute of Standards and Technology) evaluation, which relied in part on UL data, was in apparent conflict with this statement Ryan sent a letter to Dr. Gayle at NIST asking for more information. When there was no answer he allowed the letter to be published and a few days later his employment was terminated.

Kevin Ryan’s experience does not stand alone, that of Professor Steven Jones has previously been mentioned. His technical expertise and experimental work convinced him that the government’s explanation for the pulverization of the three WTC buildings could not possibly be true. But when he violated Professor Cremonini’s 17th century dictum, in the reasonable assumption that we have progressed since then in our free country, he learned otherwise. He was forced into premature retirement from Brigham Young University. It is clear, therefore, that even our top notch research institutions and universities are at present in no position to question official dogma. Since this word is used mainly in a religious connotation let me hasten to add that it also refers to, “An authoritative principle, belief, or statement of ideas or opinion, especially one considered to be absolutely true.” As such, it clearly applies to the government’s stance on the 9/11 events. But a truly independent international investigation into the events of that day has never taken place. The 9/11 Commission Report does not qualify because it was a political process as has been explained in a previous essay on this site (The 9/11 Cover-up. October 1, 2006)  

Last year there was a chance that we might have obtained further information on 9/11 when bin Laden was located in Abbottabad. But instead of allowing his testimony in a court of law he was assassinated. Our president told us that justice had been served, but this was according to the law of the jungle rather than that of a civilized society. An additional piece of evidence that we shun the possibility that unpleasant facts may come out when a trial is held in a civilian court is the case of Khalid Sheik Mohammed. He is the confessed “mastermind” of 9/11, has been in Guantanamo since 2003 and is supposed to be arraigned on May 5; with the trial still months in the future. The Obama administration attempted to have him tried in criminal court, where there are stringent rules of evidence to be adhered to, but was overruled by pressure groups. There will be a military trial in spite of the fact that this man is a civilian. The precedent of Ramzi Yousef, responsible for the 1993 WTC bombing, who was tried and sentenced in New York criminal proceedings, has been disregarded. Why? What is the difference between these two crimes apart from the number of victims and amount of destruction?

          As mentioned, the final NIST report on the collapse of WTC7, which was made public in August 2008, insisted that uncontrolled fires had brought down the building. But doubters of this opinion who argued for controlled demolition got support from two unexpected sources. In September 2002 PBS aired a program dealing with the catastrophe under the title America Rebuilds. It contains a 24 second segment where the lease holder of the WTC, Larry Silverstein, said: "We've had such terrible loss of life maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it. And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WYdAJQV100. Silverstein and his spokespersons later tried to retract the obvious implication of this damaging comment by indicating that he had meant for the building to be evacuated. This is, however, contradicted by the fact that this had been done several hours earlier.

The real reason for “pulling” the building may have been considerably more mundane: money. On April 22, 2010 Jeffrey Scott Shapiro wrote an opinion piece for Fox News, “Shame on Jesse Ventura.”

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/04/22/jeffrey-scott-shapiro-jesse-venture-book-lies-truthers-ground-zero-sept-shame.  In the article he castigated the former governor of Minnesota for advocating that our government was responsible for the destruction of the Towers and WTC7.

 

“Governor Ventura and many 9/11 ‘Truthers’ allege that government explosives caused the afternoon collapse of Building 7. This is false. I know this because I remember watching all 47 stories of Building 7 suddenly and silently crumble before my eyes.
Shortly before the building collapsed, several NYPD officers and Con-Edison workers told me that Larry Silverstein, the property developer of One World Financial Center was on the phone with his insurance carrier to see if they would authorize the controlled demolition of the building – since its foundation was already unstable and expected to fall. . . .[Emphasis added].”  

 

Are we allowed to put two and two together and regard this as evidence for a controlled demolition and that NIST is deliberately misleading us? The mystery about how the WTC7 collapsed is only one of the puzzles involving this building; there are others. It housed, apart from several financial institutions, a number of government offices which included the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), CIA, IRS and Secret Service. All of their files including those from the financial institutions, some of which were in litigation with the SEC, became rubble. In addition the 23rd floor of the building housed the Mayor’s, Rudi Giuliani, “Office of Emergency Management” (OME). This was especially created as the headquarters for the mayor from where he could coordinate police, fire fighter and other emergency personnel efforts in case of a man-made or natural disaster. Construction on these floors lasted from 1996-1999 and the security measures, which also included the most up to date electronic communication systems, were such that New Yorker’s referred to it as “Rudy’s bunker.”

One would now assume that as soon as the first but by the latest when the second plane struck, Mayor Giuliani would head for the “bunker” and start the relief operations. But the fact is that he never set foot in the place because he was told that the building was not safe. Who knew that it was not safe, and why? Nobody expected the Towers to collapse, because steel structures have never done that before, so why should WTC7 which hadn’t even been hit? Eyewitness testimony of people who were in the building earlier in the day indicates that the OEM was never used because workers who tried to were ordered to leave, ostensibly for safety reasons. That this anomaly feeds numerous speculations is obvious. I won’t engage in those, but the questions as to: who pre-positioned the charges, when and why, remain. We don’t know the answers but deserve to know them!

This is the crux of the problem. Our government projects a view abroad of America as the beacon of democracy, but fails to live up to its responsibilities at home. Secretary Hillary Clinton told the world in Brasilia a few weeks ago: “Transparency and open governments are the best way to combat corruption.” All of us agree on that but we want to see it enacted here and now. Clarity in regard to what happened on 9/11 is long overdue. We don’t want to be reduced to speculations about what our government may or may not have done. What we do want is an impartial international investigation into the events of that day by a duly constituted judicial panel which has subpoena power. This is urgent because some of the main actors in that drama of more than ten years ago, who made the decision to use it as the basis for the War on Terror, are no longer young and we need their testimony under oath.

In the April 1 installment I mentioned that the current political situation reminds me of 1939 and the run-up to WWII. For Americans who have not lived through these days this is ancient history but let me remind you of 2002 and the drumbeat for the Iraq war, which is amply documented on this website (September 1, 2002 October Surprise? December 1, 2002 Wanted: Good Judgment! February 1, 2003 Rhetoric of War). We remember that the then National Security Advisor, and now possible vice presidential nominee Condoleezza Rice, told us that we cannot wait for proof that Iraq has nuclear bombs until it comes in form of a mushroom cloud. She also told the 9/11 Commission that, “before September 11 the country was simply not on a war footing. Since then, America has been at war. And under President Bush's leadership we will remain at war until the terrorist threat to our nation is ended. The world has changed so much that it is hard to remember what our lives were like before that day [Emphasis added].”

This type of thinking, which persists into the present administration, is a disaster. It is used to justify foreign wars and domestic spying which in the long run will lead to a police state. Instead of worrying about Iran’s mushroom cloud we ought to find out what caused the real ones all of us saw when the Twin Towers collapsed and spread their pulverized cement throughout lower Manhattan. As individual citizens we now have a choice: are we to believe our government, which behaves like the corrupted Church of Galileo’s day, and fear the new Inquisition or by following reason and science live up to the ideals of the founders of this country.

The May 15 installment will document how far we have already progressed on the road to an authoritarian police state.







May 15, 2012

THE NS STATE

          Had I written an essay with this title during my High School years everybody would automatically have assumed that I am extolling the virtues of National Socialism under which we were living at the time. It was inconceivable that I would have to write it seven decades later in the “country of the free and the brave,” as our national anthem still declares, and where NS now stands for National Security. The inspiration for the title came from Steve Coll’s article in The New York Review of Books: Our Secret American Security State, in which he mentioned three recently published books on that topic. I have ordered two of them Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy by Paul R. Pillar and Top Secret America by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin. They will be discussed in a subsequent installment.

National Security has come to dominate our lives and the tragedy is that the majority of our citizens accept the restrictions imposed on our personal freedoms as simply a fact of life over which one might complain but can’t do anything about. I am, therefore, beginning to live in a déjà vue situation where I am increasingly being reminded of my youth under Hitler and Stalin. We are not yet threatened with concentration camps, but on this day eleven years ago no one would have believed the stories which subsequently became known about Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Neither would we have expected that domestic spying would occur at an unprecedented extent. For that we can “thank” the events of 9 /11.

          In the May 1 installment I mentioned that we, the taxpayers, are currently buying ourselves in Bluffdale a $2 billion computer complex, run by the NSA, the sole purpose of which is to keep us “safe.” A few years ago the good citizens of Utah were told by one TV network how this facility will bring much needed jobs to the depressed economy of our state http://www.ksl.com/?sid=7105272&nid=148, but it was not regarded as newsworthy by the other stations. A second installment at the “groundbreaking ceremony” was likewise only carried by that station http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=13908592 . But in March of this year an article appeared on the Internet http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1, which brought the topic to national attention.

The author, James Bamford, has previously published several books on the National Security Agency (NSA), with the most recent one: The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America. It was published in 2008 and the article in Wired brought the topic up to date. What one reads there is truly disconcerting and I shall try to summarize the essential features starting with The Shadow Factory. 

The book begins in Yemen where Khalid al-Mihdhar and his friend Nawaf al-Hazmi (future hijackers), who had followed Osama bin Laden’s call for Jihad, were packing their bags in late December 1999 for a trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The purpose was to attend a conference with like-minded others on how to inflict maximal harm on America. They had been notified by phone and the call had not gone unnoticed; it was duly recorded by the NSA in Ft. Meade, Maryland. The scene then shifts to General Michael Hayden who was Director of the Agency from 1999-2005, and subsequently CIA director from 2006-2009. Currently he serves as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at George Mason University School of Public Policy and was elected to the Board of Directors of Motorola Solutions effective January 4, 2011. This appointment is not irrelevant because when one looks up Motorola Solutions one finds that this organization deals with “Government and Public Safety” and provides “A New Standard of Intelligence. A New Level of Safety.” His career from the Air Force through government service to private defense industry is typical for the revolving door for public servants which has been mentioned by Bamford in other contexts.

          As NSA director, at the end of the Clinton administration, General Hayden was very concerned about the strict rules the Church Committee had placed on domestic spying in the wake of the Watergate scandal under the Nixon administration (Abuse of Secrecy August 8 and August 15, 2008). The critical component was “The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA),”which had become law in 1978 under President Carter. Its intention was to “provide judicial and congressional oversight of the government’s covert surveillance activities of foreign entities and individuals in the United States, while maintaining the secrecy needed to protect national security.” The NSA, which tries to fly under the radar as much as possible (the acronym is also used by insiders as standing for: No Such Agency and Never Say Anything), had fallen on hard times. The Cold War was over, budgets were slashed and worst of all Hollywood had gotten wind of it. The movie “Enemy of the State” exposed its nefarious activities for all to see. In May of 1999 Congress became concerned and the Georgia Representative Republican Bob Barr, who had started his professional life as a CIA operative, wanted to know more about a NSA operation called “Echelon” which he said,

 

“‘engages in the interception of literally millions communications involving United States citizens over satellite transmissions, involving e-mail transmissions, Internet access, as well as mobile phone communications and telephone communications. The information is apparently shared, at least in part, and coordinated, at least in part, with intelligence agencies of four other countries: the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.’” 

 

          Barr wanted not only more transparency from the agency but he also sponsored an amendment to the Intelligence Authorization Act and this effort was backed by two other Republicans, Porter Goss of Florida, later President Bush’s CIA director, and Dan Burton of Indiana who promised to hold hearings on Echelon. The media got hold of it and ABC asked, “Is Uncle Sam illicitly reading your e-mail? Listening in on your phone calls? Scanning your faxes?” Even the conservative BusinessWeek was concerned and stated “They’re Listening to Your Calls: Echelon Monitors Phones, E-Mail and Radio Signals. . . . Run by the supersecret National Security Agency, it’s the granddaddy of all snooping operations. Business and political leaders are waking up to the alarming potential of the hush-hush system.”

          This was the climate in which General Hayden took over the agency and he vowed to steer clear of trouble with Congress by playing strictly within the rules the law had imposed upon him. This would have been fine but he bent over backward and did not even use the existing FISA court system to the extent he might have. Bamford makes it quite clear that had Hayden fully used the powers granted to him within the law, the 9/11 hijackings could have been prevented. By January of 2000 Mihdhar and Hazmi were already in the San Diego area and phone calls from San Diego to the Yemen al Qaida operations center were monitored by the NSA. But this information never left the premises. Bamford wrote,

 

“In the NSA Ops2 B building, counterterrorism specialists continued reading the cryptic conversations between Mihdhar and the Yemen ops center that had been picked up while targeting the center. But inexplicably, the fact that the calls from Mihdhar had a U.S. country code and a San Diego area code–something that should have been instantly obvious to the NSA’s signal intelligence experts– was never passed on to the FBI, CIA, or anyone else. Overly concerned about being accused of domestic eavesdropping, Hayden made a drastic decision. He secretly pulled the plug on intercepting all international communications to and from the U.S., even those involving terrorism. The ban apparently went even so far as to not reveal the fact that suspected terrorists were present in the U.S. Thus, as analysts and agents searched for Osama bin Laden, they had no idea that his men were already here.”

 

While this ban was one facet, Bamford also relates that there was bad blood between the three spy agencies which prevented effective cooperation. The CIA’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC) treated the NSA not as equal partners but subordinates “like an ATM for signals analysis,” as one NSA member put it. In addition there was active hostility between some members of the CIA and the FBI. The CIA knew that Mihdhar had been on his way to Kuala Lumpur and at his stop in Dubai officials copied his Saudi passport, on American request, which showed “a multi-entry visa” for the U.S. with the destination New York. When the fax arrived, an FBI agent assigned to the CIA, Doug Miller, saw it and immediately became concerned. That a known terrorist – who could legally enter the U.S. at any time of his choice – was on his way to a conference with other terrorists was potentially bad news and he intended to notify his FBI superiors. But his CIA boss, Tom Wilshire, stopped him in his tracks. Miller was told to hold off with the notification and when he remonstrated on the following day he was told that, “the next attack is going to happen in Southeast Asia–it’s not the FBI’s jurisdiction. When we want the FBI to know about it, we’ll let them know.” To some extent the animosity was personal and CIA officials especially disliked John P. O’Neill, chief of the FBI’s National Security Division in New York. These are some of the strands from which the 9/11 tragedy was woven: personal insecurity by General Hayden, as well as turf wars and hostility among agencies which should have cooperated.

The morning of 9/11 was literally a gift from heaven for the NSA. Its budgetary concerns were immediately over and money began to flow in unprecedented amounts. In addition, while General Hayden had been overly cautious prior to that date he now tacked into the exact opposite direction. There was no longer a difference beween domestic and international spying, everybody became fair game. At first only calls involving American citizens from and to Afghanistan and Iraq were given extra attention but like everything else in life “stuff grows.”

Nevertheless there were some responsible individuals among NSA signal analysts who didn’t like what they were told to do. One was Sergeant Adrienne Kinne who had been deputized to the NSA because she was fluent in Arabic. After the collapse of the Iraqi regime her job was listening to calls emanating from Baghdad, especially the Green zone. This included “incredibly personal conversations between Americans–husbands, wives, and lovers.” Kinne on her own deleted these from the system because she felt that it was totally inappropriate to be there in the first place. “’I just can’t believe they were frigging recording them, and I don’t know why they would ever have to begin with.’”

David Murfee Falk who likewise worked at the Georgia station related a similar as well as a different problem. One of his friends at the facility told him that he was fed up listening to intimate American conversations within the green zone and had gone to his supervisor because it just wasn’t right. “’So they got somebody else to do it. There is always somebody else who will do something like that. The whole agency down here, at least the way it operates in Georgia, there’s a lot of intimidation, everybody’s afraid of getting in trouble, and people just follow orders.’” Faulk’s personal problem was that he had to distinguish when Arab speakers used code words for a specific activity which would lead to an airstrike and when the speakers were just harmless civilians.

 

“’You would transcribe it word for word and then after the word melon you put a little ‘op comment’ in, to the effect that ‘in terms of voice inflection it does not seem this guy is truly talking about melons.’ It comes down to inflection, a lot of gut reactions to things. The problem is, we never really got good feedback, post-mission feedback, whether the targeted people are truly guilty of terrorist acts. After the house was blown up, did you indeed find weapons and bombs in it? . . . So you always run the risk that you’ll kill some innocent people who really are selling melons and not IEDs. . . . It left me thinking we killed a lot of innocent people, but I have no real way of knowing. . . . And that was one of the reasons I got out. . . . It’s not the kind of mistake I want to make.’”

 

It is apparent that people with a conscience can’t do this type of work but unfortunately there are plenty of others who will, because the pay is good and the job safe.

In the aftermath of 9/11 NSA has not only vastly increased its own government resources but contracted with the private telecommunication industry to the extent that virtually all major companies from AT&T down have allowed government agencies to use their facilities. We always hear how interconnected the world has become but for most of us these are just words and we accept them without second thought.  But when we learn that practically all communications, regardless where they arise from, go through U.S. nodes and hubs the situation begins to look different. Geographic distances have vanished and which way a given message goes depends not on the shortest but on the cheapest route.

Bamford provided several examples but I shall mention just two.

 

“One example might be a person in Tokyo sending an e-mail at three in the afternoon to someone in Beijing–a very busy, and expensive, time for the message to pass through the Asian switch. As a result the ISP [Internet Service Provider] in Tokyo might instead automatically route all messages at that hour via AT&T’s WorldNet switch in San Francisco, or one of its peering partners there. At ten in the evening West Coast time, the communications traffic in San Francisco would be greatly reduced, and thus lessen the chance for a delay. Also the off-peak time would provide a significant price break. Because the communications travel at the speed of light, and since both Japan–U.S. and China–U.S. fiber-optic cables pass through the San Louis Obispo landing station, there would be no time delay caused by the extra thousand or so miles.”

 

While this example dealt with intercontinental traffic the other one is even more surprising. The routing can apply even to two people communicating within the same city. NSA deputy director Bill Crowell told Bamford “’ I have seen a communication that went from Memphis to Pakistan to Japan to whatever in order to get to another phone in Memphis.’”

You may now ask: how does the NSA deputy director know that? It’s simple, the agency has access to all telecommunication from anywhere around the globe. With cooperation of the telecommunication industry messages are being “split” so that a copy automatically lands at the NSA. Since this, obviously creates a horrendous amount of data, bigger data warehouses and faster computers are needed and that’s where Bluffdale comes in again with its data acquisition, storage and code breaking abilities.

It is obvious that computers need a variety of software so that eventually a human being can make sense of the bits and bytes that are collected. Although the NASA, CIA, FBI etc. do have software engineers they rely for the most part on specific programs which have been developed by private companies. There exist a huge number of them for a variety of purposes. I shall just use some of the Acronyms and their functions rather than explaining what each letter stands for. The most important ones in common use by the spy agencies are Narus and Verint. While Narus looks for preprogrammed targets from all the messages which arrive, Verint is more versatile, has a number of systems and advertises itself as “Better Business and a Safer World” as well as “Intelligence in Action.” According to the company’s information sheet it is a leading provider of Actionable Intelligence Solutions with worldwide offices 10,000 organizations operating in 150 countries including more than 85 percent of the Fortune 500 http://verint.com/corporate/.

Bamford tells us considerably more about these various spy companies and their annual get-together at what he called the “Wiretappers’ Ball” in Crystal City, Virginia, to search for the “ultimate bug.” Here are some of the items that were on the highly confidential 2006 lecture program: Combining Data and Voice over Broadband into a Unified Interception Solution; Broadening the Scope of Interception: Data Retention; Comprehensive Data Extraction for Flexible and Accurate Intelligence; Comprehensive solutions for Packet Data Collection: DEEPVIEW; Unifying Telephony, VoIP and IP Interception for a Complete Overview of your Target’s interactions. There was also a lecture on “NSC Spotter,” which “is a key-word Spotting engine designed for locating predefined words in audio conversations in real-time and off-line calls. The engine is used for speech analytics and call surveillance.” 

From all  of these programs DEEPVIEW is perhaps the one we should be especially concerned about because as the conference brochure stated it, “is a packet data collection system with the comprehensive functionality to penetrate deep into communications and turn raw, intercepted data into actionable intelligence and compelling evidence [bold print added].” Let us think this through for a moment: computer programs can decide who to target and then from a whole host of unrelated data construct a profile that can turn you into a terrorist or enemy of the state.

One may now take comfort and say, well ok, these things exist but we in the U.S. are protected because we have a government of laws and constitutional guarantees. Well, think again. First of all if you believe that these programs are under government control and rely on strict authorizations by the judiciary you are mistaken. It is the president who has the last word as to what is legal or not. This was the case under the Bush era and Obama has not appreciably deviated from that stance. Inasmuch as this is secret information, in order to protect our freedom, we will not get a straight answer from Washington. Example: Oregon’s Representative Peter deFazio had become concerned about secret plans the White House might have for what is called “Continuity in Government” in case of another terrorist attack. As Jeff Koseff from The Oregonian wrote: when deFazio, who was a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, asked to see the relevant documents he received initial approval but this was promptly rescinded by the White House http://www.rense.com/general77/cong.htm. It is true that this happened in the Bush era but there is no evidence that the situation has substantially improved since 2009.   

There is one final point in the Bamford book which gives ample food for thought. Some of the above listed spy programs were not developed by our government and didn’t even come from American firms. The country of origin was Israel, which supports what one may call equal opportunity spying. The Israelis sell these programs to anybody including the most repressive governments in the world because it makes money. Since these programs, were initially developed by a special unit of the IDF in cooperation with the Mossad, Israelis now have potentially ready access to whatever the users find. You may want to think about this for a moment and the implications of what is really being done “to keep us safe.” Some of Bamford’s points can be watched on video by entering “nova spy factory” on google.

When one keeps all of the foregoing in mind it is obvious that the Bluffdale facility which is in the process of going up in my neighborhood is just another piece of the massive expansion of what may now be called The National Security Industry, financed by our taxes. Now comes the next absurdity. Since the government is only in charge but pays private industry to do the work we are paying considerably more than we would have had the government done it. This marvel of capitalism where taxpayers support private companies to do government work, using programs developed by other countries, is surely remarkable.

Declaring an atrocious crime as an act of war, simply because the president said so, was pure genius. It not only prevented true information of what happened on 9/11 to come into public view but spawned the open-ended War on Terror and the National Security State. Since the “Security Industry” is exceedingly lucrative it is probably unrealistic to hope that any president will soon give up on it. But this “security” is a fake. Even we in our peaceful Salt Lake Valley will be less secure next year when Bluffdale becomes operational, because the Russians and Chinese are not stupid and will target their rockets on us.

In addition we will have to come to grips with the fact that we are in the process of outsourcing human intelligence and conscience to machines which gather bits of data and turn them into information, but lack the unique human capacity of ethical judgment. The pursuit of ever bigger and faster computers which already perform a quadrillion operations/second (petaflop) ought to be given serious second thoughts. What are we going to use them for except for spying and killing each other? Do we really want the day, which was portrayed decades ago in cartoon? In it a scientist was depicted as standing in front of a huge computer asking: “Is there a God?” “Now there is!” was the answer.

When one considers these fundamental questions and compares them with the pablum we are being fed by our media I am again back in the Nazi era. Goebbels made sure that the masses were entertained and Hitler made sure that we had enough to eat during the war so that the food riots of WWI would not recur. If you were Aryan, kept your mouth shut, did not belong to an outlawed organization and did what you were told, the government would leave you alone. Is this the road we are on here where “the Jew” will have been replaced by “the Muslim” or some “Terrorist?” Those of us who didn’t like what the Nazis did had to shut up because the consequences were either prison or death; we are not there yet. But if we continue to believe more in external threats, which can be manufactured ad libitum, rather than the internal ones to our freedoms, and don’t raise our collective voices due to fear and apathy we will surely get there. To avoid this looming fate we will also have to have an open discussion about everything that happened on 9/11. Unless our government can be forced to come clean on the various improbabilities we are supposed to believe in, the NS State will become permanent.







June 1, 2011

THE 9/11 TRUTH MOVEMENT

            There was a time when I, in company with most of America’s citizens, believed what our government as well as the media told us and that our country stood for all that was good in this world. For us the Cold War was a necessity against what President Reagan had called, appropriately we thought, the “evil Empire,” which had to be defeated. We rejoiced when the Berlin Wall came down and when President George H. W. Bush began to create a “New World Order,” which included peace between Israel and the Palestinians, as evidenced by the Madrid Conference. We were deeply disappointed when he lost re-election because Bill Clinton’s unbridled sexual propensities, which were well known prior to election, as well as his political orientation, did not inspire confidence. The Monica Lewinsky scandal, where he wagged his finger at us while pronouncing, “I did not have sexual relations, with that woman [pause], Miss Lewinsky,” was famously contradicted by his DNA on the “blue dress.” Dropping bombs on innocent citizens in Baghdad while impeachment proceedings were getting under way, for having lied under oath, was obviously regarded as a diversionary tactic. In addition, not only the cuts in the military, but forcing their male and female members into close physical proximity such as in nuclear silos was regarded as lack of judgment, if not worse.

          These sentiments were expressed in the Conclusion section of War&Mayhem and I, again in company of many of our countrymen, welcomed the appointment of George W. Bush by one vote of the Supreme Court. We assumed that “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” and that the son would follow the policies which his father was unable to bring to fruition. Since the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the root of turmoil in the Middle East I thought that President George W. Bush would now let General Powell, as Secretary of State, continue with the “peace process.” In order to help in this effort I wrote Whither Zionism? and sent copies not only to all members of the administration, but also of the relevant committees in the House and Senate. In addition, I started in February of 2001 this website to acquaint my fellow Americans with some aspects of history they might not be aware of. I felt that this was needed since the personal experiences of my generation of Central Europeans who had lived through the tragedies of the first half of the 20th century differed from what one nowadays reads in history books. I had called the website “thinktruth” because lying, or the deliberate use of the half-truth is what we had experienced in the Nazi as well as the Clinton era and when government or the media engage in it they should be held accountable.

          The first article on this website dealt with John Ashcroft’s nomination for Attorney General. Not knowing anything about his subsequent conduct I went to his defense and continued to believe in the righteousness of our government for the next several months. This sentiment found full expression in the article “September 11th” which was published in the October issue of that year. It makes interesting reading today. In the section on “What should be done now?” I was correct in the analysis of bin Laden’s and Israel’s goals. I was also correct in stating that a retaliatory attack on Afghanistan or any other Muslim country would be ill-advised and simply fulfill bin-Laden’s intent. But I was wrong in the assumption what our government’s reaction would be. The reason for this mistake was inadequate information in regard to the geopolitical beliefs of key members of the Bush administration. This information was available on the Internet but I had felt no need to consult it because I trusted the media and the administration.    

Truthfulness, and this is what this website is all about, requires that first one admits one’s mistakes and then tries to find out why one was mistaken. I am making this point because my attitude towards 9/11 was typical for the vast majority of our citizens. We had no problem believing that 19 devout Muslims, under the direction of Osama bin Laden, had hijacked four commercial airplanes and in a kamikaze type holy furor smashed two of them into the Twin Towers, another into the Pentagon, while the fourth one was prevented from reaching its goal in Washington by heroic passengers who overcame the hijackers and crashed the plane near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. This was and is the only legitimate version of the events of that day and it has now achieved the status of religious dogma which must not be questioned. But while a great many of our countrymen still adhere to this dogma others, including myself, have tried to educate themselves by reading relevant articles and books. When one does so it becomes apparent that the Bush administration has not told us the full truth in regard to what really happened on that day. The 9/11 Truth movement was born when the government refused to provide better explanations for a variety of improbabilities

          The first account of some of the problems with the government version was by a French journalist, Thierry Meyssan, who published in February 2002 L’Effroyable Imposture, which soon thereafter appeared in English under the title The Big Lie. The book consists mainly of three parts. The first one is called: The bloody stage is set; the second: The death of democracy in America and the third: The empire attacks. It is followed by an Epilogue and a section on: Documents and Appendices. The cover shows a color picture of black smoke arising from one façade of the Pentagon in the background with an unblemished lawn, fire trucks and other emergency response vehicles in the foreground. Underneath is an excerpt attributed to The New York Times “… challenges the entire official version of the Sept. 11 attacks.”

          This book is an important historic document because it set the pattern for all the numerous subsequent ones which deal with the improbabilities that are inherent in the official account. The books which appeared after the 9/11 Commission Report had been published, added reasons why this Report, which was to have clarified the issues, was not only inadequate but actually further stretched credibility. I shall deal with this part of the 9/11 tragedy later and for now concentrate on Meyssan’s book.

          The mentioned cover picture is important for two reasons. The pristine lawn contradicts the idea that an airplane had just flown over it at practically ground level – which must have occurred in order to impact the ground and first floor of the building. Furthermore, this feat would not only have required a highly skilled pilot but a hijacker would not have chosen such a difficult target and instead simply crashed the plane into the roof of the building. This was actually pointed out in quotes from Egypt’s President Mubarak who was interviewed by CNN on September 15. “… something like this done in the United States is not an easy thing for some pilots who had been training in Florida . . . I am speaking as a former pilot, I know that very well. I flew heavy planes, I flew fighters, I know that very well, this is not an easy thing, so I think we should not jump to conclusions now.” While this makes the official pilot version unlikely, the lack of debris from a crashed Boeing 757 is an additional facet which has never been explained by the government.

This is serious. Because if the story of flight 77, which was supposed to have hit the Pentagon, does not hold up, Pandora’s box has been opened and all the rest of what these 19 hijackers accomplished can be called into question. Meyssan then continued with the destruction of the World Trade Center. He pointed out that given the speed of the planes and their low maneuverability it “would have been a remarkable feat even for an experienced pilot, let alone trainees. . . . The professional pilots we talked to confirmed that few amongst themselves could envisage performing such an operation and completely ruled it out in the case of amateur pilots.” Meyssan continued, “There is, however, one infallible method of achieving this result: The use of radio beacons. A signal, transmitted from the target, guides the plane in automatically.” While Meyssan agreed that the impact of the planes damaged the Twin Towers this did not account for their collapse. He pointed out that, “the New York’s firemen’s association and the professional review, Fire Engineering, which, backed up by calculations, claimed that the structures could have resisted the fire for a long period. The firemen affirm that they heard explosions at the base of the buildings and demanded the opening of an independent investigation.” He then mentioned Building 7, which likewise collapsed on that day but was not hit by a plane and stated, “The question is no longer ‘was it dynamited?’ but rather, ‘what other hypothesis can one formulate?’” But if explosives were used, they must have been prepositioned and this would necessitate help from within the U.S.

Meyssan mentioned one additional item in regard to loss of life which resulted from the destruction of the Towers. It was far lower than the expected estimates based on the number of office workers who would ordinarily have been in the building at that time. He, therefore, suggested that “prior intervention was required to ensure that numerous persons, at least working on the top floors, were absent from their offices at the critical hour.” He then mentioned the same anomaly in the Oklahoma City bombing where “a large portion of the civil servants working in the Alfred P. Murrah building were given a half-day off so that the car bomb explosion only killed 168 persons.”

Foreknowledge was also suggested by the fact that an unusual number of “put options” (bets that the stock would lose value) had been placed on certain specific companies in the days preceding 9/11. The irregularities were first noted by the Chicago Securities & Exchange Commission. “Insiders had made capital gains of 5 million dollars on United Airlines, 4 million dollars on stock in American Airlines, 1.2 million dollars on Morgan Stanley Dean Winter & Co. and 5.5 million dollars on Merrill Lynch & Co. [the latter two companies had offices in the WTC]. On October 15 the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) presented an interim report. “It appeared that the illicit gains added up to several hundred million dollars, constituting the ‘biggest case of insider trading ever committed.’” Meyssan added that Osama bin Laden’s bank accounts had been blocked by the Clinton administration since 1998 and that Afghanistan’s Taliban government likewise did not have the financial means for these speculations. 

The chapter called “Moles in the White House” is also worrisome. It deals with phone calls received in the White House around 10 a.m. of September 11 which directly threatened the president, who was at that time on Air Force One. They indicated that the caller had access to the secret codes not only of the White House, but also of a number of other government agencies such as: The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Air Force Intelligence (AFI), Army Intelligence (AI), Naval Intelligence (NI), the Marine Corps Intelligence (MCI) and the intelligence services of the State Department and the Department of Energy. As Meyssan stated, “Each of these codes is known only by a very small group of officials. No one is authorized to possess several of them.” The common denominator was, however, a computer program PROMIS. It had been stolen by the FBI spy Robert Hanssen and sold to the Russians who may have circulated it to others. I have previously addressed the topic in the August 1, 2008 installment, “The National Security Scam,” and while the presidential spokesman, Ari Fleischer, as well as Karl Rove initially admitted the credible threat, it was subsequently denied by the administration.

The rest of Meyssan’s book deals with the unreliability of the passenger list on the doomed flights; Osama bin Laden’s precarious health; our government declaring not only Al Qaeda as the single responsible culprit but in President Bush’s words “the beginning of a monumental struggle of good versus evil;” the enactment of emergency powers which curtail civil liberties; the attack on Afghanistan and previous secret operations, planned or executed by the U.S. government especially against Cuba. Although the war against Afghanistan was officially portrayed as the just revenge against the Taliban which sheltered bin Laden, Meyssan demonstrated that this was an excuse rather than the reason. Negotiations with the Taliban in regard to a UNOCAL pipeline from the Caspian basin through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean, which had been going on for some time, had failed because the Taliban required that they be recognized by the U.N. as the official government of the country. This was not possible and, “According to the Pakistani diplomat, Niaz Naik, the American delegation became threatening and announced in mid-July that the dispute would be decided by arms.” Plans were then made to install the former King, Zaher Shah, who lived in exile in Italy, as head of a puppet government in Kabul.

I have mentioned the pipeline project in other installments and especially in August 1, 2011 under “Misguided Arrogant Incompetence,” but had not been aware of additional details provided by Meyssan. He added a Chinese stone to the mosaic. Pakistan, “Fearing overly strong Anglo-American pressure looked for new allies before the storm broke. It invited a Chinese delegation to Islamabad and promised that it would open a doorway for China to the Indian Ocean in exchange for military aid.” We and the British did not like this interference and “The Sea of Oman became the theatre of the biggest deployment of the British fleet since the Falklands War, while NATO transported forty thousand troops to Egypt.” These statements were not referenced but can also be found in the “911 Encyclopedia” http://911review.org/Sept11Wiki/WarWasPlanned.shtml.

Let this suffice for Meyssan’s book, which ought to be read in its entirety, because as will be shown later this information, although published in 2002, had as of March 2010 not yet reached an Editorial writer of the Washington Post.  For now let us address the next book which likewise was published in 2002. Its author was Eric Hufschmid and the title Painful Questions Analysis of the September 11th Attack. I have discussed it in the October 1, 2006 article (The 9/11 Cover-up) and it supplements much of Meyssan’s information especially in regard to the Pentagon and the WTC. The pictures Hufschmid provided are of high quality and can hardly leave any doubt that the WTC buildings did not just collapse. The Twin Towers appear to have exploded in mushroom clouds, while Building 7 imploded in a manner typical for controlled demolitions of buildings. The Pentagon pictures are likewise more detailed and cast serious doubt on the statement that the damage resulted from a crashed Boeing 757.

When one realizes that the essential information, which raises serious questions in regard to the veracity of the government’s account, was already available in 2002, it should come as no surprise that people began to demand an impartial investigation into the 9/11 events. It started with firemen who had lost their friends and they were joined by four young women from New Jersey, later somewhat derisively referred to as “the Jersey girls,” who had lost their husbands in the Twin Towers destruction. With likeminded other 9/11 widows they formed a steering committee which began to demand answers from our government. This initiated the second phase of the disaster: the deliberate cover-up – there is no other word that can be applied – by the Bush administration. If the government had promptly established a genuine impartial investigation into the events of that day the subsequent “conspiracy theories” could have been forestalled. But the administration did exactly the opposite. It took the stance that there was no need for an investigation because everybody knew that bin Laden and his hijackers were responsible. Furthermore, Vice-president Cheney called the Senate Majority Leader, Democrat Tom Daschle, to abstain from launching a full investigation. When the latter did not agree he was summoned, four days later, to the White House, where the president reinforced the request, as reported by CNN on January 29, 2002 http://articles.cnn.com/2002-01-29/politics/inv.terror.probe_1_daschle-house-and-senate-intelligence-intelligence-committee?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS.  The reason given was that it would take resources away from the war on terrorism. This was hardly credible and lent fuel to the smoldering suspicion that the government was hiding something it didn’t want to become known.

When the Jersey widows persisted in their quest for the truth and approached Congress, the administration had by November 2002 no longer a choice. Although a commission was appointed the cards against impartiality were stacked against it. I have discussed the inadequacies of the Commission report previously in “The 9/11 Cover-up” (October 1, 2006) and Professor David Ray Griffin has published in 2004 an entire book about them; The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions.” The two major problems were: the process was controlled through its entirety by the White House and that its mission had been limited to establish intelligence failures and means to enhance future security. As has been pointed out it was a matter of “The White House investigating itself.” This left the bereaved families, 9/11 emergency personnel and other concerned citizens disgusted and they called for further investigations.

Since then an ever growing number of articles and books have appeared that added information and at times engaged in a number of theories as to what might have happened. I shall not deal with speculations, which at this time cannot be verified, but will simply refer the reader to the series of books by Griffin with the latest one of September 2011; 9/11Ten Years later: When State Crimes against Democracy Succeed. They limit themselves largely to a detailed discussion of the problems with the government theory and the inadequacies of the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) report in regard to the destruction of the WTC. The author concluded that without some type of involvement by agencies within our government the attacks could not have been so spectacularly successful. On the other hand Prof. Judy Wood’s Where Did the Towers Go? Evidence of Directed Free-Energy Technology on 9/11, while showing high quality pictures in regard to the Twin Towers’ destruction, presents a novel theory which is, however, not shared by the majority of the 9/11 Truth Movement. 

All members agree on the overall goal of the Movement, namely the establishment of a truly independent international 9/11 fact finding commission. But there are differences on how this is best achieved and in regard to the extent a variety of “conspiracy theories” are advocated. There are several websites readers can acquaint themselves with. For starters one may go to http://st911.org/ where the major two different points of view can be evaluated. Scholars for 9/11 Truth prefers to engage in theoretical speculations as to what might have happened, while Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice stays on the academic experimental side and publishes a peer-reviewed journal. Unfortunately, since evidence has either been destroyed or not released by the government, the factual data are quite limited. Since I prefer to stay with personal experience information from professionals in their respective fields I was impressed with http://patriotsquestion911.com, a website where a number of professionals argue for the need of a new investigation. These individuals include: senior military, intelligence service, law enforcement as well as government officials; architects and engineers; pilots and other aviation personnel; members of academia, survivors and family members; artists, entertainers and media professionals as well as medical professionals.

Some of the supporting statements are highly relevant to what Meyssan had been told by French pilots. For instance Commander Ralph Kolstad, a former Air Combat Instructor, U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School (Topgun), who flew commercial planes after 20 years in the Navy wrote, “At the Pentagon, the pilot of the Boeing 757 did quite a feat of flying. I have 6,000 hours of flight time in Boeing 757’s and 767’s and could not have flown it the way the flight path was described.” Furthermore, pilots stated that at top speed they would have had great difficulty, even in the simulator, to hit such narrow targets as the Towers. Architects, as well as other professionals have challenged the NIST report and pointed out that the models which were used to explain the destruction of the buildings had fatal flaws. Physicists have likewise challenged the “fire only” explanation as was advanced for the destruction of WTC7. It is remarkable that this event was not even mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report. When one considers Jeffrey Scott Shapiro’s statement that, in the afternoon of September 11 Larry Silverstein, who held the lease of the WTC buildings, was contacting his insurance company for authorization to destroy WTC7 (May 1, 2012 America’s Galileo moment), one wonders why Mr. Silverstein and the insurance carrier had not been deposed under oath in order to establish whether or not this was true?

 At present the absolute numbers of people who have signed the petition for a new investigation is still fairly small and the reason is twofold: suppression of truthful information by the media and fear of losing one’s reputation and/or job. The latter is a real danger which few of us can ignore. This should not prevent, however, anyone from consulting the Internet and informing him/herself about the truth of the matter to the extent as it exists. I have already mentioned some of the books and sites although these provide in part conflicting information and viewpoints. Yet, even a cursory glance at The Terror Timeline, by Paul Thompson, which stays strictly with material published by the media, will be an eye-opener. Thompson did not editorialize in the text and merely quoted published reports on a year by year, day by day and minute by minute basis. This meticulous piece of honest work ought to be widely read. For anyone who has not been previously exposed to the data which were presented here and still finds it difficult to doubt the official explanation I would recommend http://www.corbettreport.com/911-a-conspiracy-theory. Although it is presented as a spoof please watch not only the five minute video but read the transcript and while doing so click on the red portions because they provide the documentation.

This brings up the final question: why have our public media, the supposed guardians of government accountability, failed us so miserably? Especially after the 9/11 Commission Report they have not only abrogated their responsibility but have heaped scorn on any and all who want genuine answers. Here is a typical example. On March 8, 2010 the Washington Post published an unsigned Editorial under the headline. “A leading Japanese politician espouses a 9/11 fantasy.” The key paragraph states,

 

“Yukihisa Fujita is an influential member of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan. Mr. Fujita's ideas about the attack on the World Trade Center, which he shared with us in a recent interview, are too bizarre, half-baked and intellectually bogus to merit serious discussion. He questions whether it was really the work of terrorists; suggests that shadowy forces with advance knowledge of the plot played the stock market to profit from it; peddles the fantastic idea that eight of the 19 hijackers are alive and well; and hints that controlled demolition rather than fire or debris may be a more likely explanation for at least the collapse of the building at 7 World Trade Center, which was adjacent to the twin towers.”

 

          One really wonders: is this writer of one of the nation’s most respected newspapers really so intellectually lazy of not having checked the vast literature which exists on this topic, or is the writer deliberately misinforming the public? Unusual trading had already been dealt with by Meyssan and so was the destruction of the WTC. The evidence for the “living hijackers” had been presented between September 16 and 23, 2001 in major newspapers from around the world and was summarized in pages 496-498 of The Terror Timeline, which was published in 2004. Furthermore, Andreas von Bülow former Bundesminister in Germany’s Federal Government had published in 2003, Die CIA und der 11. September Internationaler Terror und die Rolle der Geheimdienste. The author, who had personal experience with the ways various secret service agencies around the world work, likewise felt that our government’s account is not sustainable.

          The 9/11 Truth Movement will not go away because too much is at stake. The next war, against Iran, is in the planning stage and complicity of that country in the 9/11 tragedy is about to be trotted out again as it was in the case of Iraq. The “War on Terror” must be exposed for what it really is: a quest for global domination and a never ending sinecure for what Eisenhower had called the “military-industrial complex,” to which now needs to be added the “information and security industry.” On September 27, 2001 the New York Times published a guest Editorial by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld under the title, “A new kind of war,” which was reprinted in Meyssan’s book. In it Rumsfeld stated, “Forget about ‘exit strategies’: we’re looking at a sustained engagement that carries no deadlines.” Is this really what we want for our children and grandchildren: perpetual war against some phantom enemy who can morph at any moment depending upon the whims of our leadership? I doubt it. But if we don’t act now this is what we will get, in addition to a police state.

          In the July 1 installment I shall present information on the ways the Truth Movement has tried to gain public traction since the 9/11 Commission Report; the impediments encountered and a potential way forward.







July 1, 2012

THE "TRUTHERS"

          The previous three installments have provided evidence that there exists a serious credibility gap in regard to the government’s explanations for the 9/11 tragedy. There is also more than enough information indicating that this crime has been exploited by the Bush administration to launch a War on Terrorism, which Donald Rumsfeld has assured us, will last at least a generation.

We now have to be clear in our language. Although President Bush immediately declared the 9/11 crime to have been an act of war, this was not entirely truthful. Up to September 11, 2001 wars were mainly regarded as military actions between nations. Individuals commit crimes, nation states make wars. Since there was no evidence that Afghanistan’s Taliban government was involved in the planning and execution of the 9/11 attack our response to it, namely toppling the Taliban government by military action, although popular, lacked legal justification. This point is vital because it was a break with past precedents.

As mentioned in the previous installment the first WTC bombing in February of 1993, which killed 6 persons and injured more than a thousand, was appropriately regarded as a crime and the perpetrators were tried and convicted under the criminal justice system. On 9/11 the scale of damage at the WTC was bigger and additional targets were involved. But the official statement by President Bush that our nation is, therefore, at war was unconstitutional because section 8 reserves this right for Congress. It is true that several administrations since WWII have bypassed Congress by camouflaging a war as a “police action” e.g. Korea, but this does not alter the fundamentals. President Bush declared a War on Terrorism, which is pursued with the full military power of the government and this war is illegal under our Constitution. He compounded the problem by subsequently invading Iraq. Although Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator his government had not been involved in the 9/11 attacks and ever since the establishment of the United Nations an unprovoked attack by one country upon another is regarded as a war crime. This was what the Nuremberg trials were all about and German generals were hanged for having followed the orders of the then legitimate government and having prepared plans for the invasion of Poland. These are facts and since the US was instrumental in creating the UN and its statutes it ought to abide by them. Our country has obviously not done so and only uses the UN whenever convenient, ignoring it when not.

This is deeply disturbing, because when the government breaks the law no one is safe. The powers which are in charge of us are, of course, aware of the above cited unpleasant facts and when they are reminded about their dereliction of duty they strike back. People who feel that they have been deceived and want to rectify the situation are first intimidated and if that is ineffective, reviled. If they are members of one of the numerous government branches, they are persecuted. An atmosphere of fear is spread and even private citizens who voice their displeasure with the way the Bush administration reacted to 9/11 are ostracized. They are referred to as “Truthers” and labeled as: “conspiracy nuts,” “morons,” “idiots” and similar epithets.

These terms and their authors are documented by Griffin in 9/11 Ten Years Later. When State Crimes Against Democracy Succeed. So let us now look who these “idiots” and “morons” really are. The person who has done the most to shine some light on facts which contradict the government version is David Ray Griffin, who has been repeatedly mentioned in these pages. He is professor of philosophy of religion and theology, emeritus, at Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University in Claremont California. He is also currently co-director of the Center for Process Studies. When a person with this type of background questions the government’s explanations he deserves a hearing. One may now ask why, in his late years of life, he would engage in what obviously seems a fruitless effort to not only challenge the government, but declare unequivocally that the hijackers alone could not have accomplished everything they supposedly did without some help by insiders in our government. Obviously this strikes one as so preposterous that one is inclined to automatically say nonsense. But this is a “gut reaction,” and especially scientists should not react with their gut but their brains.

Let me now relate how I came to know about Professor Griffin. In previous installments I mentioned my long-standing friendship with Professor Hellmuth Petsche, who established the first Neurophysiology Institute at the University of Vienna. In spite of the distance we have stayed in contact over the decades since we first met in 1950. A common bond, apart from neurophysiology, was our interest in philosophy. Since mine tended towards the more practically oriented stoics such as Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius I found little use for the modern speculative types such as Heidegger which would have required serious study to discern the meaning of what they tried to convey. But Hellmuth was more widely read and very diligent in his efforts at trying to educate me. Among other questions he once asked me what I knew about Whitehead. The immediate answer was: nothing! I hadn’t even heard of the man let alone his philosophy. But since I had been asked I felt that I should correct this ignorance and ordered from amazon Whitehead’s writings.

The book came and the Title was Process and Reality Corrected Edition, Alfred North Whitehead edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne. The inside cover page states the title as: Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology. Gifford Lectures delivered in the University of Edinburgh during the session 1927-1928. This is Whitehead’s magnum opus and as stated in the Editor’s Preface, “one of the major philosophical works of the modern world.” The editors also explained that Whitehead was a genius who had little patience for the tedium involved to bring his notes into proper order and then proof-read the material. This was the reason why they found the first publication of the lectures unsatisfactory and had to issue a corrected edition. Even a first glance, when pages are taken at random, shows that this was no easy task. One cannot just “read” Whitehead, one has to immerse oneself in his world view, which is compounded by the fact that he used terms such as “concrescence” which require explanations. A classification of societies into “enduring objects”, “corpuscular societies” and “non-corpuscular societies,” is also not immediately meaningful. I am mentioning these aspects only to demonstrate that a person who undertakes to edit a volume of this type cannot be a fool, moron or idiot and that his views ought to be taken seriously. Whether one agrees or disagrees with his conclusions can be a matter of debate but it should be civil and name calling reflects only on the person who uses this tactic rather than the recipient.

Why should a person like Griffin become so involved in 9/11 that he spent nearly a decade of his life on this thankless task and write numerous books to direct the attention of the public to this unresolved crime. The answer is that this is what his professional life was all about. Philosophy is supposed to be the pursuit of wisdom, and religion should deal with man’s moral compass. When both of these aspects are violated by one’s government decent, caring people become concerned because societies, just like the family, are built on trust and when one’s trust is abused trouble becomes inevitable.

Now let us go back to basics again, the meaning of words. As mentioned in a previous essay we live in a Humpty Dumpty world where the word means “what I say!” rather than the commonly agreed upon meaning (The Humpty Dumpty Society, February 1, 2010). This is especially important when it comes to “Truth.” I have written a separate essay on the topic and for the current purpose will limit myself to that aspect which can be called “truthfulness in interpersonal relationships” (What is Truth? September 1, 2001). It is the opposite of using lies. It is another remarkable fact of our society that most everybody agrees on what a lie is but truth is supposed to be a matter of opinion. While this may be the case for some concepts about our world, it does not hold across the board and this difference needs to be clearly articulated.

The need to be truthful was literally beaten into me, as readers of War&Mayhem will have noted, because I was an inveterate liar in childhood. Why did I lie? I was afraid of admitting to wrong behavior. Since I am no exception to the rest of humanity this is a universal fact of our biology because it seems to be the easy way out of a difficult situation. But the opposite is the case as I found out later in life. The first lie will be found to have been inadaquate and further lies have to be produced to justify the first one. In this way the original problem gets compounded rather than resolved. On the other hand telling the truth in spite of one’s fear has in all probability saved my life during WWII. The reviled “truthers,” therefore, have a point in calling the government to account even if some of their theories seem outlandish.

9/11 has become the proverbial third rail of our society which must not be touched and the media have succeeded in giving the truthers such a bad name that one is even afraid of mentioning the topic in polite society. Let me speak again from personal experience. After having read some of Professor Griffin’s books I became convinced that in order to break through the curtain of silence the media has drawn, one needs to have an international conference, on 9/11 in New York City near the WTC site, which the media could not ignore. I expressed this idea also in last year’s October issue and afterwards started to correspond with Griffin and some other members of the truth community. Griffin pointed out that this would require a fair amount of money which neither one of us has and suggested that we have a conference in Salt Lake. I immediately demurred because Mormonland hardly seemed to be the right venue. Nevertheless, we continued our conversations and he was very helpful in providing me with e-mail addresses of responsible, professional people within the 9/11 truth-seekers. He also pointed out that there had been such a conference last year in Toronto and another one would be held in Vancouver in June of this year. But before dealing with further events I now have to deal with a significant problem within the 9/11 community.

As mentioned in last month’s essay the truth movement has split into two major components. One is the Griffin-Jones-Gage camp which concentrates mainly on scientifically verifiable information and especially on extracting from the government a valid explanation of how the WTC disintegrated. They do not deny that planes hit the Towers but their experience, based on professional advice, indicated that although the Towers had suffered structural damage from the impact of the planes and the resulting fires they should not have disintegrated in the manner all of us saw. In addition, there is the problem with WTC7 which had not been hit by a plane and had not suffered major damage from fallen debris, yet it disintegrated in a manner which is typical for controlled demolitions. The reason for largely limiting the inquiry to physically verifiable data was to avoid getting trapped in unprovable theories. I regard this as a sound strategy. There are two clearly defined positions: the government claims as presented by NIST based on models on the one hand, and scientific studies as well as reports from eye-witnesses, that explosives were responsible, on the other. This is a matter of science where each side can present its evidence and we can then judge which of the two positions has greater probability. Under those circumstances there is no room for acrimony or name-calling. Let science have the last word and then deal with the consequences of the outcome.  

James Fetzer Ph.D. and professor emeritus of the University of Minnesota Duluth was, however, not content with this limitation and felt that all of the anomalies contained in the government’s account need to be investigated. Furthermore, he insisted that all potential theories which might explain the photographic evidence we are familiar with, ought to be explored. This is, likewise, a legitimate stance but does, of course, lead to some theories which many of us will regard as “outlandish.” The problem with this approach is that whatever theory is proposed, even if it sounds reasonable, may not be scientifically verifiable because there are no primary reliable data.

Just like Griffin, Fetzer has an academic background in philosophy but there are clear differences between these two persons. I have already mentioned some of Griffin’s background and how I came to know about his work, but I knew nothing about Fetzer and had to rely on Wikipedia. It tells us that he studied philosophy at Princeton where he graduated magna cum laude in 1962. He then joined the Marines for four years, rose to the rank of Captain, and resigned thereafter to obtain his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Indiana University. He taught at several universities and eventually held a tenured position at the University of Minnesota Duluth from 1987 till 2006. He has published extensively on computer science, artificial intelligence and cognitive science. It is clear, therefore, that “conspiracy nut” and moron or idiot likewise does not apply to him.

Nevertheless in spite of the somewhat similar university background there are clear differences in personalities which have led to the split in the Truth movement which I mentioned last month. Griffin is the polite academician who chooses his words carefully and calmly while Fetzer struck me as the Marine Captain whose word must be obeyed or you get shouted down. Under those circumstances a parting of the ways was inevitable.

In my correspondence with Griffin he had told me not only about the Toronto Hearings which had been held at Ryerson University in September of 2011, under the auspices of Professor Graeme MacQueen, but that there would be another conference of this type in Vancouver during June of 2012 arranged by Fetzer. I shall have more to say about the Toronto Hearings in the August essay, for now it is necessary to concentrate on the word “Hearings.” The meeting was designed to have an international body of speakers present their evidence on why they disagreed with the official explanation and a panel of distinguished academicians would then evaluate the data and write a report. An introductory interview with Professor MacQueen can be seen on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7hkIA1UdXM.

Since persons adhering to what may be called “the Fetzer group” had not been invited there was dissension, and the decision was made to have an analogous Hearing in Vancouver. The invited speakers would present their data under oath. After the Hearings the two judges would then write a report. The announcement and program can be viewed at  http://www.911vancouverhearings.com. After having looked at the program on the Internet and the topics to be discussed I was not particularly impressed because the Mission Statement to “Expand the Boundaries of 9/11 Truth,” and some of the titles of the presentations did not lead me to expect a presentation of verifiable facts and legally actionable proposals. That is, however, what I would like a conference to achieve.

Nevertheless Griffin encouraged me to attend because I could then form my opinions on basis of what I had personally experienced and that I would be able to meet some “good people” for whom he provided me the e-mail addresses. I, therefore, did attend and shall present my impressions in the September issue. At present I shall only relate my feelings when I entered and left Canada. I had been there several times to scientific meetings over the past decades and the passage through immigration was always unremarkable. But this time was different. When the official asked why I was coming to Canada I replied: “For a conference.” He then asked: “What is the conference about?” When I said: “9/11,” he looked at me and then asked: “What are you doing there?” I replied that “I have come to listen to what they have to say.” This satisfied him and he returned my passport. The odd aspect was that I felt embarrassed to admit that I was going to a meeting of “conspiracy nuts.” A similar situation occurred on leaving Canada and for a moment I even wondered if somebody had already put me on a “no-fly list.” You may now say that this is paranoia. Yes it is; but after one has read what has happened to whistleblowers and is aware that our government does read our e-mails and does listen to our phone conversations one may be excused for feeling uneasy.

The interesting aspect is that I was not the only one who had experienced these feelings on entering Canada. At the Hearings I had extended discussions with Dwain Deets, retired Chief of Research Engineering and Director of Aeronautical Projects at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center. He clearly was no “conspiracy nut,” neither was he a moron or idiot. I shall have more to say in regard to his scientific accomplishments in the September issue which will deal with the Vancouver Hearings. Afterwards Mr. Deets sent me an e-mail about his impressions of the Hearings and I shall quote from the first paragraph:

 

“The memory of the Canadian customs official questioning me as I entered Canada is vivid in my mind. After asking me what conference I was attending, I replied, ‘the 9/11 Vancouver Hearings.’ While hoping that would be a sufficient answer, he followed quickly with another question. ‘And what is your role?’ he asked. ‘As a speaker,’ I replied. ‘Okay you may go.’ And as if to add an exclamation point, he came down with the stamp machine on my passport. With an inner sigh of relief, I promptly moved on, almost afraid I would be called back for further questions.”

 

It is truly sad that as an American citizen one should feel like a potential outcast, but it shows the power of propaganda which has thoroughly poisoned the atmosphere.

There is more. Last year Martha and I had to renew our passports and when they came in the mail I just looked at the expiration date. When I saw October 2021 I was relieved because it is in all probability the last passport I’ll ever need. Outwardly it looked the same as my old one from August 2001 but inside they had introduced a number of changes which I noticed only when I had to write the passport number on the immigration form. The passport has become “patriotic!” The back of the cover page simply used to show your picture and identifying information. No longer; now we have a picture of the siege of Baltimore during the war of 1812 with Francis Scott Key, author of the National Anthem, standing on the deck of a battleship looking at Fort McHenry with the US flag flying high, and the handwritten notes: “O say does that star spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” What an irony I thought, the truly free and the brave are the truthers, and they are at best ridiculed and at worst hounded. The first page which used to have the request in English, French and Spanish that this document should be honored by all countries now carries above it the quote by Lincoln, “And that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” Similar patriotic slogans appear on the top of each page. What a farce I thought. We no longer have a country that lives up to these noble sentiments. Instead we have a plutocracy. Elections for political office are won by the candidate who is able to raise the largest sum of money. Obscene amounts are spent even on primaries and the Salt Lake Tribune reported that our Senator Orrin Hatch had spent $10 million to achieve his victory last month.

The topic will be continued in the August 1 issue which will deal with Mr. Richard Gage’s efforts in the Truth movement and the Toronto Hearings.







August 1, 2011

ATTEMPTS AT RAISING 9/11 AWARENES:
RICHARD GAGE – TORONTO HEARINGS

          As mentioned in previous installments the 9/11 Truth Movement consists essentially of two groups. One which concentrates on evidence which is incompatible with the official 9/11 Commission Report and limits itself to the attempt to bring these to the attention of the general public. It does not engage in speculation as to who did what but merely presents facts which require better explanations than the government has provided. The second group approaches the problem from the viewpoint of a murder investigation – nearly 3000 innocent civilians were, after all, deliberately killed in a mass murder of previously unprecedented magnitude – and in the popular phrase as a “who-done-it?” Since this approach is obviously more speculative at this time it readily invites flights of fancy.

Although both groups demand a genuine unbiased, independent international investigation of this crime, the strategy how to achieve this goal differs.  The “fact-finding” group believes that it can be most readily accomplished when the improbability of the government’s theory in regard to the destruction of the Twin Towers and WTC7, as proposed by NIST and which has become official dogma, is clearly demonstrated. I emphasize the word “theory” because the government has never provided proof of how this disaster happened. The currently advocated sequence of events was not derived from facts obtained from the crime scene but from computer models performed under the auspices of the government. This must be clearly kept in mind when the results are evaluated. If it can be proven that impact of the planes and subsequent fires could not have caused the total destruction of the WTC, with nearly free fall speed, the implications are serious indeed. The only reasonable alternative for the events we all saw on television is that some type of explosives had been used to bring the buildings down. But if this had been the case, the destruction was deliberate. This is a thought most of us don’t want to entertain because it renders the government’s statement, that Osama bin Laden with 19 Muslim hijackers had alone achieved this feat, untenable. Yet, unless we think the unthinkable our government will have license to potentially keep deceiving us in other matters; especially in regard to the War on Terrorism, which is still pursued by the Obama administration.

This is what makes the 9/11 catastrophe so important. But every effort is made by the media and our politicians “not to go there.” Nevertheless, there are some determined individuals who will not let the matter rest in spite of the personal attacks they are subjected to as a result. One of these is the architect Richard Gage. He founded the group Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth in 2006, and has currently 1,704 signatures by these professionals demanding a new investigation. Mr. Gage has been extremely active in bringing the signatories’ point of view to the attention of the general public and has earlier this year taken a multi-city bus lecture tour from Vancouver across Canada to Montreal. Subsequently he toured most of the major cities in the US showing the video “9/11 Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out.” Salt Lake was not on the schedule and if I had not been an Internet surfer I would not have known about it.

Since the mainstream media have failed to adequately provide information on this topic an international conference was held last September on the campus of Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. In contrast to the usual conferences with speakers and discussion it was modeled to some extent on the Grand Jury concept as it exists in the United States. Since my European readers may not be familiar with it let me quote from Wikipedia:

 

“Unlike a trial jury – which operates under the unanimous system – a grand jury can indict a defendant with a majority vote. Moreover, trial juries will decide whether a defendant is guilty or not guilty of the crime in question, whereas, a grand jury will listen to evidence and decide if a suspect should be charged with a crime. As a result, the grand jury is responsible for determining probable cause, and not “innocence” or “guilt.”

Because the grand jury’s primary responsibility is to determine probable cause, the body will not hear all the evidence or conflicting arguments associated with the case. The information provided to the grand jury is delivered by the prosecutor; this individual must present conflicting evidence for the grand jury to accurately determine probable cause. The suspect’s lawyers (the defense team) are not allowed to be present during this evaluation process. The defense team cannot present evidence, but may consult with witnesses outside the courtroom.”

 

Ordinarily a Grand Jury consists of at least 12 members but at the Canadian Hearings four “panelists” served in this function. There was no prosecutor but the speakers were the “witnesses” who laid out their case to the panel which would subsequently render a verdict whether or not probable cause existed for this case to be further investigated. It was envisioned that the witnesses would provide their written reports to the panel members who would then issue their final opinion. The proceedings including the panel’s verdict would subsequently be published.

Members of the assessment panel were: Ferdinando Imposimato, Honorary President of the Supreme Court of Italy. Herbert Jenkins, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at McMaster University. Richard B. Lee, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. David Johnson, Professor Emeritus of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Tennessee. The names of the witnesses and their qualifications will be listed in the context of their presentations. The date of the four-day Hearings was determined in a manner that the last presentations were on September 11, 2011, the 10th anniversary of the catastrophe. Ryerson University did not sponsor the meeting but leased facilities to the organizers and helped in a variety of other ways.

Graeme MacQueen a Professor of Religion, who had retired from McMaster University and was a member of the steering committee for the Hearings, was interviewed by CTV News about two weeks prior to the meeting. The segment was introduced by Jacqueline Milczarek and the interesting aspect was the banner under her image. It read, “911 skeptics will meet in Toronto” and in smaller letters “Conspiracy theorists to converge on Ryerson University.” When Professor MacQueen was introduced we were not told that he has been an academician for 30 years, the banner read instead: “Graeme MacQueen” and underneath “Conspiracy Theorist.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7hkIA1UdXM. Thus, any dissent from official dogma receives automatically a pejorative label by the media, even in Canada. Characteristically this is the case before the guest on the program has even uttered the first sentence. The media indoctrination has been so successful that no second thought is given to the potential substance of what the program’s guest might say. We have, therefore, a situation where anyone, regardless of professional status, who merely questions specific aspects of the official account, is automatically a conspiracy theorist with all of its negative connotations. This is the problem the Toronto Hearings was also intended to overcome.

Since the official publication of the Proceedings and the verdict by the panelists on the merits of the individual presentations have not yet appeared, I shall summarize the information from the DVD “The Toronto Hearings on 9/11 – Uncovering Ten Years of Deception,” as produced by “The International Center for 9/11 Studies and Press for Truth” http://www.ic911studies.org/Home_Page.html. It can be obtained from http://torontohearings.org and the site also provides further details.

As far as speakers and topics are concerned they were “bookended” by Mrs. Laurie van Aicken who lost her husband and the father of her children in the destruction of the North Tower and Mr. Bob McIlvain who lost his son, likewise in the North Tower. Mrs. van Aicken was instrumental in creating the New Jersey group of widows, which has been somewhat derisively called “the Jersey girls” and was discussed in the June 1 installment. She related their quest for clarity about the disaster and the difficulties experienced with the 9/11 Commission. She was “outraged” that Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the Commission, had allowed President Bush and Vice President Cheney to testify together without a transcript and recording devices.  The ladies had hoped for a real investigation to take place and were concerned about Zelikow’s appointment because he had major conflicts of interest. Not only was he a personal friend and closely associated with Condoleezza Rice, but he had also served on President Bush’s transition team and had retained close White House ties. Mrs. Van Aicken regarded it as incredible that there has never been a real independent investigation, even 10 years later, and wished for one to take place in a real courtroom where there is subpoena power and cross-examination of witnesses.

This sentiment was echoed by Mr. McIlvain who stated that he had lost faith in the 9/11 Commission, 90% of whose hearings he faithfully attended. He “got disgusted” when he heard National Security Advisor Condi Rice’s testimony. “She filibustered and talked nonsense. Everyone was smiling; they shook hands, that’s when I lost my cool. . . . The investigation was a total sham. Even some of the commissioners admitted that it was a sham.” An objective nonpartisan investigation was required.

I will now present some key aspects not in a chronologic manner, as seen on the video, but group them in terms of the topics which were covered. Since the destruction of the WTC is iconic for the 9/11 disaster it was extensively discussed by six different speakers. Richard Gage, the above mentioned San Francisco architect, provided an overview. He pointed out that the scientific method is required to validate a given hypothesis but this was not done by NIST. Destruction of steel frame high rise buildings by fire has never occurred in the past in spite of the fact that some buildings had been exposed to fire for considerably longer durations. As an example he showed the Beijing Mandarin Oriental Hotel fire of 2009. The steel structure remained standing in spite of the inferno having lasted considerably longer than the WTC fires. Furthermore, whenever buildings did collapse from “natural” causes they would not do so with nearly free fall speed and they would fall over onto one side. The debris are recognizable e.g. after earthquakes, and not pulverized. He then showed examples of explosions by controlled demolitions which are usually vertical and symmetrical. This was clearly also present at the WTC and as such did not fit with NIST’s computer models. He concluded that for the type of destruction we saw to have occurred at the Twin Towers and building 7, one needed access to the elevator shafts and from there to the core columns. It takes time to prepare a building for demolition and the media should be asking: who had the means and the opportunity? He emphasized that Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth don’t speculate, they go by the laws of physics and an impartial investigation is required.

          David Chandler, a teacher of physics and mathematics, concentrated on WTC7 and demonstrated that the NIST calculations for the duration of the collapse were faulty, because it had occurred in two stages. First the penthouse disappeared, but the building remained standing and a few seconds thereafter the entire structure went straight down. The latter event occurred at free fall speed which is evidence for controlled demolition. If there had been falling mass, as NIST said, there would have been deceleration which did not occur.

          Kevin Ryan who had previously worked at Underwriters Laboratories (which certified the steel used at the Twin Towers and who was mentioned in the May 1 issue), pointed out further specifics in regard to the inadequacy of the NIST explanation. The additional main points were that the explanation of sagging floors having pulled the external columns inward and thereby initiated the collapse of the Towers was not valid. NIST never performed any kind of physical tests but relied only on computer models. When the initial models did not come up with the desired result the data were manipulated to fit the desired results. When NIST was asked to show how the model was arrived at, “they refused because it would jeopardize public safety.” In as much as NIST did not share its results with the scientific community, they cannot be independently verified. But this is the hallmark of science. He also pointed to extreme heat which was found in the basement of the WTC and which persisted for weeks after the collapse of the buildings. Molten steel was observed which required temperatures in excess of 1500 degrees C, but NIST listed maximum gas temperatures as 1000 degree C having occurred. On the other hand, if an explosive such as thermate had been involved, temperatures of 3000 degrees could well have been achieved.

          Jonathan Cole, an engineer, also discussed, “The Official Account and the Experimental Method – How did the Twin Towers fall?” His main points were that if the collapse had been initiated by the sagging floors having pulled the peripheral columns inward, the core columns should have remained standing. In addition, in as much as National Geographic had produced a documentary which claimed that thermitic material cannot cut through steel; he did the experiment in his backyard. He demonstrated to the audience that the National Geographic scientists had been mistaken and thermitic material can indeed do the job, albeit to the detriment of some of his trees and bushes which had suffered in the process.

          Retired Assoc. Professor Dept. of Chemistry University of Copenhagen, Niels Harrit also worked with physical data and found, “Incendiary/Explosive Residue Evidence in the WTC Dust.” Iron laden microspheres were observed in the dust, which resulted from molten steel, in addition to nanothermite residue. Furthermore, a team from the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and Sloan Kettering Institute, NY, had reported in 2010 on carbon nanotubes (probably derived from thermitic material) in lung tissue from 9/11 emergency responders. http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.0901159.

          Professor Graeme McQueen presented examples from 156 eye-witnesses who reported that explosions had occurred in the Twin Towers. Although some of these persons had testified before the 9/11 Commission, their testimony was omitted in the final report. The NIST report likewise did not include a single eye-witness testimony.

          While these presentations dealt with evidence for explosions at the WTC, Barbara Honegger a “Former White House Policy Analyst & Senior Military Affairs Journalist at Naval Postgraduate School,” showed that this was also the case at the Pentagon. The official version of “A surprise Pearl-Harbor like Kamikaze plane attack on the West Outer Wall of the Pentagon by Arab/Muslim terrorists in control of FL 77, a large commercial 757 impacting near ground level at exactly 9:37:46, diagonally penetrating through 3 of 5 rings, causing a single ‘Exit hole’ on the inner wall of the middle C ring,” is not tenable. She had interviewed eye-witnesses who actually worked at the Pentagon on that day and was told that the event had not been totally unexpected, because bomb-sniffing dogs had been present earlier in the day. Furthermore, the only video which was released by the FBI (five frames), which purportedly shows the impact of AA 77, has significant problems. The pre-impact pictures show only a white streak and the impact itself a huge fireball. There is no evidence for a Boeing 757 in these frames. Ms. Honegger also pointed out that an early version of these frames had been “leaked” in 2002, but it showed the wrong date and time stamp, while the same official FBI released frames in 2006, had time and date removed. Yet if these were authentic surveillance pictures they would have had the time and date imbedded. The witnesses who had worked inside the Pentagon at the time of “impact” reported bomb explosions and that the damage was most severe in the innermost rings, rather than in the area of impact. Finally the official term the FBI uses for the 9/11 disaster is PENTTBOM which stands for Pentagon –Twin Towers – Bomb. Ms. Honegger’s presentation was full of further details which will be omitted for now because she presented an expanded version of her data in Vancouver. It will be related in that context next month.

          The rest of the presentations covered a variety of other inconsistencies of the 9/11 commission report and on account of space considerations I shall present only a few highlights. Prof. David Ray Griffin mentioned that Mohammed Atta, the ringleader, was far from a devout Muslim. He had visited strip clubs, lived for some time with a stripper and used alcohol as well as cocaine. Furthermore, Atta’s teacher in Hamburg, Professor Machule, said that this was not the Atta he knew because the latter was indeed very religious and small, about 5’4, while the American Atta was 5’8 or 5’10. At least six of the purported hijackers had actually turned out to be alive after 9/11 and there were conflicting reports for Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s whereabouts at the time of the Pentagon explosion. The 9/11 commission stated that he was in his office while Richard Clarke in his book “Against all Enemies” wrote that Rumsfeld had been in the conference room participating in Clarke’s video-conference. The same discrepancy applies to General Richard Meyers who was the acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There is also conflicting evidence between early versions and the Commission Report in regard to when NORAD was notified about flights 77 and 93 having gone off course. Furthermore, the Commission Report gave an incorrect time for when Vice-president Cheney was taken to the “bunker” and omitted the crucial evidence provided by Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta. He recalled that while he was with Cheney in the bunker prior to the Pentagon attack, a “young man” came in intermittently saying that, “the plane is 50 miles out,” “the plane is 30 miles out,” “the plane is 10 miles out. Do the orders still stand?” Cheney turned, whipped his neck around and said “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?” What were these orders? As far as the crash site of UA 93 in Shanksville is concerned it was incommensurate with what one would have expected. Neither recognizable plane debris nor human remains were encountered and there was no contamination of the soil from oil or jet fuel. Additionally, the FBI had not only cordoned off the supposed crash site but an additional one 6-8 miles distant. Why was this done? In sum and substance: the Report is untrustworthy.

          James Kolar, a freelance writer, presented inconsistencies in the released passenger lists of the doomed flights; the videos from Dulles airport which showed the purported hijackers had no security stamp; and the bin-Laden videos did not always show the same person.  Paul Zarembka’s, Professor of Economics State University of New York, presentation dealt with “Insider Trading.” Although the 9/11 Commission mentioned it briefly it denied that substantial insider trading had occurred before 9/11. Yet, even one month after 9/11 the mainstream press reported that huge profits were made via “Put options.” Prof. Zarembka cited three studies two of which had so far been published. One of these appeared in the 2006 Journal of Business and is readily available. In it Professor Allen Poteshman of the University of Illinois concluded, “That there is evidence of unusual option market activity in the days leading up to September 11 that is consistent with investors trading on advance knowledge of the attacks.”   

          Other speakers dealt with what one may call local and global implications of 9/11. Lance De Haven-Smith, Professor Public Administration & Policy Florida State University, felt that a term was needed for crimes such as Watergate, Plamegate, Iran-Contra etc. and came up with SCADS, which stands for State Crimes Against Democracy. He defined the term as: concerted actions or inactions by government insiders intended to manipulate democratic processes and undermine popular sovereignty. They are the type of crime about which the conspiracy label discourages us from speaking. He noted that they tend to end up in wars and that there is a progressive trend from Watergate via Iran-Contra to Iraq with increasingly larger numbers of different agencies involved. Laurie Manwell, a PhD candidate in behavioral neuroscience and Toxicology at the University of Guelph, then presented, “SCADS and Psychological Resistance to Alternative Accounts.” She provided a neurobehavioral explanation for why people are resistant to look at evidence which conflicts with their firm opinions and why it is necessary to overcome this barrier.

Peter Dale Scott, a former English Professor at the University of California Berkley discussed, “9/11 and Deep State Politics.” The key quote came from the Commission Staff team leader John Palmer, that in regard to 9/11 we are dealing with, “either unprecedented administrative incompetence or organized mendacity on the part of key figures in Washington.” Michel Chossudovsky, emeritus Professor of Economics University of Ottawa, dealt with “Global Consequences of 9/11.” He presented the reasons for his conclusion that 9/11 was an “inside job” to create a pretext for the global war on terrorism, which benefits the military establishment. Former Representative Cynthia McKinney stated that when Congress asked questions they were simply given “talking points” instead of serious answers.

This was also the point made by former Senator Mike Gravel from Alaska in his presentation on, “State Deceptions in the Past and Today.” He was unusually blunt in his summation about how Congress works, which was due to both his age and the fact that he is no longer in Washington. The key statements were, “This knowledge [the 9/11 information] has to get out to the people. But if the people have no means to act on the information all you create is a new generation of cynics. You must have a vehicle to act upon it. The people without the ability to make law are disenfranchised. I got elected, several times, and that’s how it works: I took money from special interests and then looked down on you. I fooled you, I just got elected. That is the way it works.”

This certainly has the ring of truth and equally certainly does not want to be acknowledged. But sooner or later we will have to face facts, rather than wishful fantasies, if we want to keep our Republic. Senator Gravel’s recommendation will be dealt with in another installment but it needs an amendment to the Constitution, which would obviously take time to get ratified. Due to the increasing danger of a military conflict with Iran prior to the November elections a separate issue will appear on August 15, and the Vancouver Hearings will be discussed on September 1.







August 15, 2012

THE IMPENDING WAR WITH IRAN

          In the previous issue I mentioned that the Iranian situation is becoming increasingly dangerous and this was highlighted also by the events during the first week of this month. On August 1 former Governor and current presidential candidate Romney gave a speech in Jerusalem which was characterized by the Israeli paper Haaretz as, “Romney’s voice but Netanyahu’s words.” Here are some highlights:

 

It is a deeply moving experience to be in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel…. For an American abroad, you can't get much closer to the ideals and convictions of my own country than you do in Israel. We're part of the great fellowship of democracies. We speak the same language of freedom and justice, and the right of every person to live in peace… ours is an alliance based not only on shared interests but also on enduring shared values. In those shared values, one of the strongest voices is that of your prime minister, my friend Benjamin Netanyahu…. When Iran's leaders deny the Holocaust or speak of wiping this nation off the map, only the naïve - or worse - will dismiss it as an excess of rhetoric….  It would be foolish not to take Iran's leaders at their word. They are, after all, the product of a radical theocracy…. We must not delude ourselves into thinking that containment is an option. We must lead the effort to prevent Iran from building and possessing nuclear weapons capability. We should employ any and all measures to dissuade the Iranian regime from its nuclear course, and it is our fervent hope that diplomatic and economic measures will do so. In the final analysis, of course, no option should be excluded. We recognize Israel's right to defend itself, and that it is right for America to stand with you. Finally, we both believe in freedom of expression, because we are confident in our ideas and in the ability of men and women to think for themselves. We do not fear open debate…. I believe that the enduring alliance between the State of Israel and the United States of America is more than a strategic alliance: it is a force for good in the world.” 

 

Let us now look at some of the key words: Jerusalem the capital of Israel, the ideals and convictions of the U.S. the same as Israel’s, Iran’s containment is not an option, and no fear of open debate.

          As far as Jerusalem is concerned the city has been regarded as holy not only by Jews but also by Muslims and Christians. It is clearly an international flashpoint and the unilateral annexation of East Jerusalem, after the 1967 war, is still regarded as illegal under international law. This is the reason why no major country has its embassy in that city. The embassies are in Tel Aviv. In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, on the same day, Romney stated that he would relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem. Blitzer wasn’t sure that he had heard right so here is the relevant portion of the transcript.

 

“BLITZER:  You consider Jerusalem where we're sitting, the King David Hotel here in Jerusalem; do you consider Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel?

ROMNEY:  Yes, of course.  A nation has the capacity to choose its own capital city, and Jerusalem is Israel's capital.

BLITZER:  If you become president of the United States, would you move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem?

ROMNEY:  I think it's long been the policy of our country to ultimately have our embassy in the nation's capital, Jerusalem.  The decision to actually make the move is one, if I were president; I would want to take in consultation with the leadership of the government which exists at that time.  So I would follow the same policy we have in the past.  Our embassy would be in the capital.  But that said, the timing of that is something I'd want to work out with the government.

BLITZER:  With the government of Israel?

ROMNEY:  With the government of Israel.

BLITZER:  But every Israeli government has always asked every U.S. government to recognize Jerusalem as the capital and to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

ROMNEY:  Well, that would make the decision easy, but I'd still want to have that communication with the government leaders.

BLITZER:  So just to be precise.  If you're president, you would consult with the Israeli government.  And if they said, please move the embassy, you would do that?

ROMNEY:  I'm not going to make foreign policy for my nation, particularly while I'm on foreign soil.  My understanding is the policy of our nation has been a desire to move our embassy ultimately to the capital.  That's something which I would agree with.  But I would only want to do so and to select the timing in accordance with the government of Israel.”

 

          These are rather amazing statements. The only government which is to be consulted on this issue is that of Israel! World opinion and even our Congress are completely irrelevant. One really wonders about the thought processes of this man. But it gets even better. These statements had been preceded by:

 

“BLITZER: You're in Jerusalem right now. You're a religious individual. Give us a little sense of what this city means to you, the Holy Land, as someone who obviously believes in God. You have a deep commitment to his faith.

ROMNEY: Well, as you know, I'm running for a secular position, not a religious position. But on a personal basis, being in the Holy City is very moving for me. I believe very deeply in the promises that were made in this place. I believe in the mission of Jesus Christ. I believe he walked the very streets that we were walking.”

 

When I saw the speech and the interview transcript I wondered: has the governor ever read the New Testament and compared it with the Torah – Jewish Law? Does he not know that Jesus mission was a rebellion against the literal fulfillment of that Law? Does he not know that the much vaunted Israeli democracy extends only to Jews, even within the pre-1967 War borders? That the roughly 20 per cent of non-Jewish Israeli citizens are systematically discriminated against in housing and other aspects of life? That Israel does not have a constitution? That there are massive human rights abuses going on in the occupied territories? That our “freedom of expression” and “open debate” has severe limitations, especially when it comes to questions about what happened on 9/11? That any legitimate criticism of the policies of Israel is automatically regarded as anti-Semitic? That Israeli religious fundamentalism, which abhors not only Muslims but also Christians, is steadily increasing? 

Yes, one has to be polite to one’s hosts but this glaring sycophancy was hardly called for. If the governor is truly ignorant of the above mentioned basic facts he does not deserve to be elected. I realize, of course, that the speech was directed to the American Jewish audience whose votes he would like to get in November. But regardless of that aspect he has outsourced our Middle East foreign policy to Israel, which is hardly in our national interest.

There was one more interesting aspect of the speech. It was broadcast from a rooftop overlooking part of the Old City wall, thereby emphasizing its Jewish character. But everybody who has ever been to Jerusalem, or even seen a picture of it, knows that its skyline is dominated by the golden Dome of the Rock mosque which bespeaks of its Muslim heritage. It is clearly an eye-sore for fundamentalists, but has stood there for about 1300 years and its symbolism is immense in the Muslim world. Israeli interference with it, as well as that of the neighboring Al Aqsa mosque, would undoubtedly result in a major war with the Arab, if not all of the Muslim nations. Glib talk about Jerusalem being the capital of Israel disregards these aspects and can have fateful consequences.

In order to counteract possible inroads into the Jewish votes Romney might have gathered, President Obama immediately released $70 million to strengthen the “Iron Dome,” which is supposed to protect Israel from missile attacks. To further demonstrate the Obama administration’s commitment to Israel’s security Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was dispatched. His job was to plead with the Israelis not to start an Iran attack during election season and he promised additional Iran sanctions. These were promptly voted on by an obedient Congress and HR 1905 now sits in the White House awaiting the president’s signature. On July 31, the day before the final vote, AIPAC sent an urgent message to all Representatives which outlined the essentials of the bill and added “We strongly urge you to vote YES.” Below is the abstracted essence from the AIPAC message,

 

“… will: place virtually all of Iran’s energy, financial, and transportation sectors under U.S. sanction. Companies conducting business with Iran in these sectors face losing access to U.S. markets; impose sanctions designed to prevent Iran from repatriating any proceeds from its oil sales, thus depriving Iran of 80 percent of its hard currency earnings and half of the funds to support its national budget; impose tough new sanctions on the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), the National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC) and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC); target Iran’s use of barter transactions to bypass sanctions, the provision of insurance to Iran’s energy sector, and the provision of specialized financial messaging services to the Central Bank of Iran.”

 

          AIPAC also stated that these are “the strongest set of sanctions ever enacted to isolate any country with which we were not in armed hostilities.” While our government still insists that we don’t want a regime change in Tehran, only their abstention from pursuing nuclear ambitions, the Israelis are more honest in this respect. The nuclear issue is the wedge to obtain Western cooperation for a plan which has been in existence for decades. This information is not available in our “free press” but in Israeli Hebrew language newspapers which are, as Romney correctly stated, considerably more critical towards their government’s actions. To access those we have to read Israel Shahak’s book “Open Secrets ­­– Israeli nuclear and foreign policies.”  

The author’s personal information, which is now related, comes from Wikipedia. He was born (1933) in Warsaw, Poland, into a secular Zionist Jewish family. During the German occupation the family lived in the ghetto from which his brother succeeded to escape and thereafter joined the RAF. Israel’s mother paid a poor Catholic family to hide him but when the money ran out he was returned to his parents. In 1943 the family was deported to a concentration camp near Lublin where the father died. Mother and son managed to escape, returned to Warsaw but within one year were sent to the Bergen-Belsen camp where the mother died. After the camp was liberated in 1945 Shahak moved to Palestine. After completion of his military service he attended Hebrew University where he received a doctorate in chemistry and became an assistant to Ernst David Bergmann, the chair of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission. After a two year post-doctoral study at Stanford he returned to Israel and eventually became professor of Chemistry at Hebrew University. He was beloved by his students, published extensively in the scientific literature and died in Jerusalem in 2001.

It is, therefore, obvious that he has excellent credentials and his views need to be taken seriously. Having been a devoted Zionist his disenchantment came during the 1956 Suez war when Ben Gurion declared as the war’s aim to “re-establish the borders of the kingdom of David and Solomon.” Furthermore, as a secular humanist he became increasingly concerned about the treatment of Israel’s Arab citizens and the influence of religious fundamentalism on the policies of the state. The book, published in 1997, is important because he translated for us Hebrew newspaper articles dealing with interviews of policy-makers between 1991 and 1995.

In the following I shall only excerpt some key sections as they pertain to Iran and US Jews. The key sentence is already in the Introduction: “Israel does not want peace with Iran under any circumstances.” He explained the reason in terms of recent history. After the founding of the state, Ben-Gurion envisioned an “alliance of the periphery,” (Turkey, Iran and Ethiopia) to counter the immediate Arab threat. Iran was an ally until the fall of the Shah and during the subsequent Iraq-Iran war Israel supplied both sides with arms because the longer the war lasted the greater the exhaustion on both sides. Iraq’s military potential was thereafter decimated by the first Gulf war and ceased to be a threat. This pushed the armed Iran into the foreground and our story starts in February of 1993 when he wrote:

 

“Since the spring of 1992 public opinion in Israel is being prepared for the prospect of a war with Iran, to be fought to bring about Iran’s total military and political defeat. In one version, Israel would attack Iran alone, in another it would ‘persuade’ the West to do the job. The indoctrination campaign is gaining in intensity. It is accompanied by what could be called semi-official horror scenarios purporting to detail what Iran could do to Israel, the West and the entire world when it acquires nuclear weapons as it is expected to a few years hence. A manipulation of public opinion to this effect may well be considered too phantasmagoric to merit any detailed description. Still, the readers should take notice, especially since the Israeli Security System does envisage the prospect seriously. In February 1993 minutely-detailed anticipations of Iran becoming a major target of Israeli policies became intense.”

 

What Shahak regarded as “phantasmagoric” nearly 20 years ago is now the daily diet of the American media. Here are some additional pertinent excerpts which deal with the Israeli mind-set in regard to Iran.

 

“I am well aware that a lot of expert opinions and predictions quoted here will sound to non-Israeli readers like fantasy running amok. Yet I perceive those opinions and predictions, no matter how mendacious and deceitful they obviously are, as politically quite meaningful.… Whether one likes it or not, Israel is a great power, not only in military but also in political terms, by virtue of its increasing influence upon US policies….  Israeli enmity toward Iran stemmed from the fact that it ‘could aspire to [the] regional hegemony’ to which Israel aspires…. Last year Rabin said that Iran was the main threat to Israel’s security. The Chief of Staff Ehud Barak described the monster of Tehran as the most terrible danger to peace in the whole world…. The Iranian regime poses a danger to the very foundations of world order.… Rabin’s strategy was ‘to push the US and other western powers into a confrontation with Iran’ because if ‘Israel confronts Iran on its own, it may get involved in a religious war against the entire Muslim world. To forestall this danger ‘Israeli propaganda [Hasbara; lit. “Explanation”] was ordered to depict the rulers of Iran as ‘a danger to peace in the entire world and a threat to equilibrium between Western civilization and Islam’…. In the Middle East there is no room for nuclear deterrence as it was used in the Cold War, because the enemies of Israel are not as rational as the rulers of the USSR were, to the point that under the influence of the Ayatollahs they may court disasters for the entire world [attributed to a speech by Shimon Peres].”

 

Please note that these are the same words which Mitt Romney used in Jerusalem two weeks ago. In regard to “organized Jewry” in the US, by which Shahak meant members of exclusively Jewish organizations with political goals, he wrote:

 

“The proportion of organized Jews within the body of US Jewry can be roughly estimated as about 50 percent…. Israel wields a tremendous influence within the US, in my view regardless whether Israeli policies accord with US interests or not…. Through years of Likud rule the US Jews learned a sequence of Pavlovian reflexes: ‘Never withdraw, say no to any contacts with the Palestinian diaspora, no to contacts with any Palestinian representatives from East Jerusalem, no to any improvement of US relations with any Arab state.’… The bulk of the organized US Jewish community is totalitarian, chauvinistic, and militaristic in its views. This fact remains unnoticed by other Americans due to its control of the media, but is apparent to some Israeli Jews.”

 

          Had these words been written by a Gentile in our country he/she would surely have been branded as an anti-Semitic propagandist or worse. Please remember that all of this material stems from nearly twenty years ago and in regard to Iran we are now supposed to believe that not only our country but the entire western civilization is under immediate threat of annihilation by the “mad mullahs” and the “monster of Tehran.” Have we already forgotten the “butcher of Baghdad” who was supposed to have accomplished the same goal ten years ago?  But some of us have not forgotten the propaganda during the run-up to the Iraq war and to refresh ones memory it is useful to re-visit this site for the issues of September 1, 2002 - December 1, 2002 (For the Goyim they sing, One year later, Israel the Fifty-First State, Wanted – Good Judgment). The proverbial handwriting was on the wall then and so it is now.

The general public here and in the rest of the world may wonder: what’s the rush towards a showdown with Iran? For the answer to this question one has to realize that the timetable is not set by America but by Israel. The decision to destroy Iran’s military capability (atomic and/or conventional) was made decades ago. The only question was when and how. As mentioned by Shahak a serious effort began in the early nineties, but the U.S. was preoccupied with Bosnia and subsequently the Oslo accord, the Lewinsky affair and Camp David II. It needed the 9/11 tragedy to create sufficient animosity against Muslims in order to align our country completely with Israeli policies. In its immediate aftermath we were engaged in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which left us with little appetite for an additional one with Iran. But currently our troops have been removed from Iraq and President Obama intends to be finished with the Afghan war in another year and a half. This leaves our “military-industrial complex” with the prospect for reduced defense spending which is, of course, anathema.

For Israel the next few months are ideal because there are no external threats. Iraq is practically demilitarized, Egypt is in transition to a government which may or may not honor the peace treaty, Syria is engaged in a civil war and Turkey, as a NATO member, is unlikely to interfere. Israel has a peace treaty with Jordan, and Lebanon cannot engage in serious military action without the danger of massive reprisals. Furthermore, the U.S. Navy patrols the Persian Gulf and American troops are still ensconced in Kuwait, other Gulf States, some successor states of the USSR and Afghanistan. Iran is encircled and only needs the coup de grace. On top of it all we have elections coming up and the Netanyahu government doesn’t trust Obama. Although his re-election is far from assured the Israeli government may not want to take any chances and will be tempted to force his hand with some type of fait accompli. The only remaining question is: who will fire the first shot?

There are two theories. A popular one has the Israelis bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. But I regard this as not particularly likely. It would only anger the Iranians rather than destroy their war-making potential, which is the overarching goal. Furthermore, the onus for initiating the war would be on the Israelis, which is hardly to their liking. They want us to be involved and carry the major burden. This can be achieved relatively easily because our navy is in a vulnerable position. A Gulf of Tonkin type incident can readily be engineered and if the Iranians don’t cooperate with procuring one, a false flag operation can take its place. Since war with Iran has already been decided upon by Israel, and we are no longer in a position to assert our independence from Jerusalem, it appears that only divine intervention can save us and the rest of the world from another looming disaster. Let us hope that I am mistaken in this assessment but the next few weeks or months will provide the answer.







September 1, 2012

THE VANCOUVER 9/11 HEARINGS

          In the July 1 issue I mentioned that I attended in June of this year the “Vancouver 9/11 Hearings” and would report on them in September. There were two major reasons for the delay. Since the Toronto Hearings had preceded Vancouver and the latter were to some extent a response to them, they needed to be covered first. In addition, the Vancouver speakers were supposed to have submitted their presentations to the judges by August 1 which would then give me time to work from written material rather than merely the rather scanty notes I had made at the time. The Toronto material was indeed presented on August 1 but the hope that complete Vancouver data would become available during that month was only partially fulfilled and the judges, therefore, extended the deadline to September 1. Rather than waiting any longer I shall now present my impressions, which will convey the essence.

          As mentioned in previous installments the 9/11 Truth movement is not monolithic. It consists of a wide variety of people from diverse backgrounds and educational levels who are united only by the belief that our government has not told us the full truth about what happened on that fateful day. The hallmark is individualism rather than conformity and, as such, exhibits the spirit of America’s frontier days. There is the neighborliness of kindred thoughts but also the rowdiness of “my way or the highway.” Since whatever minimal organization exists comes from the bottom up rather than the top down one should not expect any kind of uniformity. This is important to know because it also means that there is no funding agency which can then enforce its demands. Furthermore, whatever opinions a given individual may utter they need to be regarded strictly as personal, with the only backing: the integrity of the individual.

          Nevertheless, as mentioned on previous occasions, two major groups have crystallized over the years which differ in their outlook how the common goal, namely an impartial, politically independent, legally constituted, inquiry into the events of 9/11, can be achieved. One group limits itself to acquainting the public with the fact that major portions of the data of the 9/11 Commission Report do not appear to be scientifically sustainable. The other looks at: who had the motive, means and opportunity, to commit this dastardly crime? Both are legitimate approaches but since human beings are involved, with considerable differences in temperament, acrimony exists not only between but also within these groups. This is readily apparent when one looks at some comments on 9/11 Internet sites and it came into full bloom on the last day of the Vancouver Hearings.

          Although, as mentioned, there is no official leadership the, what one may call, “who done it?” group is largely represented by James Fetzer Ph.D. whose credentials I have previously mentioned. He was not invited to speak at the Toronto Hearings because this was the forum for the “how what was done” and he felt that this limitation needed to be corrected. Specifically: the Toronto Hearings dealt only briefly with the Pentagon attack and omitted altogether the “no  plane theories” as well as the potential role of our and Israel’s government in the disaster. The Vancouver Hearings were designed to overcome the latter deficiency under his Chairmanship and that of Joshua Blakeney, a graduate student from the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. Since my personal preference is geared towards facts rather than speculations, which by their very nature are not amenable to proof, I was hesitant to attend but since Dr. Griffin had encouraged me because I “might meet some good people,” I went.

          In contrast to Toronto, where the venue was on a university campus the Vancouver Hearings were held in a movie theater which had, however, the advantage of the hotel being next door. There were 19 speakers scheduled for sessions on Friday evening, all day Saturday as well as the evening and all day Sunday. The program can be viewed on http://www.911vancouverhearings.com. The meeting was to start at 6 p.m. on Friday evening and I thought that with my plane arriving from Salt Lake at 4 p.m. I would have time to have dinner with former Navy Commander Ted Muga and his wife whom Griffin had urged me to meet. Since Commander Muga had in his younger years landed fighter jets on aircraft carriers, and had subsequently flown for Pan Am, I thought he would be a good source to enlighten me about the ease with which with the hijackers were supposed to have achieved their objective.

          As it turned out my flight did not leave Salt Lake until 6 p.m. (Vancouver time 5 p.m.) so I had to cancel dinner and told the Mugas I would meet them at the Hearings. This is not necessarily irrelevant because it reminded me what Griffin had told the audience in regard to his experience on the flight to Toronto, which had likewise been delayed by more than hour. He pointed out at that time that Mohamed Atta, the leader and chief hijacker, who allegedly flew AA 11 into the North Tower had, according to the 9/11 Commission, driven on September 10 from Boston to Portland Maine. He stayed at a Comfort Inn overnight, then left the car with incriminating evidence at the jetport and took a 6 a.m. flight back to Boston to board AA 11 which was supposed to have taken off at 7:45, but the actual departure was delayed to 7:59. Although he made it in time his luggage, which contained further incriminating evidence including his will, did not. Since airline delays are common we can now ask ourselves: why would someone risk ruining one’s major mission in life, if that’s what it was, on the chance that the Portland plane might be delayed? Furthermore, assuming that Atta wanted his luggage on AA11, why carry one’s last will and testament on a suicide mission where it would be burnt to cinders? But these are just some of the questions one is not supposed to think about.

          As it turned out I had not missed anything as far as the Keynote address was concerned. When I arrived at the theatre, having skipped dinner, I saw what appeared to be a somewhat elderly rather agitated hippie on the stage addressing the audience in what is best described as a rant. I had no idea what he was trying to tell us but he was indefatigable. The program informed us that he goes under the name of “Splitting the Sky,” had attempted a citizen’s arrest of President George W. Bush in Calgary in 2009, was near the Twin Towers the day before 9/11, had participated in the Attica Prison Rebellion and has become a staunch advocate for the marginalized and the dispossessed. Eventually he did give up the podium and the scheduled presentations could start. Obviously he was a well-meaning person but the delivery of his message was not conducive to making converts from unbelievers.

          In accordance with the title “Hearings,” the format was quasi-judicial. There were two judges (one male, the other female) who were supposed to listen to the evidence presented by the speakers – witnesses, and eventually decide whether or not certain persons in the US had engaged in criminal conduct as part of the 9/11 tragedy. To this end Judge Alfred Lebremont Webre administered an oath to each of the witnesses at the time of their speech that they would “present the truth, the full truth, and nothing but the truth.” In addition the witnesses had to declare what qualifications they had in regard to the topic they were about to address and to conclude with names of persons of interest who should be subjected to a judicial inquest. Although this sounds rather respectable it in no way guarantees that unbiased actionable evidence will be forthcoming. I am convinced that all of the witnesses presented their information in good faith and to the best of their knowledge. But since there was no cross-examination and presenters had in addition, for the most part, only second hand data, of, at times, questionable reliability, this format is not necessarily conducive to ascertain actionable facts. There is an additional aspect to witness testimony which holds even for legally constituted proceedings. Witnesses in general do not lie, but they have their bias which they at times hold to a fanatical degree because it is their subjective truth. I have discussed this aspect in other contexts on this site and it will become especially pertinent in regard to one of the potentially most important talks of the hearings.   

          The presentations themselves can be mainly be grouped under: means of the Twin Towers’ destruction; what happened at the Pentagon; faking of video evidence in regard to the plane impacts; the hijacked passengers; culpability of  government circles here and/or in Israel and one or two miscellaneous items. I shall not discuss all of them but limit myself to merely a few which provided, at least for me, new information. As far as the Twin Towers are concerned Charles Boldwyn, a retired physics and chemistry teacher, explained that the steel columns which held up the buildings were tapered, as had also been mentioned in Toronto. Since the lightest material was on top and the heaviest on the bottom it does not make good sense that the buildings should have fallen down in the way they did. Lighter mass cannot completely destroy a heavier one. In Toronto the top of the building was compared with a VW beetle which was supposed to have crushed the Mack truck underneath.

Jeff Prager was scheduled to present data which indicated that nuclear charges had been involved in the destruction of the buildings but since he could not come the presentation was given by Donald Fox who added his own material. In essence: the US Geological Service had found tritium and deuterium, which are nuclear fission products, in ground zero basement water as well as other fission byproducts in the dust which covered lower Manhattan. A full exposition of Prager’s ideas can be found on his e-book America Nuked.  

          On basis of the book, “Where Did the Towers Go? Evidence of directed free-energy technology,” Dr. Judy Wood had been invited to present her thesis but she didn’t come and the paper was given by Ms. Clare Kuehn. Regardless of the validity of the Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) theory the book contains excellent photographs which are worthwhile pondering in relation to the explanatory value of the government’s collapse model.

          In as much as there are at present, apart from the official explanation, essentially four theories how the collapse of the Twin Towers could have come about Mr. Dwain Deets tried to approach the problem scientifically by examining each one in relation to the major known observations from ground zero. Mr. Deets has an interesting scientific background with an MS degree in physics as well as one in engineering. He worked for many years in a research capacity at NASA and in 1996 was appointed Director, Aerospace Projects Office at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, CA. His NASA career is documented at http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/NewsReleases/1996/96-10.html. In the 1970s he published work on prototypes of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), which then evolved, via Global Hawk, to the current Predator. As such, he is a person who deserves to be listened to. Being a scientist he was not concerned with value judgments as to which collapse theories are legitimate and which ones off the pale this is why he included: ROOSD, nanothermite, DEW and mini-nukes.

          Like most everybody else I had not heard of the ROOSD model (Runaway Open Office Spaces Destruction) before but Deets explained that the fundamental idea is:     

 

“If the OOS [open office space] portion of the originating floor is ‘separated’ from the columns, it will drop unimpeded to the floor below. This separation could be [achieved] by carefully placed cutter charges, or by a more dramatic displacement of the upper block of floors laterally, such that one side of the upper facade drops free of the row of columns below. This could ‘strip away’ the first several floors below serving the same effect of ‘separating’ the floors from their supporting columns. The floor below, not designed to arrest this fall, will join in a runaway cascade of OOS floors to the bottom, known technically as a progressive floor collapse.”

 

Mind you, Mr. Deets did not invent any of these four theories he merely evaluated them within certain parameters which included: Crush rates; Debris patterns; Nano-thermite; Temperatures (immediate); Persistent heat; Vehicle anomalies; Tritium; Basement blasts; Radionuclides. He then created a rating scale and scoring system as to which one of the four theories would correspond best to observed data. Based on this limited material mini-nukes achieved the highest probability of having been involved in the destruction of the towers. Deets emphasized that this should not be taken as the final word but merely as an example for how the scientific method can be used to assess explanatory probabilities for a given event.

Three speakers dealt specifically with aspects of the attack on the Pentagon. Enver Masud, an engineer by profession, who has also written 9/11 Unveiled which can be downloaded from the Internet, showed a video clip from the morning of 9/11 where Jamie McIntyre, CNN's senior Pentagon correspondent stood in front of the building and stated: "From my close up inspection there's no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon. . . .  The only pieces left that you can see are small enough that you could pick up in your hand. There are no large tail sections, wing sections, fuselage -- nothing like that anywhere around which would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon. If you look at the pictures of the Pentagon you see that all of the floors have collapsed, that didn't happen immediately. It wasn't till almost 45 minutes later that the structure was weakened enough that all of the floors collapsed." This clip was subsequently withdrawn from the CNN website but exists on YouTube. Jamie McIntyre stated years later that his words had been quoted out of context but this is hardly credible because the absence of debris from a Boeing 757 has been commented upon also by other credible witnesses. Masud mentioned furthermore that:

In January 2003, the U.S. government's National Institute of Standards and Technology released the ‘Pentagon Building Performance Report’ (removed from NIST website). Page 35 of this report reads: ‘An examination of the area encompassed by extending the line of travel of the aircraft to the face of the building shows that there are no discrete marks on the building corresponding to the positions of the outer third of the right wing. The size and position of the actual opening in the facade of the building (from column line 8 to column line 18) indicate that no portion of the outer two-thirds of the right wing and no portion of the outer one-third of the left wing actually entered the building.’”

 

                Barbara Honegger, whose contribution to the topic has been mentioned in part in the August 1 issue provided a very detailed .ppt presentation which demonstrated that the AA77 flight pattern as described by the government does not conform to observed facts and that the first blast at the Pentagon occurred not with the officially reported impact at 9:37 a.m., because clocks at the helipad and inside the Pentagon stopped at 9:32. Debris corresponding to those from a small plane, possibly a Global Hawk, was found not in the area of the supposed Boeing impact but further north by the helipad and there were numerous credible reports from witnesses of bombs having gone off inside the building.

          Dennis Cimino, who used to be a Navy Command System specialist and was involved in Flight Data Recorder (FDR) testing, reported in detail on the problems associated with the supposed flight pattern of AA77. To me the most interesting aspect was his analysis of the AA77 FDR. It revealed that there could not have been a struggle in the cockpit because at no time was the autopilot disengaged which would have inevitably happened under those circumstances. Furthermore, the preamble of the FDR file, which normally carries identifying information of the plane it came from, had 000. This indicated that the file did not originate from AA77. For the sake of accuracy I need to mention, however, that I have subsequently found on the Internet a critique, by Frank Legge Ph.D., of Cimino’s report which had originally been published with Jim Fetzer in Veteran’s Today. It was subsequently withdrawn from that site but can be retrieved from others.

          I shall now skip the other presentations and go to that of Ms. Susan Lindauer’s “Confessions of a CIA Asset.” If what she said is correct, all previous major scandals would pale in comparison. I had read Ms. Lindauer’s book Extreme Prejudice – The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq The Ultimate Conspiracy to Silence Truth, and was interested to personally evaluate her credibility. At the Hearings she made the following statements under oath: As a CIA asset she had been a back-channel liaison to the Libyans and Iraqis at the UN and her “handler” was Dr. Richard Fuisz. In the middle of April 2001 she was told by Dr. Fuisz to confront the Libyans and Iraqis with the demand to hand over any intelligence they have in regard to conspiracies involving airplane hijackings and/or airplane bombings. They were also to be told that if they would not produce this evidence and any such attack were to occur, their countries would suffer severe military retaliations. Ms. Lindauer relayed the message but not the threat upon which Dr. Fuisz became furious and insisted that the threat had to be delivered in unmistakable terms. He also insisted that the Iraqis and Libyans be informed that “Those threats originate from the highest levels of government, above the CIA Director and the Secretary of State.” She delivered the message but neither the Iraqis nor the Libyans had any information. During June the emphasis shifted only to Iraq and it was felt that the WTC would be the target because “it would finish the cycle which had started in 1993.” Baghdad wanted to cooperate and offered to accept FBI operatives into their country to check for jihadists. The offer was not taken up. Although it was known by the CIA that an attack was imminent, precise information as to airports of origin and flight numbers was missing. “9/11 was not the result of mistakes. It was a deliberate execution. Though 90 per cent of U.S. intelligence tried to stop the attack, the compartmentalized structure of the intelligence community made it possible for a minority 10 percent to undercut all the good work and proactive planning.”

After 9/11 she continued contacts with the Iraqis in order to forestall the impending war but was thwarted by the administration. After the invasion she informed members of Congress and the administration about the war’s false pretenses but was arrested and charged with spying for Iraq in 2004. Since she insisted upon her innocence she was declared mentally ill and imprisoned in a military facility. She was to be forcibly drugged to cure her so that she could stand trial, but she refused the medications. She insisted that her statements regarding the impending attack were verified by a Canadian friend, Parke Godfrey a professor of computer sciences, who was in Washington in those days.  

She did not mention that she was released from prison in 2006, but declared mentally incompetent to stand trial and that in 2009 all charges were dropped. What are we to make of testimony of this type? The prison episode is objectively verified but how are we to assess the claims that the highest levels of the Bush administration facilitated 9/11 in order to allow the Iraq war to go forward? There is no doubt that what she testified to was her subjective truth but was it “the” truth and is it verifiable? I tried to get a personal feeling of her current mental state by inviting her for dinner but the meeting dragged on and by the time I got back to the hotel she had left her room and could no longer be reached. It is easy to write her testimony off as “delusions of grandeur” and she may well have overemphasized her role in the scheme of things. But there is by now considerable evidence that 9/11 was not merely an “intelligence failure” and that the Iraq war was a top priority for the Bush administration immediately after the inauguration.

I shall forgo for now a discussion of the other presentations and refer the reader to a succinct summary by Craig McKee who captured the essence on http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/911-vancouver-hearings. Instead I shall present two personal encounters. I had read Webster Tarpley’s book Synthetic Terror Made in USA and was eager to engage him in conversation. I told him that “the Bush administration may well have allowed some type of attack to happen, but underestimated its magnitude, similar to the original Pearl Harbor when Roosevelt baited the Japanese to fire the first shot.” This immediately released a torrent of anger. He told me in no uncertain terms that Roosevelt was a great man who saved Western civilization and that I am undoing years of work with my LIHOP suggestion (Let It Happen on Purpose), when it was really MIHOP (Make It Happen on Purpose). Since it was obvious that I was confronted with dogma there was no purpose in continuing the conversation.

          The other one was a brief conversation with Judge Webre about where these Hearings might lead and he thought that eventually it might go to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The program had told us that the judge was on the “Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal” and since I had not heard of it previously I looked it up after returning home. Wikipedia tells us that this is a Malaysian organization established in 2007 by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad to investigate war crimes. It was to be an alternative to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which Mahathir accused of bias in its selection of cases to cover. The tribunal does not have a UN mandate or recognition, no power to order arrests or impose sentences, and it is unclear that its verdicts have any but symbolic significance.

Nevertheless, in May 2012 after hearing testimony for a week from victims of torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the tribunal unanimously convicted in absentia former President Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former Deputy Assistant Attorneys General John Yoo and Jay Bybee, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and former counselors David Addington and William Haynes II of conspiracy to commit war crimes, specifically torture. The tribunal referred their findings to the chief prosecutor at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

It seems doubtful to me that the Court will take the case but this seems to be the model upon which a 9/11 investigation could be built. On the other hand even if The Hague International Criminal Court were to hear these cases it would have only moral impact here because “American exceptionalism” does not recognize international jurisdiction over its citizens.

In sum and substance I came away from the meeting with the conviction that the 9/11 Truth community still has a long way to go before it will achieve general acceptance, but that with good will progress can and will be made toward uncovering this enormous crime. In view of the tremendous importance of this topic for the future of our country, and the world, further discussions of specific aspects will appear in subsequent installments.    







October 1, 2012

THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS

          In a little over five weeks from now Americans will exercise their democratic rights and try to elect their president for the next four years. I said “try” deliberately because it is in no way guaranteed that the voice of the people is really heard, as the 2000 elections proved. President George W. Bush was not truly elected in that year but appointed by one vote of the Supreme Court, which had such fateful consequences. I have previously discussed our country’s arcane and even archaic election laws, which were designed in the “horse and buggy days” (Voting in America, March 1, 2006), but let me just mention again the key features so that my European readers can get an impression of how this republic of ours really works.

          As is well known “We the People” don’t directly elect our president and vice president. For the presidency we have the “electoral college” and the vice president is selected by the presidential nominee. If the president were to die in office we would get the vice president, who was the add-on in the November election, regardless whether or not we like him. The actual electors are determined in primaries, which are held by the political parties and to participate in them the person must belong to the party for which he intends to vote, although there are some states which allow cross-overs and independents to vote in the primary. Inasmuch as only a small minority of the most dedicated citizens actually bothers to show up for the primaries the vast majority is then confronted in November with a candidate who may not be to their liking at all, which has relevance for November 6 as will become apparent later.

          These comments dealt with the Presidency and the elections to the Senate; for the House of Representatives another variable enters into the equation: the gerrymandering of the district a given person is supposed to represent. I have likewise commented on the origin of the term previously but we need to remember that our current president would never have reached his exalted office had Chicago politicians not changed the borders of the district he lived in from a predominantly low middle class area to include a considerably more affluent one. This border change has nothing to do with the will of the people but is the exclusive purview of the politicians in control of the State House and the ability to raise the money to influence them in one’s favor.

          A more recent example is the current situation here in Utah. The state is largely rural and predominantly of the Mormon religion. For some reason which I currently am unaware of, Mormons initially voted largely as a block for the Democrats but have subsequently shifted to the Republicans. The only areas where a Democrat has a reasonable chance to win an election are sections of Salt Lake City and Park City which have a considerably more diverse population. Our state is, therefore, the most Republican in the nation and a Democrat or Independent doesn’t need to go to the polling place for the presidential elections because the outcome is a foregone conclusion. The same applies to the Senate; it is for the House and local offices such as mayor or judges where we have more choice. But since state government is heavily Republican our lone Democrat Representative, Jim Matheson, from the district we live in, currently has to fight for his political life because the district borders were changed earlier this year to include more Republican voters. This leads to the spectacle on our TV screens where Jim Matheson now assures us that he actually has voted more commonly for Republican interests and against the wishes of his party as for instance in regard to the mislabeled “Affordable Health Care Act,” which has become a major campaign issue.

          The latter is now a classic case for political demagoguery. The law, which is derisively called “Obamacare,” was actually modeled after the medical insurance provisions of Massachusetts which had been passed under then Governor Mitt Romney. In his 2008 run for the presidency he could still regard the passage of this law as a major achievement, but in as much as Obamacare is anathema for Republicans he had to disown it and has vowed to repeal the law as soon as he gets into the White House. The excuse for what Democrats have promptly called “Romneycare” is, that it was designed specifically for his state and should not be applied to the country at large. Whether or not this stance has merit I leave for the reader to decide. We can also question if it would not be better to improve the existing law rather than ditching it altogether and start from scratch again. But this would require reason rather than political emotions and the former is rather hard to find.

          The fact that the president is not elected by popular vote means that a candidate has to gain 270 electoral votes in order to win the race. This makes the election outcome dependent on how a given state rather than the country at large votes. From past experience it is obvious that some states, such as ours, are Republican dominated and a Democrat doesn’t need to spend time and money here. The opposite is the case, for instance, in New York. This puts the election outcome into a handful of “swing states.” The current situation was summed up in a Newsweek article by Michael Crowley in the September 24 issue. It carried the title “Ad Nauseam” with the subtitle “Romney and Obama are spending more money to woo fewer voters than at any time in history. Will it make a difference?” The main title referred to the fact that in the swing states 30 second political advertisements flood the TV screens to an extent that people get fed up.

          In the article Crowley presented some details. As of last week there were nine states for which the election outcome was in doubt. Of these, five are regarded as crucial. They consist of: Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Iowa and Colorado. Together they have 77 electoral votes and as mentioned 270 are needed to win the election. Omitting these five states Obama has currently 237 committed delegates to Romney’s 191 while 110 (who include the mentioned 77) are regarded as toss-ups. Thus, Romney needs to garner more than twice as many electors in the next five weeks as Obama (79 vs. 33). This formidable task is to be solved by money, which is in more abundant supply for Romney than for the president. It is expected that the cost of this campaign will total in excess of $1 billion; about 600 million of which are to be spent in the next few weeks. Let me now quote from Crowley’s article,

 

“The only thing more astounding than all this spending is the uncertainty of campaign pros and political analysts over what difference the money will make in the end. The hundreds of millions already spent has produced weeks of a virtual tie, with the only significant movement occurring after the nation focused on the parties’ national conventions: democrats threw the more energizing celebration, and Barack Obama went home from Charlotte with a small bounce in the polls.

But now the campaigns are like two armies fighting intensely over a few hundred yards of bombed-out terrain. Campaign pros estimate that a tiny 6% of the electorate remains undecided about whom to vote for …”

 

          This is, however, not the only way that our democracy exists more on paper than in reality. There has always been the problem of voter fraud. In former years ballot boxes were stuffed with nonexistent or deceased voters and it is well known that John F. Kennedy won the crucial West Virginia primary with his dad’s money, which also bought the Chicago Mafia. The latter came to haunt him during his presidency when he and his brother Bobby went after them. They resented this ingratitude and it has been reported to have contributed to his murder in November 1963. The computer age has made ballot stuffing obsolete and those who are interested in changing the outcome of a given election merely need to assure themselves that the programs which tabulate the results perform according to their specific desires as has been the case especially in the 2004 and 2006 elections (Why Bush won, December 1, 2004; Diebold to the Rescue, November 1, 2006).

          In as much as the demographics of the country are changing with more Latino, Asian and to some extent African votes, Republicans now find themselves in a minority, especially in the big inner cities. This handicap is currently being overcome in two ways. Under the guise of preventing voter fraud some Republican leaning states have now passed a law that a drivers’ license needs to be shown before one is admitted to the voting machine. Since a number of elderly and the poor, who otherwise might vote for a Democrat, have no drivers’ licenses their constitutional right to vote has become non-existent. The same applies to the quality and quantity of voting machines that are available at a given polling location. There are no problems in suburban areas but in inner cities such as Cleveland they were in rather short supply during previous elections. This resulted in inordinately long lines, people turned away in disgust and it was “mission accomplished” for the Republican election supervisor who had promised to Bush that he would deliver the necessary votes for the 2006 election.

The magic of computer programming should also not be underestimated. The news networks base their election forecasts on exit polling, which has been perfected to an extent that it mirrors the eventual actual count down to a decimal point. But to use 2004 again as an example the final official vote especially in the mentioned swing states bore no resemblance to the exit polls and it was later observed that in some instances more votes had been cast for Bush than people existed in that particular election district. I am bringing the 2004 and 2006 examples up now because Republicans find themselves today in difficult circumstances and similar tactics may well be resorted to again on November 6.

          The problem the Republicans face in winning the election is not only their diminishing demographic base and their candidate, Mitt Romney, but the fact that they have alienated a considerable proportion of former Republican voters. This was accomplished by yielding to the neocons’ aggressive foreign policy which regards the world as their dominion, and a domestic policy which abhors any form of government regulation (The Neocons’ Leviathan, April 1, 2003). While George W. Bush could still campaign in 2000 on a “compassionate conservative” platform this would be political suicide for Romney today. Regardless of his personal feelings he has to toe the party line that the underprivileged are freeloaders who are just lazy and really ought to work for their living. The wealthy are the “job creators” and they deserve further tax cuts. The off the cuff remark that 47% of the general public don’t pay any federal taxes at all and since they won’t vote Republican they are not Romney’s problem, as he declared at a private fundraiser earlier this year, has become a bonanza for the Democrats. They pointed out that this figure is quite misleading because it includes people whose taxes are withheld from their payrolls, and the working poor whose low income makes them exempt from federal taxes.

          While this shift in the attitude of the official Republican Party has brought dismay not only to some former Republican voters, even long standing conservative commentators are now voicing their concern. David Brooks who was on the staff of National Review, a conservative publication, who now writes for the New York Times and acts as counterpart to the Democrat Mark Shields on the Friday night PBS news broadcast, wrote a column on September 26 under the title “GOP misses traditional conservatives,”

 

“Some people blame bad campaign managers for Romney’s underperforming campaign, but the problem is deeper. Conservatism has lost the balance between economic and traditional conservatism. The Republican Party has abandoned half of its intellectual ammunition. It appeals to people as potential business owners, but not as parents, neighbors and citizens.”

 

          The article also appeared in The Salt Lake Tribune and hits the nail on the head. But there is an additional problem some of us have with Romney’s candidacy. We just don’t know what he really stands for. One gets a sense of lack of sincerity and of a person who will say whatever is expected to win over a given audience. While this can frequently be seen in politicians it is outright dangerous for a person who aspires to an office where he will hold the fate of the world in his hands. Once in office the donors who put him there will want his promises kept.

          Up to now the Romney campaign has focused nearly exclusively on domestic matters and seems to have adopted James Carville’s slogan which defeated George J.W. Bush in 1992: “It’s the Economy Stupid.” That Obama has not been able to correct the economic meltdown he was confronted with in 2009 is regarded as evidence of incompetence. But the fact that the presidency does not equate with the status of a CEO of a private company is deliberately ignored by the Republican public opinion makers. Furthermore, while everybody agrees that the world is vastly more inter-related than even a few years ago, the fact that the US president has no influence on how Europe tries to emerge from the 2008 economic disaster goes likewise unmentioned. Yet, it is the potential break-up of the Euro zone which may stall our recovery, or even bring on a new recession, regardless who is president here. This is the danger and to forestall it would require cooperative rather than unilateral actions. This seems to elude our Republicans and although they probably know it, they can’t use it to win the election, which is the only goal.

          In this effort they are also painting Obama as a social revolutionary who, if re-elected will turn the country not only into a European type Social Democracy but practically a communist state. These are scare tactics which are also to some extent employed in the foreign affairs arena. Romney lacks experience in that area and that he is not a particularly good diplomat was shown at the London Olympics as well as subsequently in Jerusalem. In London he offended his hosts by pointing out that their security arrangements might be inadequate and in Jerusalem he insulted the Palestinians (The Impending War with Iran, August 15 2012). The Jerusalem speech was in all probability directed at America’s Jewish voters, but is it wise to deliberately affront the Palestinians whose suffering under Israeli occupation is a concern to a large number of Muslims?

It is axiomatic that there can be no peace in the Middle East unless the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved. Obama has initially tried to re-animate the moribund peace process, which requires, first of all, for Israel to stop its settlement policy in Jerusalem and West Bank areas, but he ran into Netanyahu’s concrete wall. Domestic electoral realities, where the Muslim vote is negligible but the Jewish vote powerful, prevented him from pursuing the matter, but at least we know that he will continue to try if he were to be re-elected. On the other hand if Romney were to win his foreign policy, not only in the Middle East but in regard to the rest of the world, seems to be that of George W. Bush: if you are not with us, you are against us. I am saying this because it has been reported that his foreign policy advisors stem largely from the disastrous Bush era. They are wedded to the idea of absolute American domination on land, the sea, the air, and outer space. Their blueprint remains The Project for the New American Century as discussed here on The Neocons’ Leviathan and further details can be found at its website http://www.newamericancentury.org.htm. But we have to realize that this cannot be accomplished without new and even more devastating wars and this is why a Romney presidency is likely to be just as dangerous as a McCain presidency might have been four years ago.

Currently the Middle East is in turmoil with the events in Libya, Egypt and especially Syria taking center stage. Obama stayed out of the Egyptian revolution, because it was up to Egypt’s citizens to decide what form of government they want. He was reluctantly dragged into Libya’s when France and Britain ran out of NATO equipment. He also has, so far, abstained from entering into the fray in Syria which is an even more complex civil war. He is being criticized by Romney for this “lack of leadership” which he countered with the correct statement that if Romney “wants war he should just say so.” President Bush’s Afghanistan and Iraq wars have unleashed forces of which they had only been dimly aware. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stated in July of 2006 that we are witnessing “the birth pangs of a new Middle East,” http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1219325,00.html I commented in December of that year that “the baby may well arrive with a turban on its head and may have no use for Westerners dictating what it should or shouldn’t do. The era of colonialism is over” (The People Have Spoken).

This was correct then and as subsequent events have shown is still true today. It is truly appalling that these simple realities which are clear to everyone who brings a minimum of understanding, and an open mind that tries to see the needs of both sides to a difficult problem, has not penetrated Republican consciousness. Unfortunately we have a voting citizenry which has either been turned off  by the inability of the two political parties to come to a modicum of agreement for the good of the country, or is simply too lazy to inform itself about the vast issues that are at stake and is swayed by political propaganda. This is why the election outcome is currently in doubt and everybody is waiting how the three scheduled October debates between Romney and Obama will turn out.

In August of this year (The Impending War with Iran) I mentioned that Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu has also tried to insert himself into the elections. Since he used to be an American citizen he may feel that he has a right to do so but his insistence that Obama should not only condone an air-strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities but actually participate in it, has apparently failed. In spite of potential adverse political fall-out at the elections Obama has drawn his own red line when America should intervene militarily. This became clear in his speech before the UN General Assembly last week and when he did not meet with Netanyahu while in New York, the message may have sunk in.

There was very little reporting on the UN proceedings in our media except to praise Israel and bash Ahmadinejad, but fortunately we do have the Internet where we can get the relevant transcripts. As far as the Iranian President’s speech goes it was his farewell address because next year he will be out of office. It did not bring any news and he was also somewhat constrained in his comments on Israel, obviously trying not to make a bad situation worse. There were only two sentences dealing with Zionism and Zionists. In the first one he deplored that the world’s media have not been allowed to “criticize the hegemonic policies and actions of the world Zionism.” In the second he commented on the “Continued threat by the uncivilized Zionists to resort to military action against our great nation.” That was all he said in 35 minutes about this particular problem but the US as well as the Israeli delegates did not want to listen and had walked out.

On the other hand Netanyahu’s speech was well attended and received several rounds of applause. In the first half he started with King David having made Jerusalem the eternal capital of Israel, then recited Israel’s continued presence in the Middle East for three thousand years, Jewish resilience in face of unrelenting persecutions and eventually turned to Israel’s modern scientific and cultural achievements. The second half was entirely devoted to the threat Iran presented not only to Israel but the entire world which must be met now before it is too late. In the speech he took some liberties with the truth, as is common in political discourse, but the most important one was in regard to a diagram he showed the assembly picturing Iran’s bomb-making capability and Israel’s current red line which Iran must not be allowed to reach.

Description: Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu points to a red line he has drawn on the graphic of a bomb as he addresses the 67th United Nations General Assembly at the U.N. Headquarters in New York, September 27, 2012. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

 

Above is a copy of the picture. He explained that any bomb needs explosive material and a fuse. The fuse is undetectable; therefore efforts have to be made to prevent production of the fissile material. Please note that the “1st stage” of uranium enrichment has a line at 70 % and the red line is at the top of the 90%. With other words Iran must be stopped somewhere in the second stage (the Prime Minister’s left index finger points to it) and the sooner the better. But he went overboard in his zeal by insisting that Iran has already entered the second stage i.e. has achieved 70% enrichment of which there is no evidence from the IAEA or any of the world’s intelligence services. The latest IAEA report from August 2012, condensed from Wikipedia, said that: “since 2010 Iran had produced about 190 kg of 20%-enriched uranium, up from 145 kg in May. The report also noted that Iran had converted some of the 20%-enriched uranium to an oxide form and fabricated into fuel for use in research reactors, and that once this conversion and fabrication have taken place, the fuel cannot be readily enriched to weapon-grade purity.”

Nevertheless, the Prime Minister does seem to have given the world a little breathing room by apparently postponing any Israeli military action to next spring or early summer.  This would be a welcome relief for a war-weary world although as we say in German: aufgeschoben ist nicht aufgehoben – postponed doesn’t mean abandoned. So let’s hope that there won’t be any disastrous “October surprise.” Obama doesn’t want a new war; neither does Ahmadinejad, so let’s hope that Netanyahu’s government doesn’t want it either.

In view of the upcoming elections the next issue will not appear on the customary first of the month but on the 10th so that the results can be commented upon. 







November 11, 2012

THE ELECTIONS OF NOVEMBER 6

          When Americans went to bed on that November night about half of them breathed a sigh of relief while the others were either despondent or had divorced themselves in disgust from the political process altogether and didn’t care anymore. The most disappointed man, apart from Governor Romney, was probably the widely listened to conservative radio show host Rush Limbaugh. On the day of President Obama’s inauguration in 2009 he vowed that his presidency needed to fail and that he must become a one-term president. This became the battle cry for the Republican Party at large and, after the 2010 elections, was also taken up by the newly-minted Speaker of the House, John Boehner.

          Although the Democrats had in 2009 a majority in the Senate and the House, the Republicans used all the procedural rules at their command to delay or cripple proposed legislation. The most effective one was the threat of filibuster and the Democrats needed to muster a supermajority of 60 votes in the Senate to overcome it. Although there were in theory 60 votes available to the Democrats, they consisted of 58 Democrats and two Independents who were expected to vote with the Democrats. But two of the Democrats had serious health problems: Senator Byrd of West Virginia was elderly and ailing, while Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts was suffering from a brain tumor. Neither man’s vote could necessarily be counted on for medical reasons. In addition, not every Democrat would automatically toe the party line. It, therefore took one and a half years before the Affordable Health Care Act reached Obama’s desk for signature. During this time a series of compromises had to be made which resulted in a document, which most people agree is a monstrosity. Its major provisions were to become fully effective in 2014 but obviously will need some revisions before then.

          The Republicans were unhappy and since they had lost on the federal level they pursued their goal to abolish this act on the state level. Several states, including Utah, filed law suits to declare the Act as unconstitutional. They were taken all the way to the Supreme Court who to everybody’s surprise actually upheld the constitutionality of the law on June 28, 2012 by a 5 to 4 decision. The cost for this exercise is obviously borne by us, the taxpayer, but nobody seems to care very much about this expenditure of scarce funds.

          After the 2010 midterm elections, which gave the Republicans control of the House and gathered them seven more seats in the Senate, they smelled victory for 2012 and Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority leader together with John Boehner the House majority leader took up Rush Limbaugh’s standard and devoted their entire efforts to make Obama a one-term president. They adopted Vyshinsky’s famous “nyet” to prevent fiscal reform and last year brought the country to the brink of default on its debts by blocking a raise of the debt ceiling, which had been automatic heretofore. The irony of the situation is that the debt is being created by Congress for bills which are unfunded and when the money needs to be put on the table it simply isn’t there. Republicans and Democrats are responsible for these unfunded or underfunded mandates and not to face the consequences is pure hypocrisy. Republicans also refused to accept the fact that the Bush administration had inherited a modest budgetary surplus from the Clinton presidency but that this had changed into a $438 billion deficit for fiscal 2008. Since a fiscal year is not identical with the calendar year and goes from October to September it overlapped the two administrations. The total US debt at the beginning of the Bush administration in January of 2001 stood somewhat over $5.7 trillion and had risen to $10.6 trillion by January 2009 when Obama was sworn in. This inconvenient fact, published by http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/NPGateway, resulted from the inappropriate response to 9/11, with a massive expenditure on defense in the name of War on Terrorism, the invasion of two countries, as well as several stimulus packages which were largely in form of tax cuts to aid the already ailing economy. The latter was a consequence of the stock market crash of 2000 which resulted from Wall Street’s “irrational exuberance” during the nineties, as Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan had called it.

          As mentioned, in their effort to regain the White House the Republicans turned raising the debt ceiling, which had been automatic before, into a Rubicon which must not be crossed and sabotaged every reconciliation effort. In the end they “kicked the can down the road,” as the saying goes, and adopted a strategy which they thought would never take effect. The final solution was that if no compromise on the deficit is achieved by January 1, 2013 automatic drastic spending cuts and tax increases will take effect. This is the infamous looming “fiscal cliff” everybody is talking about now. But it was utterly avoidable had the Republicans been more reasonable early on.

          Everybody agrees that the federal debt, which has further risen under Obama to the current $16, 2 trillion, has to be addressed. The only way to do so is by increasing revenue and decreasing expenses. Republicans and Democrats agree on that. The devil, as usual, is in the details, and those we were supposed to get during the election campaign. Since they will be onerous it is no surprise that both candidates shied away from them and kept to vague generalities. The Republicans painted Obama as a profligate spender whose social programs will lead to fiscal bankruptcy and only an austerity program, similar to that which is currently pursued in the Euro zone, coupled with further tax cuts will bring about fiscal health. The Democrats on the other hand might have said: OK look at the Euro zone; their economies are stalled and unemployment, especially among the young, is reaching intolerable and dangerous levels. They did say that sufficient revenue cannot be raised by closing tax loop holes and cutting funding for social programs; taxes on the wealthy will have to be raised.

          “Read my lips, no new taxes” was the promise by George HW Bush prior to his 1988 election victory, but reality intervened and it couldn’t be kept. This time around the Republicans tried to make sure that it will be. During one of the Primary debates last year the moderator asked all the candidates if they would accept a $1 increase in taxes for a $10 decrease in spending. Not a single one agreed to that suggestion. It’s obvious, nobody likes to pay more taxes but how are you going to fund the “defense” industry, and burgeoning social costs resulting from an aging population? One of the proposals was to shift some of the cost burden to the states. This is, however, to put it bluntly, fraudulent. Where are the individual states going to get the money from to deal with these new and unexpected burdens? They can’t print it, as the federal government does, and they also have, unlike the federal government, a balanced budget mandate. So it’s obvious, we the individual citizens will have to pay higher taxes and if it isn’t to the Fed it’ll be to State government. This is simply a fact some of my Republican friends refuse to accept.

          One of the other preferred Republican solutions is “privatization.” This is already done on the federal level in the defense industry, where contracts are issued to private firms even for projects which carry top secret classifications. Since these contractors have to be paid from our tax dollars, and private industry works for profit, rather than out of the goodness of their hearts, the absurdity arises that we are actually paying more for what the government could do for less. On the state level it exists for prisons and some schools. The prison example is especially interesting because it’s obvious: the more prisoners, the more profit. It has been estimated that about half of all the non-violent offenses for which people are incarcerated are related to the “war on drugs.” Fox News reported in May 2010 that after 40 years we had spent $1 trillion without achieving any of its goals. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05/13/ap-impact-years-trillion-war-drugs-failed-meet-goals/. Keeping this “war” going, although there are considerably better ways to deal with drug abuse, is profitable for the large dealers while the small fry are put in jail to swell the prison business.

          It should be obvious that the Republican plans, when examined in detail, have not only considerable problems but are actually potentially dangerous for the economic future of the country. The Democrats likewise propose pie in the sky solutions and are not angels from heaven but what I want to emphasize is that this should be a time when the top economists sit down with each other and reach some type of consensus. The president should then endorse it and the political parties would need to stop fighting each other and do what’s right for the country. This is actually what Obama had tried in 2009 but the result was a “stimulus package” which some economists scorned as extravagant and ruinous, while others, like Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, regarded as too small for the magnitude of the problem.

          At any rate after a fierce primary season, where each candidate outdid the other not only in righteousness but also in proposals which became increasingly more radical, Mitt Romney emerged not so much as a beloved victor but the last man standing. The game plan was: gang up on the current media favorite and destroy him/her by exploiting a “gaffe.” Texas governor, Rick Perry, committed the sin of having favored education stipends for children of illegal immigrants and when, in the heat of the moment, he failed to remember the third of the three departments he wanted to eliminate from the federal government, his fate was sealed. On such moments American history hangs. By the beginning of the year Newt Gingrich was riding high but when he, likewise, endorsed a way to citizenship for the millions of Mexicans, who have walked across the border without first asking the immigration service for a visa, his chances also evaporated. Mitt Romney and the only other remaining candidate, Rick Santorum, took him to task and in the end the amount of money which flowed into Mitt’s coffers, as well as his résumé of success in business, the Utah Olympics and as governor of Massachusetts carried the day.

          Romney, the businessman, won the nomination with the assumption that he was the only one who understands how business works and he would bring with him sound business principles to effectively govern the nation. As noted in the previous installment I had some doubts that experience in business translates automatically into good government on the federal level, and I also had considerable concerns about his reliability. While there is no doubt that he is faithful to his family and the tenets of the Mormon Church, he seemed to have considerably flexibility on most everything else in the sense that he would say whatever was most opportune for the moment. In addition, his economic as well as his foreign policy plans were a replica of the Bush administration, which has landed us in the troubles we are trying to dig ourselves out from. Since he, like George W, had no experience in foreign policy one needs to look at his advisors. In so doing it was clear that they are the same neocons who gave us Afghanistan and Iraq. Currently they are eager to start war with Iran sooner rather than later.

     When I wrote the October 1 article, in which I voiced these concerns, I had not yet taken time to look in detail at the vaunted successes of Mitt Romney’s life. That he had made a great deal of money, of that there is no doubt. But the questions of how he made it, what made the Olympics so successful and what he accomplished as governor, were not addressed at that time. So let us take a look at them in succession. This is not an idle exercise. Although the election is over and Governor Romney is again a private citizen there are lessons to be learned for all of us. In essence it is an education in the current American political-financial system which will persist regardless who is the temporary occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC. Furthermore, it is important to realize that the information which is presented below was available on the Internet during the summer but was not reported by the official media.

          The key word for Romney’s financial success is “leveraged buyout” or LBO in short. Although the average person may know that something like this exists most of us, including me before I began writing this essay, have no idea what it really amounts to. A detailed description is available on Wikipedia but when reduced to its essence this is how it works. A financial institution A wants to get control or actual ownership of another company B. In order to do so A puts up as small amount of its own money as possible and borrows a large amount (usually from 60-90%) from an institution C based on the assets of B. A now has ownership or a controlling interest of B but B is still responsible for the debt and interest payments which have to be met from the successful operation of its company. When an economic downturn occurs, the revenue of B decreases, it cannot meet its payroll plus the debt load and B goes bankrupt. On the other hand A has received continued benefits during the operation of B and even when B goes under the actual loss is negligible because A had only put a minimum on the table in the first place and C is saddled with the debt. In other words this is legalized gambling where the bank .i.e. company A, always wins and only the amount of gain is in question.

          With this background we can now look at how Bain, Romney’s firm, operated. Mitt Romney joined Bain&Co., a Boston consulting firm, in 1977, became a vice-president in 1978 and left the parent company in 1984 to co-found “the spin-off private investment firm” Bain Capital, where he soon switched from financing start-ups to LBOs. This is important because in the presidential campaign Romney emphasized that he was a “job creator” and listed as the prime example Staples, which indeed had received money from Bain Capital to improve and expand its operations. This occurred, however, before Romney switched from job creation to debt creation with LBOs. This aspect is dealt with by several reports which are available on the Internet.

The one by Matt Taibbi on http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829 is entitled Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney with Bain Capital. Although written in a somewhat acerbic style it does present the essential facts in lay language and provides several examples how Bain Capital really worked. Key portions are: Romney switched from financing startups to leveraged buyouts because, “there’s a lot greater risk in a startup than there is acquiring an existing company.” Once an LBO of a given company, B, has been achieved Bain Capital charged B a substantial ongoing managing fee, which of course had to come out of B’s revenue. In order to stay profitable in view of the added debt burden, its interest payments and the management fees, B had to trim its work force. In other words people were fired. This explains the famous statement in one of the debates: “I like firing people.” Now comes another wrinkle how the Federal Government actually encourages this type of activity. The interest payments on the debt are tax deductible, just like home mortgages. With other words, we the taxpayers subsidize this debt creation because of lost revenue for the IRS. Now it gets even better. As mentioned the person at Bain Capital who does the “managing” receives management fees for operating B. One would assume that whoever gets this fee would have to pay regular income tax on it, as all of us do for our work. But that does not hold true for the rarified atmosphere of high finance. Their lawyers have found a loophole by immediately transferring this income into an “investment.” Thereby, depending on income, instead of the usual 25-35% or so which all of us are being taxed, the financiers pay only the capital gains tax of about 15%. This is how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. This “gimmick” which is the only word that properly describes this type of swindle is currently under investigation by New York’s District Attorney Eric Schneiderman. Since he is a registered Democrat and his investigation does not merely cover Bain but all of these financial institutions it is obvious that his probe is accused of playing politics.

Taibbi is not the only one who has described Romney’s personal wealth creation. David Stockman published an article in Newsweek on October 15, 2012 with the title, “Mitt Romney: the Great Deformer.” While Taibbi could be dismissed as a Romney hating Democrat, this cannot be said about Stockman who was Ronald Reagan’s budget director. Stockman has written a book, “The Great Deformation: How Crony Capitalism Corrupts Free Markets and Democracy,” which will be published in March of next year. But last month he provided what amounts to a summary for Newsweek. It is written in a professional authoritative style and needs to be taken to heart, especially by Romney supporters. It can be found at http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/10/14/david-stockman-mitt-romney-and-the-bain-drain.html. Another article, “Decoding Romney” which should be read, was posted by Paula Gordon on 10/28/2012 at the Huffington Post http://www.google.com/search?q=Paula+gordon+Huffington+Post+romney+10%2F28&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1  and she has since then published several additional ones on that website.

In order not to belabor this aspect further let me now turn to Mitt Romney’s major Utah achievement, the Olympics. We were all very grateful for his effort and I would like at this point to refer the reader to “The Mormon Olympics” published here on March 1, 2002, which represents the view of all of us who were here at the time. They provided a lasting major boost for our economy, created a light rail line which reached from Salt Lake City south to Sandy with a spur to the Olympic stadium and the university. The southern route is currently being expanded to Draper and another spur to the airport will be opened next year. In addition a Winter Sports Training Park was created which provides athletes from around the world with up to date facilities. For all this we are very grateful to Romney. In addition the Olympics did not leave us saddled with a deficit but had actually a surplus of $101 million. We didn’t know where all the money for these improvements of our infrastructure had come from and what’s more we weren’t even interested in finding out.

When I now checked on this aspect I found out that Romney had persuaded the federal government to shell out $1.3 billion, which far outstripped previous government expenditures for these events. Senator John McCain had become enraged in 2000 over this “pork barrel” project and his actual words can be found in an article at http://www.politicolnews.com/romneys-2-7-billion-olympic-bailout-by-john-mccain, which also contains a video clip. In fairness we have to admit that it is indeed difficult to see why a farmer in South Dakota or Tennessee should have to support an event, which is of little to no interest or benefit to him. Another article from 2001 on this topic was published at http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mitt-romney-expensive-olympics-federal-funding. As mentioned we Utahns were happy that the Fed helped us but under these circumstances Romney’s current attacks on government spending ring hollow. The US Government did create jobs here which Romney’s friends in industry failed to do.

                As to his record as governor there are also significant aspects which have been omitted from public discussion but can be found on Wikipedia. He did inherit a deficit and had to balance the budget in his first year of office which required drastic spending cuts. He had also promised not to raise taxes but since not enough revenue could be created from cuts in spending he raised fees for birth certificates, new car purchases, driver’s learning permits, firearms permits, professional licenses, and billboards advertising, as well as for many state services. For the individual citizen who now had to pay more for something that used to cost less it is irrelevant whether you call it a fee or a tax. Furthermore, these fee increases hit the middle and lower income segment of our society the most while upper income people could shrug them off. When Romney mentioned that he didn’t care about the 47% who don’t pay taxes this was not a gaffe; it came from the heart. For a complete description of his tenure as Governor of Massachusetts please go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governorship_of_Mitt_Romney because it gives you an idea of how he would have conducted himself as Chief Executive in the White House.

                While President Obama can also be taken to task for not having performed according to expectations, his failures are understandable when one considers the magnitude of the problem he had inherited. We don’t know what the next four years, or even the next year, will bring and all the 10 year projections economists are so fond of are utterly meaningless. We may be engaged in a war with Iran which will further drain resources which we don’t have. We can only hope and pray that Obama will not let himself be pushed into this potential disaster which can bring no good for anybody. Let him justify his premature Nobel peace prize! Under these circumstances his next four years are likely to be successful because the economy, although not growing by leaps and bounds, will probably gradually improve. Provided that the Eurozone does not collapse, we may avoid a double dip recession. Some aspects of Obama’s conduct in office, which disappointed a number of us, will be taken up next month.

          This brings me back to our Republicans and their guru Rush Limbaugh. On Monday he and Dick Morris, a favorite of Bill O’Reilly on FOX News, had confidently predicted that Romney would win in a landslide. When it was not to be he told his audience on Wednesday: "I went to bed last night thinking we'd lost the country. I don't know how else you look at this. The first wave of exit polls came in at five o'clock. I looked at it, and I said ... 'this is utter BS, and if it isn't, then we've lost the country.’”

What Limbaugh and people who think like him have not understood is that what I called a tectonic shift had taken place with the first Obama election (Audacity of Hope; November 8 2008). Whites, although still in the majority, are gradually losing their privileged status and Hispanics as well as Africans and Asians are finding their voices. We are a multicultural society and the Republican Party must come to grips with that fact. It must also realize that “crony capitalism” has ruined the middle class and is unsustainable. The failure to do so, and especially if it persists in the previous obstruction of the legislative process can only spell doom for the party and grief for the country. This is the legacy and lesson of November 6.

          Since I shall be attending the American Epilepsy Society Meeting in San Diego at the end of this and beginning of next month the December installment will not appear on the 1st but on December 8.    







February 1, 2013

THE U.S. HEALTH CARE SYSTEM:
A STUDY IN CONTRASTS

                The past two months were highly educational although in a rather unexpected manner. As mentioned in the December comment I got a firsthand view of how the U.S. “health care system” currently works. For a physician to be on the receiving end was an eye-opener because one knows how care should be dispensed and can evaluate it against observed facts. But before going into the details let me provide the background.

          With my co-workers Dr. Constantino and Dr. Bigelow I had prepared a poster to be shown on December 1 at the American Epilepsy Society Meeting in San Diego on “Interictal EEG Intracranial Infraslow Activity.” This is completely new information, not yet appreciated by epileptologists, but is likely to become important in our understanding of epileptogenesis. The poster evoked interest and I had planned to give a live demonstration on December 2 to key epileptologists in order to show what additional features can be seen in the EEG when appropriate software is used.

          The demonstration was planned for the morning and in the afternoon I was scheduled to meet with some members of the 9/11 Truth movement which is very active in California and especially the greater San Diego area. It consists largely of professionals who are now retired, which allows them to express their true views without fear of repercussions in regard to their job. This is a real problem and I shall report my personal experiences on this topic in the March issue. I had met some of the participants in Vancouver and was glad to have the opportunity to renew contacts and exchange views on various aspects of what is, up to now, the greatest crime of the current century.

          For the evening of December 1, I had invited my co-workers to join me for dinner at the Convention Hotel dining room. Since they attended a meeting at the Convention Center next door which ended at 8 pm I had made reservations for that time. Inasmuch as the late afternoon meeting was not in my sphere of interest I had returned to the hotel earlier and presented myself at the hostess desk at 8 pm intending to meet the guests at the table. Then fate stepped in.

          While walking behind the hostess my right leg gave way, I fell on the artificial hip and the right leg was bent out of shape as well as paralyzed. Every slight movement caused excruciating pain and since I had suffered two previous hip dislocations with similar symptoms I assumed that this was what had again occurred. Hotel personnel immediately gathered while I managed to get into a sitting position propped against the wall. It was obvious that I needed an ambulance to get to a near-by emergency room where an X-ray could be taken and since I thought that it was merely a dislocated hip I assumed that once it is put back in place I could continue with next day’s schedule. This assumption was not unreasonable because, as mentioned it had happened twice before here in Utah and the replacement had taken only a few hours before I was home again and could continue with my routine activities. But this time was different.

          When the hotel called 911 (the US emergency number) a “fire truck” appeared on the scene 20 minutes later rather than an ambulance. This was beyond comprehension and I kept insisting that I wanted an ambulance because that’s what was required.  Another 20 minutes passed the ambulance did come and I was taken to Scripps Mercy hospital with Dr. Constantino accompanying me. The mystery of the fire truck resolved itself later because their personnel, rather than the ambulance have the emergency medical technicians. That this does not make good sense and simply increases costs seems not to have penetrated the minds of decision makers unless cost is the actual the purpose because the whole system is designed “for profit” in this capitalist country of ours.

          Now let me digress to 1950-1951 when I was an intern at Staten Island Hospital. The hospital had its own ambulance and when an emergency arose the intern on call for the emergency room rode with the driver to the scene of the problem where a preliminary diagnosis could be established and a decision was made whether or not the patient needed hospitalization, was actually already dead (I personally saw some of the weirdest circumstances which made even veteran NY police officers sick), or could be treated on the scene and then referred to his/her regular physician. The system was efficient and cost effective but those days are gone for good.

          By 9 p.m. I was admitted to the ER of the hospital and then came the surprise. Here in Utah, on the two previous occasions, I was immediately taken to X-ray, the orthopedist on call assessed the situation and, as mentioned, put the hip back in its place. But in California there was no orthopedist anywhere to be seen. A young physician, who never introduced himself, stood around rather helplessly while lab personnel became busy with drawing blood for lab tests and did ECGs but what was needed namely the X-ray had to wait several hours.

          When it was taken only the pelvis area was X-rayed on the assumption of hip dislocation, but although the hip was in place it was noted that the proximal end of the femur, which could be seen, had been shattered around the shaft of the prosthesis. Now it would have made good sense for the technician who saw this problem, which was obvious even to a lay person, to show it to the radiologist and they would then reposition the X-ray to view the entire length of the femur to see how far the fracture extended. But that would have been logical and I was reminded of the saying in the Wehrmacht: leave the thinking to the horses; they’ve got the bigger heads. I was taken back to the ER and lingered there for another several hours until I was returned to X-ray for further study. Mind you, by now it was way past midnight and I had not yet seen an orthopedist. Dr. Constantino to her eternal credit stayed with me (not having had any dinner) and since by 2 a.m. there was still no sign of a physician I insisted that she return to the hotel because there was nothing that she could accomplish at the hospital.   

          Eventually I was taken from the ER to a hospital room and the waiting for a physician continued there. Now it is true that it was a Saturday-Sunday weekend but that is no excuse for not having ER physicians of the various specialties on call. My mood which initially had been rather stoic gradually changed to suppressed fury and when in the morning there was still no hide or hair of the orthopedist to be seen I demanded that they call him and let me know where exactly he was physically located at that time and when I might expect a visit. Eventually sometime after 11 a.m. Dr. Bawa, the orthopedist on call, did show up and seemed clearly annoyed with having been bothered on a Sunday morning. He explained that the fracture was serious; the prosthesis had to be removed, a new one inserted and the fracture stabilized. But by that time I had lost all confidence in him and told him that I would not let him do the operation. I then requested another orthopedist with whom I could establish human contact and discuss options. Needless to say we did not part on good terms but nursing personnel did get in touch with Dr. Fabi who came later in the day. In contrast to Dr. Bawa’s robotic attitude Dr. Fabi was a genuine physician who evoked trust and the operation was scheduled for 8 am next morning. As it turned out it didn’t take place until 5 pm that afternoon. In other words approximately 44 hours had elapsed before the necessary action was taken.

          Let me now go back to the middle 90’s. Martha and I had been skiing at Snowbird, when for no good reason at around 2 pm her leg gave out and she fell. We had just started on the slope; I was ahead, when I heard an expletive and on turning around saw that she was disabled. As luck would have it the skier right behind us was an ER physician who immediately called for the toboggan. She was X-rayed right at Snowbird, a hip fracture was diagnosed and an ambulance was called. For unknown reasons the ambulance didn’t make it up Little Cottonwood canyon and another one had to be summoned. But by around 6 p.m. Martha was at Alta View hospital, wheeled directly into a room. The orthopedist, Dr. Gordon, started the operation at 7 p.m. and was finished by around 9:30 p.m. Those had been prior experiences which showed what could and should be done.

           Whether or not the California events, as related above, are nowadays the general rule or specific for Scripps Mercy hospital (SM) I cannot tell. Due to sports related injuries and other conditions I had several operations in the past and, therefore, extensive experience with general anesthesia. On all of these occasions I had been allowed to awaken spontaneously from the various drugs which had been administered. This time I regained consciousness as a result of rather vigorous slapping of my cheeks, an event which had not taken place since adolescence and the circumstances that warranted it at that time were described in War&Mayhem. It seems that the hospital was working on an assembly line principle where drugged patients have to be gotten out of the recovery area as fast as possible to make room for the next victim. By the way, the word “patient” has become anachronistic and when you enter the health care system you become a “case” or “client.” Another change which has occurred over the years is that you are routinely addressed by first name only. This annoyed me; I pulled rank and insisted that they call me Dr. Rodin. This was not just arrogance but caregivers should have some idea who the person is they are dealing with because we are not all cut from the cloth.

          I was returned to my room from the OR sometime around 10 p.m. and hospital rules demanded that you were not allowed to sleep any length of time because blood pressure, heart rate and blood oxygenation have to be checked every few hours. The fact that a patient with a fractured leg does not necessarily need these is not only irrelevant but actually harmful because tissue repair proceeds best during sleep. By now it was Wednesday morning and at 9 a.m. a physiotherapist showed up. I was still hung over from the anesthetics, as well as lack of sleep, and clearly in no shape to engage in any kind of physical activity. By refusing I became a “bad patient” but that didn’t concern me because there was a conflict of interest. The  hospital wanted to keep me while I was bound and determined to get out as soon as possible because there was no way I could improve under those circumstances and Martha, alone at home, could not be expected to come to San Diego for several weeks. I had to get back to Utah and the faster the better.

          That’s when the “system” kicked in again. For SM hospital to discharge me a Salt Lake Hospital would have to accept me. I tried to convince them that I wanted to return to the facility which had done the second hip operation but was told that they refused to accept me in my condition because of the danger of deep vein thrombosis with emboli or fat emboli from the fracture. I was stuck; yet come hell or high water I had to get out of that hospital. For arranging this feat I am indebted to friends from the 9/11 Truth community who explored all possible means how to get me back to Utah, even if it had to be done against medical advice. Since the Salt Lake hospital refused acceptance we decided that I just go home and subsequently make arrangements for a proper Rehab facility in our neighborhood.

          Commercial airline flying was out of the question because the right leg was paralyzed and I couldn’t possibly have gotten into a seat. Private Air Ambulance was an option but it would have cost $25,000 and it was not clear if flying in my debilitated state would be advisable. Fortunately my San Diego friends and our daughter, Krista, discovered two ambulance services which would undertake the arduous trip from San Diego to Salt Lake. The first one was located in New York and that would have involved a trans-continental trip for them with all the added expense. But the second one was based in San Diego and for $7,500 they would take me home while lying on a stretcher, admiring the rather desolate scenery of the southwestern U.S. through the back window.

          The earliest they could do so was at 3 a.m. on Friday morning and 12 hours later I was at home ensconced in a rented hospital bed, surrounded by loving family members. In sum and substance the SM medical experience was rather dismal and the only bright spot, apart from Dr. Fabi, were the nurses’ aides who were genuinely interested in the needs of their patients. They were courteous, available when called and even respected my wishes for privacy by posting a sign on the door that visitors needed to be cleared by the nursing desk. I was surprised that practically all of them came from the Philippines and even Dr. Fabi, who was interested in my well-being, was second generation Filipino. It seems that the hospital couldn’t have functioned at all without personnel from these Pacific islands.

It was obvious that I was too ill to stay at home and there are several Rehab facilities in Sandy. We picked HealthSouth because it is on the way to one of our favorite restaurants, can be easily reached by Martha within 15 minutes and I was admitted on Tuesday, December 11.  It turned out to have been an excellent choice. The personnel: physicians, nursing, physio- and occupational therapy, was mainly local and had, with a few exceptions, the amiability one is used to find in our state. The primary care physician, Dr. Rada, was not only competent but also a person who took time with his patients and actually listened to suggestions I made in regard to my problems, which in the meantime had multiplied. Former esophageal and gastric ulcers, which had been under control prior to the accident, flared up leading not only to intense pain and inability to eat but also bleeding. Medication changes, as well as two blood transfusions, were required to bring it under control. Nevertheless it took about a week before I was capable of engaging in meaningful physiotherapy. This nearly proved to be my undoing.

On Christmas Eve I was presented by a lady from hospital administration with the news that the Medicare (which paid for the hospitalization) limit assigned by some bureaucrat on basis of some number ended on Friday the 27th. HealthSouth was designated as an Intensive Rehabilitation Facility (IRF) and I could either go home or head for a nursing home where only minimal rehab facilities were available. This Christmas present was clearly a shock because neither of these two so-called options was realistic for my condition but this is how the system works. I shall explain the maze of intricacies and alphabet soup which all falls under Medicare at the end of this essay.

Needless to say this was a sad Christmas Eve but Martha, Krista and I celebrated with some Kahlua hoping for better times. On Christmas Day the physiatrist Dr. Elovic arrived and found that the entire femoral nerve was disabled which led to the mentioned paralysis of the leg. He not only suggested an EMG but more importantly told us that we could appeal the Medicare decision and ask for an extension of my stay due to the intervening additional illness. This was a ray of hope and since Christmas is a federal holiday, Krista spent most of the 26th to convince somebody at Medicare that I needed to stay longer at HealthSouth. She was told that the hospital would have to send a report and they might then reassess the situation. The hospital did so and we were informed that the answer would arrive in 48 hours.   

This not only left us in suspense but also with the problem how to get an EMG to determine precisely which muscles and nerves are functional. The hospital did not have the necessary equipment and visiting another one as an outpatient was problematic in my condition. Dr. Constantino came again to the rescue. She knew from her church an elderly physician, Dr. Duerksen, who actually travelled to outlying communities around the state with his portable equipment and provided this important service. The only problem was that on Monday, December 31, was his 70th birthday and the last day where he would see patients. By that time it was Thursday the 27th but Dr. Duerksen agreed to see me at HealthSouth on Friday later in the day. The complicating factor was that he was actually in St. George, which is about 300 miles to the Southwest. Depending on road conditions in the winter takes a minimum of 4 hours driving and his last patient was scheduled for 1 p.m.

Now comes an example that natural goodness and willingness to help still exists in some members of our species although it does not seem obvious when one limits oneself to news reports via print or electronic media. The patient Dr. Duerksen was supposed to have seen at 1 p.m. was late, the exam took longer than expected and he showed up at my hospital room at around 9 p.m. He had not had any dinner and in spite of driving all this distance was in good cheer and proceeded with the exam. The result was that all the muscles supplied by the femoral nerve showed absence of activity when an attempt at voluntary innervation was made. One can speculate about the cause, which I won’t do, but the verdict was, of course, serious and unimpeachable. Prospects for recovery appeared dim. We were both disappointed and since he had literally gone the extra mile to see me I offered him some compensation apart from the rather ridiculously low fee he would be getting from Medicare. He absolutely refused and told me that he never charges colleagues. This reminded of the other good old days at the Mayo Clinic which likewise did not charge physicians or members of the clergy for their services.

Thinking subsequently about the situation I remembered a lecture I had heard several years ago when an East Coast professor had shown videos of children with muscular dystrophy (MD) who had experienced remarkable improvement when treated with the drug prednisone. Well, if it works in MD why not try it I reasoned. Next day I discussed the possibility with Dr. Elovic, who was lukewarm about it, but Dr. Rada was willing to give it a try. Within 48 hours some strength appeared in the quadriceps and the physiotherapists as well as the physicians were impressed that improvement was actually taking place to the extent that after a few days I could take a few steps in a walker. This is an excellent example of what can be done if competent physicians trust each other, can rationally discuss a difficult situation, and are willing to try unorthodox solutions. Unfortunately this avenue is not available to the average lay person who has to take the physician’s fiat, which is dictated not only by his limited personal and literature experience but also, at times, bias. Progress continued, Medicare relented, and on January 17 I could return home for continued physiotherapy as well as assistance with bathing and other activities of daily living, such as taking a shower etc. The quadriceps has regained some function by now, but flexors and abductors are still too weak, which makes the wheel chair the main means of propulsion, although we are working hard to graduate to a walker for shorter distances.

Before discussing IRF, PPS and the CMG aspect of the “system” I need to express my gratitude to the nursing and therapy personnel at HealthSouth. Regardless of shift, all of them were not only genuinely helpful but exuded an air of friendly optimism. From all of the people working at the hospital there were only three persons who performed their job in a sullen manner. In order to fully appreciate this fact one has to know that a considerable number of the people working at HealthSouth do not hold permanent jobs there but are regarded as “temporary help.”  This means that they do not get health insurance or any other benefits and their salaries are quite low. In order to make ends meet most of them have at least one and at times two additional jobs which can lead to a work week of up to 80 hours. Our Republicans who rail against the “benefits” which the government doles out seem to be quite unaware of how the capitalist system really works even for the middle class

Now a few additional words about the “system,” apart from the previously mentioned acronyms.  Upon discharge from the hospital I was given a prescription for necessary medications but when Martha tried to fill them at the pharmacy she was told that our insurance was no longer valid. This was a shock because there seemed to be no reason why it should have been cancelled. The pharmacist who knew us, spent hours on the phone with Lansing (we are on the State of Michigan Retirement Plan) and got it temporarily straightened out. When I called Lansing the next day I was told that as of January 1 Medicare had switched insurance carriers, without notifying anybody about it, and we would get our new card within two to three weeks. You can readily imagine the problem this can create when a patient needs medications on an emergency basis because drugs have become prohibitively expensive and the few items we did need would have cost us over $400.

Let me now return to Medicare and its subsidiaries. During our working days Martha and I had Blue Cross-Blue Shield health insurance as part of the benefit package of the State of Michigan for its employees. When I stopped working for money at age 65, I was told that Medicare was now the primary insurance and the “Blues” would only cover some aspects which Medicare does not provide. This was a surprise because we now have two bureaucracies to deal with instead of one. When reflecting upon this situation it seems that the private insurance lobby had been very active in Congress to rid itself of expenses for the elderly, who are notoriously in more need of medical care, shifting the major burden to the federal government. As such it is no surprise that with an aging population the Medicare budget is ballooning. But when Congress tries to reduce expenditures the cuts come through inadequate compensation for physicians and for services rendered.

There is no doubt that not only a great deal of waste but also actual fraud (billing for services not provided) does occur and that the system needs a thorough overhaul. But “Obamacare,” which will become fully effective in 2014, cannot do so because the provisions are so complex that it will need still more bureaucrats to implement it and physicians will have even less time to deal with patients because of all the forms which need to be filled out. While the affluent can, of course, get optimal care this does not pertain to the majority of our citizens.

This brings up the fundamental question should medical care be a “for profit industry” or should some type of basic insurance be available to everybody with co-pay for extra services? This was Obama’s battle with Congress in 2009. He lost; and the enacted compromise will neither fulfill its goal of cost reduction nor better service.

             Let me now try to explain what IRF, PPS and CMG stand for and how they impact on patient care. The excerpted information comes from:  http://www.medpac.gov/documents/MedPAC_Payment_Basics_08_IRF.pdf.

 

“After an illness, injury, or surgical care, some patients need intensive inpatient rehabilitation services, such as physical, occupational, or speech Therapy. Relatively few beneficiaries use intensive rehabilitation therapy because they generally must be able to tolerate and benefit from three hours of therapy per day to be eligible for treatment in an inpatient rehabilitation setting. Under the PPS (prospective payment system), discharges are assigned to case-mix category groups (CMG) organized by clinical problems and expected resources.  Each case-mix category has a national relative weight reflecting the expected relative costliness of treatment for patients in that category compared with that for the average Medicare inpatient rehabilitation patient….”

         

What this actually amounts to is that optimal medical practice, as dictated by the needs of the patient and certified by the treating physician, is hardly possible anymore because the decision which treatment facility you can go to for how long a period of time is now dictated by a complex computer algorithm which has placed the patient into a “case-mix group” from which there is no escape. This explains the mentioned Christmas Eve surprise. HealthSouth is designated as an IRF which means that patients have to actively participate in rehabilitation efforts about 3 hours each day. If this goal is not met the patient has to be discharged or the hospital will lose its Medicare accreditation. Since I was too ill in the early stages of hospitalization, and nobody had told us about this restriction, the mentioned notice had to be served and only the persuasiveness and persistence of our daughter supported subsequently by the physicians’ appeal saved the day.

          These are the facts as of January 2013 and with increasing reliance on computers for medical decisions the situation can only get worse. Private pay has risen to astronomic levels and is as such only available to a minute fraction of our society. This is the brave new world we are creating by insisting on the capitalist mantra that everything has to be “for profit” even when it comes to the most basic aspect of life namely the opportunity to get the best possible medical care in “The Land of the Free and the Brave!”

          Finally I must thank our three children who came in installments from various parts of the country to provide help. Eric, the pilot, visited even in San Diego and was with Krista on site when I returned home for the first time, making arrangements to ensure that their crippled father was as comfortable as possible. Peter, our physician son, not only was the essential liaison with Dr. Fabi in San Diego as well as Dr. Rada here in Sandy, but also removed the 91 staples with which the extensive incision had been closed. The brunt of worry fell, of course, on Martha, who although not in good health herself, rose to the occasion. She visited practically on a daily basis and since hospital food was not always to my liking she brought extra supplies for lunch and dinner. This truly showed the importance of a caring family without whose help I would not nearly have regained even the limited function in the legs and certainly not my capacity to engage again in meaningful work. 







February 15, 2013

PROOF OF HEAVEN

          The October 8, 2012 issue of Newsweek carried on its cover page a picture of a hand stretched out beyond heavenly clouds to the cosmos, with the captions:
“Heaven is real. A doctor’s experience of the afterlife.” http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/10/07/proof-of-heaven-a-doctor-s-experience-with-the-afterlife.html. The article discussed a neurosurgeon’s, Dr. Eben Alexander III, experiences during coma from bacterial meningitis which left him to conclude that heaven and the afterlife are real and scientists better face up to that fact. Although a nominal Christian he, just like most other scientists, had adhered to the current concept that consciousness is a result of brain function and cannot occur in its absence. Yet

 

“In the fall of 2008, however, after seven days in a coma during which the human part of my brain, the neocortex, was inactivated, I experienced something so profound that it gave me a scientific reason to believe in consciousness after death…. When I entered the emergency room that morning, my chances of survival in anything beyond a vegetative state were already low. They soon sank to near nonexistent. For seven days I lay in a deep coma, my body unresponsive, my higher-order brain functions totally offline…. There is no scientific explanation for the fact that while my body lay in coma, my mind—my conscious, inner self—was alive and well. While the neurons of my cortex were stunned to complete inactivity by the bacteria that had attacked them, my brain-free consciousness journeyed to another, larger dimension of the universe: a dimension I’d never dreamed existed and which the old, pre-coma me would have been more than happy to explain was a simple impossibility. 

But that dimension—in rough outline, the same one described by countless subjects of near-death experiences [NDE] and other mystical states—is there. It exists, and what I saw and learned there has placed me quite literally in a new world: a world where we are much more than our brains and bodies, and where death is not the end of consciousness but rather a chapter in a vast, and incalculably positive, journey….

All the chief arguments against near-death experiences suggest that these experiences are the results of minimal, transient, or partial malfunctioning of the cortex. My near-death experience, however, took place not while my cortex was malfunctioning, but while it was simply off. This is clear from the severity and duration of my meningitis, and from the global cortical involvement documented by CT scans and neurological examinations. According to current medical understanding of the brain and mind, there is absolutely no way that I could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma, much less the hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent…”

         

          The article was actually part of a promotion for his about to be published book, “Proof of Heaven. A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife,” Inasmuch as I had previously published, in the scientific literature as well as on this site, my views on NDE’s I ordered the book from Amazon to find out what “proof” Dr. Alexander could offer the scientific community for his assertions.

          Since the book itself switches back and forth between snippets of biography, the experience itself, the genesis of the book, medical observations, scientific data including quantum mechanics and assertions about consciousness and reality, I shall be more systematic here and take the essential points in sequence followed by a personal assessment.

          His experience during coma consisted of three parts. First he found himself disembodied, with no recollection of his actual life, underground “like being a mole or earthworm buried deep in the ground.”  There were also some visions of what he regarded as roots which then changed to grotesque faces and accompanied by a roar and foul smell. Near panic set in and this part he subsequently called “the earthworm’s eye view.”

He was rescued by pure white filaments, tinged with gold, spinning around at the center of which was an opening. This was accompanied by the “richest, most beautiful music you’ve ever heard.” He realized that he had to move up through this entrance, which he later called the “gateway.” He went through and “found myself in a completely new world. The strangest, most beautiful world I’d ever seen.” He was flying over a valley populated by happy people and then realized that he was actually on a wing of a butterfly accompanied by a beautiful young woman who reassured him that, “You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever;”  “You have nothing to fear;” There is nothing you can do wrong.” These were not spoken words but direct thought transfers. They were surrounded by millions of other butterflies and there was synaesthesia of beautiful sound and vision without separation as well as a sense of oneness.

As he moved forward he entered the third phase which he called “the Core.” “[I] found myself entering an immense void, completely dark, infinite in size, yet also infinitely comforting. Pitch black as it was, it was also brimming over with light: a light that seemed to come from a brilliant orb that I now sensed near me. An orb that was living and almost solid, as the songs of the angel beings had been.” He then compared his situation with that of a fetus floating in the womb except that “the ‘mother’ was God, the Creator, the Source who is responsible for making the universe and all in it. This Being was so close that there seemed to be no distance at all between God and myself. Yet at the same time, I could sense the infinite vastness of the Creator, could see how completely miniscule I was by comparison.” “The Orb was a kind of ‘interpreter’ between me and this extraordinary presence surrounding me.” His questions were immediately answered telepathically and he was provided with knowledge which surpasses terrestrial understanding; the words to transmit it simply don’t exist in our vocabulary. “The knowledge given me was not ‘taught’ in the way that a history lesson or a math theorem would be. Insights happen directly, rather than needing to be coaxed and absorbed. Knowledge was stored without memorization, instantly and for good.” Eventually he returned through the same stages and found himself again in the earth-worm’s view but this time it was no longer accompanied by fear.

When he came out of coma he experienced paranoid psychotic ideation for several days, but he clearly differentiates the reality of the “experience” from his psychosis, which lacked this feature. He believes the psychosis was a result of the neocortex, which in his opinion had been dead, gradually returning to its pre-coma functions.

Let us now look at some of the biographical snippets, in order to see to what extent they might have flavored the above cited experience. There are two aspects which stand out. One is that he was, since adolescence, a dedicated skydiver which may have contributed to the second stage of his experience. The other, namely the message that he is “loved and cherished, dearly, forever” was wish fulfillment. His biologic mother was 16 when he was born and he had been adopted by the Alexanders (Dr. Eben Alexander II was a prominent neurosurgeon, whose obituary can be found on Wikipedia) at the age of 4 months. He insists that he had always known about the adoption and was clearly loved by his new parents. Nevertheless he had a lifelong feeling of having been abandoned by his biologic parents. “For in fact, ‘thrown away’ was, on a deep level, how I had indeed felt all through my life–in-spite of the best efforts of all of my family to heal that feeling through their love.”

Over the years Dr. Alexander had made several efforts to find his biologic parents and in February of 2000 he discovered that his biologic parents had actually married several years after his birth and that he had two sisters and a brother. One other sister had died in 1997. When he tried to contact his birth mother she refused to see him. It was a devastating blow. His career as well as family life began to take a nose dive. His work suffered and he left Harvard. The accompanying guilt over having disappointed the expectations of his renowned adoptive father was a further complicating factor. He had been brought up in the Christian religion and had tried to hang on to his belief in God in spite of the doubts a scientific life creates in this regard. But after this rejection he lost the remnants of his faith entirely. The situation changed, however, in 2007 when he succeeded in contacting one of his biologic sisters and thereafter the rest of his family, although he did not meet the father until summer of 2008. Good relationships with his biologic mother and siblings persisted but he could never get over the loss of the sister who had died.

 Although the book always emphasizes the reality and even “super-reality” of the experience, the author does admit to intermittent nagging doubts because the NDE literature emphasizes that one is met by deceased friends or relatives in the afterlife. This had not happened in his case. Since he was close to his adoptive father who had died four years earlier he wondered why he had not met him. Inasmuch as the presence of deceased relatives is taken in the literature as evidence for an afterlife, their absence was worrisome. This problem resolved itself when he received a photograph of his deceased sister Betsy in the mail. “She looked so strangely hauntingly familiar. But of course she would look that way. We were blood relations and had shared more DNA than any other people on the planet with the exception of my other two biologic siblings.” He put the photo on the dresser but made no mental connection to his experience. This changed dramatically when he read the next morning in the book On Life After Death by Dr. Kuebler-Ross an account of a 12 year old girl who had a NDE. At first she had kept it from her parents but then told her father of “traveling to an incredible landscape full of love and beauty, and how she met and was comforted by her brother. ‘The only problem’ the girl told her father, ‘is that I don’t have a brother.’ Tears filled her father’s eyes. He told the girl about the brother she did indeed have, but who had died just three months before she was born. After reading this account when Dr. Alexander looked at the photo on the dresser it was clear to him that the deceased sister was indeed the young woman who had accompanied him during the second and third stage of his voyage. “In that one moment, in the bedroom of our house, on a rainy Tuesday morning, the higher and the lower worlds met.”

Genesis of the book. After his health had reconstituted to some extent he was, of course, confronted with the dilemma of how to explain what he had experienced because it violated current scientific principles. At first he thought that he would study the literature on NDEs but his son, Eben Alexander IV, who was a college student at the time, told him that he should first set down in writing what he had experienced. He followed the advice and “For the next six weeks [approximately the beginning of December to middle of January 2009] or so most days went the same. I woke up at 2 or 2:30 a.m. feeling so ecstatic and energized by simply being alive that I would bound out of bed. I’d light a fire in the den, sit down in my old leather chair and write. I tried to recall every detail of my journeys in and out of the Core and what I had felt as I learned its many life-changing lessons. Though tried [italics in the original] isn’t really the right word. Crisp and clear, the memories were right there where I had left them.”

For further information one has to go the Acknowledgment section of the book. There one finds that among others “Raymond Moody and Ken Ring, pioneers in the near-death community, whose influence on me has been immeasurable.” He also cites additional “thought leaders" of the “Virginia Consciousness” movement and gives thanks to “My God-sent literary agent Gail Ross and her wonderful associates, Howard Yoon and others at the Ross Yoon agency. Ptolemy Tompkins for his scholarly contributions from unparalleled insight into several millennia of literature on the afterlife, and for his superb editorial and writing skills, used to weave my experience into this book, truly doing it the justice it deserves.”

When I looked up Mr. Tompkins on the Internet I found that he has a webpage http://ptolemytompkins.net which announces: “Welcome – sort of

My name is Ptolemy Tompkins and this is my website. A website which, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t want to create, and which I still have my misgivings about, now that it’s pretty much done.” As far as his belief system goes he states: “If a label must be produced, then “Reincarnational crypto-Christian with some Buddhist/Taoist leanings but Stronger Hindu ones, with a pronounced interest in current ideas about the evolution of consciousness such as put forth by people like Owen Barfield, Ken Wilber, Jean Gebser, Rudolf Steiner, Douglass Fawcett, Michael Whiteman, and (with reservations) Teilhard de Chardin, who also believes very much in the Persian/Islamic metaphysical model of the personal imagination as outlined by Henry Corbin will do as well as any.” When one looks up Mr. Tompkins on Wikipedia he is referred to as “the collaborative ghost author of Dr. Eben Alexander’s Proof of Heaven.” He has published several books and the most recent one carries the title: The modern book of the dead: A Revolutionary Perspective on Death, the Soul, and What Really Happens in the Life to Come; which obviously alludes to the well-known Tibetan Book of the Dead and possibly also The Egyptian Book of the Dead.

                Dr. Alexander’s book was published in late October 2012, an interval of nearly four year since the experience, and we don’t know when the actual writing took place. But it is apparent that he had immersed himself during that time in what might be called “new-age mysticism” rather than resuming medical/scientific work. In this connection it is also of interest that “Gateway,” the word he used for the second phase of his journey is apparently linked to the Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia, which devotes itself to the study of Out of Body experiences. Wikipedia tells us that the main method of inducing these sensations is “a program called Gateway Voyage, a training course that uses binaural soundtracks to facilitate exploration and replication of specific altered states of consciousness known as Focus levels. Gateway Voyage is a six-day intensive [set?] of exercises using custom-designed sound booths (CHEC units), talks, and group interaction.” Dr. Alexander was familiar with the institute, which is within easy driving distance of slightly over 40 miles from his home in Lynchburg, and describes how the Hemi-Sync techniques not only helped him in his recovery period but also to recreate some of the aspects of his coma experience.

          There is an additional point about the bibliography which deserves to be mentioned. The overwhelming majority of books and articles listed were published between 1995 and 2011. The earliest is a 1952 publication and one looks in vain for Dr. Maurice Bucke’s Cosmic Consciousness – A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind which was originally published in 1901, but has since been reprinted several times and is available on amazon. Likewise, one fails to find William James’ The Varieties of  Religious Experiences – A Study in Human Nature  which consists of The Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion delivered in Edinburgh 1901-1902. There is also no mention of the Tibetan Book of the Dead yet all three are classics which serious students of human consciousness need to familiarize themselves with. As far as the title of the Dr. Alexander’s book is concerned, he had intended to call the book N of 1 to emphasize the uniqueness of his case but was persuaded by his agent to adopt, for commercial reasons, the current one.

          The medical facts which are presented to justify the opinion that consciousness can exist in the absence of a functioning brain; that we are immortal; and a loving God cares deeply for each one of us, are scant. Appendix A contains a brief statement by Dr. Scott Wade, who was the major attending physician. It consists of only one and one third of a page and merely tells us that Dr. Alexander had E. coli meningitis and that the prognosis for recovery was quite poor. The key sentences are: “Dr. Alexander presented to the hospital with seizures and a markedly altered mental status both of which are risk factors for neurological complications or death (mortality over 90 per cent).” After six days of coma the mortality rate was regarded as having risen to 97 per cent and “the fact that he went on to have a full recovery from this illness after being in a coma for nearly a week is truly remarkable.” No further details are given about the depth of coma, the seizure types and their treatment as well as the laboratory tests that were performed throughout this week apart from CT and spinal fluid examination.

          This information one has to retrieve from pieces which are distributed through the various chapters of the book. I shall now try to reconstruct the course of his illness. Although the diagnosis is always referred to as simply “meningitis” he had a sub-form which is called “subpial toxic encephalopathy.” Since the bacteria do not penetrate the immediate thin covering of the brain (pia mater) but accumulate above in the subarachnoid space and ventricular fluid, the damage is assumed to be toxic in nature. The textbook symptoms are: confusion, stupor, coma, and convulsions all of which occurred in Dr. Alexander’s case and we can therefore safely refine the diagnosis to this condition.

Although the book ascribes the coma exclusively to the meningitis there were other factors at play namely seizures and their treatment. That part of the coma had been iatrogenic is hinted at in a conversation Dr. Wade had with family members just before the patient emerged from the coma. It is in the chapter called The Rainbow and represents the memory of Dr. Alexander’s wife, Holley. She was told that her husband had not properly responded to the antibiotic treatment and if the coma persisted for another twelve hours he would at best end up in a vegetative state. Under these circumstances it might be better to discontinue the antibiotics and let him die as a result of the meningitis. The wife protested, “’But I saw his eyelids move yesterday, really they moved. Almost as if he was trying to open them. I am sure of what I saw.’” Dr. Wade replied: “’I don’t doubt you did. His white blood cell count has come down as well. That’s all good news, and I don’t for a minute want to suggest that it isn’t. But you have to see the situation in context. We’ve lightened Eben’s sedation considerably [italics mine] and by this point his neurological examination should be showing more neurological activity than it is.’”

          The first seizures (apparently status epilepticus) had occurred on Monday (the day of admission) and had a focal onset in one hemisphere, rather than the brainstem. This is not stated as such in the book but apparent to an epileptologist because the book says that “Just as troubling to Laura [the ER physician] as the seizures was that I seemed to show an asymmetry in the motor control of my body. That could mean that not only my brain was under attack but that serious and possibly irreversible brain damage was already under way.” What he described here are focal onset seizures which then led to temporary postictal paralysis of one or both extremities on the opposite side of the body (Todd’s paralysis). Todd’s paralysis is independent of the cause of seizures and has an excellent prognosis It also disappeared promptly in Dr. Alexander’s case.  

He continued to have intermittent seizures during hospitalization but these are poorly described apart from having occurred “early in the week” and he was given “more sedation.” He reported of having shown divergent strabismus when his wife passively opened his eyelids, a finding which is common in purulent meningitis but, contrary to his assertion, not in other causes of coma. As far as laboratory tests are concerned we are only told about the results upon admission and one further spinal tap in the middle of the week. Upon admission the spinal fluid examination was typical for purulent meningitis and a CT scan had shown that “the meningeal lining of my brain was dangerously swollen and inflamed. A breathing tube was put in my trachea, allowing a ventilator to take over the job of breathing for me–twelve breaths a minute exactly–and a battery of monitors was set up around my bed to record every movement within my body and my now all-but-destroyed brain [italics added].” I have used italics to highlight the sense of drama which is conveyed throughout the book. The statement was hardly applicable to the first day.

          The premise of the book is that during the coma “the brain hadn’t been working improperly. It hadn’t been working at all [italics in the original].” Retention of consciousness while the brain is not functioning at all is one of his chief arguments against current scientific theories which postulate the necessity of the brain for mental activities. Yet, the crucial evidence for absence of hemispheric activity is missing! The word “electroencephalogram (EEG)” never shows up, but it is the single most reliable laboratory test for assessment of the physiological capabilities of the brain. In as much as this is my professional specialty and it is routine practice to obtain EEGs when a patient has seizures, or is comatose, the question immediately arises why we are not given the results. CT scans provide evidence for structural changes, but tell us nothing about residual function. The EEG on the other hand provides objective facts on current brain activity down to the millisecond range. At this time I could only speculate why this vital piece of information is missing but will refrain from doing so because I shall first try to obtain facts and report on them thereafter.

During the years when I was in charge of the EEG laboratory at Childrens Hospital of Michigan in Detroit, and later at Harper Hospital, the EEG was routinely used to establish cerebral death, which is difficult to do with certainty when patients are on respirators. We certified patients as “brain dead” when two consecutive EEGs over at least a 24 hour period showed no cerebral electrical activity i.e. the tracings were “flat.” It is highly unlikely that Dr. Alexander ever had a prolonged “flat EEG” which was not related to seizure treatment because the family would have been notified of that fact and discontinuation of the respirator would have been advised. This leaves us with three other main possibilities: the EEG could have shown diffuse slow wave activity with or without spikes in various regions, PLEDS (periodic lateralized epileptiform discharges) or burst-suppression. Although these findings indicate a very sick brain they do not justify the statements in the book that his “brain wasn’t working at all;” or “no neocortex functioning.”

Although the book provides no evidence for nonfunctioning hemispheres Dr. Alexander makes this the central thesis and repeats it in all interviews he gives as well as in a second Newsweek article. It was published on November 18, 2012 to answer critics of the book which had been published on October 23, 2012. In that article, entitled The Science of Heaven, one finds statements such as: “complete absence of neural activity in all but the deepest most primitive portions of my brain;” “the only difference between my experience [near-death, NDE] and those of others is that my brain was, essentially, deader than theirs;” “Most people who had them were in bad shape, but they weren’t really near death. But I was. My synapses–the spaces between the neurons of the brain that support the electrochemical activity that makes the brain function–were not simply compromised during my experience. They were stopped [italics in the original]. Only isolated pockets of deep cortical neurons were still sputtering, but no broad networks capable of generating anything like what we call ‘consciousness.’”

Assessment of the claims. From a neurologic point of view the opinion on absence of hemispheric functions cited above is not sustainable because as mentioned no evidence for it is provided at any time. Yet, it is the hallmark of all of Dr. Alexander’s current presentations and interviews. The statements are made to impress a lay audience and possibly non-specialists but carry no weight among neuroscientists. Dr. Sam Harris, whose work was discussed in Our Atheists (May 1, 2010), as well as Dr. Oliver Saks, published rebuttals, but these are ignored. The book has been a bestseller since its publication and Dr. Alexander’s website, states that translations into numerous foreign languages are pending.

There are a number of aspects in the book I agree with, such as: that subjective mental activity can persist when patients are comatose, especially during the process of emerging from coma; that our purely materialist view which permeates current scientific work is not adequate; that science and a spiritual outlook on life are not incompatible; that all of us are connected to a larger universe; that scientific exploration of this interconnectedness is needed; and that he has “a responsibility to tell my story right.”

As readers of this site know, I have been interested in what came to be called the NDE phenomenon and its reality for decades and, therefore thought that a dialogue between us on this topic would be useful. I, therefore, sent him, after having read the first Newsweek article, an autographed copy of The Jesus Conundrum, directing him to the chapter on What is Truth? as well as the Conclusions. I also asked him to write to me after he had a chance to peruse the material. The book was never returned as undeliverable, but there was also no acknowledgement of its receipt. Since we are both neuroscientists a doubt about his sincerity began to arise.

In preparation for this essay I looked at his website and as a matter of fact there are actually two. One is the “personal” one “Life Beyond Death” http://www.lifebeyonddeath.net/ and the other for Eternea, an organization Dr. Alexander founded prior to the publication of the book. I shall return to Eternea http://www.eternea.org/ later. What struck me on the personal site was the first sentence one reads when going to “About the Author.” It states: “Dr. Alexander, a renowned academic neurosurgeon, spent 54 years honing his scientific worldview.” Inasmuch as he was born in 1953 this is obviously not correct. When one looks at his CV one finds, based on papers published, that his scientific career started in 1980 and ended in 2001. Furthermore of the 97 papers which are listed, he is first author on only 15. The current inflation of co-authors has been commented upon previously. One other point is that he lists under academic appointments: 2008-present Assistant Professor of Research in Neurological Surgery University of Virginia Medical School, Charlottesville. 

On the Eternea site, which is devoted to “The Convergence of Science and Spirituality,” one finds under “Medical Background” that his appointment ended in 2010 but the CV on the same site had not been changed. More important, however, is how Eternea operates. It offers three “options” for membership: Friends of Eternea, Frontier Science Forum and Blue Butterfly Society. You can join Friends of Eternea as a “supporter” “advocate,” “angel” and “archangel” with dues ranging from a minimum of $50 for the supporter to a minimum of $1200 for the Archangel. The Frontier Science Forum has Bronze, Silver and Gold members with minimum dues ranging from $150-$1200 for the various levels. The Blue Butterfly Society has minimal annual dues of at least $10,000 or more. For an annual contribution of at least $25,000, or a one-time contribution of at least $50,000 one can become a “governor” of the society.

I have listed these facts because they show that Dr. Alexander no longer works as a scientist but crass commercialism has taken over his life. His book and the websites represent an “objective reality” in the sense that anybody can check on what is written there. But since they are not trustworthy for scientific assessment how can we trust his subjective coma reality? Yet, the topic of consciousness, or mind, is of major importance for our understanding of who we are and what we are doing on this planet. It clearly deserves rigorous investigation.

What should be done now? For the sake of truth and scientific integrity Dr. Alexander should 1) authorize Lynchburg General Hospital to make the entire medical documentation in regard to his coma week public. He has forfeited his right to privacy because he is earning a living and giving lectures on his illness. These provide dogmatic statements but, as mentioned, crucial medical details are missing. Most importantly we must be able to see the EEG results and those of the CT scan(s). The EEG(s) will show the functional state of the brain and the CT(s) the degree of pathology. Only when these objective data become available can we place his experience into the proper context. As mentioned on an earlier occasion the deliberate use of half-truth is the most vicious lie. 2) He should also publish the unedited version of his initial six weeks of documentation. These contained genuine personal information and were not yet influenced by other interests. Currently we are given an exaggerated account, which was in part written by Mr. Tompkins, and we don’t have enough objective medical facts. But these are required before the scientific community can accept his assertions.

There is no doubt that Dr. Alexander had a profound subjective life-changing religious experience which led him to abandon his profession of neurosurgery and become a missionary for his belief.  But subjective and objective reality can be quite different. The problem of how we know what we think we know and what NDE’s might be able to teach us will be taken up in the March 1 issue.







March 1, 2013

NDEs, COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS AND BUDDHA

          In my quest for objective verification of Dr. Alexander’s claim that his near-death experience (NDE) occurred in absence of a functioning cortex, and that the brain is not necessary for consciousness to survive, I contacted the administration of Lynchburg General Hospital with a request for the e-mail address of Dr. Wade and that of the neurologist who took care of Dr. Alexander during his coma. The administrator, Mr. Bill Ashe, wrote back that he had forwarded my letter to Dr. Wade and Dr. Alexander. Dr. Wade declined to be further involved in the matter but Dr. Alexander would respond within two weeks.

          I did receive within a few days thereafter the following letter,  

 

          Ernst,

Dr. Scott Wade and one of his main administrators, Bill Ashe, forwarded your inquiry concerning my medical records and more details about my neurologic condition during my 7 day coma with gram-negative bacterial meningitis.

I have discussed my detailed records with several colleagues in an effort to better understand my experience. Initially, I was my own worst skeptic, and knew that I could explain it all as a brain-based phenomenon, although to have such a rich odyssey as the memory of my entire existence when I was first coming out of coma (memories of life before coma returned in layered fashion over 3-5 weeks), given the severity and duration of my meningitis, seemed a serious challenge - I should have experienced nothing, according to my beliefs about neocortex and consciousness before coma.

I am interested in open-minded discussions about the implications and lessons of my experience with like-minded professional colleagues. I had to learn a tremendous amount about consciousness that I never had to know as a neurosurgeon to even begin to fathom what I experienced. Those colleagues who are versed in "The Hard Problem of Consciousness," the enigma of quantum mechanics, and similar deep mysteries hinting at the fundamental nature of consciousness and existence, have much to offer in helping explain my experience. 

In the process of assembling some of the medical information to respond to you, I read your log (at http://www.thinktruth.com/hot_topics/february15_13.html )

Sadly, it does not reveal the thinking of an "open-minded professional colleague." Some of your language in picking apart my CV, pointing out that I was lead author on so many papers versus the 97 peer-reviewed articles, etc, your conjectures about Ptolemy's role in writing the book and about influence of Monroe Institute on my story (the "Gateway", trying to imply some fabrication and lack of actual writing by me), your attacking of Eternea without paying any attention to what we are trying to do to educate the public about frontier science and provide a robust data base for the reporting of a wide variety of spiritually transformative experiences, reveals a closed mind intent on debunking my story and credibility no matter what. Then I got to "Crass commercialism has taken over his life." You seriously expect me to take time discussing the profound nature of my experience with you?

I have no time to enter into discussion with such closed mindedness -- your mind is already made up on the matter, you are not willing to learn anything new, or to enter a productive dialog. I suggest you read

1. Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century, by Kelly, Edward F., Emily Williams Kelly, Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael Grosso, and Bruce Greyson. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 20072.

2. Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of Near-Death Experience, by Van Lommel, Pim. New York: HarperCollins, 2010.

Good-bye.”

 

I have reprinted the entire message because it is obvious that he will

enter into discussion only with “like-minded” individuals, but under those circumstances one is talking to the choir and only subjective truth is likely to emerge. It is understandable that “crass commercialism” hit a raw nerve and in spite of his “Good-bye” I sent a conciliatory reply which was followed by his, which started with the words: “Now we’re getting somewhere.” But he also pointed out that he will be quite busy in the coming weeks and showed no inclination to release the requested medical information. I followed up with another request but so far there has been no reply to it. Since the question: can consciousness exist in absence of a functioning brain? is of fundamental importance I don’t intend to let the subject rest and will try to also pursue it in the neurologic literature.

When one reads the NDE literature it becomes obvious that we are dealing with a genuine subjective event which should not be denied by professionals. The only question is its interpretation. This is where we run into trouble because the subjective reports are then taken as evidence not only for objective reality but also that the person who had the experience was at that time not merely in the process of dying but already dead. This is an unwarranted assumption. Clinical death does not equate with brain death and even the latter can occur in two ways. In one the cortex has ceased to function but the brainstem continues to work. This was originally called the “apallic” syndrome, but has subsequently been renamed to “persistent vegetative state.” Unless death supervened it would have been the likely outcome had Dr. Alexander not emerged from coma. These patients present an ethical dilemma as to continued care, especially when spontaneous respirations are present. The Schiavo case would be a good example (Pain and Suffering April 1, 2005).

The other condition is “brainstem death” and rare. I have seen only one case but since it was quite remarkable I published it in 1985 under that title. The abstract is available on PubMed under Rodin E and the full paper can be obtained from me. The case is important because the patient was clinically dead without brainstem or any other reflexes but the EEG showed an unmistakable sleep pattern. The patient was then maintained on artificial life support which was terminated when the EEG became isoelectric 14 days later. In as much as we know that dreams occur not only in the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) stage of sleep, it is perfectly possible that the patient had subjective dream experiences but their content – be it of heaven, hell, or mundane – is, of course, unknown.

There was an additional fascinating point. As mentioned in the Pain and Suffering article, assessment of cerebral functions is not limited to the raw EEG but we can perform evoked response studies. The responses to external stimuli consist of a primary wave form, limited to the specific receptor area of the brain, and a more wide- spread secondary one which is compatible with cognition. In this patient’s case electrical stimulation of the median nerve resulted only in activity below the brainstem and the same was the case for auditory stimuli. But visual stimulation, which does not require brain stem participation, not only produced primary and secondary responses from each eye but they were of unusually high amplitudes. This probably resulted from the fact that the patient’s brain did not receive other external stimuli and could, therefore, respond in an exaggerated manner to the only available ones. This fact might be of relevance to the “reality” of NDEs, which will be discussed later.

While NDEs refer by definition only to life-threatening circumstances, we should not omit similar spiritual experiences as having occurred in healthy human beings. William James’ classic The Variety of Religious Experience (The Gifford Lectures 1901-1902)and Dr. Maurice Bucke’s Cosmic Consciousness – A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind (1901), provide examples from ancient as well as more contemporary history. Bucke felt that the phenomenon is a relatively recent acquisition of the human mind (historical times) and pointed out that even the sense of color has not always been present. He bolstered this assumption by pointing to the absence of words denoting colors in the Vedas and Upanishads. Even the Iliad and Odyssey never mention that the sky is blue, although I might mention that we can repeatedly read about “rosy-fingered dawn.” Bucke believed that the appreciation of black and red emerged first. From red yellow split off and later white. From black the first separation was green, while the appreciation of blue was last. The relative absence of color vision might also account for the fact that dreams tended to be in shades of grey, which was also the depiction of Hades, the underworld. Be that as it may, but it is a fact that my dreams were “black and white movies,” which at one point in adulthood switched to Technicolor.

Bucke used the color example only to indicate that evolution has not stopped and human consciousness also continues to expand. He described the following stages: initially there was only mental reception of events. Then came the jump from reception to perception, which involved cognition, and this in turn was followed by concept formation, abstract thinking, and the development of language. The last and current stage is intuition namely the appreciation of being linked to the entire cosmos, “cosmic consciousness.” As such it is not supernatural but simply “a new sense” which he believed will become more commonplace as time goes on.

The hallmarks of the Cosmic Consciousness Experience (CCE) consist mainly of: a subjective light, moral elevation, intellectual illumination, sense of immortality, loss of fear of death, loss of the sense of sin and suddenness of awakening. It is apparent that these also apply to NDEs, although the Out of Body Experience (OBE) is more common in NDEs than CCEs. This may or may not be important. But what is important is that a factor analysis of NDEs, carried out by Noyes and Slymen showed three statistically independent factors. The first one, which they called mystical, corresponded to CCEs, the second was called depersonalization and contained the OBE, while factor III dealt with clarity of thinking (in Greyson and Flynn The Near Death Experience 1984 pp.20-23). This is the type of work NDE researchers should engage in because it clearly shows that the phenomenon is not unitary but consists of a variety of experiences which are then, more or less arbitrarily, subsumed in the category of NDE.

This leaves us with the problem to what extent this mystical experience corresponds to reality as we know it. Bucke wrote:

 

“It seems that in every, or nearly every man, who enters into cosmic consciousness apprehension is at first more or less excited; the person doubting whether the new sense may not be a symptom or form of insanity…. The first thing each person asks himself: Does what I see and feel represent reality or am I suffering from a delusion? The fact that the new experience seems even more real than the old teachings of simple and self consciousness does not at first fully reassure him, because he probably knows that delusions, when present, possess the mind just as firmly as do actual facts.”

 

          How does Bucke solve the problem? In the first instance he points out that the delusions of insane patients are “distinctly amoral or even immoral,” while the CCEs are “moral in a very high degree.” Although Dr. Bucke was a psychiatrist and in charge of a mental hospital, my own experience does not necessarily bear this out. Some religiously deluded patients believe that they are Jesus, for instance, and try to conduct themselves accordingly. They only become obstreperous when the environment they live in does not accept their idea. In the second instance, Bucke explains, “in all forms of insanity self-restraint – inhibition – is greatly reduced, sometimes even abolished, in cosmic consciousness it is enormously increased.” “In the third place (whatever scoffers of religion may say) it is certain that modern civilization speaking broadly) rests (as already said) very largely on the teachings of the new sense.”

It is likely that our atheists will disagree and we need some firmer distinctions especially in regard to dreams, which also are real to us at the time of their occurrence and are labeled as dreams only in retrospect largely because memory has become hazy. On the other hand there are a few dreams which remain clearly in memory. For instance I have had an OBE where I thought I had crashed the car into a wall. I felt that I was standing somewhere above the scene, saw the wrecked car with my body in it and said to myself: “aha, he’s dead” without any kind of emotion; it was just a fact. By the way, I commonly refer to my body and its activities in the third person. In the distance stood my dead grandmother but she made no effort to meet me and I didn’t either. Instead I thought, since I’m dead I might as well go and see God and wandered off without meeting Him. On awakening I realized that it was a dream but since it was so different from usual dreams it stayed in memory thereafter. Another one was where I felt that I was lifted out of my body by some unseen helpers. Since this “substance” seemed very fragile I said to the helpers: “don’t drop him.” The answer was: “don’t worry, we do this all the time.” Although these were real experiences during the dreams and left a memory trace which has lasted decades, they lacked the extraordinary intensity which is present in NDEs and my own 1953 experience.

          So what does make the NDE and CCE so real? Obviously I don’t know, but this is an area that could lend itself to neurophysiologic research. As mentioned above Bucke felt that in contrast to mentally ill patients inhibition is greatly increased in the CCE. But one could actually posit the opposite. The hallmark of both experiences is the total absence of doubt. In our waking lives we always weigh unusual events in a critical manner. We use discriminative thinking which is mainly verbal. Dreams and NDEs are mainly visual. It seems likely that the prefrontal portions of the brain, which are the latest evolutionary attributes of our brains, are resting while the dream plays itself out in the limbic system and its subcortical connections. With prefrontal inhibition lost, the rest of the relevant cortical circuitry might have free play in analogy to the markedly enhanced visual evoked potential of the brainstem dead patient. I have no evidence for this idea but it is at least plausible and clearly a question neuroscientists might pursue in their laboratories.  

          Over the last several years numerous books have appeared on the market dealing with NDEs and the subject has become a veritable growth industry. Unfortunately there is a great deal of redundancy in these books and even some case reports from the 1970s and 80s get recycled in a number of them. The overall thrust is to provide evidence that the “scientific reductionist” model which relates NDE’s to aspects of brain function is invalid. The main emphasis now is that “science” has disproved previous assumptions because physicists have moved from classical Newtonian physics to the quantum sphere. I have previously briefly discussed quantum mechanics on these pages (Faith and Science July 1, 2009, Christiamity December 1, 2010 as well as in The Jesus Conundrum) so let me just point out that the fundamental problems quantum mechanics present us with namely: non-locality, simultaneity and “collapse of the wave function into particles,” depend entirely on processes within the observer’s brain. This seems to be an unpleasant fact which is not commented upon. Everything we do is dependent upon the functions of our brain and while it is nice to think about astral planes or what not, proof in the here and now will have to come through what our brains allow us to do and transmit to others.

          It will now be argued that this statement is too limited because OBE and reincarnation reports prove that mind can exist without a brain. In regard to OBEs Dr. van Lommel, a Dutch cardiologist, mentioned in his book that when signs had been placed in the operating room which could not be seen by the patient lying on the table, but were visible from an “above view” “.… there has been no published case where patients during CPR have perceived this hidden sign despite perceiving veridical details of their resuscitation previously unknown to them.” This unpleasant fact was explained as being due to the patient being more preoccupied with watching his body and the procedure, rather than looking around for other trivia. While this might be the case one could surely design an experiment where something obvious was placed in a position next to the patient, which could not be missed on a view from above.

          I had read Dr. van Lommel’s original article in Lancet (2001) where he reported on his prospective study of 344 patients who had undergone 599 resuscitations during the four years of 1988 to 1992. What immediately struck me was the relative paucity of patients who reported a definite NDE namely 12 %. When one added another 6 patients who claimed to have some indistinct memory one still reaches only 18%. Although most other studies report higher percentages they were not retrospective in nature.      

After having read the article I ordered the book in the hope of getting more medical details. This was in part disappointing because of the 340 text pages only 23 deal with medical information which included three additional prospective studies where NDEs had occurred respectively in 11, 15.5 and 23%. The rest of the book consists of overall descriptive data, the “debunking” of current explanatory theories and personal views on the phenomenon. He believes in a “nonlocal and endless consciousness ….[which] preceded birth and will survive death independently of the body and in a nonlocal space where time and place play no role.” Furthermore, “… death as such does not exist.”

          At this point we have to pause and think what he is really talking about. Although I may be immortal to myself, I am certainly mortal to my family, friends and acquaintances. This is a fact which NDE aficionados seem to disregard. What is this consciousness they are talking about? First of all it is an abstract noun and the German word Bewusstsein expresses the meaning better. If one were to translate it more accurately it would mean “being aware.” It is an active process which requires, however, some object, thought, or picture one is aware of. It is the content of awareness and its reality all the arguments are about. 

            The current idea of, what one may call, “free floating consciousness” seems to have come from Buddhism which declares that mind is supreme and produces matter. Most relevant for the present topic is The Bardo Thoedol (Liberation by Hearing; better known as The Tibetan Book of the Dead), which informs the dying person what s/he is going to experience on the “after death plane.” Sogyal Rinpoche has more recently expounded on it and published The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying where he extends the Bardo, i.e. plane of consciousness, also to the living person. The key word in regard to consciousness is Rigpa which refers to the substratum from which our ordinary day to day awareness arises. Songyal explains it as: “a primordial, pure, pristine awareness that is at once intelligent, cognizant, radiant, and always awake. It could be said to be the knowledge of knowledge itself.”  It is this Rigpa, which is regarded as immortal, the NDE researchers are apparently talking about. But as I understand it Rigpa is unformed, devoid of personal content and its appreciation is only reached at the deepest level of meditation.

          We now have to go to the teaching of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha (c. 563-483), himself in order to arrive at a modicum of understanding. Before doing so a word of explanation: “Rinpoche,” just as “Buddha,” are not proper names but titles. The first one means “The Precious One” while the latter denotes “Enlightened” or “Awakened.” A very readable version of Siddhartha Gautama’s life and thought has recently been published by Deepak Chopra under the title Buddha – A Story of Enlightenment. Siddhartha did not concern himself with the mysteries of life and death, and he did not engage in philosophical speculations about the gods. His sole goal in life was to find a way to get rid of suffering and this was then expressed in the Eightfold Noble Path. There is no esotericism, anybody can embark on it, but it is arduous, takes a lot of work meditating and this is why people shrink from it.

The fundamental point was the insight that everything is in constant flux, an idea which was also propounded by Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 535-475). But since Siddhartha insisted also that there is no abiding, eternal “self,” he found himself immediately in conflict with the ruling Brahmins, because the assertion denied the existence of Atman, the divine spark which connects the person to Brahman, the ultimate Reality – God, which was the basis of Hindu religion. In as much as Atman corresponds in essence to the Christian concept of soul we are thereby warned that it likewise has no eternal existence. This is, of course, what some NDE investigators, who insist on eternal personal life, don’t want to hear. But Siddhartha tells us that this desire for an unchanging eternity is due to ignorance and arises from a desire to cling at, or grasp for some pleasurable object or experience. Nevertheless, this desire will eventually again end up in suffering once wish fulfillment has ended.

This is important in the NDE context and our concept of heaven. Most individuals who had a NDE are bitterly disappointed when they find themselves back in their own bodies. We must, therefore, ask ourselves: What is Heaven? Answer: The ultimate wish fulfillment! Dr. Alexander’s heaven was the experience of unlimited love, while mine was unlimited freedom. Heaven is a highly personal emotional experience and should not be looked for in geographic terms as “out there.” Remember what Jesus said: “The Kingdom of God is within you!” It is personal because your heaven might be my hell and vice versa.  

For Siddhartha reality meant constant metamorphosis. As such the deceased soul, while remembering earthly life for some time, will eventually experience rebirth in one of the various worlds of the universe. Even when good karma has landed one in the world of the gods of unbounded leisure and happiness, this will not last and the soul will eventually have to go to work again and participate in the unceasing creation of the cosmos. But creation requires destruction of existing forms. All forms are evanescent and this can be experienced during meditation.

I realize that this may be difficult to accept but is vouchsafed by a number of Buddhist monks who have spent their lives trying to fathom reality. One of my favorite ones is Nyanaponika Thera whose book The Heart of Buddhist Mindfulness I have mentioned on another occasion (Perceptions of Reality August 26, 2004). What I have not pointed out at that time was that this name was given to him on his initiation into monkhood. He was born as Siegmund Feniger in 1901 in Hanau Germany of Jewish parents and over the years had developed some interest in Buddhism. When Hitler came to power in 1933 Feniger removed himself to Ceylon (currently Sri Lanka) and sent his mother to Austria, which was at that time still a safe haven for Jews. But as mentioned nothing lasts and when Hitler temporarily erased Austria from the map Feniger arranged for his mother to join him in Ceylon where she eventually entered a Buddhist monastery. To recognize these biographic snippets is valuable because they show the stuff a person is made of and lend credibility to his writings. Furthermore, they combine the perspectives of West and East, which is all to the good.

For the current topic the seventh and eighth point of the eightfold noble path are most relevant: right mindfulness and right concentration. The latter is a potentially somewhat vague term and better expressed in German as: richtiges Selbstversenken (Buddha – Leben Lehre Wirkung. Der östliche Weg zur Selbsterlösung by Johannes Lehmann, 1980). Versenkung stands in this context for deep meditation, but in ordinary parlance for sending a ship to the bottom of the ocean. Erlösung is liberation but again the point is that the individual must do the work towards it rather than relying on faith that an outside agency will provide it. All Siddhartha did was to show us the way he had traveled and since he succeeded so can we. That is at least the assumption

Nyanaponika’s book deals with right mindfulness and is a very valuable vade mecum. He not only provides instruction but also excerpts from the Pali Canon. An abbreviated version of the stages, or levels, of meditation is as follows. The first one consists of rapture and joy which is accompanied by discursive thinking. In the second stage joy and rapture persist, but discursive thinking has disappeared. In the third stage joy and rapture have vanished and only happiness, equanimity and mindfulness remain. In the fourth stage even happiness has vanished and only a “pure and lucid mind” remains. Since thinking occurs in words as well as pictures the first two stages could be an analogue to NDEs. But the essential point is that only a progressive divestment of thought and emotions will lead us from ignorance and illusion to the final reality.  

As mentioned the NDE literature has swollen to vast proportions and is currently a growth industry. In as much as we have left the “Age of Faith” and have moved to what can be called the “Age of Science,” various authors feel obligated to provide a scientific façade to their opinions. This is also exemplified by Dr. Alexander who wrote: “The further I dug, the more convinced I became that my discovery wasn’t just interesting or dramatic. It was scientific [italics in original].” This claim will be discussed further in the next installment which will deal with what may be called: The Science of Mind.    







April 1, 2013

THE SCIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS – MIND

          In the previous installment I mentioned that my efforts to obtain Dr. Alexander’s medical records, which would verify that his brain was “dead” at the time of his near-death experience (NDE), had not met with success. I also pointed out that I shall pursue the topic further in the neurological literature. Since JAMA Neurology contains a section called Viewpoint it seemed to be an appropriate venue to bring the topic to the attention of neurologists. Inasmuch as contributions are limited to 1200 words one has to be very concise and I presented my opinion under the title: “Can consciousness exist without a brain? Near-death experiences reappraised.” It is reprinted below.

         

“Dr. Eben Alexander III, a neurosurgeon, has recently published a best-selling book “Proof of Heaven” (1) in which he describes his near-death experience (NDE) during coma from E. coli meningitis. This convinced him that consciousness exists in absence of a functioning brain.

Although Dr. Alexander repeatedly emphasized that his brain was “dead” during his experience, he furnished no proof. He stated that a CT scan had been obtained but we were not provided with the official interpretation which would allow us to estimate the amount of damage at that time. Furthermore, since he had status epilepticus upon admission, as well as intermittent seizures during coma, one or more EEGs were in all probability obtained and we should be allowed to know the results.

In order to obtain this information I contacted the administration of Lynchburg General Hospital with a request for the e-mail address of Dr. Wade, his primary physician, and that of the neurologist who took care of Dr. Alexander during his coma. The administrator, Mr. Bill Ashe, replied that he had forwarded my letter to Dr. Wade and Dr. Alexander. Dr. Wade declined to be further involved in the matter but Dr. Alexander would respond within two weeks. This was indeed the case and he pointed out that “I am interested in open-minded discussions about the implications and lessons of my experience with like-minded [italics added] professional colleagues.” Apparently even well-meaning skeptics seem not to fall into this category and he has not acceded to my request for the release of the EEG(s) and CT scan(s). But the medical profession has a right to know the objective extent of his brain damage during coma. Since Dr. Alexander is giving public lectures on his experience I believe that he has thereby forfeited his right to privacy of his coma data and since he insists on being a scientist he should welcome the input from experts in EEG and neuroradiology. His case is important and all of us could potentially learn something from his undoubtedly subjectively real experience.

Dr. Alexander has also published a brief article in the medical literature (2) emphasizing that the brain is not necessary for consciousness and a reply is, therefore, indicated; especially because I have previously published a personal experience of the knowledge that “I am dead,” while under the influence of anesthesia. Let me emphasize that this was not simply a thought but firm and absolute knowledge/reality. The blissful emotion was powerful but its immediate interpretation that “I am dead” was erroneous. This forced me to take issue with publications which regarded these phenomena as evidence for an afterlife (3, 4).

Dr. Alexander’s book is only the latest among a large number which point out that the “materialist-reductionist” attitude of neuroscientists towards the nature of consciousness is flawed and one needs to take the information provided by quantum physics into account. This is not the place to enter into this argument which is extensively presented by Kelly et al. (5) and in the context of NDEs, among others, by the Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lommel (6). But it is important to note that “consciousness,” is an abstract noun, just as “mind,” and can be, therefore, endlessly debated. The German word for consciousness, Bewusstsein, is more descriptive. It points to an active process of “being aware” which in turn requires some kind of an object, even if it as immaterial as a thought.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

It is true that the NDE phenomenon presents a fundamental challenge to the scientific community and it should not be ignored. It is intensely emotional, which provides the “reality” aspect, and deals with thoughts in form of words and/or pictures, that are associated with the “afterlife.” But any theory about its nature and the problem of consciousness will be flawed because we don’t know what a thought is and how it is produced. Since thoughts are a form of energy the scientific question is: do they fall within the electromagnetic spectrum or are we dealing with a currently unknown form?

In regard to scientific work we must also recognize another limitation. Since it is descriptive and involves measurements, which can be replicated by others, it can only be carried out in the eyes open state when discriminative thinking dominates. It, therefore, lends itself less well to the other half of our life which is spent in the eyes closed state where fantasies, daydreams and nocturnal dreams occur. These have varying degrees of subjective reality and can usually be shared with others only to the extent retrospective memory is available. The NDE is regarded as different from dreams because of its intensity/reality. This leads to the question: how do we experience reality? Judging from my own experience it is the complete absence of doubt. We know that discriminative thought, which weighs probabilities, is a function of the frontal lobes especially in their prefrontal portions. One could thus speculate that their temporary disconnection from their usual network components during sleep, coma, or other altered state of consciousness might furnish the biologic substratum for the subjective reality of NDEs and similar experiences.

Since dreams do not occur only in REM sleep but also in the delta stage, although recall is usually absent, there is no theoretical reason why they could not occur in comatose patients especially when awareness begins to reconstitute itself. In this connection it should be pointed out while the most extensive studies towards linking local brain functions with mental events have used fMRI this is not the best available tool. It relies on increased blood flow which has a delay in the range of seconds and cannot show connectivity. The EEG/MEG on the other hand registers events in the millisecond range; can show connectivity; and source models can be displayed as images. As such, its use in the exploration of mental functions, even for events which currently fall under the category of “paranormal,” should be strongly encouraged.

The EEG might also elucidate the possibility of subjective awareness in coma. In deep coma only the primary response of evoked potentials, which is limited to the specific sensory input site, is present, while the secondary more widespread response, related to cognition, is absent. Thus, evoked potential measurements could provide important information. We also need to remember that the Glasgow coma scale only provides information about reaction to external stimuli but tells us nothing about a potential subjective awareness of the patient.

While subjective reality does deserve the attention of the scientific community, the NDE related literature at this time contains a great deal of what one may call “mental quantum jumps.” Clinical death, which is only one stage of the dying process, is equated with final death; the mental content of dying patients is regarded as proof of an eternal afterlife; and since the experience is regarded as common it is asserted that we don’t die. These are non sequiturs and it behooves us to be more modest in our statements about the unknown and currently unknowable. The final conversation in the book by Fenwick and Fenwick (7) perhaps expresses the situation best:

“A nobleman asked Master Hakuin: ‘What happens to the enlightened man at death?’ ‘Why ask me?’ ‘Because you are a Zen master.’ ‘But not a dead one.’”

 

I have omitted the references here but they can be obtained from me. In the middle of last week came the rejection. The manuscript had been sent to four reviewers. Two of them had “no comments for the author” the other two comments were, “Interesting thought piece focused on near death experiences. However, this would seem out of place in a general neurology journal;” and “While this article reviews an interesting topic, it is probably not appropriate for this section/journal.” In other words “don’t make us think about things we don’t want to think about.” Why the relationship of consciousness to the brain, with the latter obviously one of the main aspects of a neurologist’s scientific work, should not be relevant to be presented in a major neurology journal eluded me. But it apparently confirms what Max Planck, the discoverer of quantum physics, has been quoted as saying: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”   

That Planck’s experience is correct I can vouch for because it has happened to my own work in EEG and is still happening. In the 1960’s and throughout the first half of the 1970’s we investigated the extreme high frequencies of the EEG (>100 Hz). The method was cumbersome and the investigations could be carried out only in animals. Since cats do not differ from humans in regard to the genesis of epileptic seizures the work was obviously important. Nevertheless, in spite of numerous presentations on the national and international scene it was largely ignored by my colleagues at the time. One of them dubbed it, not in my hearing but as relayed by a friend to whom it was said, “Rodin’s folly.” Forty years later, there is now not a single national meeting of the American Clinical Neurophysiology Society or the American Epilepsy Society where these extreme high frequencies are not on the program. Currently, in advanced age, when everything slows down, it is appropriate to explore the opposite end of the EEG frequency spectrum, namely extreme slow activity. This, as well as the investigation of fast frequencies, has now been aided by the change from analog to digital EEG technology which allows us to see these data with a couple of mouse clicks. I have diligently tried to publish these observations for several years only meeting with rejections, some of which questioned my competence. Even the eventual publication in the major international journal Clinical Neurophysiology, which led to the invitation to present the data before the 2010 International Federation Congress in Kyoto, Japan, has so far not resulted in its routine clinical use.

I have mentioned these personal facts only to demonstrate that my fellow scientists are loath to tackle topics which provide genuinely new information and/or challenge previous assumptions. Inasmuch as this is the case even with relatively innocuous topics, such as the EEG frequency band, it should come as no surprise when mind-brain relations are at stake. Here we are at the interface of religion, philosophy and science and our society, as it is currently constituted, does not allow for integrating viewpoints from different disciplines, except in literature for the general public. But when this is done we run into another problem. Scientific experimental data are presented in a general format, crucial experimental details tend to be omitted and what was science becomes scientism. I have pointed out this phenomenon in regard to Tipler’s book, The Physics of Christianity (Christiamity; December 1, 2010). The problem was also taken up by Charles T. Tart in the Foreword to Ring and Cooper’s Mindsight. Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind. Tart, an emeritus professor of psychology, wrote:

 

“Scientism occurs when real science is stopped by the psychological process of being too satisfied with the answers we have and becoming intellectually and emotionally invested in them, attached to them. Scientism, more formally defined is a psychological process of taking the current scientific theories that work well about how the universe functions and subtlety [sic] starting to regard them as if they were the absolute truth, beyond any further serious questioning. A theory, always subject to further test and refinement, becomes a Law. Thus the process of science becomes an “ism,” becomes a psychological stopping point, becomes a dogmatic belief system, like many of our most dogmatic religions.

Scientism is extremely widespread in our culture, and has an especially pervasive and pernicious influence on us because we think we’re being scientific when we’re actually being dogmatic and scientistic.”

 

          This is a correct observation and numerous examples from the literature could be cited. Eben Alexander’s Proof of Heaven is obviously only one. Chris Carter’s book Science and the Near-Death Experience is another one. The book is actually a very readable, succinct summary of the field but the subtitle, How Consciousness Survives Death, goes beyond current scientific data as the above mentioned Zen master has pointed out. To equate a near-death experience with death, even when it occurs under circumstances which would ensure final death, unless the process was stopped, is scientifically impermissible and all conclusions regarding the afterlife based on these data have to be regarded as speculative.

          The problem becomes compounded when persons of scientific standing engage in scientism. I shall now discuss only one most recent example. Theory of Reality. Evidence for Existence beyond the Brain was published in 2012 and I owe my acquaintance with it to a correspondence with Dr. van Lommel whose work was discussed last month. By the way he also sent me a copy of his most recent paper on the subject: Non-local Consciousness. A Concept Based on Scientific Research on Near-Death Experiences During Cardiac Arrest (Journal of Consciousness Studies 2013, 20:7-48). The paper summarizes his current opinions on the topic and I may return to it on another occasion. For now I am going to concentrate on the Theory of Reality. Its author, David O. Wiebers, is listed on the cover as Emeritus Professor of Neurology at Mayo Clinic Rochester Minnesota. Since I received my neuropsychiatric and electrophysiological training at that institution I immediately ordered the book but was rather surprised at its contents.

          Apart from the Preface, with which I largely agreed, the book has three main sections. The first one deals with the Theory per se (abbreviated as TOR); the second one presents corroborative evidence, while the third one is best described as “self-help” to gain access to higher dimensions of consciousness. An aspect which I immediately found disconcerting was the massive redundancy of the material but as the author explained this was done on purpose so that each chapter can be read in isolation. Another unexpected element was the style which reminded me of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus even down to numbering the various apodictic statements.

The “Condensed Messages” of the Theory consist of 27 assertions among which are: “1. You are not your brain or body–they are temporary vehicles rather than your core identity; 4. You can exist and function without your brain; 7. It is important to know your deeper identity (higher self); 9. The brain facilitates consciousness and our expression and application to this plane of existence, but it does not create consciousness; 11. NDEs (Near-Death Experiences) are valid, real phenomena and not hallucinations, seizures or some other aberration. 13. Blind people can see during NDEs and OOBEs (Out-of-Body Experiences); 23. The universe is a deeply unified living process rather than a collection of separate objects; 24. Consciousness is not contained within matter or the world–it contains all matter and the world; 26. Our tendency to fragment and to see ourselves as separate from the universe, the earth and from other human and nonhuman beings is at the root of our neither being at peace as a species nor as a society; 27. The TOR provides the underpinnings to address the most basic universal questions of humankind–Who are we? Where are we going? How do we fit into the universe?–and an approach for personal and societal transformation.” The words which are written in italics appeared as such in the original.

The Evidence for the Theory is presented as Primary and Secondary. The key elements for primary evidence are NDEs and OOBEs, while the secondary evidence rests largely on results of quantum physics and some from neuroscience. The latter deals in part with EEG information, which I have not yet had time to check out, but will report on when I have obtained the papers from the library. There is, however, one aspect of the primary evidence which can be discussed now namely point 13 which deals with the blind. It is asserted that even congenitally blind people can see during NDE’s and OOBEs. Although I had read a key case in van Lommel’s book I failed to follow up on the reference given by that author. But since this is such a startling assertion I did obtain the above cited book by Ring and Cooper which deals with the topic.

The book is an excellent example for scientific investigations in this field as well as some of its pitfalls, which are recognized by the authors.  In addition, it shows the necessity to read all of it and not just snippets or conclusions. The data consist of interviews with 31 blind persons who had experienced NDEs or OBEs. The latter abbreviation differs among authors but the phenomenon is the same. Of these persons 14 had been blind from birth, mainly due to prematurity and excessive use of oxygen. This led to retrolental fibroplasia of the eyes which in turn prevented the development of the brain’s visual system. The other individuals had been either adventitiously blind or had severe visual impairments. Since in these cases some visual memories may have persisted I shall concentrate only on the congenitally blind segment of the data. The first point was that there was no difference in the NDE reports from these individuals and persons who have sight. When one stops here, as apparently Wiebers and others did, one is justified in concluding that the blind can have vision under these circumstances and that the brain is irrelevant for this purpose.

Careful reading of the case material revealed, however, a psychological element in the interviewers. This is not meant to impugn the character of the interviewers but to emphasize the all too human tendency to try to obtain information that would corroborate the result one desires. It became apparent in the use of language where the blind person was pressed to state that he/she did “see” what they had reported. This can then be compounded by the interviewee’s desire to please the interviewer. On reading the case material it became apparent that the information was to some extent obtained by “leading questions” in a manner that would have been objected to in court proceedings. I am mentioning this only because one has to guard against this natural tendency in future studies of the phenomenon.

That something might be not quite right with these “visual images” became apparent in the case of Brad who reported that in his OBE he had seen snow on Boston’s streets from a previous storm.

 

“Brad: I think that everything except for the streets was covered with snow. It was a very soft snow. It had not been covered with sleet or freezing rain. It was the type of snow that could blow around anywhere. The streets themselves had been plowed and you could see the banks on both sides of the streets. I knew they were there. I could see them. The streets were slushy. The snow had fallen when it was almost at the freezing mark, so it was basically slushy. The snow was very soft, kind of wet. I don’t remember anything in particular that the snow rested on, like trees or anything like that. I can’t recall that.” 

         

          This reply came in response to previous questions where Brad had been urged to recall other elements of the snow in spite of his having earlier said that it was “very dark, generally a wintry kind of cloudiness … but I didn’t spend much time looking at that because as soon as I had a look I was in that tunnel.” Nevertheless, the authors seemed to have taken the long reply at face value. They stated: “What is perhaps most striking in Brad’s narrative is the precision of his apparent visual perceptions during this stage of his experience, as, for example, in the description he has just given of the qualities of the snow that had fallen the day before.” But any skier will immediately notice that there were two different kinds of snow in this description: one was classic Utah powder which is in such demand and the other a city type slush you don’t like under your skis. We must now ask “so what did he ‘really see’”?

          Since these descriptions do not square, a cynic might literally close this book and be done with it. But this would be wrong because towards the end of the book the authors, to their credit, did approach the crucial question of the type of “seeing” involved. They concluded that the term was used loosely in the way sighted people might say “Oh, I see” meaning that they now understood. This is a crucial point which has gotten utterly lost in apodictic statements that the blind can see during NDEs or OBEs. As Ring and Cooper point out when the congenitally blind refer to “seeing” it is a synesthetic experience where the individual perceives a different reality. This can include elements of what they would regard as sight although it may be far different from what sighted people experience. But since we live in a sighted world the language of even congenitally blind people contains the words “see” or “vision” in their day-to-day conversations. But they are used in the sense of knowing, or having become aware, rather than referring to the same experience sighted people have. It is apparent that in congenitally blind individuals the brain reorganizes itself and the areas which ordinarily would be used for vision are devoted to the remaining senses which then have an opportunity to become more acute.

          Inasmuch as details like these throw a completely different light on some of Wiebers’ evidence one now would have to go through all the other points he cited but, as mentioned, I shall limit myself only to the EEG/MEG and fMRI literature which I am competent to assess.

In regard to the secondary evidence for TOR only two typical points will be presented. Under point 8 we find:

“Consciousness is the fundamental wave aspect in deeper dimensions, including all of what has been labeled as non-local space by physicists (and all that has been referred to as one’s subconscious by psychologists and psychiatrists). Consciousness manifests as the various attributes and dimensions of the physical world. The particle aspect of one’s individual consciousness corresponds to the materially oriented (of this physical dimension) manifestations of one’s “inner world” which occur in association with one’s day-to-day thoughts, words, actions, and other brain-mediated activities as they relate to this physical plane and to time and space (which are of this physical plane).”

 

In point 11 of that section he stated:

 

“The C field [consciousness field] is an  even deeper wave function or ‘base wave-form building block’ of all that exists, including all of the wave functions mentioned above which correspond to all matter and all material manifestations of our personal consciousness for example. …”  

 

So what has Wiebers really done in this section? He used as “evidence” for TOR an extrapolation of quantum physics experiments which have shown that a wave can manifest itself also as a particle. The observation that under certain circumstances particles can become “entangled” whereby the behavior of particle 2 depends on particle 1 regardless of distance involved, has been generalized to “non-local consciousness.” Wiebers is not alone in these thoughts, they pervade the NDE literature.

When our scientists write about the universe and our role in it they don’t like the word God. It has been changed to “higher consciousness” or, by Wiebers, as “all in all (God).”  But some of the TOR points have a very familiar ring to anyone who has read not only Buddhist literature but also the Hindu Upanishads, which preceded it by probably a millennium. There we find: “The reality behind all these [contents of the organic world] is Brahman, who is pure consciousness [italics added]. All these, while they live, and after they have ceased to live, exist in him. Thus Brahman is all in all [italics added]. Self-luminous [italics added] is Brahman, ever present in the hearts of all. He is both that which is gross and that which is subtle. Attain thou him. He is the principle of life. He is real. He is immortal. Attain him, O my friend, the one goal to be attained.”  The way to achieve this goal is meditation which has freed itself from the material world. The notion that “you are not your body” is common to both Hindu and Buddhist tradition and so is the essence of Wiebers’ self-help section in his book.

The fact that these thoughts, under different names, have been property of some members of the human race for millennia neither affirms nor denies their potential validity, but they are not experimentally verifiable. To regard them as scientific evidence stretches the meaning of the word in a manner that would not be acceptable in scientific publications or in a court of law. Yet, this type of evidence is needed to convince the skeptic. Furthermore, Wiebers accepted the NDE and OBE reports not only as subjective reality of the experiencer but apparently as an objective fact. That subjective reality does not necessarily agree with the truth, as it can be established by independent observers, was disregarded. In this connection I’d like to point out that I have contacted Dr. Sam Parnia, who is in charge of the collaborative project to objectively investigate the veridical value of OBE’s, for the results. But although the three year limit of the project has expired, he told me that it is still not finished. As of now there are, therefore, no prospective data which would support this aspect of TOR.

Finally one needs to stress the obvious. The most profound experience of “reality” is useless unless it can be communicated to other human beings. But this requires an intact brain and proper use of language. If the experiencer were to have become aphasic immediately thereafter no meaningful communication could have been achieved. This also applies to the quantum physics experiments. First of all they are designed with the aid of human brains which also interpret the results by putting them into language. In general, we rarely argue over results when they have been independently reproduced. We argue over interpretations which become a “free for all.” While I agree that the realization that we are all part of a vast Whole, the Hindu “tat tvam asi” (That Thou art), is important to create a healthier society we should not blind ourselves to the fact that matter/brain and mind are interdependent. Energy, even when experienced as consciousness, requires matter to act upon and NDErs frequently report that they are sent back to this valley of tears, mostly against their will, because they still have work to do. This selfless work, for the benefit of others, is the foundation of the major religions. But it requires what the Greeks insisted on “a healthy mind in a healthy body” and must be done here rather than some hereafter.

In conclusion: the transcendental aspects of NDEs and OBEs are not verifiable and can be left in the realm of faith. But the subjectively real terrestrial phenomena, which defy currently held concepts, should be rigorously investigated for objective validation.







May 1, 2013

EEG AND PARAPSYCHOLOGY

          In the previous installment I voiced concerns over Dr. Wiebers’ Theory of Reality (TOR) and mentioned that I would check on the EEG references which were used to bolster the idea that reality is not what we are used to think of as such. Since I don’t like to go behind people’s backs and believe that they are entitled to know how others feel about their work I sent the April issue to Dr. Wiebers and Dr. Ring, whose book was likewise discussed. Ring wrote back, and we have since engaged in very fruitful discussions of the topic which will be reported on at another time. For now I am merely grateful to acknowledge that he sent me the e-mail address of Mr. John Audette who is a close friend of Dr. Eben Alexander and who might prevail on the latter to release his EEGs and radiographs.

          Since Mr. Audette is also Executive Director of Eternea, the organization I had mentioned previously with some misgivings, I did not expect a reply. To my surprise a very gracious one came back, and Mr. Audette promised to get in touch with Dr. Alexander to discuss the request. He did indeed and wrote back again that they are planning to release the data at the time of the anniversary of the book Proof of Heaven. In the meantime Dr. Alexander is discussing them in his talks. I answered that most of us don’t have the opportunity to attend these sessions and at any rate we should not contend ourselves with reports on the data but should see the actual material. I offered to pay Lynchburg General Hospital for putting the EEG as well as CT/MRIs on CDs and sending them to me. I also mentioned that I regularly receive such EEG data, free of charge, from colleagues here in the States as well as Europe. In regard to the X-rays I pointed out that Dr. Boyer (neuroradiologist) had previously been an outstanding collaborator in regard to Tutankhamen’s skull X-rays and has now expressed his interest in reviewing Dr. Alexander’s material. Our careful evaluation had proven that the “splinter,” which was supposed to have been due to a skull fracture, inflicted with murderous intent, was a postmortem artifact. We published the findings in The American Journal of Neuroradiology (reprints available on request) and suggested that a CT scan would be indicated to be 100 per cent certain. Scanning was indeed performed a few years later and corroborated our conclusion.     

          The full “Saga of Tutankhamen’s Skull X-rays” was presented here on October 17, 2002 and a follow up under “Tutankhamen’s CT scans” in November 2005. I am mentioning these installments now because they show a) that sometimes perseverance pays, even if it takes a decade or so, and b) the politics of science. The second letter to Audette has gone unanswered and I really don’t have too much hope for getting the data.

          My message to Dr. Wiebers also went unanswered which, considering what I wrote about TOR, was no particular surprise. Nevertheless, the TOR book had the advantage that it provided a great many references, and as stated last month I subsequently investigated those which dealt with my favorite professional hobby of the past 61 years, the EEG. At this point I need to mention that in respectable circles the word “psi” has now been introduced to investigate these parapsychological phenomena. It’s simply a new label to make “parapsychology,” which has given rise to outlandish claims, palatable to the scientific community. It is the Greek letter ψ and stands for “psychic,” to which one mentally adds “phenomena which are not explainable by current theories about how the universe works.” Dean Radin, about whom more will be said later, listed in his book The Conscious Universe ten areas of extrasensory perception (ESP) which are subsumed under psi “as a neutral term for all ESP type and psychokinetic phenomena.”

          Before discussing this material I want to express my gratitude to Ms. Julie Quilter and her co-workers at the Eccles Medical Library of our University for providing me with older reprints and those for which I could not get an e-mail response from the authors. The first paper linking psi with the EEG was published by Duane and Behrendt in 1965 under the title: Extrasensory Electroencephalographic Induction between Identical Twins (Science 1965; 150 (3694): 367). A discerning reader notices immediately that a one page article will hardly be able to provide the details required to substantiate a claim as unusual as reflected in the title. The Abstract consisted of a single sentence: “Alpha rhythms have been elicited in one of a pair of identical twins as a result of evoking these rhythms in a conventional manner solely in the other.” The authors were not electroencephalographers (EEGers) but worked in the Department of Ophthalmology of Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia PA.

The experiment involved 15 pairs of identical twins. They were seated in separate rooms and “instructed to open and close their eyes only on command.” Since eye closure usually allows alpha rhythm (8-13 Hz) to emerge the appearance of alpha in the twin whose eyes were open when the other twin closed the eyes was taken as evidence for an extrasensory event. A single EEG channel with the electrode positioned over the occipital protuberance was used. The phenomenon was observed in 2 of 15 pairs and did not occur in a control situation when the pairs were not related. The accompanying figure shows neither a time scale nor calibration signal and would not have passed muster by reviewers of articles submitted to the EEG literature. In addition, one must add that alpha is not as reliable a phenomenon as is implied in the paper. Some of us, which includes me, produce hardly any alpha and the opposite is also true. When a person has a strong alpha rhythm it may show up after a few moments even in the eyes open state. Unless these factors are controlled for, the evidence cannot be regarded as conclusive and possibly not even as “suggestive,” especially since it was observed only on two occasions.  

The next paper, “Information transmission under conditions of sensory shielding” by Targ and Puthoff, is far superior (Nature 1974; 251 October 18: 602-607). The authors worked in the Electronics and Bioengineering Laboratory of the Stanford Research Institute (ISR) at Menlo Park and have scientific credibility. The goal of the study was, “to resolve under conditions as unambiguous as possible the basic issue of whether a certain class of paranormal perception phenomena exists.” The investigation actually consisted of three separate experimental procedures. In the first one Uri Geller, the well-known Israeli spoon bender, was asked to reproduce simple drawings which were located in sealed envelopes in one room while Mr. Geller sat in a soundproofed and electromagnetically shielded different room. Geller’s drawings were then subjected to judges who decided on the similarity. Since only two of them matched to a reasonable extent and statistics proclaimed that this could have been due to chance the experiment was regarded as having been negative. In fairness to Geller I must admit that these two drawings were actually very similar to the target. In one a bunch of grapes was correctly reproduced and in the other instead of a camel a horse. Furthermore, he performed significantly beyond chance when it came to identifying the face of a die in a double  blind experiment At one point the authors had him connected to an EEG system but he felt sufficiently uncomfortable with the wires in place so that he did not produce any drawings.

The second experimental paradigm dealt with the possibility of remote viewing. Mr. Pat Price, former California Police Commissioner and City Councilman, was asked to describe scenes and happenings far removed from his actual physical location at the ISR. Nine target locations were involved and the descriptions were submitted to five judges. The judges, who had independently visited these nine locations after the experiment, were asked to find a narrative which best corresponded to the place they had been to. “By plurality vote, six of the nine descriptions and locations were correctly matched” and this result was statistically highly significant.

The third set of experiments dealt with the EEG and used the well-known observation that when light flashes of a given frequency are delivered to a person the brain will respond by producing the identical frequency. This phenomenon, called photic driving, is readily reproducible and has the advantage that it can be precisely quantified by subjecting the data to frequency analysis, a method I have repeatedly used in my own studies. It was hypothesized that if one person whose driving response is recorded, while located in an electromagnetically shielded room, another individual in a distant room whose EEG is simultaneously recorded, but without stimulation, might show a similar response. The experiment consisted of a ten second epoch which either contained flashes delivered to the “sender” or, in a random sequence, no flashes. The ten second epochs were heralded by a brief tone burst delivered to sender and receiver. Only the last four seconds of the epoch were analyzed to avoid the alerting effect of the sound signal. This yielded three sets of numbers one for the zero condition one for 6 flashes per second and one for 16 flashes per second with 12 trials for each condition within one recording session. Only one EEG channel was available and recorded from the mid-occipital region. No photic driving response was observed in the receiver at these flash rates although such a response was present when that person was stimulated.

Since this was a negative result the authors might have called it quits and never published this aspect because one inherently dislikes publishing negative data. But they persisted. One of their subjects, a lady, had an exceptionally good alpha rhythm centered at 10 cycles per second and the authors wondered that, although there was no evidence for photic driving, something might have happened to the alpha when a sender was stimulated. Thirty six trial runs revealed that there was a measurable decrease in alpha for average power as well as peak power when the sender was stimulated with 6 and 16 f/p/s. The data were statistically highly significant for the 16 f/p/s segments. Translated into everyday language, the result showed that a small but measurable degree of alerting had occurred in the receiver’s brain. She was unaware of it because when asked to indicate the flash vs. no flash condition the answers were randomly distributed.   

The authors concluded,

 

A channel exists whereby information about a remote location can be obtained by means of an as yet unidentified perceptual modality.

As with all biological systems, the channel appears to be imperfect, containing noise along with the signal.

While a quantitative signal-to-noise ratio in the information-theoretical sense cannot as yet be determined, the results of our experiments indicate that the functioning is at the level of useful information transfer.

 

In the final sentence of the paper they stated, “… experiments in the area of so-called paranormal phenomena can be scientifically conducted, and it is our hope that other laboratories will initiate additional research to attempt to replicate these findings.”

This was subsequently done, here as well as abroad, and I shall report on some of the results from six different laboratories. They will not necessarily be in chronological order because some came from the same laboratory and reported on replication attempts. Jiri Wackermann and co-workers from the Department of Empirical and Analytical Psychophysics (EAP), Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology in Freiburg, Germany, published in 2003, “Correlations between brain electrical activities of two spatially separated human beings,” (Neuroscience Letters 336: 60-64). The sample consisted of 38 subjects, 17 pairs and four single persons. The pairs were separated into two groups of seven. The first subgroup pairs (E1) were emotionally related e.g. spouses, relatives or friends, while the other subgroup (E2) consisted of unrelated individuals. The control group was composed of three related pairs and four single subjects. Prior to the test period the participants of group E1 had to spend about 20 minutes together to establish further empathy, while the E2 pairs were unaware of the presence of their partner in another room and were simply told to relax. 

Six electrodes recorded from the central, parietal and occipital areas bilaterally and instead of light flashes a checkerboard reversal pattern was used. This is also common practice in EEG circles and referred to as “pattern visual evoked potentials” (PVEP). The data were averaged and although a PVEP was clearly present in the stimulated sender none occurred in the receiver. Similar to Tart and Puthoff this study also was negative in regard to its most crucial feature which I would have loved to see, namely either a flash or pattern VEP, albeit with possibly diminished amplitude or increased latency, in the receiver. But it was not to be.

Likewise similar to Tart and Puthoff, the authors then subjected the data to further analysis with a variety of complex statistics and found a “high co-incidence of variations of the brain electrical activity in the non-stimulated subjects with brain electrical responses of the subjects.” But there was still a problem. The change in the receiver’s EEG was not always in the same direction. Voltages could either be increased or decreased and there was no preferred location. The authors concluded, “…we are facing a phenomenon, which is neither easy to dismiss as a methodological failure or a technical artifact nor understood as to its nature. No biophysical mechanism is presently known that could be responsible for the observed correlations between EEGs of two separate subjects.” The correlation had existed only within the experimental and not the control group but “relatedness” had no influence.

I wrote to Dr. Wackermann and he kindly sent me some further reprints on the topic. He and his co-workers had attempted to replicate the study and published the results in the following year under the title, “Event-related Correlations between Brain Electrical Activities of Separated Human subjects. Preliminary Results of a Replication Study,” (The Parapsychologic Convention 2004:465-468). The experimental procedure was identical but since the previous investigation had failed to show that an emotional link was required for the demonstration of the phenomenon, the twenty minute pretest period was omitted. Sixteen pairs of related subjects participated, but this time 19 EEG channels were available for registering the PVEP as well as other EEG changes and the electrodes were placed in accordance with the international norm, usually referred to as the 10/20 system. Each experiment consisted of two halves. In one, the subject was stimulated, while in the other the monitor, which delivered the checkerboard pattern, was covered by an opaque shield. In this way the subjects served as their own controls. Unfortunately, statistically significant differences were discovered in the receivers’ EEG for both the “covered” (control) and the uncovered (test) condition. The values were predominantly negative in the first and predominantly positive for the second condition.

For further analysis it was then decided to use only the uncovered condition, i.e. actual checkerboard reversals, for comparison with the EEG of the receiver. Under these circumstances it was found that background EEG activity was indeed reduced to a statistically significant extent in the left parieto-occipital and right frontal region in the receiver. The authors were puzzled by these results and stated that:

 

We are facing an enigmatic situation, unless we assume that the subject B’s brain [receiver] responds to the physical presence of the stimulus rather than to the subject A’s [sender] brain response to the stimulus. Even with such an ‘ESP-like’ interpretation it remains unclear why should subject B’s brain response go to two opposite directions, depending on whether the stimulus has or has not been perceived by subject A. Yet another interpretation might take into account an ‘experimenter effect’: the experimenters were not exposed directly to the visual stimuli but they were aware of their occurrence. These interpretations imply that our experiment was a kind of unintentional ESP-experiment: an assumption more disturbing than compelling. We hope to obtain more clarity from the next replication study, using a protocol with experimenters being unaware of stimulus presentations, and varying  stimulus parameters to modulate the subject A’s brain response magnitude.

 

          Apparently Wackermann’s further studies did not clarify the issue and the next publication on this type of data came from Wolfgang Ambach from the same Institute in Freiburg, Germany. The 2008 publication carries the title, “Correlations between the EEGs of two spatially separated subjects – a replication study,” (European Journal of Parapsychology; 23/ 2: 131-146). Seventeen pairs of related subjects were studied under identical conditions as reported by Wackermann but conducted in a different laboratory by a different investigator. Checkerboard patterns were used for stimulation and the EEG was recorded from the standard 10/20 electrode placement system. Although there was no difference in data acquisition between Wackermann’s and Ambach’s study the statistical work-up differed and corrected for what Ambach had felt were possible sources of artifact. Under these conditions the Wackermann observed findings evaporated, although they could partly be reproduced when Wackermann’s statistics were employed. But under those circumstances the statistically significant differences were not found in form of decreased activity in the right parieto-occipital and left frontal area. They appeared instead as “an increase in EEG power in parietal, predominantly left-hemispheric regions and a decrease in the bilateral temporal regions.” When the new statistics were used the changes were below significance level.

          I am not qualified to enter into arguments about statistics but Wackermann responded with an article, “Dyadic EEG-correlations re-examined: A commentary on the replication study by W. Ambach,” in the same journal issue (pp.147-153). Although Wackermann defended his statistics and their results, he concluded that taking his own replication attempts and those of Ambach into account “it is highly doubtful that there is anything such as a ‘real’ effect. This negative evidence arises from the remarkable lack of consistency, in terms of direction and spatial distribution of the effect measures ….” He then added a general comment for the psi community in regard to the “entanglement” hypothesis, which will be discussed in another installment.

 

As to our knowledge, none of these high hopes has ever been fulfilled, and none of those approaches developed into a really working experimental paradigm – that is, one yielding reproducible results across laboratories, results that would visibly stand out of the bush of error bars. There are no signs of real progress. We take the lesson seriously and turn to more productive research topics, not to spend our lives in a heroically ‘relentless’ but ultimately unproductive search. 

 

          Dr. Dean Radin, with whom I likewise corresponded, emphatically disagreed with the comments expressed in the paragraph quoted above but before going into his own studies I’d like to briefly mention those by Standish as well as Richards who worked in the same laboratory, which was associated with the University of Washington, but appeared as first authors on different papers.

          Leanna Standish published in 2004, “Electroencephalographic Evidence of Correlated Event-related Signals between the Brains of Spatially and Sensory Isolated Human Subjects,” (The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine; 10/2:30-314). Thirty pairs of individuals were tested. The standard checkerboard pattern stimuli were delivered, the EEG 10/20 electrode system placement was used and statistically significant differences for the stimulus on vs. stimulus off condition, in terms of “higher brain activation,” were noted in the receiver’s EEG in five subjects, although the accompanying table shows significant levels in six subjects. Although not specifically mentioned the implication is that PVEPs did not occur in the receiver and “brain activation” dealt with background EEG activity. A replication study was performed in four of these pairs but was successful in only one. This subject a 51 year old man had also previously been reported on by Standish as a single case study when functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) had been used (Standish et al. Evidence of Correlated functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Signals between Distant Human Brain. Alternative Therapies. 2003; 9:120-125). For the sender checkerboard stimuli were used while the receiver was in the MRI scanner. The figures showing actual curves are difficult to interpret for me but the pictures show increased blood oxygenation in the parieto-occipital areas.   

         The fMRI data were subsequently replicated by Richards on two new pairs of volunteers (Replicable Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Evidence of Correlated Brain Signals between Physically and Sensory Isolated Subjects. 2005;11:955-963). Statistically significant increase in oxygenation was observed in the occipital regions and the result was reproducible in one of the two subjects. Another fMRI study was carried out in Hawaii by Achterberg et al. (Evidence for Distant Intentionality and Brain Function in Recipients: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Analysis. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. 2005; 11/6:965-971). Eleven “healers” (persons who were regarded as having the ability to perform psychic healing of illnesses) were asked to concentrate on a person with whom he/she had a special connection while this person was in the scanner. Activation was observed in the recipients’ brains in the parietal, frontal and cingulate areas. This was the result of a group analysis of ten subjects and no individual results were reported.

I shall not comment on the fMRI data because, although intriguing, there is more potential subjectivity in their interpretation than is the case with EEG. I shall, therefore, conclude with a paper by Radin on “Event-Related Electroencephalographic Correlations between Isolated Human Subjects,” (The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 2004; 10/2:315-323) Thirteen pairs of volunteers participated in the experiments which were structurally similar to those of the other EEG studies. The differences were: instead of flashes or checkerboard stimuli, the face of the receiver was intermittently projected to the sender’s monitor and only one electrode, placed at the vertex, was used for recording. The reason was that a facial image was regarded as more meaningful to the sender than tones or flashes and what is called the P300 (around 300 milliseconds after stimulus onset), or cognitive evoked potential, is usually maximal at that location. For the group aggregate a sizeable P300 analog was recorded from the sender at around 368 milliseconds and a considerably smaller peak occurred 64 milliseconds later from the receiver. When individual test data were investigated it was noted that a significant effect was present in three of the 13 pairs but ten “showed positive EEG peaks.” Unfortunately, only statistical group data are shown in the figures and the professional EEGer would have liked to see the raw data for sender and receiver in order to gain an impression of the magnitude of the sender’s and receiver’s signal amplitudes in microV. To the best of my knowledge there has been no independent replication of these observations.

What is one to conclude from these studies? The Duane and Behrendt alpha report can safely be disregarded because of too many uncontrolled variables, but the others have to be taken seriously. They suggest that some type of effect exists. But it requires statistics for its observation; it is variable, inconsistent within the same subject group, and is only partially reproducible. For the professional EEGer it was especially disappointing that evoked potentials, which would be the clearest demonstration of EEG transmission, were present only in the sender and not in the receiver. With the possible exception of Radin’s study only a small nonspecific effect was noted in the EEG background activity.

It appears that although there is smoke we have yet to find the source of the fire. The results also reminded me of mercury which is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature and if one tries to grab one of the drops it escapes one’s grasp. When written with capital M it is the name for the Roman god one of whose functions was to serve as a messenger from the gods to earthlings. In other words we might be getting some kind of message but it is buried in “noise.” We don’t know what to do with it and how to interpret it. Psi researchers like to relate the phenomenon to the quantum observation of entanglement and, as mentioned, I shall try to evaluate the validity of that assumption in a subsequent installment after having presented further experimental psi data next month.







June 1, 2013

THE QUEST FOR PSI

            In last month’s installment I discussed some of the experimental evidence for what used to be called parapsychological events. Since the word parapsychology tends to be tainted by a variety of anecdotal reports, which also include communication with the dead, respectable scientists now prefer the Greek letter ψ “psi,” for their experimental work in this field. This brings up the question why one should bother with something that belongs in the realm of science fiction and even more personally why should I, a specialist in clinical neurophysiology and epilepsy, be concerned about a subject as esoteric as psi, and report on it here. But please remember that the name of this website is “thinktruth.” This requires that one needs to investigate all of the phenomena our society is confronted with, and attempt to ascertain to what extent reported opinions or beliefs conform to what one generally regards as the truth. Let me emphasize again that I am not concerned with absolute truth, which is a philosophical concept and inaccessible to human beings, but only the everyday meaning which distinguishes it from falsehood. This is the unifying theme which urges one to critically examine all the issues we as a society are confronted with, for their adherence to what we regard as truthful standards.

For a human being who has embarked on this quest there should be no taboos and theoretically all our commonly accepted notions of what is “true” can be questioned. But this is not how our society operates. There are taboos which must not be opened to investigations and the two most obvious ones are the Holocaust and 9/11. In the former instance you will be sent to jail in Austria or Germany if you question any aspect of it (Today’s Democracy in America. January 1, 2004. Understanding the Holocaust Part II February 21, 2006), and in the latter you are relegated to the ranks of crazies if you merely hold the belief that something is not quite right with the official version. If you become too vociferous and especially if you were to act on your feelings that the government has engaged in a massive cover-up you are liable to run afoul of the “Patriot” Act. This occurs in our “free” society in spite of the fact that it is the patriotic duty of a citizen to hold his government responsible for its actions.

One would think that this situation pertains merely to politics and that the hallowed halls of academia are still engaged in search for the truth wherever it might lead. But this is likewise a mistake. We, who publish in scientific journals, also have to toe a line and are not allowed to deviate too markedly from accepted opinions. Even if one is in the lucky position, as for instance in my situation, where one doesn’t have to rely on funding for one’s research, one can’t publish unorthodox work in the top journals of the field because our “peers” who are wedded to orthodoxy will reject the manuscript. This is not fantasy but actual experience. Since this happens in as innocuous an area as epilepsy, for instance, it is obvious that psi research will have an even tougher row to hoe.

Given these facts why should one bother with psi? The simple answer is that these phenomena profoundly rattle the cage we have built around our thinking. It seems that the time may have come to start re-assessing to what extent our notions of time as unidirectional, flowing only forward, and that cause has to precede effect, conform to reality. This is what psi research attempts to do. Dr. Dean Radin, part of whose work I have mentioned in last month’s installment and to whom I am indebted for having provided me with valuable references, has so far published two books on the subject and a third one will appear later this summer. In the first one, The Conscious Universe. The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena, he wrote in the Introduction,

 

In science, the acceptance of new ideas follows a predictable, four-stage sequence. In Stage 1, skeptics confidently proclaim that the idea is impossible because it violates the Laws of Science. This stage can last for years or for centuries, depending on how much the idea challenges conventional wisdom. In Stage2, skeptics reluctantly concede that the idea is possible but that it is not very interesting and the claimed effects are extremely weak. Stage 3 begins when the mainstream realizes not only that the idea is important but that its effects are much stronger and more pervasive than previously imagined. Stage 4 is achieved when the same critics who previously disavowed any interest in the idea begin to proclaim that they thought of it first. Eventually no one remembers that the idea was once considered a dangerous heresy.

 

          As far as psi research is concerned we are currently in Radin’s Stage 2 and in the following pages I shall demonstrate why this is so. While The Conscious Universe (published in 1997) is a good introduction to the overall topic, the second book Entangled Minds Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality, presents the data as they were available in 2006 and the third one, Supernormal, which I haven’t seen as yet, will bring the topic up to date. The books are well referenced and demonstrate the rather vast literature which now exists on the topic. This presents the skeptical reviewer with a literally huge problem because it is impossible to sift through all the scientific publications in order to detect flaws either in reasoning or methodology. I shall limit myself, therefore, largely to samples of electrophysiological work and since even here the literature is substantial mainly to Radin’s efforts. But before doing so here are some aspects of his bio as it appears on www.deanrdain.com.

 

He holds a BSEE degree in electrical engineering, magna cum laude with honors in physics, from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and then an MS in electrical engineering and a PhD in psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. For a decade he worked on advanced telecommunications R&D at AT&T Bell Laboratories and GTE Laboratories. For over two decades he has been engaged in consciousness research. Before joining the research staff at IONS in 2001, he held appointments at Princeton University, University of Edinburgh, University of Nevada, and several Silicon Valley think-tanks, including Interval Research Corporation and SRI International, where he worked on a classified program investigating psychic phenomena for the US government. Currently he is Chief Scientist at the Institute for Noetic Sciences (IONS) in Petaluma, California, and on the Adjunct Faculty of Sonoma State University.

 

Because of his background in engineering as well as psychology, he deserves to be listened to. From the large number of his publications I shall discuss only two which deal with the electrophysiology of precognition, also referred to as presentiment, as well as the Global Consciousness Project (GCP). In a 2004 publication, Electrodermal Presentiments of future Emotions, normal individuals were presented with randomly selected photographs which depicted either calm scenes or violent events while their electrodermal activity (EDA) was monitored. The latter is also known as the galvanic skin response and depends on the fact that the sweat glands in our fingers react to emotional stimuli thereby changing the electrical conductance. It is routinely used as one part of “lie-detector” variables. The trick in all of these studies is that not only was the response after the stimulus evaluated, but also for 5 seconds before the stimulus was delivered. While one has no problem understanding that the EDA would be larger after emotional stimuli, it is difficult to find a rationale why the reaction to calm vs. violent pictures should differ before these pictures were even presented. But this is what the paper shows and the difference is statistically significant.

We now have to pause for a moment because a few statistical terms have to be mentioned. These are: Z scores, effect size, and significance. In simplest terms z scores represent deviations from a standardized mean; effect size is a descriptive statistic in regard to the strength of a relationship between two variables, while significance refers to the probability how often the observed phenomenon could have occurred by chance. While z scores of 1 or 2 standard deviations (SD) from the norm are not necessarily regarded as pathological in medicine, a SD of 3 is clearly abnormal. For effect sizes there are no uniform criteria but in general 0.1 is regarded as small, 0.3 as medium and 0.5 as large. Statistical significance has to be at least 0.05 which means that the probability of a given event having occurred by chance, is 5 times in one hundred. With <0.01 it shrinks to one in a hundred and the more 0s before the one the probability that a given phenomenon had occurred by chance shrinks to extremely unlikely. Now comes the hooker. While effect size is not necessarily dependent on the number of observations, statistical significance is. The more observations which are available for the calculations of a given effect, the higher the statistical significance. This is fundamental for the assessment of psi data because effect size is usually small, but statistical significance can be huge. This is especially the case when Meta-analyses are performed. These are necessary, especially in psi research, because in a given experiment the effect size is usually small and to demonstrate significance large numbers are required. This is why some investigators, including Radin, have resorted to meta-analyses. These studies evaluate literature reports on a given topic for the reliability of the data as well as their analysis, and then combine the numbers obtained for a given phenomenon. In this way large numbers are accumulated and statistical significance can reach astronomic levels. There is, of course an obvious problem with meta-analyses because judgment is involved which studies are to be included or excluded and one has to rely on the integrity and the statistical acumen of the author(s) of these analyses.

          When we now return to Radin’s EDA paper, we find that 860 trials by 24 participants had resulted in a z score of 2.92, an effect size of 0.1 and significance level of 0.002. Small variants of the basic test procedure were then performed which in one instance raised the z score to 3.34 and the statistical significance to 0.0004, while the effect size had actually declined to 0.089. From a statistical point of view there can be no doubt that something had happened that allowed the calm from the violent curve to differ even before those pictures had been shown. We can, therefore, no longer talk about a response because there was nothing to respond to at that time period. Radin believes, therefore, that the observation suggests presentiment. In the Discussion segment of the paper he presented various “alternative explanations” but felt that they do not stand up to scrutiny.

Although EDA is, as has been mentioned, commonly used as a measure of emotional arousal it does have a variety of technical problems and the EEG is a considerably more reliable tool for a variety of purposes. Radin, therefore, published EEG results in 2011 under the title, Electrocortical Activity prior to Unpredictable Stimuli in Meditators and Nonmeditators. There are, as is well known, a large variety of meditative practices and it is important for scientific work to specify which ones the practitioners, who form the test group, are engaged in. Radin’s meditators practiced “non-dual awareness.” By this is meant that they train their minds to achieve states where “common distinctions – between subject and object, me and you, and past, present and future – begin to diminish.” 

Eight experienced meditators were matched with eight controls, and 32 EEG channels recorded their brains’ activities before, during, and after unpredictable light and/or sound stimuli. In one experimental set-up, “on demand,” the participants had to start the trial by pressing a button whereupon three seconds later a random number generator (RNG) selected a stimulus and presented it immediately to the test person. There were three possible stimuli: a light flash, a sound tone, a combination of both, as well as a non-event i.e. no stimulus was delivered. Three seconds after stimulus onset a click informed the subjects to start a new trial at any time of their choice. Light and sound stimuli were used because it was expected that different electrical responses would occur and their field distributions could be plotted. The other two conditions, light and flash as well as no stimulus, were intended to serve as distraction, and reduce bias. In the second experimental setup, “free running”, the subjects were told that they may hear a sound or see a flash but they should react by button press only to the sound. For each condition, epochs of 200 trials were extracted from the continuously recorded EEG and averaged after those trials which contained artifact had been removed.

I won’t go into the details of the statistics that were employed and merely limit myself to present the results for different stimuli in meditators and controls. In the post stimulus portion EEG differences between light and flash condition were present to a statistically significant extent in nearly all electrodes in the control group, but in the meditators the differences were limited to about half of the electrodes. This is what one might expect from individuals who have trained themselves in controlling their thought processes and this part of the data work-up mainly served the purpose of demonstrating that the system worked. When it came to a comparison of the two groups for the pre-stimulus period there were no differences between sound and light in the controls but five electrodes showed significant differences of <0.5,  in the meditator group. When comparisons were made between the two groups there were no differences prior to flash stimuli, but in the meditator group 15 electrode sites were significantly different prior to audio stimulation. When the investigators then used only the “free running” condition it became apparent that the noted differences had mainly resulted from the free running trial with attention to the audio stimulus. The authors felt that these results were not due to “conventional forms of anticipation” and this is the point where my scientific problems with the data start.

I shall not go into detail here and will take them up with Radin personally because we are in the realm of opinion. I just want to point out here, that a sizeable literature exists, which shows that the brain reacts for variable periods of time before an actual voluntary movement or an anticipated event begins. Benjamin Libet has written a book about it Mind Time The Temporal Factor in Consciousness (2004). He noted in his experiments, like others before him, that the brain starts preparing for action several hundreds of milliseconds before a voluntary movement takes place. But when he measured conscious awareness of the urge to move he found that this had occurred only about 200 milliseconds before the actual movement. He then argued that since the movement is unconsciously initiated, free will could be questioned. He solved the problem by limiting its role to a “veto function” over the processes which had started earlier. In other words, one has about 200 milliseconds to voluntarily stop the movement from occurring but one has no control over the previous brain processes that prepare the brain for it. One can question the validity of the free will conclusion but I am presenting the data here because until recently the brain’s anticipatory effect was regarded as mainly limited to hundreds of milliseconds or maximally for one to two seconds. But a Japanese group has recently shown on basis of fMRI data that it can actually extend for up to ten seconds. This means that our own finding of increased EEG activity about seven seconds before voluntary hyperventilation, when a frequency range of 0.1-0.9 Hz is used, need no longer be regarded as artifact and we can urge our colleagues to repeat this simple experiment for validation.

The importance of these data for presentiment experiments is obvious. If trials follow in short order a “left-over effect” may be present. I noted that in practically all presentiment trials the baseline is adjusted only a few seconds before the stimulus and one doesn’t know what had happened in the brain prior to that time. These are some of the details which must be sorted out before presentiment conclusions will be generally accepted. Another aspect in the presentation of purported evidence for psi is that actual raw curves be they EEG or EDA which show the differences are only rarely presented. We see statistical evaluations and diagrams rather than the wave forms on which they were based. There are two exceptions in the material I have so far seen. Radin et al.’s figure 5 of the mentioned paper does provide the complete curves for the mean potentials with one SD for flashes and sound over a period from 2 minutes prior to the stimuli up to one minute after them for one electrode location of controls and meditators. Although the figure clearly shows that there was no difference for the pre-stimulus portion in the controls and a good post-stimulus response, there are still some technical questions remaining which need to be taken up with the author. The devil after all is in the details.

Another paper which deals with Differential Event-related Potentials to Targets and Decoys by Donough and co-workers also presents the differences of actual EEG curves for evoked potentials. The subjects guessed which one of four cards would subsequently be randomly selected by the computer and presented as “targets”. The other three cards served as “decoys,” “non-targets.” The investigators found that although the verbal guessing accuracy did not deviate from chance expectations, the brain responses did to some extent. A negative slow wave, which occurred especially in the late segment of the response, showed significant differences for six electrode sites in the right hemisphere. The difference was statistically significant at the 5% level and taken to “indicate an apparent communications anomaly because no viable conventional explanation of the ERP differential could be identified.” When one looks at figure 2 of the paper which provides the grand average comparisons for all electrodes, clinical electroencephalographers would not be impressed. Especially when one reads that the differences were 0.15 µV with the actual responses at that time measuring about 4 µV.

In order to assess the validity of the presentiment claims, Julia Mossbridge of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and a colleague from Padova, Italy, as well as another one from the University of California, performed a meta-analysis of 26 reports that had been published on this topic between 1978 and 2010. The authors found a small but highly statistically significant effect and also noted that higher quality experiments had yielded both a larger effect size and a greater significance level. But in view of the diversity of studies, they suggested that multiple replications by different laboratories with a common standard protocol are needed to shed more light on this currently unexplained phenomenon. They also felt that the cause of this anticipatory effect “undoubtedly lies within the realm of natural physical processes (as opposed to supernatural or paranormal) ones.”

While one can occasionally expect weird behavior from our fellow human beings, machines should be immune from such quirks. But that seems to be another mistaken assumption. Random number generators (RNGs) which ought to produce 0s and 1s in a truly random manner can, at times, defy their pre-ordained behavior and assume a more regular pattern. Well, one might say that anything can happen once in a while. But when they are supposedly doing so at a time when meditators, who specialize in healing thoughts, are engaged in an attempt to make astrocytes (a type of brain cell) grow in a culture medium one really scratches one’s head. Radin reported on this event in Entangled Minds stating that on day three of the experiment several RNGs not only in the laboratory but throughout the San Francisco Bay area showed significant deviations from randomness. In addition the astrocytes apparently enjoyed the attention they received and grew more than a control group which was left to its own devices. Radin believed this indicates that concentrated thought can produce a consciousness field which can then interact with matter.

To test the idea of “field consciousness” Roger Nelson of Princeton University and colleagues, including Radin, started in 1998 the previously mentioned Global Consciousness Project http://gcp.grama.co. The project has currently over 60 RNGs which are distributed worldwide and the data are examined in relation to events which have significant emotional impact on large numbers of people. It seems to have been catalyzed by the death of Princess Diana when some RNGs in different countries stopped their randomness during her funeral. The hallmark event of the current century is, of course 9/11, and by that time a global network was in place comprising 37 RNGs. We are told that on this fateful day “all of the RNGs behaved in the same way, even though they were located thousands of miles apart, scattered around the world [italics in the original].” With a z score of 3.5 the observations reached a significance level of 0.00024. To add a further intrigue to the already unexplainable finding, the RNGs started to deviate from their routine about two hours before the first plane hit the North Tower.

One can now spin any number of theories about why the RNGs did and still do the things they are not supposed to do, but first one needs to know whether or not these psychokinetic effects can be duplicated. Holger Bösch (University of Freiburg, Germany), together with Fiona Steinkamp (University of Edinburgh) and Emil Boller (University of Freiburg, Germany) provided in 2006 a meta-analysis of published articles dealing with the interaction between human intention and random number generators. The result was equivocal; depending upon the statistics used a small but statistically significant effect was found. But the heterogeneity of the material was such that it “provides no directive as to whether the phenomenon is genuine.” The editors of the journal had sent the article to two other research groups for comment and while David Wilson of George Mason University and William Shadish of the University of California agreed that the jury is still out on the reality of psychokinesis; Radin, with Roger Nelson and York Dobyns of Princeton, and Joop Houtkooper of the Justus Liebig University in Giessen Germany, disagreed and felt that the “studies provide evidence for a genuine psychokinetic effect.”

Where does all of this leave us? Essentially in the same situation as last month only more puzzled because of the RNG results. There exists a small but statistically significant effect which may or may not be genuine. The theoretical model for this effect is assumed to be quantum physics and we will explore this explanation in the next installment. We shall also discuss at that time why the effect, provided that it is not some artifact, is as small as it has repeatedly shown to be.







July 1, 2013

Consciousness and Quantum Physics

In last month’s installment I mentioned that parapsychological investigations have revealed a small, but consistent, statistically significant effect which is currently unexplained by our scientific models. The same applies to near-death experiences (NDE’s) and out-of body experiences (OBEs). Subjectively real phenomena are repeatedly reported with some degree of consistency and these are taken to indicate not only that consciousness can exist without a brain but that we don’t die. Quantum physics is regarded as the link which can account for these statements. It is, therefore, necessary that we examine and define what we are talking about.

          First of all, and most important, is the use of language and the difference between concrete and abstract nouns. This becomes immediately apparent to a person, who is fluent in at least two different languages. I, for instance, can think and speak equally well in English and German using either as the occasion demands. When I translate the concrete noun “brain” into German the corollary is Hirn, or Gehirn.” Both refer to the same lump of matter we carry around in our heads. But when it comes to abstract nouns difficulties arise. Although there is only one word for consciousness in English and German, the connotations and implications can differ. The English word can be taken to imply some type of static phenomenon while the German term Bewusstsein indicates an active process. Literally translated it says: “to be aware.” This immediately brings up the next question: to be aware of what? Yet this does not necessarily follow from “consciousness,” which just is!

The problem got worse when I tried to find the German counterpart to “mind.” When I found myself unable to think of one I looked it up in my Wildhagen English/German dictionary and found that it wasn’t bad memory on my part. The word simply does not exist as a single concept. Here are some of the translations provided in the order they appeared when re-translated into English: memory, point of view, intention, will, inclination, conviction, spirit. So when we talk about “mind/brain relationships” we need to define what aspect of the mind we are talking about. The same applies to “consciousness” and “reality,” which likewise have several different dimensions. Unless these are specified our conversations and arguments can create a great deal of heat but very little light.

Take for instance the titles of Dr. Pim van Lommel’s book “Consciousness beyond Life,” Dr. Dean Radin’s “The Conscious Universe” or the subtitle of Chris Carter’s book “How Consciousness Survives Death.” Are they all talking about the same thing? Van Lommel and Carter probably refer to what the Hindus called atindriya which means: trans-sensuous, infra-sensible, and transcendental. But does this necessarily mean the survival of personal memories, will, and intention for ever and ever more? Possibly, but as Gershwin’s Porgy would have said: it ain’t necessarily so. When it comes to Radin’s “Conscious Universe” I must admit that I am lost, because I have to go back to my German. This is important because unless two different languages agree on a given meaning of a word we have no common ground. If for instance the moon, as part of our universe, has Bewusstsein, what is it aware of?

As mentioned the common denominator for a universal consciousness into which parapsychology as well as NDE’s and OBE’s are fitted is quantum theory and unless we come to some rudimentary understanding of this extremely complex field of human endeavor we will not be able to talk intelligently with each other. But unless we do so we cannot progress in our concepts of what we, and the world we live in, are all about. I shall, therefore briefly review my understanding of quantum mechanics (QM) and the conclusions which have been drawn therefrom. Let me emphasize that these are my personal opinions, which may well be challenged on a number of grounds. If experts in the field were to read these comments I would appreciate it if obvious mistakes, from their point of view, were to be present that they should let me know. This is, after all, the only way learning can take place.

My information about the topic comes mainly from three books as well as chapters which appeared in others. These are: The Tao of Physics – An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism by Fritjof Capra who is a nuclear physicist; How the Hippies Saved Physics –Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival by David Kaiser who is a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Quantum – Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality by Manjit Kumar who has degrees in physics and philosophy. Capra’s book explains the relationship to mysticism, Kaiser details the soil of the American scene from which consciousness and psi became, to use a QM word, entangled, while Kumar describes the history of the fundamental differences in interpretation of the same QM phenomena. The books complement each other and I can strongly recommend to anyone who thinks about current society in terms of where we are going to read these books.

The Tao of Physics was first published in 1975 and the 2010 “35th Anniversary Edition” is the fifth in the English language. The book has been translated into 23 languages, has remained a bestseller and it is clear that it has met a need of the reading public. Yet it presents us with a curious blend which has proven disconcerting to some critics. Far Eastern mystic thoughts are interspersed with fairly detailed mathematical aspects of quantum physics. The reason for this amalgam is not clearly discernible from the book, but is clarified by Kaiser who devoted Chapter 7 of his “Hippies” book to: Zen and the Art of Textbook Publishing. We now have to return to the late 60s and the San Francisco-Berkeley counterculture spawned by Timothy Leary’s psychedelic cult under the mantra: tune in, turn on, drop out. Kaiser explained that some young physics Ph.D. degree holders with slim job prospects gravitated to Berkeley where they founded the “Fundamental Fysiks Group” which met weekly on the campus of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. The unusual spelling of physics was in all probability derived from Niels Bohr’s “Universitetes Institut for Teortisk Fysik” in Copenhagen.

   Capra, a native Austrian, had obtained his PhD in molecular physics from the University of Vienna in 1966 and received a post-doctoral fellowship in Paris thereafter. He witnessed the 1968 student riots in that city and was deeply impressed. In the same year he was invited to the University of California Santa Cruz for a postdoctoral fellowship which he gladly accepted. To quote from Kaiser’s book: “he led ‘a somewhat schizophrenic life’ in Santa Cruz: hard-working quantum physicist by day, tuned-in hippie by night.” He was fully immersed in the counterculture including its drug, communal living and sexual aspects. He also started to explore Eastern mysticism and while sitting on the beach, possibly under the influence of one of the psychedelics, he had a powerful life-altering experience. This is how he described it in his own book:

 

I was sitting by the ocean one late summer afternoon, watching the waves rolling in and feeling the rhythm of my breathing, when I suddenly became aware of my whole environment as being engaged in a gigantic cosmic dance. Being a physicist, I knew that the sand, rocks, water and air around me were made of vibrating molecules and atoms, and that these consisted of particles which interacted with one another by creating and destroying other particles. I knew also the Earth’s atmosphere was continually bombarded by showers of ‘cosmic rays’, particles of high energy undergoing multiple collisions as they penetrated the air. All this was familiar to me from my research in high-energy particle physics, but until that moment I had only experienced it through graphs, diagrams and mathematical theories. As I sat on that beach my former experiences came to life; I ‘saw’ cascades of energy coming down from outer space, in which particles were created and destroyed in rhythmic pulses; I ‘saw’ the atoms of the elements and those of my body participating in this cosmic dance of energy; I felt its rhythm and I ‘heard’ its sound, and at that moment I knew that this was the dance of Shiva, the Lord of Dancers, worshipped by the Hindus.  

 

 

          A pictorial approximation appears in his book on page 224. When his visa was about to expire in December of 1970 he returned to Europe but without having any job prospect. At London’s Imperial College he did obtain some small office space with a desk, but no position and no income. Finances became increasingly problematic and he began to entertain the thought of writing a textbook of quantum physics. It would provide some income but more importantly land some paying job at a university. With an outline in hand he contacted Victor Weisskopf, a fellow Viennese highly respected physics professor at MIT, whom he had earlier met, for advice. Several letters ensued and although Weisskopf liked Capra’s writing style he was pessimistic in regard to any financial reward. But life is unpredictable and Capra received, at that point, an invitation to return to California where his former Santa Cruz advisor encouraged him to combine his interest in subatomic physics with Eastern mysticism in a book for the general public. Capra got to work and added the chapters on Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Zen to the already existing ones on physics. There were the usual rejections but when it was accepted by a small British publisher he contacted Shambala Press (located in Berkeley), which publishes books on Far Eastern mysticism, for a US edition. The Tao of Physics appeared simultaneously in the two countries and Capra’s financial worries were immediately solved.

          I shall leave Capra for now and turn to Kaiser because, as mentioned, he provides an excellent background to the culture from which the American “new physics” arose. During WWII physicists had hit a bonanza of which the Manhattan project, devoted to the A bomb, was just one aspect. After the war the “military-industrial complex,” which also included the CIA, funded physics departments all over the country and the emphasis was on potential practical applications rather than theoretical speculations in regard to what it all might mean. When some youngster was not satisfied with that, he was told in Kaiser’s words: “shut up and calculate!” This attitude prevailed throughout the forties to the early sixties. But with the Cold War winding down somewhat funds became scarce again, the need for meaning re-asserted itself and found fuel in the mentioned California Hippie movement.

          Berkeley became the center for the “search for meaning” which resulted in the confluence of QM interpretations with mysticism as well as psi. This, of course, does not deny that extremely valuable practical scientific work went on in parallel. I am merely emphasizing the esoteric aspects to show where and how this school of thought originated. In this connection Kaiser’s chapter 4 “From ψ to psi” is highly relevant. It is prefaced by Jack Sarffati’s (a member of the Fysiks group) statement,

 

In my opinion, the quantum principle involves mind in an essential way […such that] the structure of matter may not be independent of consciousness! … Some component of the quantum probability involves the turbulent, creative sublayer of ideas in the mind of the ‘participator.’

 

          The word “participator” rather than “observer” was chosen because some QM experimental results were interpreted as the observer having actually influenced the result through the mere act of observation. In QM there is nothing tangible, there are only shifting patterns with changing probabilities and it is assumed that the observer is part of the induced changes. I am saying assumed because, although this is part of the classical Copenhagen (Bohr/Heisenberg) interpretation of the phenomenon, it is not universally accepted by QM physicists.

           “Observer” was changed to “Participator” by John Wheeler, a prominent physics professor at Princeton University, who had collaborated with Bohr as well as Einstein. He was known for creating neologisms of which “black hole,” “quantum foam” and “wormhole,” are some examples. He also worked on achieving Einstein’s unified field theory and had little use for parapsychology. He wanted the American Association for the Advancement of Science to expel the Parapsychology Society from its ranks but did not succeed in that endeavor. Yet, as Kaiser wrote, he “had grand ambitions for these ‘participators.’ Not only did they fix reality in the here and now, they could even do so retrospectively.” Wheeler proposed an experiment to prove this point but it is too complex to be adequately summarized and apparently has never been carried out.

          While Wheeler shunned parapsychology, the CIA was interested because of an assumed telepathy and telekinesis gap between us and the Soviets. If we could read their minds, and see their secret installations without the use of aerial photography, that would have been a real breakthrough. In the May 1 installment (EEG and Parapsychology) I had mentioned the work of Puthoff and Targ in relation to the EEG, Uri Geller’s feats and remote viewing. Kaiser provides information on the physics background of these investigators, its CIA funding and that the remote viewing experiment could not be replicated. The statistical results were at chance level but there was one instance where the “remote viewer” apparently accurately described a scene which took place the following day in that location. If this had indeed been the case it would be of major importance because not only does it suggest precognition, but also points to a gap in QM theory. Since QM in its current incarnation (I use the term advisedly because it is human beings who invented the math, perform the experiments and interpret their results) exclusively deals with statistical probabilities, individual events which deviate from expected group behavior are not accounted for.

          Kumar’s book, originally published in a hardcover edition in 2008 and paperback in 2011, gives us an up-to date overview of the debate among physicists on fundamental points of data interpretation. The Copenhagen School maintains that subatomic reality consists of waves and particles in a state of superposition which “collapses” into either wave or particle upon observation. A particle has momentum and position but only one can be measured at a given time (the uncertainty principle). When a particle collides with another the two become correlated in regard to spin direction or polarity, regardless of separation over time and distance. Nothing exists in reality until it is observed and, as mentioned above, the observer additionally influences the observed result.

Einstein vigorously disagreed and Kumar wrote in the Prologue: “Einstein said years later that ‘this theory reminds me a little of the system of delusion of an exceedingly intelligent paranoic, concocted of incoherent elements of thought.’” According to Einstein “physics should represent reality in time and space free from spooky action at a distance.” It would take us too far afield to go into the details and I shall limit myself to showing how “entanglement” as well as “Schrödinger’s cat” (July 1, 2009; Faith and Science) were born. This information comes from a series of letters between Einstein and Schrödinger in relation to a “thought experiment” which Einstein in collaboration with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen had published in 1935. This publication, which elicited vigorous debate, has subsequently been referred to as the EPR paper. It demonstrated to the satisfaction of the authors that the Copenhagen interpretation failed to account for “hidden variables” and was, therefore, incomplete.

          Schrödinger, the author of the wave function which later earned him a Nobel Prize, agreed with Einstein and in the mentioned interchange of letters Einstein suggested,

 

Imagine two closed boxes, one of which contains a ball. Opening the lid of a box and looking inside is ‘making an observation.’ Prior to looking inside the first box, the probability that it contains the ball is ½, in other words there is a fifty per cent chance that the ball is inside the box. After the box is opened, there is either a probability of 1 (the ball is in the box) or 0 (the ball is not in the box). But, says Einstein, in reality the ball was always in one of the two boxes. So, he asks, is the statement ‘The probability is ½ that the ball is in the first box ‘a complete description of reality? If no, then a complete description would be, ‘The ball is or is not in the first box.’

 

          Einstein, in a subsequent letter, substituted for the boxes “a keg of unstable gunpowder that spontaneously combusts at some time during the next year. At the beginning the wave function describes a well-defined state – a keg of unexploded gunpowder. But after a year the wave function describes a sort of not-yet and of already exploded systems. ‘Through no art of interpretation can this wave function be turned into an adequate description of a real state of affairs … in reality there is just no intermediary between exploded and not exploded.’” Schrödinger substituted for the keg of gunpowder a steel cage which contained: a tiny amount of a radioactive substance, “’so small that perhaps in the course of one hour one of the atoms decays, but also with equal probability, perhaps none.’” At the first moment of decay it hits a hammer which shatters a cyanide vial releasing its content and the resident cat in the box dies. According to the Copenhagen interpretation the cat exists during this hour in a state of superposition where it is both dead and alive until the box is opened at which time its “real” state is determined.

These thought experiments were intended to show the limits of the Copenhagen interpretation but they also added another word to our vocabulary. Inasmuch as two particles, once they have collided, share certain properties Schrödinger used the term Verschränkung, in his conversations with Einstein to point out their connection. He subsequently translated it into English as “entanglement.” Yet the German verb verschränken, from which the noun is derived, encapsulates not only limit but also opposite directionality which is missing in English. The simplest way to explain this is when you cross your arms. They overlay each other from two different directions. The same occurs at some railroad-crossings “Bahnschranken,” where the barrier posts descend from opposite sides of the road. In this way the German word includes the notion of electron spin which the word entanglement does not.

The above mentioned Einstein/ Schrödinger thought experiments highlight the fundamental question: is probability the exclusive way in which everything in the universe operates? In other words, is there only a “maybe” in this world, or does “either-or/yes-no” have at least an equal place? That the latter is obviously the case is proven by computer technology where a “bit” of information is designated as either 0 or 1. The problem resides in the fact that in order to make mathematical equations meaningful for others we have to use everyday words as metaphors rather than for what they commonly mean. For instance how can a wave be simultaneously a particle? Capra explained,

 

This state of affairs is bound to be paradoxical as long as we adopt the static view of composite ‘objects’ consisting of ‘basic building blocks.’ Only when the dynamic, relativistic view is adopted does the paradox disappear. The particles are then seen as dynamic patterns, or processes, which involve a certain amount of energy appearing to us as their mass. In a collision process, the energy of the two colliding particles is redistributed to form a new pattern, and if it has been increased by a sufficient amount of kinetic energy, this new pattern may involve additional particles.

 

The same applies to the “wave,” or more precisely speaking the “wave function.” Kumar wrote: “The wave function itself has no physical reality; it exists in the mysterious, ghost-like realm of the possible. It deals with abstract possibilities, like all the angles by which an electron could be scattered following a collision with an atom.” At this point we should note that the symbol Erwin Schrödinger used for the wave function was ψ, which has subsequently been appropriated by parapsychologists for their work. But what does all of this mean? In 1926 a little ditty appeared which asked this question:

 

Erwin with his psi can do

Calculations quite a few,

But one thing has not been seen:

Just what does psi really mean?

 

In 1999 a poll was conducted among 90 physicists who had attended a conference on quantum physics at Cambridge University. Only four voted for the Copenhagen interpretation, 30 for a “many worlds” explanation, while 50 chose the box which said “none of the above or undecided.” In 2013 the situation is no better, as the June issue of the Scientific American testifies to. It contains an article on “Quantum Weirdness? – It’s all in your Mind” by Hans Christian von Baeyer, an emeritus particle physics professor. It focusses on the “probability” aspect and points out that the Bayesian model – probability based on belief of what is likely to occur – might be better suited to explain QM than the commonly used model which is based on the expected frequency of occurrence of a given event. The article also lists the pros and cons of the current explanations.

As I have repeatedly mentioned in this essay, when one deals with abstract concepts the correct choice of words is important. We have to define what we are talking about or we will be talking at but not with each other. I shall, therefore, now provide my own definitions of QM and consciousness. QM could be defined as, “A set of mathematical equations, which has been remarkably successful in technological applications. But when expressed in everyday language, difficulties arise in regard to the interpretation of experimental results and most of all, to its meaning for our understanding of the world we live in.” For consciousness I would suggest, “Human consciousness is a process resulting from internal and external sensations and consists of an emotional as well as intellectual component.” Although it may seem redundant, I have added “human” to emphasize that this is what we commonly mean by consciousness. If we were to meet an alien we would still be limited in our understanding of that life form by our biologic heritage and socially acquired biases. If a rock were to be conscious I have no idea how I could communicate with it. But whatever communication might conceivably happen it would still be my concept of what the rock experiences. Furthermore, the definition emphasizes process as the important aspect of the concept. Since we never see the actual processes, which constantly go on in and around us, we describe and judge results. This is not commonly realized but probably the essence of what Whitehead has tried to tell us. I am saying “probably” because I still have not mustered the time and energy to study his magnum opus Process and Reality. I have used the word “study” advisedly because each sentence in the book has to be thought about and one can’t just “read” it. 

As I understand it, the link between QM with consciousness resides in non-locality and entanglement. QM in its classical interpretation posits that when a particle collides with another it imparts “information” on it which then controls the latter’s behavior regardless of distance or time. To put it crudely: particle A tells particle B from now on you do what I say, particle B complies. But one of the facts is that nobody has seen a particle and its travels across time and space. It exists only as a pattern which appears in one spot and immediately pops up at another. This discontinuity does indeed have some analogy to our thought processes, which I shall discuss in some detail on another occasion, but it does not necessarily lend itself to the conclusion that our personal consciousness lives forever.

Dr. Pim van Lommel, whose book I have previously mentioned (March 1, 2013; NDE’s, Cosmic Consciousness and Buddha), has sent me a copy of his recent article “Non-local Consciousness – A concept based on Scientific Research on Near-Death Experiences during Cardiac Arrest.” The first sentence of the final paragraph states: “It often takes an NDE to get people to think about the possibility of experiencing consciousness independently of the body and to realize that presumably consciousness always has been and always will be, that everything and everybody is connected, that all of our thoughts will exist forever, and that death as such does not exist.” This is obviously somewhat lengthy and although Dr. van Lommel holds it out as a possibility others may readily jump to the end where “death as such [italics are mine because I don’t know what this qualification means] does not exist.”

Let us now think somewhat more about this statement, as well as similar others which try to reassure us that our consciousness will survive physical death. These are, of course, statements of faith because even if NDEs are indeed the mental accompaniments of the beginning dying process, we have no idea what happens to consciousness thereafter when the brain and body have decomposed and the remains disposed of. What type of consciousness will remain? Our personality with the attributes it has acquired during life? But this is a static concept which defies what we know about the universe and its functions including QM. As far as we know there is only constant flux and interchange of matter and energy. These two aspects of nature are interdependent. So is it not more likely that even if we conceive of consciousness as thought patterns, which are or can become independent of our brain, that they will either disintegrate or form other patterns which our human thinking cannot even imagine? This is one aspect advocates of eternal life based on QM seem to ignore. Another aspect is the previously mentioned fact that QM deals with statistical probabilities of what may happen to groups but has nothing to say about individuals. Yet it is the individual who wants his/her life prolonged in eternal bliss. QM is of no help in this respect and a better course to achieve this goal might be what the gospel song calls “the old time religion … it was good for our mothers, it was good for our fathers and it’s good enough for me.”   

I believe, therefore, that we are being led astray by imprecise language and by taking metaphors literally. I further believe that when dealing with such abstract nouns as “consciousness” we need to be very careful and specify not only that aspect of it we are talking about at a given time (e.g. will, memory, sensation, external phenomena etc.), but also the dimension in which it occurs. This aspect, as well as what we mean by “reality,” will be discussed next time in the context of John C. Lilly’s remarkable life and work.      







August 1, 2013

PSYCHONAUTS

          In last month’s installment I mentioned that I would discuss what we mean by “reality.” The question is: How do we differentiate between fantasy, dreams and the “real” world we live and work in? But before addressing it a relevant event which transpired during the past month needs to be mentioned.

          The Internet version of Esquire featured an article by Luke Dittrich called The Prophet. It is an important contribution to the ongoing Eben Alexander saga because it puts his trip to heaven into perspective and adds important details. The article is based on an initial extensive interview and a subsequent follow-up, as well as an interview with Dr. Laura Potter, who was the emergency room physician when Alexander was admitted to Lynchburg General Hospital, in addition to drawing on some official legal documents. It details Alexander’s professional career, with its ups and downs, and shows that his neurosurgical life was in shambles prior to his illness. He faced a $3 million lawsuit for having operated on the wrong cervical vertebrae. Since this had not happened only once but twice, he had lost his surgical privileges at the hospital a year earlier. I shall not go into some of the other points which raise questions about his professional ethics; they can be read in full at: http://www.esquire.com/features/the-prophet?click=pp. Friends and supporters of Alexander called the article “a hatchet job” but I would encourage everyone to read it and form their own opinion on what is presented.

          From a medical point of view, Dr. Potter’s statements are important. Based on the book, I had previously stated that he was, upon admission, in status epilepticus, which is accompanied by coma and necessitated anticonvulsant medications and if refractory, even anesthesia (February 15, 2013 Proof of Heaven). But this was not the case. Dr. Potter stated that at the time of admission Alexander was delirious and thrashing about to an extent that he had to be put immediately under anesthesia in order to perform the necessary spinal tap, CT scan and the other laboratory procedures. This point is important because it raises a question about prognosis. Patients usually recover from delirium, but if there is indeed spontaneous coma during the first few hours of the illness, as we are led to believe by the book, a fatal outcome is more likely. Dittrich also asked Dr. Potter about the “God help me” plea before Alexander completely lost consciousness. But not only could she not recall such an incident, she said that it would have been medically impossible because she had intubated him immediately upon arrival in order to start anesthesia. She also stated that whenever anesthesia was lightened delirious combative behavior re-emerged. One may now say: okay, he exaggerated a little. But although Alexander admitted in the first interview with Dittrich that he had taken some poetic license in the book, his attitude subsequently hardened and in the second interview he insisted that every word in the book is true. 

          Does this matter? Yes it does, because Dr. Alexander now travels around the country and the world telling a story, based on subjective reality, major aspects of which are highly questionable. He could readily resolve this question if he were to adhere to the statement, “I am still a scientist, I am still a doctor, and as such I have two essential duties: to honor truth and to help heal.” This could readily be achieved by opening his medical records dealing with that week for inspection by qualified physicians. Unless and until he does so it will be impossible for medical professionals to trust his word. In view of this impasse, and since Alexander presents a one-sided view of this difficult topic, I have submitted a manuscript to the Journal for Near-Death Studies (JNDS) with the title: The Reality of Death Experiences – Three Decades Later. 

          In the article I compared the state of NDE interpretations from 1980 to the present and noted that actual progress in the understanding of the near-death phenomenon has been quite limited. I then discussed under what circumstances we regard something as “real” as contrasted with fantasies, dreams, delusions and hallucinations, and ended with suggestions how genuine scientific advances might be made in this area. I did deal fairly extensively with the Alexander phenomenon but at the time of writing had not yet immersed myself into John Lilly’s life and work. But since one was limited by the journal to about 20 pages it could not have been adequately discussed anyway.

          My information on Lilly comes from four of his books which I have read, supplemented by information from Wikipedia which described him as, “physician, neuroscientist, psychoanalyst, psychonaut, philosopher and scientist.” I found the term “psychonaut” very appropriate because in contrast to our astronauts and the Russian cosmonauts who explore outer space, he devoted himself to inner space. Lilly is important because his life and work contain many lessons for us personally as well as our society. There are also some interesting parallels with Alexander. Both were highly intelligent and held MD degrees, both dealt with the brain in their professional lives, both had extraordinary experiences and both abandoned their professional work and devoted themselves to informing the world about what can be called inner reality. But while Alexander has at this time completely surrendered to mysticism and regards the brain as irrelevant for “higher consciousness,” Lilly retained a degree of skepticism at least until 1978 when his The Scientist   A Metaphysical Autobiography was published. Yet his major professional scientific work, judging from PubMed listings, ended in 1968. The CV in the book states that he was a member of the American Electroencephalographic Society from 1951-1967 which also indicates that he seems to have lost interest in “hard science” around that time.

          The important aspects of his life are as follows. He was born in 1915 a middle son to Catholic, professionally highly successful parents; developed a scientific interest in childhood; devoutly believed in the teachings of the Catholic church; had at age 7 a religious vision in church; was profoundly disappointed when the nun told him that only saints have visions; became completely disgusted with the church in early puberty after a priest in confession had asked him about his sexual habits; went for his graduate education against the wishes of his father to Cal-Tech rather than Harvard; to medical school in Dartmouth and Philadelphia; graduated in 1942; remained on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania till 1956; joined the NIH as section Chief for “Cortical Integration” with a joint appointment in the Institute for Neurological Diseases and Blindness as well as the National Institute for Mental Health from 1953-1958; was in psychoanalytic training from 1949-1957; founded and directed the “Communications Research Institute in St. Thomas and Miami for work with dolphins in 1959-1968;  also held  a Research Career Award fellowship from the National Institute of Mental Health during 1962-1967. From then on he devoted his time to private research on the exploration of inner space – the mind.      

Within this bare-bone outline, taken from The Scientist, there are several additional key elements. One of these is what he regarded as his mission in life which will later be discussed in some detail. The book gives the impression of ruthless honesty where even some of the most intimate details of his life are presented for public scrutiny. He avoids criticism by the method of talking about himself in the third person, a technique he also used during psychoanalysis, and emphasizes that the book can be read not only as an autobiographical account but also as science fiction, if the reader so desires. I shall not go into details here but encourage anyone who is interested in these aspects not only to obtain this book but also the earlier ones: Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer (1967) and Center of the Cyclone – Looking into Inner Space (1972). The Dolphin work is summarized in The Communication between Man and Dolphin – The possibilities of Talking with Other Species (1978).  

His mission in life, as explained to his analyst, Dr. Robert Waelder, was to conclusively settle the question: Does the mind result from the activities of the brain or is the brain simply a tool for the mind? This would be accomplished by implanting tens of thousands, not readily detectable, electrodes into the brain, for ethical reasons at first in his own, video record all of his activities over a certain period of time and after a proper interval stimulate these electrodes and record what he was doing while the stimuli were delivered. If these two videos matched, the problem was solved in favor of the brain, if not the mind would have won. Dr. Waelder just shook his head at this obviously hare-brained scheme and warned him of the potential consequences not only in regard to his own health, but also what the government could do with this type of mind control. Lilly insisted that the electrodes were safe and so were the stimuli because he had already worked out the method. But even if he had done this experiment with tens of thousands of electrodes it would have been meaningless because a) they would not be nearly enough to properly cover all cortical and subcortical structures and b) who would guarantee that the electrical stimulus parameters that were to be used would produce the same results as what the brain’s electrochemistry does on its own.

Nevertheless, Lilly did go ahead with the implantation work during the fifties in monkeys and produced scientifically valid data for reward and aversion zones in the brain. It obviously aroused government interest and when he saw a secret presentation where a mule, carrying some type of load, had been programmed with his electrode technique to pursue a direct undeviating line over most difficult mountain terrain, he realized that this could well be used to transport a nuclear bomb undetected into some enemy’s territory. Although the cat was now out of the bag, he stopped further electrical stimulation work, especially since histological evidence had shown that the technique did in fact leave some minor damage to the brain’s cellular structures.

During the years he was doing electrical stimulation studies he had also been engaged not only in official psychoanalysis, but also in private self-analysis. This was done first in an isolation tank, where he would float for varying lengths of time deprived of almost all sensory input, apparently simulating the intrauterine experience. Subsequently he added LSD for even greater effectiveness in the exploration of his mind. I don’t know if monkeys were also beneficiaries of LSD but some dolphins did receive electrical stimulations as well as LSD. The brain was for him a biocomputer and since the dolphins’ brains are at least as big as ours and they had existed as a species far longer than humans, they were regarded as perfect models for telling us something about ourselves.

This resulted in the Biocomputer book which was intended to present the conclusions of his neurological work. When one omits the computer language one can say: the brain has an inborn set of structures and functions upon which learning is imposed. This occurs on a voluntary and involuntary basis through conscious as well as unconscious processes, which go on throughout the individual’s entire life. Here are his conclusions in regard to the reality of the isolation tank and LSD experiences,

 

Experiments in programming in this innermost space [during isolation tank with or without LSD] showed results quite satisfying to a high degree of credence in the belief that all experiments in the series showed inner happenings without needing the participation of outer causes. The need for the constant use of outer causes was found to be a projected outward metaprogram to avoid taking personal responsibility for portions of the contents of his own mind. His dislike for certain kinds of his own nonsensical programs caused him to project them and thus avoid admitting they were his [bold print and italics are in the original].

 

It is obvious that he was using third person language as well as psychoanalytic and computer terms so as not to offend his superiors and thereby endanger his livelihood and reputation. But he did go further. After providing the scientific explanation of the brain as the originator of these experiences as the “safe” one, and stating that it neither validates nor invalidates other viewpoints he wrote,

 

I wish to emphasize that there is a necessity not to espouse a truth because it is safe. Being driven to a set of assumptions because one is afraid of another set and their consequences is the most passionate and nonobjective kind of philosophy [bold print in original].… Those who must find a communication with other beings in this kind of experiment will apparently find it. One must be aware that there are (as in the child) needs within one’s self for finding certain kinds of phenomena and espousing them as the ultimate truth. Such childlike needs dictate their own metaprograms. If ever good, hard-nosed, common sense, unequivocal evidence for the existence of currently unaccepted assumptions is presented by those who have thoroughly attenuated their childish needs for particular beliefs, I hope, I am prepared to examine it dispassionately and thoroughly. The pitfalls of group interlock are quite as insidious as the pitfalls of one’s own phantasizing. Group acceptance of undemonstrated theorems and of seductive beliefs adds no more validity to the theorems and beliefs than one’s own phantasizing can add.

 

Lilly then went on to describe the safeguards individuals who engage in this type of experimentation must use because serious harm can readily result.

Let us now take a look at his first LSD experience as described in Center of the Cyclone. He was no novice in regard to metaphysical events because his isolation tank experiences had acquainted him with some of the phenomena. In preparing for the 100 microgram intramuscular injection he had already laid out the questions he would pursue during “the trip” and an experienced empathic female guide, who could intervene if the necessity arose, was also present. The house was in an isolated area and to avoid any contamination by the mores of civilization both had shed their clothing. One other external component which deserves mention is that initially a stereo set played Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The total event, with some breaks in between when external reality re-asserted itself, lasted eight hours. “I moved with the music into Heaven. I saw God on a tall throne as a giant, wise, ancient Man. He was surrounded by angel choruses, cherubim and seraphim, the saints were moving by his throne in a stately procession. I was there in Heaven, worshipping God, worshipping the angels, worshipping the saints in full and complete transport of religious ecstasy.” His guide later told him that he was kneeling at the time looking upward towards heaven with his hands in the prayer position. “I then looked into the mirror at my own face and saw multiple ‘projections’ onto my own face.” His face morphed into numerous others. Some of them very old, others from childhood, still others with sickness, as a cripple, his father’s, and even that of a “hairy anthropoid.” “Since I was on a high I thoroughly enjoyed this experience and elaborated it further. I didn’t stop to explain to myself what was happening I watched it happen ….” Eventually he found himself back in childhood: “being suckled by mother, being back in the uterus, floating in empty, wonderful, ecstatic space, surrounded by light. I became smaller and smaller in the uterus, going backwards in time until I was the fertilized egg. Suddenly I was two. I was in a sperm; I was in an egg. Time reversed and they suddenly came together. There was a fantastic explosion of joy, of consummation, as I became one and started through all the embryonic stages.” He then went on to describe the shock of the birth experience as well as the joy of the first nursing experience. This description served in 1980 as the base for the movie “Altered States,” just as some of his cetacean work was used for “The Day of the Dolphin,” in the 1973 film.

Lilly summarized this and other sessions from his tank and LSD experiences in the dictum; “What one believes to be true, either is true or becomes true in one’s mind, within limits to be determined experimentally and experientially.” Since the event was so joyous he tried to repeat it fourteen days later but this turned into a “bad trip.” His professional and personal life situation was difficult and the family was unhappy. Under LSD he first berated the wife, then himself and simply was at odds with himself and the world. Since LSD has an additional delayed effect, he had been careful in his first experiment to have adequate time for adapting again to what he called “human consensual reality.” But this was not the case the second time around. He had to fly from California to New York to give a speech the next day to a scientific society. Then things went from bad to worse. It is not quite clear what happened after the speech, because he had amnesia and his accounts differ somewhat. In one he stated that he had passed out after pushing the elevator button to go back to his room, but in another version we are told that he had injected himself in his room with what he thought was an antibiotic, but it was “foam with a detergent.” This created bubbles in his blood stream some of which lodged in his brain and he was comatose for several days.

 At some point during that time he had additional transcendental experiences. He stated that it was difficult to put these into language and since the complete description covers one and one third book pages I have to abbreviate

 

a golden light permeating the whole space everywhere …I am a single point of consciousness, of feeling, of knowledge. I know that I am. That is all … no need for a body… just I. … suddenly in the distance two similar points of consciousness, sources of radiance, of love, of warmth…. They transmit comforting, reverential, awesome thoughts. I realize that they are beings far greater than I.… They tell me I can stay in this place, that I have left my body, but I can return to it if I wish…. They tell me it is not yet time for me to leave my body permanently.… They give me total and absolute confidence, total certitude in the truth of my being in that state. I know with absolute certainty that they exist. I have no doubts…. They say that they are my guardians, that they have been with me before at critical times and that in fact they are with me always, but I am not usually in a state to perceive them…. [He can do so only] when I am close to the death of the body. In this state, there is no time. There is an immediate perception of the past, present, and future as if in the present moment.

 

Lilly recovered from the illness but unfortunately he did not provide a date. Nevertheless, by 1968 his frequent trips into inner space had exacted their price. His day-to-day behavior had changed. His second marriage ended in divorce, his professional credibility had suffered and official funding sources had dried up. He then became a full time psychonaut. In September of 1969 he joined the Palo Alto Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences as well as the Esalen Institute, which is devoted to personal growth and humanistic alternative education, where he gave workshops and lectures. While there he also heard about the Instituto de Gnosologia under the direction of Oscar Ischazo in Arica, Chile. He spent several months of 1970-1971 in that Institute and was taught how to enter the highest levels of consciousness called satori in Japan or samadhi in India. The second half of the Cyclone book is devoted to these experiences.

While lecturing at Esalen he also started to experiment with ketamine. Throughout his life Lilly had suffered from debilitating migraine attacks and during one of the Esalen workshops a young physician friend suggested that he might try ketamine, a short lasting anesthetic agent, to get some relief. The effect, which began ten minutes after injection, was presented in The Scientist rather than the Cyclone: “Very rapidly I am floating through space. My pain is moving away from me. I am in a luminous domain, isolated from the pain.”  The effect lasted 20 minutes, the pain returned and he received another injection.  “The pain moves away again. I become isolated in the luminous space.   Something begins to approach me. I see new domains, new spaces. I leave my body totally and join some Beings far away. The Beings give me instructions. I am to continue using this chemical agent for educational purposes.”

Since LSD had been banned by the government, he followed the advice and did so for a thirteen-month period. This had nearly fatal consequences on two occasions, as well as some psychotic episodes which necessitated psychiatric hospitalizations. He had become addicted; gave himself increasingly higher doses and then “decided to live in the internal reality continuously for an extended period.”  This was accomplished by injecting himself with “50 milligrams of ketamine every hour on the hour, twenty hours a day, with four hours out for sleep.” He maintained this regimen for three weeks, living in internal as well as external reality, when a near fatal bicycle accident put an end to it.

Before addressing the “reality” of Lilly’s experiences further, a few words are needed in regard to his dolphin work and on the information the Beings provided. The most important aspect in regard to the dolphins was Lilly’s insistence that we should not regard them, as well as other cetaceans and elephants that have highly evolved brains, as animals to be exploited for our purposes, but as valuable partners in exploring non-human consciousness. It is inappropriate to try to establish contact with aliens from outer space unless we have first established effective communications with highly evolved alien species on our own planet.

As far as the mentioned Beings are concerned Lilly felt at one point that they are part of what he called the Earth Coincidence Control Organization (ECCO). The two previously mentioned guardians report to a third one from a still higher level, who in turn is responsible to others who were inaccessible to Lilly. These Beings arrange for what is regarded in our everyday world as coincidental events. But these occurrences are actually intended to allow the fulfillment of the plan which has been arranged for that particular individual. Lilly also traveled throughout the multiverse on different occasions far into the future up to 3001. He brought back two separate versions. One was disastrous for the human race because solid state intelligences (computers) had eliminated us, while the other was a happier human race, which had left its current exploitative behavior behind and existed in harmony with nature.

Most of us will now ask: but what did he really believe about all of this? His answer would probably have depended upon the mood he was in.  But in the Introduction to the Cyclone he wrote,

 

My skepticism is intact-please keep yours. Skepticism is a necessary instrument in the exploration of the unknown. Humor is even more necessary, especially in regard to our own self and our observations and records. Full dispassionate detachment implies cosmic comedy with each of us a fun-loving player. Cosmic love is ruthlessly loving: whether you like it or not, it teaches you, teases you, plays with you, surprises you.

 

After the Introduction and prior to the first chapter of the Cyclone Lilly wrote,

 

One’s centered thinking-feeling-being, one’s own Satoris, are in the center only, not outside. One’s push-pulled driven states, one’s self-created hells, are outside the center. In the center of the cyclone one is off the Wheel of Karma, of life, rising to join the Creators of the Universe, the Creators of us. Here we find that we have created Them who are Us.

 

This echoes the message of the Tibetan Book of the Dead where during the process of dying, and in the intermediate state before rebirth, the person is constantly re-assured, that regardless of what is experienced: Do not fear! Flee not! The visions sounds and feelings are not real; they are conjured up by “your own consciousness.”

So how is it possible that we regard the experiences during these states of consciousness as “real,” or “more real than real,” “ultra-real?” Lilly’s answer, in the Biocomputer book, was, “Because of the lack of sensory stimuli, and lack of normal inputs into the computer (lack of energy in the reality program), the space in the computer usually used for projection of data from the senses (and hence the external world) is available substitutively for the display of thinking and feeling.”

I have come to essentially the same conclusion in the manuscript which is currently under review by JNDS. It does not refer to Lilly because I had at the time of writing not yet immersed myself in his books. I shall do so if and when it were to come back for revisions prior to acceptance for publication. I have, however, additionally addressed the problem of absence of doubt in some detail, because it is a crucial part of the metaphysical experience. In my opinion it results from the temporary inactivation of discriminative thought processes. These are operative in the eyes open state of consciousness, diminish in the eyes closed state, and are absent in dreams and other altered states of consciousness.

I believe that it is unreasonable to look for absolute, ultimate reality. Instead we should divide it into external reality, Lilly’s human consensual reality, and internal reality. The latter can be further subdivided into the circumstances under which deviations from consensual reality occur. The same applies for consciousness. We should distinguish between consciousness in the eyes open versus the eyes closed state. In the latter it may be useful not to think and talk about “levels,” which not only have a physical meaning but contain value judgments: higher is better, lower is worse. This is inappropriate and it may be more useful to think and talk in terms of “states.” This word is more accurate because it is devoid of such meanings. We can then specify under which circumstances a given state occurred without prejudging reasons or causes. When talking about higher and lower there is also the danger which Lilly had pointed out in the Biocomputer  book. Since some of the experiences are highly pleasurable, they may become “overvalued” and could begin to dominate the person’s life. He warned of the hedonistic use of psychoactive agents and insisted that these activities need to be pursued strictly for self-knowledge. He wrote

 

As one opens up the depths, it is wise not to privately or publicly espouse as ultimate any truths one finds in the following areas: the universe in general, beings not human, thought transference, life after death, transmigration of souls, racial memories, species-jumping-thinking, non-physical action at a distance, and so forth. Such ideas may merely be a reflection of one’s needs in terms of one’s own survival. Ruthless self-analysis as to one’s needs for certain kinds of ideas in these areas must be explored honestly and truthfully. The rewarding- and positively- reinforcing effects of LSD-25 must be remembered and emphasized: one overvalues the results of one’s chemically rewarding thinking [italics and bold print in the original].

 

He then stated that while keeping the hedonistic danger in mind, these experiences need to be thoroughly integrated into the human consensual reality of the individual. This takes time and considerable honest soul-searching, devoid of wishful thinking. Unfortunately, as Lilly’s life showed, this is an extremely difficult job. He succumbed during the most important period of one’s professional life (age 40-60)) to the lures of the “altered states” and thereby lost not only credibility in professional circles, but funding for the “hard science” work with dolphins. He tried to revive it later, but it was too late, as his website www.johnclilly.com shows. Updates end in 2001, the year of his death. Although some of his books are republished and a John C. Lilly Research Institute exists under the presidency of Philip Hansen Bailey (but without a website under that name), his work is largely ignored by writers on the topic. Recently published books, which deal with altered states of consciousness, do not mention Lilly’s name. Among them are: The Conscious Mind by Chalmers, Irreducible Mind by the Kellys, The Conscious Universe by Dean, Brain, Mind and the Structure of Reality by Nunez, and Theory of Reality by Wiebers. Even the 856 page Oxford Companion to the Mind, published in 1987, has nothing to say about his work and views. It seems that our society demands that one identifies with one viewpoint on the topic or the other and Lilly was “too far out” even for the supporters of “higher consciousness.” “Ruthless honesty” is apparently not desired in our society.

I intend to continue the discussion of Lilly’s inner sights, especially in regard to the role of computers and the future of mankind, in a subsequent installment. It will also provide an answer to the question “what is real,” by the first, historically documented, psychonaut. But this will have to wait till October because the September 1 issue has to be devoted to the memory of the 9/11 crime and its victims, here and abroad. This is also an area where “ruthless honesty” is clearly lacking, but urgently needed.







September 1, 2013

9/11: CONTEXT AND AFTERMATH

          The 12 year anniversary of that dreadful day is coming up and it is safe to predict that we will be treated to a number of patriotic speeches which will emphasize the strength and resilience of the American people in the face of terror. The media will dutifully extensively report on these happenings, but judging by precedent, they will also studiously avoid reporting on meetings held by concerned citizens who find themselves unable to believe the official government version of events. These will take place in a number of cities around the country, including one in Virginia, literally overlooking the Pentagon.

           The location is symbolic because, as will be discussed later, the Pentagon attack is a crucial link to understanding what really happened on 9/11. The government insists that the 19 hijackers under the command of Osama bin-Laden and Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) were the sole responsible agents for all that happened, and this version is now enshrined in the “ National September 11 Memorial and Museum” on the site of the former Twin Towers. Nevertheless, there are several books from reputable persons which point out that the complexity of the 9/11 events is of an order of magnitude which is beyond the capability of any outside group such as al Qaida.

I have previously discussed Thierry Meyssan’s book 9/11 The Big Lie, which already raised serious questions about the government’s version of the events in 2002 (The 9/11 Truth Movement, June 1, 2012). His observations were supported in the following year by Andreas von Bülow, a former member of the German Bundestag as well as Secretary of Defense and subsequently for Technology and Research. In Die CIA und der 11. September – Internationaler Terror und die Rolle der Geheimdienste, he pointed out that 9/11 cannot be understood simply as the action of some fanatic Muslims. Members of various secret service intelligence organizations must have acted as enablers.

While the official version, contained in The 9/11 Commission Report,  insisted that the success of the hijackers was due to the government having failed to “connect the dots,” as a result of interagency rivalries, Kevin Fenton, who carefully studied all the relevant open source material, came to a different conclusion. In Disconnecting the Dots – How CIA and FBI officials helped enable 9/11 and evade government investigations he pointed out that information, which would have thwarted the impending hijacking was deliberately, rather than accidentally, withheld from the FBI and that there was also a disconnect within the FBI between the field agents and their superiors. He concluded “…there are major flaws in The 9/11 Commission Report, the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry report, the Justice Department’s Inspector General’s report and the CIA Inspector General’s report. The only way that this issue will ever be satisfactorily resolved is by a new, credible investigation.” It needs to be pointed out that these four reports are the only official documents the government has ever produced to explain the success of the hijack operations and thereby justified the notion of “intelligence failure.” This was to have been corrected by the establishment of a new bureaucracy and the appointment of a National Director of Intelligence.

The idea of “intelligence failure,” and its remedy, was thoroughly debunked by Paul R. Pillar who had served for decades in senior government intelligence positions and who is currently a professor in the Security Studies Program of Georgetown University. In his book Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy – Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform he made the point that it was not the intelligence community which failed, but that information was created to provide the justification for the government’s foreign policy. Although he concentrated especially on the Iraq invasion, the deliberate deceptions in The 9/11 Commission Report were also highlighted. The remedy, as far as Pillar is concerned, is not more bureaucracy, but government policies need to change. Currently foreign policy is politicized and “The narrow focus toward reform–extremely narrow in the case of fixation on the intelligence community’s organization chart–has missed most of the images that shape policy and most of the reasons those images are often flawed.” These images are provided via “think tanks” to the media, and are in essence nothing else but propaganda efforts by groups to get their agenda enacted.

The most glaring example of manufacturing “intelligence” was the Office of Special Plans (OSP) in the Pentagon. It existed officially from September 2002 to June 2003 and was created by then Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and headed by Douglas Feith. Its purpose was to provide links of Saddam Hussein to 9/11 and thereby a pretext for the Iraq invasion which the official intelligence community failed to come up with. The operation was “Top secret” and Feith reported directly to “Scooter” Libby in Vice-President Cheney’s office.

A small group of neoconservative Zionists needed the elimination of Saddam Hussein as Israel’s most dangerous enemy. Intelligence, from unreliable sources, including Ahmed Chalabi (The Niger Forgery, August 1, 2003), was slanted and presented to Cheney to provide the needed pretext for the Iraq invasion. Everybody in the intelligence community knew that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 but the American people had to be made to believe otherwise for the war to occur. The fact that this unprovoked aggression was a crime under international law, ever since the Nuremberg trials, did not matter.   Details can be found in Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker article, “The Stovepipe” http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/10/27/031027fa_fact  and James Bamford’s A Pretext for War – 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies.

It is, therefore, obvious that if we want to understand 9/11 we cannot simply focus on bin-Laden and Muslim fanatics but we also have to study the perceived needs of the Israeli government and the political forces which drive its leadership. Since this is what has been called “the third rail” of American politics, which must not be touched, and which receives practically no media attention, one has to be very careful not only in one’s choice of words but also in presenting whatever facts are available. One fundamental fact is that the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 has profoundly changed the power constellation in the Middle East. Herzl, its ideological founding father, knew that a Jewish state could not exist in the Muslim world without the backing of a foreign power. He had initially hoped that it would be Germany, but during WWI Zionists settled for the U.K. When the Brits had second thoughts about the wisdom of the enterprise they were made to yield through terror tactics (Bowyer Bell Terror out of Zion – The Fight for Israeli Independence), and the patronage was bestowed on America. President Truman was the first to recognize the country and by small steps Israel advanced from a friendly state, which could still be made to accede to America’s wishes by Eisenhower, to our most important ally in the region whose foreign policy goals have now become identified with ours.

The Ben-Gurion government, as well as all subsequent ones, never defined Israel’s borders and never produced a codified Constitution which would ensure equal rights to religious and ethnic minorities. The wars of independence from 1947-1949 created the Naqba, the forcible expulsion of Arabs from their homes and confiscation of their property, with the resulting Palestinian refugee problem. From the Zionist point of view which desired, and to some extent still desires, a Greater Israel on both sides of the Jordan, the absence of internationally accepted borders, of a codified Constitution and expulsion of Arabs was, of course, a means to an end and these fundamental factors are still operative today. The assumption was and still is that Palestinians, who have no power, are irrelevant.

Palestinians on the other hand didn’t see it this way. After the 1967 war the West Bank and East Jerusalem were de facto annexed by Israel, and when King Hussein of Jordan declared himself uninterested in the West Bank, its Muslim and Christian inhabitants became stateless. Since the rest of the world likewise did not care about the Palestinians’ problem some of them resorted to the only means available to attract attention – terrorism. There was the Israeli athletes’ hostage taking and their subsequent murder during the failed rescue attempt at the Munich Olympics. This was followed by several plane hijackings with the most spectacular one of Air France 139, which resulted in the raid on Entebbe airport. It led to the death of its Israeli commander, Jonathan Netanyahu, the brother of the current Prime Minister. In his memory the Netanyahu family founded the Jonathan Institute which from July 2-5, 1979 sponsored a “Conference on International Terrorism,” at the Jerusalem Hilton Hotel. It was the blueprint for what became America’s “War on Terrorism” after 9/11.     

The Conference proceedings were published by Benjamin Netanyahu in 1981 under the title International Terrorism – Challenges and Response. I strongly recommend to readers of this article that they study this important document. It is readily available on Amazon.com and lays out the strategy which the world community was urged to employ to meet a supposed universal threat. The language of the Israeli participants, largely echoed by other speakers, became that of President George W. Bush on the evening of September 11, 2001 when he declared that we shall make no difference between terrorists and states that harbor them. The underlying theme of the Conference organizers and their like-minded participants was: Terrorists, of whatever stripe, but especially the Soviet Union and the PLO, have declared war on all democracies and it therefore behooves the world to act in unison in the defense of the free world. The Conference’s goal was a call to arms. “There is no room for compromise. If free society does not awaken to the danger, that danger will threaten its very existence.” “Our main problem: The climate of Appeasement” was the title of Lord Chalfont’s presentation. In it he chastised journalists who did not refer to terrorists by that name and regarded it as Orwellian “newspeak” when they were referred to as “commandos, urban guerillas, or even ‘freedom fighters.’” He also urged that “the democratic countries of the world must act with great deal more courage, resolution, and even ruthlessness [emphasis added], than they have shown in the past.” It was a call to war with only a few dissenting voices from Europe and Canada who insisted that these acts need to be regarded as crimes.

The irony that some of the Israeli participants had officially been labeled terrorists by the British prior to 1948 seems to have eluded the attendees. For instance when then Prime Minister Begin talked about “Freedom Fighters and Terrorists” he excused the tactics which created the state of Israel with the statement that it was a “… fight for physical survival. That was the fight we, the Jews, conducted in the country historically known as Eretz Israel or the land of Israel since the days of the Prophet Samuel.” That the area was known as Palestine for the past 2000 years was not to be remembered.

The conference proceedings are a superb example of propaganda which eventually bore fruit. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the war advocates immediately shifted their attention to the Arab states in the Middle East. In 1996 a group of neoconservative American Zionists prepared a position paper for the newly elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu entitled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” I have briefly  mentioned it in the April 1, 2003 article (The Neocons’ Leviathan) and pointed out that not only did it urge the abrogation of the Oslo accords but also pushed for regime change in Iraq, Syria and Iran as well as a missile defense system. Furthermore,

 

To anticipate U.S. reactions and plan ways to manage and constrain those reactions, Prime Minister Netanyahu can formulate the policies and stress themes he favors in language familiar to the Americans by tapping into themes of American administrations during the Cold War which apply well to Israel. If Israel wants to test certain propositions that require a benign American reaction, then the best time would be before November 1996 [U.S. presidential elections].

 

The chief architect was Richard Perle who after 9/11 became one of the driving forces for the war against Iraq and among the co-signers was the already mentioned Douglas Feith. http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm. 

Their efforts did not stop with advice to Netanyahu. The same group, on an enlarged basis, created a think tank in 1997 under the name “Project for the New American Century [PNAC],” which urged increased military spending to make the U.S. the unrivaled global power for the 21st century. Any perceived threat should be met in a “preemptive manner” by overwhelming military force, with allies when available without them when not, and democracy was to be spread throughout the world. (December 1, 2005 (Albert Wohlstetter’s Disciples). In September 2000 PNAC published an extensive Position paper, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.” It outlined in detail what military and political steps the U.S. should take in order to enact the 1997 recommendations and also pointed out that the suggested “transformation strategy” should be carried out “in a manner so as not to unduly alarm America’s allies.” “Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”  http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf.

These ideas found no fertile ground in the Clinton administration but with the appointment of President Bush by the Supreme Court the entire neocon group became the dominant voice. Some of the signatories of the 1997 document like: Elliott Abrams, PaulWolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Zalmay Khalizad, I. Lewis Libby and Donald Rumsfeld moved into government positions, while others lent a helping hand with the media. It, therefore, should surprise no one that the positions advocated by this group became official policy as the “Bush doctrine” on the very day of 9/11 and the catastrophe was promptly called the “New Pearl Harbor.”

Although there have always been lingering doubts about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor having been entirely unforeseen, the majority of Americans still believe that it was an unprovoked surprise attack. But Robert Stinnett has recently done his best to put this myth to rest in Day of Deceit – The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor, which was published in 2000. His diligent search of documents, aided by the Freedom of Information Act, produced a key position paper by Lt. Commander Arthur H. McCollum, dated October 7, 1940, which detailed a proposed American Strategy towards Japan. The main aspects were: Japan was to be deprived of all natural resources, not only by the U.S. but also the U.K. and the Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia). China’s Chiang Kai-shek was to be logistically supported in his war against Japan, heavy cruisers and submarines were to be deployed in the Orient and the Pacific fleet was to be kept permanently in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands. Since Japan has no natural resources of its own it was felt that the economic measures would force it to go to war.

The memorandum was immediately sent to President Roosevelt, who over the coming year implemented all of its measures. Keeping the fleet in Hawaii was bitterly opposed by the Navy because its exposed position was regarded as dangerous and Admiral James O. Richardson urged it be returned to its home port in San Diego. He was overruled by FDR, relieved of his command, and replaced by Rear Admiral Husband S. Kimmel who also was promoted to full admiral. Roosevelt knew that sooner or later America would have to join the British in their fight against Hitler, but the country was vigorously opposed to entering the war. This is why the Japanese strategy was employed as a “backdoor” approach. Japan had to be maneuvered into firing the first shot. The attack did not come as a surprise to the Roosevelt administration because the U.S. had broken not only Japan’s diplomatic code but also that used by the navy. FDR was at all times fully aware of Japan’s activities. By November 1941 it was obvious that war was imminent but Admiral Kimmel and General Short, who were in charge of the defense of Pearl Harbor, were not included in the distribution of critical information. The fleet was sacrificed for the greater good: the defeat of Germany, Italy and Japan.

Stinnet concludes the book by stating that the moral justification for provoking Japan to go to war will be argued for years to come, but Roosevelt “must be viewed in the total context of his administration, not just Pearl Harbor.” In view of the “new Pearl Harbor” the following sentences deserve to be taken to heart.

 

The real shame is on the stewards of government who have kept the truth under lock and key for fifty years. It may have been necessary for wartime security to withhold the truth about Pearl Harbor until the war ended, but to do so for more than half a century grossly distorted the world’s view of American history. … Because they [cryptographers, interceptors, other military leaders and witnesses] were never called to testify for their country, we have been denied a full account of what happened from their perspective.

 

It is, therefore, clear that the American people have been deceived for decades about the full truth of December 7, 1941 and it is equally clear that we have not been told the full truth about September 11, 2001. I can say this with confidence because the Bush administration, instead of immediately calling for a full inquiry into this massive crime, first obstructed the Joint Inquiry by the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, and subsequently the establishment as well as the work of The 9/11 Commission (The 9/11 Cover-up, October 1, 2006). There has never been a full and impartial investigation and those members of our society who call for it are maligned as conspiracy theorists, and whistleblowers are persecuted. This bodes ill for the future of our country.

While one can understand the government’s motive to shield itself, it is more difficult to fathom why some obviously intelligent and thoughtful British writers would pour scorn on those who regard the government’s explanations as inadequate. Summers and Swan have recently published a magisterial tome of over 500 pages The Eleventh Day – The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin-Laden which, although faulting the Bush administration for having hidden the potential culpability of the Saudi and Pakistani secret services, gives full credence to the explanation of the destruction of the WTC, the damage to the Pentagon, and the fate of UA93. When one studies this book it becomes obvious that selective reading was involved in its genesis and that in some instances the wish to exonerate the Bush administration overcame reason. One example is the treatment of the attack on the Pentagon. The authors document that Hani Hanjour, the purported hijacker of AA77 which was supposed to have inflicted the damage, was a terrible pilot. But on the same page he is credited with having performed a manoeuver which military pilots stated they could not have performed (see Pilots for 9/11 Truth). Although Barbara Honegger, a former senior Military Affairs Journalist with the Naval Postgraduate School, has spent years on elucidating what happened at the Pentagon her work was not mentioned and the name appears only in an endnote as one of reputable persons who take issue with the government’s account in regard to the WTC.

The Pentagon attack has always taken a back seat in favor of the dramatic Twin Towers destruction but as Ms. Honegger points out it was the crucial aspect needed to turn a crime into a war. A destruction of private property, regardless of scale, might not have been sufficient but an attack on the country’s foremost military installation surely was. This was the second Pearl Harbor!

I have previously discussed why the government’s explanation is untenable (The 9/11 Cover-Up, October 1, 2006; 9/11 Remembered, October 1, 2011; The 9/11 Truth Movement, June 1 2012; The “Truthers,” July 1, 2012; Attempts at Raising 9/11 Awareness, August 1, 2012; The Vancouver 9/11 Hearings, September 1, 2012) and will, therefore, add only a few examples of misleading information by Summers and Swan. The authors mention that April Gallop, an Army information management specialist, had brought her baby boy to work because the baby-sitter was sick and that “After the plane hit, and waist deep in debris, she was horrified to see that the infant’s stroller was on fire–and empty. She found the baby, however, curled up in the wreckage and virtually unscathed, and both were rescued.”

Honegger had interviewed Gallop, who under oath provided a different version. Gallop stated that when she turned on her computer, rather than “after the plane hit,” a massive explosion occurred. Furthermore, she was not in the area of the plane impact but more than 100 feet to the north, in Wedge 2. She also smelled cordite and thought that a bomb had gone off. “Being in the Army with the training I had, I know what a bomb sounds and acts like, especially the aftermath, and it sounded and acted like a bomb…. There was no plane or plane parts inside the building, and no smell of jet fuel.”  Finally this event did not occur at 9:37, which is the official time for the plane impact, but Gallop’s wristwatch had stopped at 9:30 or just thereafter. That a major destructive event had occurred between 9:31 and 9:32 is also apparent from the stopped clock on the heliport firehouse, as well as an additional one from inside the Pentagon. Since these early times are indisputable, the 9:37 plane impact could not have been the only event.

Summers and Swan must have known this but they failed to report on it in their “Full  Story.” They also knew about Meyssan’s book but did not mention that he had quoted an important CNN interview on September 15, 2001 with Egypt’s then President Mubarak.

 

You remember Oklahoma… there came rumors immediately that the Arabs did it, and it was not Arabs, who knows… let us wait and see what is the result of the investigations, because something like this not an easy thing for some pilots who had been training in Florida, so many pilots go and train just to fly and have a license, that means you are capable to do such terrorist action? I am speaking as a former pilot, I know that very well, I flew very heavy planes, I flew fighters, I know that very well, this is not an easy thing, so I think we should not jump to conclusions for now.

 

Although Summers and Swan had mentioned Mubarak on several occasions in regard to pre 9/11 intelligence reports, the omission of this interview practically amounts to deception. The authors also used the tactic employed earlier in The 9/11 Commission Report of putting material which does not quite fit the version to be propagated, into the endnotes where readers usually don’t look. As all of us know the anticipated investigation Mubarak alluded to never took place.

As far as the Pentagon is concerned other eyewitnesses also stated that bombs had gone off at different times in various sections of the building including the innermost A and B rings which are far distant from the supposed “exit hole” in the C ring. High level military officers likewise stated that they had smelled cordite rather than jet fuel. In addition one needs to know that the section of the Pentagon, which the government states was hit from the outside, had recently been reinforced to withstand such terrorist attacks. It was used by military intelligence personnel who were trying to track $ 2.3 trillion which Secretary Rumsfeld had declared as missing only the previous day, September 10. Important financial records also disappeared in the destruction of the Twin Towers and WTC7 which included offices of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Crucial records for uncovering illegal financial operations were thereby lost. None of this critical information is mentioned in official reports or in Summers and Swan’s book. An extensive exposition of Honegger’s work exists on a DVD “Behind the Smoke Curtain – What happened at The Pentagon on 9/11, and What Didn’t, and Why it Matters,” which can also be seen on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fvJ8nFa5Qk and a summary is available in The 9/11 Toronto Report.

I have previously discussed the Toronto 9/11 Hearings (Attempts at Raising 9/11 Awareness, August 1, 21012), which were held from September 8-11, 2011 at Ryerson University, and the Proceedings are now available Amazon.com in the above mentioned Report. This book is currently the best account of the numerous questions the 9/11 Commission has left us with and it deserves the widest circulation. It also includes the comments by the four panelists who assessed whether or not the various speakers had indeed shown that a prima facie case exists, which demands a full inquiry by a duly constituted legal body with subpoena powers. Although one panelist felt that not enough evidence in favor of the government’s view had been presented, what was shown did create serious doubts in regard to the veracity of the government’s explanation. It was agreed that a crime had been committed which has never been properly investigated. As Italy’s former Supreme Court Justice, Ferdinando Imposito, stated

 

In case of inert behavior of the State, which has the duty to punish the culprits, it is possible to access the International Criminal Court, which has jurisdiction complementary to national criminal prosecutions. In 9/11, we have 1) Crimes against humanity committed as part of the widespread attack directed against the USA and civilians of other States; and 2) The case has not been investigated or prosecuted in the USA or any other country that has jurisdiction over it. The only possibility to have justice is to submit the best evidence concerning the involvement in 9/11 of specific individuals to the ICC [International Criminal Court] Prosecutor and ask him to investigate ….

 

Judge Imposito then listed the relevant statutes under which this could be done. If one were now to object that Osama bin-Laden was the guilty party and by killing him “justice was served,” as President Obama declared, we have to answer that civilized societies do not execute their adversaries without a proper trial. The same applies to KSM who likewise never had a public trial in criminal court. He is still in Guantanamo under military detention and the full transcript of a trial has never been made public. Since his “confession,” not only for 9/11 but a whole host of other terrorist acts, had been elicited by torture it would not be admissible in a public criminal court of law.

Inasmuch as the U.S. is not a signatory to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court it could ignore its proceedings, if the case were ever brought before it. Nevertheless, indictments would send a powerful message that U.S. citizens, regardless of their status, are not above the law of civilized countries and their conduct can be censured. Why is this important? The “new Pearl Harbor” succeeded in promoting the goals of a small fraction of neoconservative Zionists. Israeli security has become fully identified with American security and attacks against Israel have become attacks against America. The Netanyahu sponsored 1979 conference goals were achieved via 9/11. Since “Pearl Harbor” appears to have worked twice for a powerful insider group, if we do nothing now a third one is virtually guaranteed.

While the role of some members of government members in the perpetration of 9/11 remains unclear, that an ongoing cover-up exists is obvious. We must remember Watergate. It was not necessarily the burglary which cost Nixon the presidency, but the subsequent cover-up. “I am not a crook” he told us on TV because “when the president does it, it’s legal.” This holds for authoritarian states but cannot be condoned in a republic. Covering up malfeasance is a crime and this crime also needs to be investigated by a special prosecutor.

Unless our country comes to grips with these fundamental aspects of 9/11 we will go from war to war and disaster to disaster. This is also exemplified by the current drive to “punish Syria.” The planned military action makes no sense from an American point of view, but the destruction of the Syria-Iran axis has been a long standing goal of Israel, as documented by Israel Shahak in his book Open Secrets – Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies, which was in part discussed on August 15, 2002 (The Impending War with Iran). Only when we begin to listen to authentic Israeli voices who disagree with their government’s policies and those of America’s neoconservative Zionists will there be a possibility for a more peaceful future.

The War on Terror and “national security” will continue to be the pretext for increased secrecy and erosion of civil liberties. This is why the people of our country have to rise from their lethargy and demand government accountability. We need an international impartial investigation of all the 9/11 events and a special prosecutor who deals with the subsequent cover-up. This is the only way to save our democracy and regain the trust of the world.







September 29, 2013

SYRIA – IRAN AND THE USA

          For personal reasons this installment is written a few days earlier than usual but I do not expect any major events to occur over the weekend which would invalidate its contents.

          The last part of August and the month of September were again filled with events for history books and thus displaced 9/11 memorials from the headlines. Their nature and consequences will be debated for decades to come. During the night and early morning of August 21 rockets containing Sarin gas, were unleashed on the Ghouta suburb of Damascus. According to our government 1429 persons were killed including more than 400 children. Syria’s President Bashar al Assad was immediately made personally responsible for this atrocity and contingents of our fleet were ordered to move towards the Syrian coast as well as the Red Sea. Assad was to be “punished” by a barrage of tomahawk missiles. This measure was, according to our government, intended to degrade his capacity to continue the civil war and bring him to the negotiating table. President Obama assured us, however, that our ground troops would not be used in an invasion of Syria. Last year our president told us that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a “red line,” which if it were crossed by the Syrian government, would bring about immediate counteraction. Now the time had come to show that this was not an idle threat.

          Although it was “full steam ahead” for the administration, the country was clearly in no mood for another slide into war because the Iraq adventure with its still uncertain outcome was clearly on everybody’s mind. For some unexplained reason Obama then reconsidered and thought that before sending missiles into Syria it would be better to have approval by Congress. He would not have needed to do so because previous presidents, including Clinton, have readily sent cruise missiles into other countries without asking Congress. Nevertheless, he probably felt that it was better to err on the side of caution and, I am guessing now, in his heart of hearts he really didn’t want to do it anyway. We know that even his good wife, Michelle, was against it and potential domestic discord might also have entered into the decision. 

As it turned out Congress was in no mood either to send tomahawks to undefined targets in Syria and the military likewise wasn’t fond of the idea. Obviously, you can’t bomb the chemical weapons depots because they would poison the atmosphere, so what are you going to destroy in this “teaching lesson?” It now looked that Obama might lose this vote of confidence in Congress and he would be worse off than before.       In the meantime not only American ships appeared off the coast of Syria but also some from Russia, and even China was interested in observing the show from close-up. A showdown appeared inevitable.

Then the miracle happened. Putin threw Obama a lifeline which he eagerly grabbed. How this happened will probably also be debated for quite some time. The official version was that at a news conference, Secretary of State Kerry, who sounded quite bellicose, was asked what would happen if Assad were willing to surrender his chemical arsenal to international control by the UN? His offhand reply was that under these circumstances we would agree and there would be no missile strikes. Putin immediately endorsed the idea; put his full weight behind it, and for the time being the tomahawks remained securely on America’s offshore fleet. 

Kerry and his Russian counterpart then met in Geneva to hammer out an accord which would lead to a resolution by the UN’s Security Council. The talks were complicated because we insisted that any formula which orders Assad to surrender his chemical weapons must include a statement that if he failed to do so military action would follow. The Russians didn’t want to include a threat of force, but remarkably enough a face saving formula was agreed upon which sailed through the Security Council without a hitch on the night of the 27th.

During the month there also was a great deal of activity by leading players for the hearts and minds of people. Assad gave a number of hour-long interviews to French, Russian and American journalists in which he made his views known. The Americans were actually granted two interviews: one by PBS (Public Broadcasting System) with Charlie Rose and one by Fox News where former Congressman Dennis Kucinich participated. The Rose interview was characterized by an aggressive inquisitor who was convinced of Assad’s guilt on all counts, while the Fox News interviewers were more respectful. In all instances Assad kept his emotions under control. He did not rise to Rose’s baits and simply provided his version of the events. He insisted that the attack was perpetrated by rebel forces because he had no reason to resort to chemical weapons since he was already winning the war. He would be happy to put his chemical arsenal under international supervision and let the UN get rid of it. He also stated that the rebel army has been largely taken over by foreign Muslim extremists and the Syrian people, as a result of concessions and amnesties, are rallying to his side. It is up to the international community to get the foreigners out of his country by refusing to pay and supply them with weaponry. Once this has been achieved there will be general elections. Although he will be a candidate he would abide by the will of the voters and step aside if his party were to lose. On one point he was adamant: foreign intervention must stop and it is up to the Syrian people to solve Syrian problems. Furthermore, if there were to be military action by Western powers he could not be held responsible for the consequences. The conflict has become regional in the Mideast and Muslim extremism would be strengthened everywhere. This message was the same in all interviews regardless who he was talking with.

President Putin also did something else which was rather unusual; he wrote an opinion editorial for the New York Times which was quite conciliatory although he did not believe in “American exceptionalism.” This raised the ire of our conservatives, and former presidential candidate Senator John McCain weighed in by sending his editorial to Pravda. In it he lectured the Russian people that they deserve someone better than Putin and the implicit message was that the sooner they get rid of him the sooner they would be in America’s good graces. The editorial was typical for the mindset of a great many of our Republicans, namely that we are ordained by God to impose our will on other nations. It reminded me of a spoof on a Munich beer hall song during the Nazi era: “… und willst du nicht mein Bruder sein, dann hau ich dir den Schaedel ein” – and if you don’t want to be my brother then I’ll smash your head to bits.

The Putin attempt to reach the American people was promptly taken up by another one of our “sworn enemies,” the newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who sent a conciliatory opinion editorial to the Washington Post. With Russia and Iran as well Syria appearing reasonable, our hawks immediately rose to the challenge and pointed out that the Assad-Putin-Rouhani trio is hardly trustworthy. They asserted that this charm offensive was simply a trick to let Assad off the hook, and as far as Iran is concerned a play for time while they continued to work on the development of their bomb.

On the morning of the 24th of this month the sun seemed to finally shine on peace after Obama’s speech before the UN General Assembly. CNN assembled its most prominent commentators and it was agreed that peace might be at hand. Later in the day Obama and Rouhani would meet face to face and shake hands. Well, that hope lasted about a couple of hours. Then came the announcement that there wouldn’t be a meeting because the Iranians had placed obstacles in the way. It is axiomatic that the other side always gets the blame but as Reuters, in a more neutral tone, pointed out, the American and Iranian staff members had failed to reach agreement on the meeting. Rouhani afterwards mentioned that this high level meeting would have been too early.

In his speech later in the day Rouhani insisted that his country does not want to develop nuclear bombs and will never do so. But he also pointed out that the belligerent tone of other countries with “the military option remains on the table” is not helpful. He asked for respect, but he did not get it from the country that matters most. The Israeli delegation had been ordered by Prime Minister Netanyahu to leave the hall before Rouhani had even uttered a single word. He called Rouhani’s statements on the nuclear issue a “smokescreen” and the policy, as reported in the SL Tribune of the 25th, as “smile but enrich.” Schooled in psychoanalytic thought this immediately brought to mind Freud’s projection theory and Israel’s policies in regard to the negotiations with the Palestinians, “smile but proliferate settlements.” So for respect Rouhani had to make do with the French Prime Minister, the Austrian chancellor, and Pakistan’s as well as Fiji’s president and several Foreign Ministers.

This was essentially the narrative as presented to the American public and will likely be enshrined as “history.” But as usual the story is one-sided and for a fuller picture we have to go to the Internet and read what the “enemy” has to say. The events of the Bush and now Obama era with the concomitant unilateral propaganda vividly reminded me of my adolescence where in 1942 and early 1943, when my brother was already in the Wehrmacht and my parents were at mother’s store, I sat every afternoon at 5 p.m. with my ear glued to the radio listening to BBC’s “Sendung für die deutsche Wehrmacht.” The volume had to be turned to a minimum because listening to enemy broadcasts was punishable by death. A habit was born in these days. Since any dispute involves two people with each one claiming to have the only truth it behooves one to listen to both sides and then decide which one appears more plausible. Fortunately, we still have a relatively uncensored Internet and one no longer risks one’s life when one investigates the views from the other side.

Right from the start, I was bothered by the statement that Assad was personally culpable for the chemical attack because I could see no reason why he should have ordered this massacre. Even we had acknowledged that he was gaining the upper hand over the rebels and UN inspectors had actually been in the country since August 18 to investigate chemical attacks which had occurred earlier in the year. The UN team was there on Assad’s invitation; so why would he order a Sarin attack on suburbs of Damascus when the inspectors were sitting only a few miles away in a downtown hotel?  It just didn’t make good sense. The opposite scenario, namely an attack by rebel forces seemed considerably more reasonable. They were losing, needed outside support and a chemical disaster could be turned into a propaganda coup of unmatched proportions. 

Before pursuing this alternative view, we have to study the UN inspectors’ report which was released earlier this month. Their mission was a simple one: find out whether or not Sarin had been used as alleged by the rebels and the U.S. government. Their task did not include ascertainment of who fired the rockets. Our government was against the inspections and asserted that they were unnecessary; we already knew what had happened and who had done it. It was also alleged that Sarin readily decomposes and negative results would be meaningless. Nevertheless the inspectors did proceed and succeeded against all odds in establishing that, “… the environmental, chemical and medical samples we have collected, provide clear and convincing evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used in Ein Tarma, Moadamiya and Zamalka in the Ghouta area of Damascus.”

Appendix IV provided medical data and Appendix V dealt with recovered munitions. It was established that two separate attacks had occurred during the night, one involving the eastern suburbs of Zamalka-Ein Tarma and another on the southwestern suburb Moadamiya. From the medical point of view I noted that only a relatively small number of survivors could be clinically examined (36 persons), but blood and urine samples were found positive for Sarin in “a large proportion.” Apart from interviews with an unspecified number of survivors, a chart review of eight patients who had been admitted to Zamalka hospital was performed. “Records of survivors who demonstrated moderate to severe symptoms and signs were prioritized.”  The probable reason for these small numbers, of what has been portrayed as a massive massacre, may have been related to the fact that the investigators had very little time for their work because only temporary cease-fires could be arranged. The total time spent in Ein Tarma - Zamalka was five and a half hours on two separate days, while Moadamiya was visited once for two hours. Nevertheless, the data were obviously sufficient to establish the fact of Sarin having been used.

Appendix V, although not dealing with who fired the rockets, did establish trajectories from impact craters which could be used to ascertain the site of firing. Two such landmarks were available in Moadamiya and one in Zamalka. The trajectories for the Moadamiya sites were 215 and 214 degrees respectively indicating that the rockets came from the same launcher. The Zamalka site showed a trajectory of 105 degrees. Although Moadamiya does not show up under this spelling on Google Earth the location can be found on other maps of the Damascus area and Zamalka does show up. When I plotted the 215 degree trajectory of Moadamiya and the 105 degree trajectory of Zamalka they converge on the area around Mount Qasioun, where a detachment of the Republican National Guard was stationed. This is in accord with what our government has concluded. Two rocket motors had also been found with one having, in addition to numbers, Cyrillic letters. The UN report makes it clear, therefore, that at least these impact sites came from government held regions. Although the UN report noted that ordinance had been handled and moved prior to the inspectors’ arrival as well as during their visit, the Zamalka crater was in an open field and the “projectile had remained dug in until investigated.”

These are the facts we have been presented with, and notably, there is no official number for the victims of the attack. As mentioned the Obama administration immediately stated that 1,429 persons were killed among whom were over 400 children, but no explanation was given how such a precise number could have so soon been available. The UN report did not give numbers and merely stated that chemical weapons had been used “also against civilians, including children on a relatively large scale.” We know the old saying that “figures don’t lie but liars figure” and this truth is fully borne out in the present case. Here are some of the numbers for persons who have been reported killed in these two attacks: France Intelligence Services 281, UK intelligence services 350, Doctors without Borders 355, Damascus Media Office 494, Violation Documentation Syria 624, Human Rights Organization 1,222, Syrian National Council 1,300, U.S. government 1429 and Free Syrian Army 1,729.  Obviously they can’t all be true and equally obviously the highest numbers come from the rebel side that has the most to gain from inflated counts.

The evidence upon which we were to go to war with Syria was supplied by videos. These had to come from the rebel side because no one else was on the scene right away. We were shown only a few of these videos but Congress was supposedly treated to more of them which were regarded as highly impressive. When I tried to find them on the Internet I noticed that most were difficult to interpret except for some groups of about a dozen dead children. But what struck me was that they were dressed for daytime activities rather than in nightclothes. With a sufficient dose of Sarin death is instantaneous and the two attacks occurred respectively between 2-3 and 4-5 a.m. I wondered: why would somebody dress these children before putting them into the white shrouds required for burials?

One possible answer came from an unlikely source hardly anybody has ever heard of before: Mother Agnes Mariam of the Cross who is Mother Superior of the monastery of St. James in Qara, Syria. The monastery is ancient, dating to the 6th century, and has frequently been destroyed. But in 1994 the aforementioned Mother Superior took the reins. The monastery was restored with the help of the Syrian General Directorate of Antiquities and at last report housed an international community of 14 people. But Mother Agnes Mariam has an additional job: President of the International Support Team for Musalaha in Syria (IST). Needless to say, I knew nothing about the existence of such an organization and what Musalaha stood for but Wikipedia enlightened me.

We are told that Musalaha is a non-profit organization that works towards reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians based on the biblical principles of peace, justice and love. The name Musalaha is Arabic and denotes reconciliation. Its Board members are Messianic Jewish Israeli as well as Palestinian Christian leaders in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The organization was founded in 1990 after the first Intifada by Dr. Salim J. Munayer, an Israeli Palestinian from Lod. Their vision was to create a neutral space for Messianic Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Christians to meet with each other and receive training in reconciliation. 

I originally found Mother Agnes’ writings on the Canadian website http://www.globalresearch.ca which has informative reports about trouble spots from around the world. Although the site has what may be called an “anti U.S. imperialism” bias, an intelligent person is able to sift facts from fancy. On September 9 it published an interview of Mother Agnes Mariam with reporters from the news network Russia Today (RT) headlined: Mother Agnes Mariam: Footage of Chemical Attack in Syria is a Fraud.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/mother-agnes-mariam-footage-of-chemical-attack-in-syria-is-fraud/5348939. In this interview she raised several questions about the videos which were the purported evidence for the intended missile strikes. Her contention was that the video footage was a “frame-up.” “It had been staged and prepared in advance with the goal of framing the Syrian government as the perpetrator.” She did not deny that an attack had taken place, but she questioned the reliability of the footage. She also mentioned a double standard by the western media having failed to report on a massacre by extremist rebels on villages in northern Syria where 500 people including women and children were killed. Her major concern about the videos in that interview was the timing of the release of the footage. How is it possible, she asked, that Reuters could publish these pictures at 6:05 in the morning when the attack had barely ended? She also asked: Where are the parents? She promised the interviewers that a full description of the video problem and its relationship to the mentioned tragedy in northern Syria would soon be submitted to the UN.

A preliminary version of the report is now available and can be viewed on http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-chemical-attacks-in-east-ghouta-used-to-justify-a-military-intervention-in-syria/5349928. The article contains a link to the pdf. report which analyzes video footage. The main points from the Introduction are:

 

We found that, as a whole, the videos present a clear absence of a normal Syrian family life, with no signs of a resident civilian population. While the proliferation of young males and children everywhere, dead or alive, let us wonder who they are and what they are doing in East Ghouta without their families.… Moreover, our study highlight [sic] without any doubt that their little bodies were  manipulated and disposed with theatrical arrangements to figure in the screening.… Thus we accuse the editors of the videos of artificial treatment of what should have been honest information footage…. We present this work to distinguished Spiritual Leaders, Heads of States, Heads of Delegations, Senators, Members of Parliament, Humanitarian Actors and to any person that has a heart for truth and justice and that seeks true accounting for evil deeds.

           

          When one views the footage shown it is apparent that this very extensive material was assembled in some haste with limited resources. Some of the captions do not seem to match the content of the pictures and the video sources which are provided are as yet not linked. I could also not copy and paste the URLs and they were, therefore, difficult to access. Furthermore, the conclusions in regard to some of the statements can be questioned. Nevertheless, the overall substance does indeed give rise to concern. For instance: a picture is shown purported to have been used to document the Sarin attack, yet the same picture had previously been published in Egypt showing victims of the revolution in that country. On other occasions the rebels had used pictures of the same child as a gas attack victim but supposedly obtained from separate geographic locations.

          The presentation closes with a discussion of the massacre by rebel jihadists in 11 Alawite villages of Lattakiah province in northern Syria. Hundreds of civilians were killed with conventional weapons on August 4, 2013, and 150 women and children were abducted. It is the contention of the Mother Superior’s video review that some of these children may have been used in the Sarin attack footage. She provided the names of 59 of the abducted children as well as of six who were killed in these attacks. The list also contains the names of over 200 adults who were killed, missing, or abducted and is as yet incomplete. 

          In a subsequent interview with RT Mother Agnes Mariam stated that she had met with several families in the Lattakhia area and “ They told me they had recognized their children in the videos capturing the alleged victims of the chemical attack in East Ghouta.” http://syria360.wordpress.com/2013/09/18/mother-agnes-de-la-croix-staged-filming-of-the-august-21-cw-attack. 

          When I then typed “Sister Agnes Miriam” into Google, I received within 0.26 seconds 196,000 results! Her current Internet popularity resulted from the fact that Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, had hinted at her writings, and journalists then looked into her background. I now shall summarize only the information from recent articles in the New York Times. Sister Agnes Miriam is the daughter of Palestinian refugees and was born in Lebanon. After a somewhat turbulent adolescence she converted to Catholicism and eventually became Mother Superior of the mentioned monastery in Syria. In 2011 she published an open letter to President Assad about the disastrous conditions in some Syrian hospitals and prisons, also complaining about torture which had taken place in some of them. When the Syrian revolt became dangerous for Christians, she spoke out against the jihadist elements who in turn threatened her life. She then temporarily left the monastery and moved to Lebanon, although she continues to visit Syria. The above-mentioned detailed video-analysis report was written feverishly on her laptop over a few weeks in a Geneva hotel. The site was chosen to provide an opportunity for personal contact with members of the UN Human Rights Commission.

          I believe that this explains the previously mentioned unevenness of the video-analysis report and why she is persona non grata for our media. She is regarded as a propaganda tool for Assad and Russian endorsement hardly works in her favor as far as our ruling circles are concerned. Yet it behooves us to listen to her; the UN should look at her report and then perform a professional investigation of the videos. The matter is too serious to be left in the hands of amateurs and parties with conflicting interests.

          The Sarin attacks also immediately brought to mind another galvanizing event for our first war against Saddam Hussein – the baby incubator story. Saddam’s finances had been depleted in the Iraq-Iran war in which we had supported him. He was in debt to Kuwait and tried to negotiate a settlement. When the Emir balked, Saddam decided to annex Kuwait which had actually always belonged to Iraq even when it was part of the Ottoman Empire before the British snatched it and created a separate Emirate under their protection. President Bush 41 was not interested in this takeover because Saddam after all was the counterweight to Iran. The American public likewise didn’t care. But two things happened. The Iron Lady, Maggie Thatcher, took our president to task at a symposium in Aspen with “Now George, don’t you go wobbly on us,” or words to that effect. The Brits still considered Kuwait as their stomping grounds and had no use for Saddam getting more oil. Bush, who still smarted from the Chicken Kiev epithet he had received earlier for not sufficiently standing up for Ukrainian rights, promptly fell in line. But there was still the problem of how to make a war against Saddam palatable. Kuwait’s emir, who had fled to Saudi Arabia, hired an American PR firm to make propaganda for Kuwait’s “liberation.”  Their coup was a story which had begun to circulate that the Iraqi soldiers had thrown babies out of their incubators to the floor where they died and the incubators were shipped off to Baghdad. When an “eye-witness” to this event testified before a Congressional Human Rights Caucus, albeit not under oath, an outcry against this dastardly deed occurred and popular support for the ensuing Gulf War was assured. But this was not all; our forces needed a staging area and Saudi Arabia was the only reasonable place for it. The Saudis had to be pressured to allow foreign troops on their soil which was strictly against their grain. Therefore, the fiction that Saddam was about to invade Saudi Arabia was peddled for which there was not a shred of evidence. This in turn was deeply resented by devout Muslims and especially one by the name of Osama bin Laden who might have used the Arab equivalent of Bush’s  words in regard to the Kuwait problem: “This will not stand.” We know what Osama did thereafter, but that the baby incubator story was a lie, just as the danger to Saudi Arabia was, did not make headlines. As it turned out the “eye-witness” hadn’t seen anything at all and was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the USA. This is how countries are driven into war, and it looks like we may well be in for another round. This is also the reason why the Mother Superior should receive help from everyone to bring out the truth about these videos.

          As mentioned above, the trajectories of the rockets examined by the UN, leads to the conclusion that they were fired from a Syrian government base. But this does not necessarily mean that the order came from Assad. It has been pointed out that gas grenades might have been mistakenly loaded among regular shells or that there are renegade elements within the Syrian army that might have been responsible. We don’t have facts and one can be reasonably certain that both sides will be lying. 

          Next week we are going to be treated to a speech by Prime Minister Netanyahu at the UN and a visit with Obama in Washington. Whether or not there will be a repeat of his June 2011 Congressional triumph (Bibi’s Finest Hour) is not yet known. Although “peace” will again be touted in public, it may not come to pass any time soon. I am saying this in spite of the conciliatory efforts by Obama who even phoned Rouhani on the 27th before the latter left American soil. The reason for my skepticism resides in the awareness that the current peace offensive deeply troubles not only our homegrown hawks but also those from abroad.

All of this is taking place against an internal background of massive dissension over government spending with a threat of shutting down the government altogether unless Obama’s “Affordable Health Care Act” is defunded. There was worry earlier in the month about Obama’s credibility in the world after he had failed to go through with the military strike, but the disgraceful spectacle our lawmakers are now providing for the world does not seem to concern them. That a credible foreign policy depends on having your own house in order appears to elude them.

Today the world has a genuine opportunity for a peaceful resolution of various conflicts. But it must be tightly grasped lest it will slide out of our hands for a long time to come. Since events are moving rapidly, and this website has as its goal to present Zeitgeschichte, the next installment will appear in the middle of October. It will discuss Netanyahu’s visit and the overall Israeli-Palestinian question which Obama has vowed, in his UN speech, to devote himself to during the rest of his presidency. 







October 15, 2013

BEREFT OF GOOD SENSE

          Last month’s installment ended on a note of optimism because military intervention in Syria was avoided and President Obama had agreed to hand this messy problem over to the UN. I was, however, concerned that Israel might not look with favor on this change of affairs and especially on a potential rapprochement with the clerical regime in Iran. Prime Minister Netanyahu had made his position of profound distrust in regard to Iran’s “charm offensive” clear, even prior to his speech at the UN. The Iranians, therefore, reciprocated the Israeli’s walkout before Rouhani’s speech and likewise didn’t listen to what Netanyahu had to say. In essence the Prime Minister was miffed and promised that even if Israel had to stand alone against Iran’s presumed nuclear armaments, it would take unilateral action. He was emphatic that there could be no compromise on Israel’s security. While this may sound reasonable, “security” is such a flexible concept that it can be invoked for any and all activities one may want to pursue, as the continued West Bank settlements demonstrate.

          Although a domestic crisis was already brewing when I wrote the last sentences of the September 29 installment, I had hoped that our “lawmakers” in Washington would show some good sense and achieve a compromise on the budget issue rather than shut down the government. It was not to be. “Non-essential” aspects of government such as the National Parks and monuments, the Library of Congress, medical research funding etc., were closed and hundreds of thousand government workers “furloughed.” At the time of writing the shutdown continues although last week some attempts were made to re-open certain government aspects piece-meal. Subsequently, our so-called representatives decided that they might as well keep most of the government shut down until they come to an agreement on raising the debt ceiling. This needs to be done by the 17th to cover the costs of programs which have exceeded the budgeted expenses. Currently there are dire warnings that if the impasse in Congress continues the government would default on loan payments and not only our economy but that of the rest of the world would be in serious trouble. Christine Lagarde, managing director and chairman of the International Monetary Fund, has already expressed concern over another global recession if no compromise between the two parties is reached by Thursday. Unless Congress were to show utter callous irresponsibility it is likely that some last minute deal will be struck and its members will again fall back on the true and tried method of “kicking the can down the road.” A temporary budget and short term extension of the debt ceiling will be passed. Theoretically this would give the two sides breathing time to work out more lasting solutions. But this was done last year, no compromise was reached and automatic across the board spending cuts, “sequesters,” are already in progress. Unless repealed, they are scheduled to last for years to come.

          Our friends around the world must be scratching their heads and wonder how a great country like ours, which claims “leadership of the free world,” can behave in such a foolish way. In my opinion, part of the problem dates back to President Obama’s first inauguration. Within hours Rush Limbaugh, a highly influential Republican radio personality, announced that “I disagree fervently [with Republicans who say about Obama] we’ve got to give him a chance.” His reason was that Obama is an out and out liberal whose programs would ruin our country and “I hope that he will fail.” An excerpt of the talk can be seen on http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/rush-limbaugh-passes-out-his-marching-o . This was the rallying cry some diehards had been waiting for and the intention was to block all of Obama’s legislative efforts so that he would become a one-term president. Although both the Senate and the House had slim democratic majorities in 2009, Obama’s legislative proposals were fought tooth and nail by requiring not only a simple majority vote but a “super majority” of two thirds of the votes. This could only be accomplished if the Democrats made significant concessions to Republican demands. As a result bills were either obstructed or when passed, they contained aspects that were disliked by both parties.

The best example is, of course, the “Affordable [health] Care Act” (ACA), which was supposed to see to it that every American has health insurance. The legislation was vigorously fought against by the Republicans who saw it as Obama’s attempt toward creating a European type Social Democracy in our country. The fight occupied all of Obama’s first year in office and when a final version was passed it had such significant flaws that both sides were dissatisfied. The Republicans then vowed that, instead of making some needed improvements, the legislation has to be repealed altogether. Furthermore, our legislators have come up with a new wrinkle. Potentially controversial pieces of legislation are endlessly debated and amendments are included which lead from a simple document of a few pages, which anyone could understand, to a final piece of legislation that contains hundreds, if not thousands, of pages. The compromises are hashed out by committees and are then voted on by the full House and Senate. This has led to the absurdity that the final bill that was to be voted on reached the full House and Senate on such short notice that the individual lawmaker didn’t have a chance to read what he/she was really voting on.

Although the ACA was a windfall for private insurance companies, Republicans continued their fight by declaring it unconstitutional. The legislation had to go all the way to the Supreme Court which, to most everyone’s surprise, sided with Obama and the ACA is currently the law of the land. In addition the last election was also a referendum on “Obamacare.” Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, had declared that he would abolish it as soon as he sat down in the Oval Office. Although the Republicans lost the presidency, they gained a majority in the House which now lies at the root of the current impasse. Instead of passing a budget, as was routinely done in most other years, the Republican House members attached a rider which would have defunded the ACA. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, was the thought behind it. There was, of course, no way, for the Democrat majority in the Senate to pass such a budget and the government shutdown was on its way.

Both sides dug in their heels. Republicans tried to somewhat water down their objections by limiting them to certain key aspects of the ACA but the Democrats insisted that the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, should allow a vote on the budget without any strings attached. Since it was regarded as highly likely that the Republicans would lose this vote he resisted and the stalemate dragged on. One of the main Republican objections to the ACA is a provision that everybody has to pay something for health insurance. If one is not insured at present, one will have to buy insurance on the open market and whoever is unwilling to do so will be fined a certain sum. This raised the fury of the defenders of freedom. Yet the provision is necessary because unless young and healthy people buy insurance the companies would go broke. Without this income the costs for the ageing population and those with “preexisting conditions,” such as diabetes, epilepsy and others, could not have been covered. Yet if one thinks about it the appeal to loss of freedom is really just propaganda because, for instance, we have to buy insurance if we want to drive a car. If we don’t we get fined. While our Republicans fret over loss of liberty in the ACA they have absolutely no problem with the PATRIOT act which has much more profound restrictions on our constitutional freedoms. 

While the immediate budget and debt ceiling problems will be plastered over, hardly anyone of our media pundits talks about the long term consequences of a polarized country and a legislature that periodically immobilizes itself. But this is precisely what we should be concerned about. As a Viennese, the current sad spectacle brought to mind events which occurred during my lifetime in Austria. Although the child obviously could not understand the background of the political events as they unfolded in March of 1933, in February and July of 1934 and the final catastrophe of March 1938, this deficit was made up later and resulted in the book War&Mayhem. March 4, 1933 was the day when Austria’s First Republic died. The reasons are largely unknown in the USA but since they bear a distinct similarity to what is happening here at this time I shall briefly summarize them here.

The collapse of the Kreditanstalt in 1931, as a sequel to the Wall Street collapse of 1929, had plunged the country into a deep economic depression. The two major political parties, the Social Democrats, popularly referred to as the Sozis or Reds, were in fierce opposition to the Christian Socialist party, the Blacks (the color of the clerical garb). In addition the Groszdeutschen were represented in Parliament. This party felt that the post-1918 mutilated Austria was not viable and they wanted union with Germany, although it was forbidden by the victorious Allies. The Legitimists, who favored a return of the monarchy, the National Socialists (Nazis) and Communists had not garnered sufficient votes to be represented in Parliament. The government under the Christian Socialist chancellor, Engelbert Dollfusz, had 83 votes while opposition Social Democrats could muster 82. Under these circumstances parliamentary wrangling over pieces of legislation was inevitable and the government could fall at any moment. Furthermore one must know that there was intense dislike, if not outright hatred, between the major parties which dated to the beginning days of the Republic in 1918 and was exacerbated by events in 1927. I have chronicled them in the first part of War&Mayhem, which can be downloaded from this site. They can be found under the key word Schutzbund. 

The immediate precipitant for the crucial March 4, 1933 vote was about an aborted general strike by railroad workers. As mentioned, the country was practically bankrupt, and the government was forced to pay the salaries and pensions for the railroad personnel in three installments instead of, as usual, a monthly lump sum. In addition cuts in salaries and pensions were envisaged for the future. A strike could have been disastrous because the population depended on the railroads for bringing the necessities of daily life to the people of the country, the same way we depend on the trucking industry. A decree had been in existence ever since the war to allow the government to ensure the livelihood of the population and this was now enacted. The army occupied the railroad terminals and the ringleaders were arrested. The question before Parliament was: what to do with the leaders of the strike? The opposition demanded amnesty while the government wanted to set an example that in those difficult economic times strikes were not tolerated.

Since the government coalition had only one vote to spare an effort was made to coral all members of Parliament for this crucial session. But in the end the opposition had 81 votes and the government 80. The president, Karl Renner a Socialist, was not allowed to vote. When the votes were tallied the government representatives became frantic and challenged the vote. A parliamentary farce ensued thereafter. In order to garner more red votes the Social Democrat president was persuaded to yield the chair to the Christian Socialist 2nd president. With this stratagem they would get an additional vote while the government would lose one. But the ruse backfired. The 2nd president resigned and the Groszdeutsche 3rd president refused to serve. Without a president business could not be conducted and everybody went home in disgust.

Dollfusz, whose term of office had only started in May of 1932, and who had labored under similar difficulties as Obama has experienced with Congress, then decided that since Parliament had in essence defaulted on its duties he would run the country without it. The situation was to be temporary to gain some breathing room until new general elections could be held. But there was a problem. Not quite two months earlier Hitler had taken over in Germany and the Reichstag had gone up in flames a few weeks later during an election campaign with the votes to be cast on March 5. Since it was certain that he would win, it was a foregone conclusion that not only propaganda would now flood Austria but German money would abundantly flow to the Austrian Nazi party. This would bring them into Parliament, a fate which had to be avoided. The rest of the story can be found in War&Mayhem. Suffice it to say that the Christian Socialists tried to run the country, but without the Social Democrats they were always in the minority and therefore had no chance when Hitler made a temporary end to the country in March of 1938. 

It is obvious that analogies should not be stretched, but there are commonalities. The most important one is a chief executive, be it chancellor or president, who is, for a variety of reasons, disliked and distrusted by a major segment of the population. The second one is the polarization of the two major political parties where at least in one the most extreme elements have become dominant and spread fear about what the other side is planning to do. In Austria it was the fear of civil war, which had been threatened by the Reds, while the Reds feared an authoritarian government which would deprive them of their hard won social success for the underprivileged. In the US the fear is currently spread by Republicans who paint Obama and the Democrats as arch liberals who will not only take over the major private industries and will curb Wall Street but will even impose restrictions on one of the people’s most cherished possession – guns. Thus, fear propaganda was and is the tool. But those who promote fear forget Job’s lament: What I have feared, has come to pass!

The differences between the Austrian and American situation are obviously major ones. Austria was a small country in the throes of a severe economic depression and her great neighbors Germany and Italy had authoritarian governments. America is a superpower on a continent with friendly democratic neighbors and the economic recession is at present still manageable. Nevertheless imagine for a moment what would happen if the current bitterness between our two parties not only persisted but got worse. Senate and House would remain deadlocked, the government would run out of money to pay its bills. Social security checks, government pensions, Medicare and Medicaid payments would not be forthcoming, investors would start selling stocks and bonds, Wall Street would crash and the economy would take a nose dive. Under those circumstances there would be riots in the streets and the government, regardless of which party would be in charge, would declare a national emergency and assume autocratic powers. We would be told that these measures are temporary but as the Russians under the Czar wryly commented: nothing is as permanent as a temporary ukas (proclamation). This scenario obviously will not happen in the near term but unless America’s people, including our lawmakers, come to their senses it will become inevitable in the future. 

It is commonplace to compare the USA with ancient Rome and a visit to D.C. will readily demonstrate that the city abounds with Roman style architecture. But although Rome ruled the world for centuries, the empire first broke into half and subsequently disintegrated altogether. In the past all empires have fallen and America is not likely to become an exception to the rule. I have come to the conclusion that history repeats not because of inevitability but because people’s emotions have not changed and each generation regards itself superior to the previous one. This inhibits learning from the past. America is especially vulnerable in this respect because world history and the humanities in general, are not properly taught in high school and college where increasing emphasis is on “practical” subjects such as science and technology. This mistake is bound to extract its price.

In 1957 the French historian Amaury de Riencourt published a treatise: The Coming Caesars, which can be regarded as a sequel to de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, published somewhat over one hundred years earlier. In it the author explored the difference between culture and civilization and drew comparisons between ancient Greece/Rome and Europe/America. Just as Greece and its Hellenic culture in Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa had been absorbed by Roman civilization, America has taken over Europe’s cultural heritage. The distinction between culture and civilization lay in his opinion in the time domain. A young and restless individualistic people produce new thoughts and values, which in time become organized, mechanistic and egalitarian.

 

Civilization aims at the gradual standardization of increasingly large masses of men within a rigidly mechanical framework–masses of “common men” who think alike, feel alike, thrive on conformity, are willing to bow to vast bureaucratic structures, and in whom the social instinct predominates over that of the creative individual. It could be said metaphorically that Cultures are the systoles and Civilizations the diastoles of human evolution, relaying each other endlessly, the pulsating heartbeat of history.

 

This interpretation of history’s inner development has a special meaning for us today because we are in the very process of switching from European Culture to American Civilization.

 

In de Riencourt’s opinion the long term evolution of Civilizations, as far as the political organization of the society is concerned, has always been from a democratic to an authoritarian rule. This does not come suddenly and against the wishes of the people but rather gradually. The transitions can be marked by violence as in the Roman civil wars prior to Augustus but these are only way stations. Caesarism allows the form of democratic institutions to persist but their power has been handed over to one individual. Why does this happen? People get tired of their freedom which requires individual choices and the responsibility for their outcome. He wrote

 

More honest and more perceptive than many of our contemporaries, Cicero, without the benefit of our historical perspective, pointed it out clearly: ‘It is due to our own, moral failure, and not to any accident of chance that, while retaining the name, we have lost the reality of a republic.’

 

New emergencies and the ceaseless trend toward democratic equality brushed aside Rome’s conservative reaction. There was no more ruling class and there was urgent need for a strong, farsighted ruler.

 

 

This ruler appeared first in the form of Julius Caesar and subsequently Augustus. One may now think that this is ancient history and has nothing to with us in the 21st century. But America is a de facto empire and overstretched. The separation of powers in government is no longer working, there is a national debt of nearly $17 trillion and the country totters on the brink of a serious economic recession. In addition we have, as de Riencourt remarked, already a potential proto-Caesarian chief executive. I had never thought of our presidency in this manner but he was correct when he wrote,

 

In truth, no mental effort is required to understand that the President of the United States is the most powerful single human being in the world today. Future crises will inevitably transform him in a full-fledged Caesar, if we do not beware. Today he wears ten hats–as Head of State, Chief Executive, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chief Legislator, Head of Party, Tribune of the People, Ultimate Arbitrator of Social Justice, Guardian of Economic Prosperity and World Leader of Western Civilization. Slowly and unobtrusively these hats are becoming crowns and this pyramid of hats is slowly metamorphosing itself into a tiara, the tiara of one man’s world imperium.

 

One may regard this as an exaggeration but he pointed to Franklin Roosevelt as the first proto-Caesar who in fact drove America by sheer strength of will into the direction he desired. Through adroit maneuvering, Congress became his willing tool and although he could not “pack” the Supreme Court he filled vacancies with persons of his choice and thereby achieved the same purpose. Subsequent presidents have not used all the potential powers inherent in the office. Obama last month even returned the power to militarily intervene in foreign countries to Congress although he had previously used it in Libya. Judging by precedent the current Syria solution is likely to remain an exception especially as long as Congress is at war with itself.

If we are not to repeat Rome’s fate we have to seriously study the reasons for the failure of its Republic and then not only apply these lessons but also look back at the wisdom of our founding father: George Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address  http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp.

After having thanked his countrymen for the opportunity to serve them over a 45 year period he felt obliged to warn them of several potential dangers they need to avoid. These dealt with secession, weakening of the government, debt, political parties and foreign affairs. Secession was dealt with by Lincoln, but today we are confronted by all of the others. I shall discuss his foreign policy admonitions on another occasion and limit myself to his comments about political parties because they deal with our current congressional problem. Below I have excerpted and pasted some key passages.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.

There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.

          At this time we are so enmeshed in party politics that there hardly seems to be a way out. The problem starts with the electoral map where districts have been gerrymandered to fit the needs of a given party which ensures that only that this particular party will have its Representative in Congress. Elections have become so expensive that ordinary citizens cannot win without powerful, wealthy supporters who will then extract their price from the candidate regardless whether he/she serves in the House, the Senate or the Presidency. To prevent our falling into Caesarism, under whatever name, a complete overhaul of our political system would be needed. There would have to be genuine election reforms which limit not only the amount of money involved but also terms of offices. At present when a Representative is elected he/she is already concerned about re-election two years hence and a substantial amount of effort is diverted from governing to fund-raising. This applies also to the four year term of the president. Senators have at least six years before they have to face the voters again but even this span does not prevent them from constantly enlarging their “war chest.” They are looking for sinecure rather than regarding themselves as temporary servants of their constituents as was the original purpose.

          The major bane is the corruptive influence of “big money” which prevents genuine meaningful long-term reforms. This applies also to the tax code which cannot be properly simplified because the financiers are against it. But without these major reforms our government will be lurching from one crisis to another, one war to the next, and may eventually end up with the worst possible situation: a one person dictatorship and perpetual warfare. A harmonious world where America is primus inter pares and conflicts are settled by the UN and the International Court is not in the offing in the foreseeable future. It seems that a great deal more of blood and treasure will have to be spilled before it comes to pass. It took a catastrophic war for Austrians and Germans to come to their senses and the question for Americans is: can they do so without such a disaster?







November 1, 2013

SHATTERED TRUST

As anticipated in the previous installment, Congress has indeed postponed a solution of the budget problem until January of next year when we may or may not be treated to a repeat performance. In the intervening two weeks we have encountered two more problems: the disastrous “rollout” of Obamacare and the NSA spy scandal. On October 25 the Salt Lake Tribune published an article on the latter under the headline, “Merkel: Obama has shattered allies’s trust.” The first paragraph stated,

 

European leaders united in anger Thursday as they attended a summit overshadowed by reports of widespread U.S. spying on its allies – allegations – German Chancellor Angela Merkel said had shattered trust in the Obama administration and undermined the crucial trans-Atlantic relationship.

 

          For Mrs. Merkel, who had grown up under a Communist dictatorship, allegations that the NSA may have tapped her cell-phone hit a very personal nerve. I know how she must have felt upon receiving this news. Having spent the major portion of my youth under the Nazis, I can well understand her feelings and this dislike of the political system at the time was part of the reason to immigrate to America, the bastion of freedom.

          I must admit that I remained a true believer in the honesty of our government, with only occasional slight misgivings, until the aftermath of 9/11. The drum beat for the Afghanistan and then the Iraq war was a re-run of Goebbels’ propaganda and my faith in our system of government, including the justice department as well as the media, yielded to agnosticism. As a result I began to look into the history of this country in order to see if the Bush debacle was simply a temporary aberration or a long-standing feature of American politics.

Fortunately we have the Internet which makes access to historical information infinitely easier, although its trustworthiness can likewise not be guaranteed. In my previous articles I have tried to steer a middle course and provided the sources for crucial statements so that readers can refer to them and form their own opinions. This is especially important for the two most critical events: the Kennedy assassination and 9/11. The literature is quicksand and the well-meaning historian is confronted with a massive problem which boils down to the simple question: who can be trusted?

Later this month will be the 50th anniversary of JFK’s murder and one can predict with reasonable certainty that we will be treated to officially sanctioned scenarios. The Warren Commission’s final word was and to a large extent still is: Lee Harvey Oswald, a mentally deranged malcontent, was the lone gunman who fired three shots from the Texas Book Depository Building which killed the President and injured Governor Connally. But, is this the truth and if so how was it arrived at?

Anyone who is trying to find out will immediately face the problem that apart from the thousands of pages of the Warren Commission’s report there exists a plethora of books, and when you type “Kennedy assassination” into Google you will receive within 0.16 seconds about 28,300,000 citations. Who can read, sift, and absorb all of this material? I shall, therefore, try to simplify the task by concentrating on five specific aspects: how the Warren Commission arrived at its verdict, the state of the country at the time, Oswald’s background, the Zapruder film and finally the medical data.

The answer to the first question is simple because there is unanimity. The dictum of Oswald having been the only culprit was created by FBI Director Herbert Hoover on the afternoon of Friday 22 immediately after Oswald’s arrest. It was consolidated on Sunday, after Oswald had been murdered by Jack Ruby. The assassin had been found, eliminated, justice was done, book closed. The Warren Commission was to be the fig leaf to confirm a preordained conclusion. This is not to say that Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Commissioners and their staff were corrupt.  They were not, but they yielded to political pressure. The Chief Justice was told by President Johnson that unless he accepted the task and the verdict of the lone gunman, there was great danger that the American public would accuse Castro and/or the Soviet Union. An atomic war with the loss of approximately 40 million lives might well be inevitable.

This sounded reasonable at the time and we have to put ourselves into the mindset of November 1963. The missile crisis of the previous year is for most Americans merely a historical fact but for us, especially those who lived in big cities, it was literally a matter of life and death. In those days Detroit was still regarded the “arsenal of democracy” and I vividly remember discussing with my colleagues over cups of coffee whether or not we would still be here the next day. We were among those 40 million who would go up in radioactive smoke. This memory also is responsible for my allergic reaction to the NSA’s brand new spy center next door in Bluffdale. We are now again on the list of potential Russian and/or Chinese missile targets. This is not paranoia but results from life experience.   

Both Kennedy and Khrushchev had shown reason and reached a compromise: his missiles would leave Cuba and ours would leave Turkey. That was the proper way to resolve problems, but this is not what we were told at the time. The newspaper headline was: “Khrushchev Blinked” and the country was happy that we had successfully stared the Soviets down. The tit for tat came out years later and only for intrepid souls who devoted time and effort to the study of those days’ affairs. The media perpetrated other pious frauds. Kennedy was portrayed as the counterpoint to the aging Eisenhower. The young, intelligent, erudite, athletic war hero who played touch football with his brothers and sailed his boat was picture perfect. His beautiful, charming wife and the two children rounded out the picture of Camelot. Those were the days of the new frontier. With brother Bobby, as Attorney General, the Mafia was to be put out of business; an end to the Cold War, which Eisenhower had sought at the failed Paris peace conference, was to be achieved via détente; our Negro citizens were to be granted equal rights; the Federal Reserve prerogatives were to be re-examined and a space program was initiated with the goal of reaching the moon in 10 years. We knew nothing about Kennedy’s health problems, his insatiable sexual appetite and other behind the scenes political shenanigans.

Although we were aware of the usual discontent with presidents we knew nothing of the intense hatred his policies had aroused in some circles. The Bay of Pigs disaster had left him thoroughly disenchanted with the CIA and he was determined to drastically reform the agency. He disliked FBI director Herbert Hoover and did not want to renew his tenure beyond mandatory retirement age of 65. The feeling was mutual and Hoover met this danger by collecting as much potentially incriminating evidence against the Kennedy brothers as he could. The Cuban exile population and the extreme right regarded Kennedy as a traitor for not having lent air-support to the Bay of Pigs operation which guaranteed its failure. He also had profoundly alienated the Joint Chiefs of Staff by the decision not to invade Cuba during the missile crisis. In addition there was the likelihood that he might even pull out of Vietnam. The policy of détente and the nuclear arms reduction treaty, which was signed in September 1963, were regarded as further evidence for Kennedy being “soft on communism.” “Big money” was concerned that he might fuss with the Federal Reserve Board by ordering the treasury to issue its own money thereby avoiding the detour of Federal Reserve notes. Then there was the Mafia. One faction wanted to re-establish the good old times in Cuba making money on the casinos and the drug trade. Another was more concerned with Bobby’s vendetta which threatened income and power at home. Finally there was the Vice President, Lyndon B. Johnson, who loathed both Jack and Bobby.

There were, therefore, numerous powerful enemies who did not want to give Kennedy the chance to implement his programs in the upcoming second term.  Similar to the 9/11 Commission, the Warren Commission proceedings had to be concluded in a hurry lest they interfere with the 1964/2004 elections and, as we now know, the outcome was foreordained in both instances. Likewise, in both instances responsible government officials lied to the Commissions, crucial witnesses were not called or their testimony was disregarded, and the CIA as well as FBI withheld vital documents. For the 9/11 Commission this also extended to the FAA, the NTSB and the military including NORAD. These seem to be harsh allegations but for 9/11 I would like the reader to watch first 9/11 In a Nutshell http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs_quLjUHwM which takes no time at all and for extended documentation September 11 The New Pearl Harbor,  http://www.luogocomune.net/site/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticle&artid=167. This presentation consists of three sections with a total play time of 5 hours. The viewer is encouraged to download the data but the DVDs can also be purchased from amazon. Because of the extensive amount of information I recommend that it be viewed in increments.

           When one now looks into the background of Lee Harvey Oswald Wikipedia provides us in 0.19 seconds with about 3,760,00 entries. For the purpose of this brief overview I have consulted Wikipedia as well as the book The Kennedy Conspiracy? by the British author Anthony Summers. It has recently been republished under the title, Not in Your Lifetime. I have previously referred to Summers in connection with his The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden (9/11: Context and Aftermath; September 1, 2013). In contrast to the 9/11 book, Summers was considerably more critical of the government’s performance in regard to the Kennedy assassination although he did not endorse any of the numerous theories which swirl around it.  

          The bare bone substance of Oswald’s brief life is as follows: Born in 1939 he was raised fatherless by a mother with rather strange personality characteristics and intermittently by an uncle who had Mafia ties. At age 17 he enlisted in the Marines. He became a radar operator, ran into difficulties with superiors and was discharged on September 11, 1959. He had always been interested in communist ideology and in October of that year travelled to the Soviet Union. He renounced his American citizenship and in 1961 married a young Russian woman who happened to be the niece of a MVD colonel, the Soviet Union’s FBI. Oswald returned to America with wife and infant daughter in 1962 to live in Fort Worth, Texas. In April of 1963 he was supposed to have attempted to kill a major right wing figure in Dallas, retired Major General Edwin A. Walker, but missed his stationary target. He then moved alone to New Orleans, where he created a public uproar while distributing leaflets for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. In August of that year he went to Mexico where he applied at the Cuban embassy for a visa to Cuba and he contacted the Soviet embassy for a visa to again visit that country. Both were denied and he had to return to the U.S. within a week. The marriage was on the rocks; through friends he got a job as “order filler” at the Texas Book Depository and moved to a boarding house in Dallas. These data are undisputed but when one tries to go into details the situation becomes considerably murkier.

          There is no doubt that he was a misfit. His behavior in regard to the USSR trip as well as his subsequent return and the aborted Cuba visit was certainly strange and invites numerous questions. So does his conduct on 11-22. The government states that he shot the President from the SE 6th floor corner window of the Book Depository Building at 12:30 p.m. while the presidential motorcade slowly proceeded down Elm Street at Dealey Plaza. The government also claims that Oswald used a WWII Italian Mannlicher-Carcano rifle with a telescopic sight which he had purchased via mail-order. The gun, as well as three expended shells, was found in the mentioned location. This was all the evidence needed to confirm Oswald’s guilt. Critical investigators have, however, raised questions as to Oswald’s exact whereabouts and the choice of weapon.

          After his arrest Oswald insisted that he had “never killed anybody” and had been in the lunch room of the building rather than on the 6th floor. Since three shells were found and Oswald was designated as the only culprit, it was determined that no more than three shots could have been fired. This led to some convoluted reasoning. It was asserted that the first shot hit Kennedy in the back and that this “magic” bullet exited through his neck to hit Governor Connally, who was in the front seat, in the back. It exited through the chest into his right arm and wrist, proceeded to his right thigh and then was found in nearly pristine condition on the governor’s stretcher at Parkland Hospital. Another shot had missed and struck a curb slightly injuring a bystander while the third shot was the fatal one.

Although the course of the magic bullet considerably stretches one’s imagination, it had to be insisted on because an additional shot which hit Connally would have required a second assassin and therefore an admission of conspiracy. Questions have been raised in regard to the quality of the Mannlicher-Carcano, of its telescopic sight, as well as Oswald’s marksmanship. But I shall forego those and instead briefly mention his stint in the Marines at the Atsugi airbase in Japan. This base also housed the CIA and America’s most secret reconnaissance tool the U2. This plane could reach 70,000 feet and was, therefore, invulnerable to enemy aircraft and rockets. As radar operator Oswald was familiar with these flights and had initially a “Confidential” security clearance, which was later upgraded to “Secret.” His expensive living habits led to rumors that he might have been recruited by the CIA.

If he had indeed worked for the CIA it would put his trip to the USSR and his subsequent return into perspective. The money which paid for the voyage could not have come from his savings, especially since he stayed at expensive hotels during transit in Helsinki. In Moscow he ingratiated himself with the officials by saying that he would provide them with “all information concerning the Marine Corps and his specialty therein,” and “that he might know something of special interest.” The latter obviously referred to whatever he had found out about the U2 flights which were of vital importance to the Soviets. Whether or not this had anything to do with the downing of Gary Powers’ U2 on 5-1-1962, which wrecked Eisenhower’s Paris peace summit with Khrushchev, is open to speculation. But it would certainly be valuable if one of our historians could get together with one of his Russian counterparts and look at Oswald’s KGB files.  

This would be especially interesting because of another pertinent revelation in Summers’ book. At the time of Oswald’s defection and subsequent return he was not the only one who underwent these experiences. The CIA had a program which sent pseudo-defectors to the Soviet Union to gather whatever material they could and subsequently return to this country. There is sufficient evidence that Oswald was known to the CIA, as well as the FBI, prior to November 22 but it has been withheld and to the best of my knowledge is still not in the public domain.

Let us now look at the Zapruder film controversy. Mr. Zapruder had stationed himself with his 8 mm Bell and Howell movie camera on a pedestal on the “grassy knoll” from which position he could film the entire motorcade as it came down Elm Street in front of him. The film used was a Kodachrome color double 8. This has become an important element in the dispute surrounding the authenticity of the pictures we are currently shown and has spawned a literature all of its own. The details are technical and fully discussed in two recent books. One is by David R. Wrone, professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK’s Assassination, and the other by Richard B. Trask National Nightmare on Six Feet of Film: Mr. Zapruder’s home movie and the murder of President Kennedy. Mr. Trask does not come from academia but is listed as “archivist and historian.” The books are amply illustrated and in spite of viewing the same material in great detail the authors came to opposite conclusions. They agree that the film was not deliberately altered. But Wrone insists that it proves conspiracy because Governor Connally reacted too late for the magic bullet theory and the fatal shot could not have entered Kennedy’s head in the back and exited in front. Trask believes that the film proves a rear entry fatal wound. I shall return later to another dissenting view.

The critical frames of the Zapruder film consist of two portions. The first one showed the motor-cycle police escort coming from Houston Street into Elm Street. When Zapruder realized that this was only the beginning of the motorcade he turned the camera off to save footage for the main event. In this way he was able to focus, with his telephoto lens, on the President’s limousine from the moment it entered Elm Street, when it passed directly in front of him, and then disappeared in the triple under path. As such we have direct information on these crucial seconds of history and anybody can buy from amazon the DVD Image of an Assassination: A New Look at the Zapruder Film. It provides the history surrounding the creation of the film and shows the event in regular as well as slow motion. This allows one to form an opinion about the plausibility of the magic bullet theory and the origin of the fatal shot.

It now needs to be pointed out that in the late 1970s, as a result of popular discontent with the Warren Commission’s findings, the House of Representatives reopened the question and issued its report in 1978 (United States House Select Committee on Assassination; HSCA). Although it endorsed Oswald as the assassin it found evidence for a fourth shot which led to the conclusion that the President “was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.” But the Committee failed to name likely suspects. In addition Wikipedia states

 

Their report concluded that the investigation [sic] on the assassination by FBI and CIA were fundamentally deficient and the facts which have greatly affected the investigation had not been forwarded to the Warren Commission by the agencies. It also found that the FBI, the agency with primary responsibility on the matter, was ordered by Director Hoover and pressured by unnamed government official to conclude its investigation quickly. The report hinted that there was a possibility that senior officials in both agencies made conscious decisions not to disclose potentially important information.

 

This was, however not the end of official involvement. In 1991 Oliver Stone’s film on the Kennedy assassination created a furor around the country and by 1994 the government established the Assassination Records Review Board (AARB). It was tasked with the survey of all records held by the government in regard to the Kennedy assassination and to release them into the public domain no later than 25 years after the enactment of the legislation. This time frame ends on October, 26 2017. The large amount of material which has so far been released provided new fodder for the pro and con of conspiracy theories. The Board closed its activities in 1998 and one of its members and subsequently Chief Analyst for Military Affairs, Douglas P. Horne, published in 2009 a five volume tome entitled Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK. I have not yet had an opportunity to study the material but will report on it when I have done so. I am only mentioning it now so that interested readers become aware of its existence and can form their own independent opinions. Suffice it to say for the moment that Mr. Horne, who has a B.A. in history, endorses the idea that the original Zapruder film was deliberately tampered with by the CIA and provides his reasons. They are extensive and can be viewed on http://archive.lewrockwell.com/orig13/horne-d1.1.1.html.

This brings us finally to the medical evidence. It is contaminated by the government’s insistence that the two shots which hit the President had been fired from the rear. This was dogma to which the medical experts at the Warren Commission and the House Committee had to adhere. Yet we have the initial testimony from the physicians who had attended the President at Parkland Hospital from a news conference immediately after he had been pronounced dead. http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/press.htm. They stated that they found an entrance wound in the throat and the shot, therefore, had come from the front. As far as the major right parietal wound they could not give a definite opinion whether or not this represented the exit wound of the bullet that had entered the throat or had a different provenance. They had enlarged the throat wound to perform a tracheostomy and this larger wound was then taken by the autopsy pathologists as the exit wound of the previously mentioned magic bullet. The Parkland physicians had been unaware of a wound in the back because they were too busy with life-saving attempts.

In regard to the autopsy, which was performed at Bethesda Naval Hospital under the auspices of the Director of Laboratories Commander Dr. James Hume, it needs to be noted that the team did not include a forensic pathologist which would have been indicated. The fatal head wound was explained by a shot from the rear which had created a massive defect as it exited. The X-ray reports showed multiple fractures of the cranium which extended into the anterior and middle portions of the base of the skull. The most extensive damage was in the fronto-parietal area (emphasis added) and extended into the temporal region. Metallic fragments were seen throughout the right hemisphere. When this material was presented to well-known respected coroners, during the HSCA investigation, they agreed that the interpretation was reasonable.

Theoretically this would settle the issue, but there is a great deal of literature which purports that the autopsy reports as well as the X-rays have been tampered with which renders any conclusion based on them meaningless. We are now in the typical conspiracy theories area. But need all of them be disregarded? The most important testimony always comes from initial observations and here we find discrepancies. At the previously mentioned press conference Dr. William Kemp Clark, director of neurosurgery at Parkland Hospital, stated that “A missile had gone in or out of the back of his head (emphasis added), causing extensive lacerations and loss of brain tissue.” During the Warren Commission Hearings Dr. Clark testified in regard to the head wound, “This was a large gaping wound in the right posterior part, with cerebral and cerebellar tissue being damaged and exposed” (emphasis added).  Dr. Robert Nelson McClelland, associate professor of surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, was giving a lecture at the hospital when Kennedy’s limousine arrived. By the time he reached the emergency room the tracheostomy had already been performed. McClelland testified at the Warren Commission in regard to the head wound,  

 

I noted that the right posterior portion of the skull had been extremely blasted. It had been shattered apparently by the force of the shot so that the parietal bone was protruded up through the scalp and seemed to be fractured almost along its right posterior half, as well as some of the occipital bone being fractured in its lateral haft [sic], and this sprung open the bones that I mentioned in such a way that you could actually look down into the skull cavity itself and see that probably a third or so, at least, of brain tissue, posterior cerebral tissue had been blasted out.

 

We now can take our pick: do we believe the autopsy report which places the major skull defect in the fronto-parietal area with some extension into the temporal lobe, or the physicians from Parkland Hospital who found the wound in the occipital-parietal region with loss of cerebellar tissue? Both can’t be right!      

This brings up another question: where did the fatal shot come from?  Zapruder was at the scene and initially reported hearing the shot coming from behind him. In addition he wasn’t sure if it was one shot or two in extremely close succession. Zapruder’s presumed origin of the shot was documented in a brief note to Washington on Friday night by Secret Service agent Max D. Phillips, which accompanied a copy of the Zapruder film.

The possibility that there may indeed have been two shots in extremely close succession need not be dismissed out of hand because Summers reported that the driver of Kennedy’s limousine, secret service agent Greer as well as his partner, agent Kellerman, who sat next to him, heard two shots in close succession. As Kellerman put it “like a double bang bang–bang! … like a plane going through a sound barrier.” Summers book can be recommended for an overall assessment of the assassination because it is filled with facts and contains a minimum of theory.

There exists still another relevant book; JFK and Sam: The connection between the Giancana and Kennedy Assassinations co-authored by Dr. John R. Hughes, who is director of neurophysiology, director of the Epilepsy Center and professor of neurology at the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago. I have known Dr. Hughes for decades, have high regard for his work and respect his integrity. The book’s first author is listed as Antoinette Giancana, the daughter of Mafia boss Sam Giancana, and the third author is Thomas H. Jobe MD, professor of psychiatry and associate director of neuropsychiatry at the University of Illinois Medical Center. The book was published in 2005 and provides testimony by an inmate of the Illinois State Prison system, James E. Files, who is incarcerated for an unrelated crime. He claims to have fired the fatal shot from the grassy knoll with a Remington X100 Fireball weapon. Files stated that he, as well as Chuckie Nicoletti and John Roselli, worked for the Chicago crime boss Sam Giancano and were sent by him to Dallas on the assassination mission. In regard to the fatal wound Files stated that Nicoletti fired one shot from the Dal-Tex building which hit the back of the President’s head on the right side and caused it to briefly snap forward. Files fired his weapon practically at the same time which led to the clearly seen marked backward motion of Kennedy’s head. Files claimed furthermore, that he bit the shell of the bullet he had fired and placed it on the stockade fence on the grassy knoll. The book contains a picture of this shell casing and below it one of John C. Rademacher who found it in 1987. Giancana was summoned to testify before the HSAC but was gunned down in his own house during the night before he was scheduled to travel to Washington.

Files is a convicted felon and one may or may not want to believe his claim. But I found two YouTube videos from interviews he gave. One is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxtrFoh3Pao&list=TL2rYsJlxanVM. It is somewhat over 10 minutes and provides background but cuts off before the crucial admission of his guilt. This is provided in the other video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6YtIKtWpBU, which seems to have come from the same interview. One has to realize that whenever Files talks about the left side he refers to his view and is, therefore, Kennedy’s right side.

Regardless whether Files did or did not fire the Remington 100X there seems to be some probability that a weapon of this type was used. I have always been puzzled by Kennedy’s massive skull defect and the statements from witnesses that his “head exploded.” This seems uncommon as a result of conventional ammunition fired by a Mannlicher-Carcano. The Remington Fireball on the other hand does just that as this YouTube video testifies to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCAkkncfJ9Y. Another discussion of this weapon can be found at http://jfkmurdersolved.com/fireball1.htm. Apart from its power, the fact that it can readily be concealed would make it an assassin’s weapon of choice when a short range target is involved.

Where does all of this leave us and what is the truth? Summers wrote that when Chief Justice Warren was asked if all the investigation’s findings will be made public he replied: “Yes, there will come a time. But it might not be in your lifetime.” He also added that there “may be some security concerns.” This implies that some of them might never see the light of day. When Hoover was asked privately, eight months after the Kennedy murder, whether Oswald had really been the assassin, he replied, “If I told you what I really know it would be very dangerous to this country. Our whole political system could be disrupted.” Congressman Don  Edwards remarked after a session of the HSCA, “There is not much question that both the FBI and the CIA are behind this coverup. I hate to think what they are covering up–or who they are covering for.”

Fifty years after Dallas the coverup persists and we must ask ourselves what is this awful secret which has to be protected at all cost? Could it be that the assassination was really a coup d’état, a conspiracy within the highest levels of government to remove a President whose policies they hated? Under these circumstances the question: Who killed Kennedy? becomes irrelevant. It needs to be rephrased to: Who set the assassination project in motion? This is the question I shall try to shed some light on in the next installment. It is vital because we appear to have had a replay in 2001 when similar powerful players may well have been involved. But if this were to be the case the entire vast National Security system we have erected is not only a phenomenal waste of money and talent but also utterly worthless because another coup d’état can readily be engineered whenever these powerful entities feel themselves threatened.

National Security has now become the new divinity in our country. Its ways are inscrutable and must not be questioned. But we have to expose this false idol and get at the truth of the mentioned two key events. As far as the Kennedy assassination is concerned we may only get important glimpses of the truth because too much time has elapsed, documents have been destroyed, and major witnesses are dead. This makes, however, a complete reassessment of 9/11 urgent and essential. More than 12 years already have elapsed and we are still suffering from the consequences with the current NSA scandal only one of them. Unless Americans start educating themselves on these events and not only demand but enact the necessary changes in our political structures, the arrival of dictatorship and/or atomic war, as outlined in the previous installment, is unavoidable. George Orwell was absolutely correct when he wrote: He, who controls the past, controls the future. This is, therefore, my urgent plea for the sake of our children and grandchildren: study these two pivotal events of our recent history while there is still time, sift fact from fancy, insist on an honest accounting and then restructure our political institutions to conform to the goal of a more peaceful world for which President Kennedy had to give his life.







November 15, 2013

MONUMENTAL MEDICAL COVER-UP

          As anticipated in the November 1, installment the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination has spawned at least three more books, several articles and some TV coverage. Fact and fiction are liberally mixed and after looking at the material one is no wiser and still left to draw one’s own conclusions according to individual bias. Inasmuch as the current installment builds on that of November 1, I would like to suggest to the reader to start with that one because it provides the overall context. The current installment will deal exclusively with what Adam Gopnik has called in his The New Yorker article of November 4, (Closer than That: The assassination of JFK), David Lifton’s “obviously mad idea.”

 In the previous installment I mentioned the discrepancy between the observations of the physicians who attempted to resuscitate President Kennedy after his arrival at Parkland Memorial Hospital and the observations made at the time of the autopsy. I also quoted Dr. McClelland’s testimony before the Warren Commission. He attended the President at Parkland Hospital in his capacity as surgeon and reported the head wound as “… the right posterior portion of the skull had been blasted …. The parietal bone seemed to be fractured almost along its right posterior half, as well as some occipital bone being fractured in its lateral halt [sic] … probably a third or so, at least, of brain tissue, posterior cerebral tissue had been blasted out.” The full quote is in the November 1 installment.

Since then I had the opportunity to study the relevant aspects of the available literature, including the entries into the medical charts at Parkland by attending physicians. These were made between 4 and 5 p.m. on the afternoon of Friday November 22nd and, therefore, represent primary data. All medical personnel who saw the President’s head wound at Parkland Hospital reported that it was located in the back of the head on the right side or in medical terms the occipital-posterior parietal area. Dr. Kemp Clark, the attending neurosurgeon, reported not only a massive injury to that region but that he could even see cerebellar tissue. Here are relevant excerpts of Dr. Clark’s Summary Report. They can be found on the Internet as Warren Commission (WC) Exhibit No. 392.

 

Neurological evaluation revealed the President’s pupils to be widely dilated and fixed to light. His eyes were divergent, being deviated outward; a skew deviation from the horizontal was present. No deep tendon reflexes or spontaneous movements were found.

There was a large wound in the right occipito-parietal region, from which profuse bleeding was occurring. 1500 cc. of blood were estimated on the drapes and floor of the Emergency Operating Room. There was considerable loss of scalp and bone tissue. Both cerebral and cerebellar tissue were extruding from the wound.

 

Although non-medically trained readers may have difficulty with some technical terms, such as “skew deviation,” they can ignore those and merely concentrate on the wound location. I am deliberately including complete relevant medical data in original quotes because of the seriousness of the problem they uncover. It was also stated by attending medical personnel that if one were to casually look at the President’s head one might not have noted any obvious wound, especially on the top of his head.

          These statements are important in regard to what was observed at the autopsy. FBI agents Francis O’Neill and James Sibert were in continuous attendance and their report, dated November 26, is also available on the Internet. In it the agents stated that after the President was placed on the autopsy table it was “apparent that a tracheotomy had been performed, as well as surgery of the head area, namely, in the top of the skull [italics added]. Since no such surgery was ever performed at Parkland this part of the sentence led David Lifton who was a graduate student in engineering  at UCLA to study in great detail the aspects surrounding the President’s death and subsequent autopsy. The result was the book mentioned earlier by Gopnik, Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, which was published in 1980. The book’s title reflected the fact that in murder cases the autopsy results are regarded as the “best evidence,” which trumps eye-witnesses’ reports. After carefully amassing a large number of facts from official sources and private interviews of witnesses he concluded that at some time the chain of evidence in regard to the transport of Kennedy’s body must have been broken and the official autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital was performed on a body whose wounds had been altered. I shall not go into the merits of his theories when and how this could have been accomplished and shall remain strictly with medical data which are available from Parkland Hospital, the Bethesda autopsy, the Warren Commission (WC), the Clark panel (CP), the House Select  Committee on Assassination (HSCA) and the Assassination Record Review Board (ARRB).

          When one now looks at the official autopsy report, the sketches of the wounds made at that time by Dr. Boswell, Chief of Pathology who assisted Dr. Humes, as well as the X-rays which were taken at that time, one cannot fail to note that there are massive differences in relation to what was seen in Dallas. The official report signed by Dr. Humes, Boswell and Finck stated:

 

There is a large irregular defect of the scalp and skull on the right involving chiefly the parietal bone but extending somewhat into the temporal and occipital regions.  In this region there is an actual absence of scalp and bone which measures approximately 13 cm in its greatest diameter.

From the irregular margins of the above scalp defect tears extend in stellated fashion into the more or less intact scalp …

Situated in the posterior scalp approximately 2.5 cm laterally to the right and slightly above the external occipital protuberance is a lacerated wound measuring 15 x 6 mm. In the underlying bone is a corresponding wound through the skull which exhibits beveling of the margins of the bone when viewed from the inner aspect of the skull.

Clearly visible in the above described skull defect and exuding from it, is lacerated brain tissue which on close inspection proves to represent the major portion of the right cerebral hemisphere. At this point it is noted that the falx cerebri is extensively lacerated with disruption of the superior sagittal sinus. Upon reflecting the scalp, multiple complex fracture lines are seen to radiate from both the large defect at the vertex and the smaller wound at the occiput. These vary greatly in length and direction, the longest measuring approximately 19 cm. These result in the production of numerous fragments which vary in size from a few millimeters to 10 cm in its greatest diameter. The complexity of these fractures and the fragments thus produced tax satisfactory verbal description and are better appreciated in photographs and roentgenograms which are prepared.

The brain is removed and preserved for further study following formalin fixation.

 

          It is, therefore, apparent that the FBI agents’ statement in regard to “surgery at the top of the head” was not necessarily their fantasy but a genuine observation that something was drastically wrong at the top of the head, as was reported by Dr. Humes. It seems that the agents faithfully reported what they heard the autopsy physicians say while they were doing their work. The following paragraphs, taken from the O’Neill-Sibert report, also shed light on the back wound, which is now commonly referred to as a “neck wound,” as well as the genesis of the “magic bullet” theory.

 

During the latter stages of the autopsy, Dr. Humes located an opening which appeared to be a bullet hole which was below the shoulders and two inches to the right of the middle line of the spinal column.

This opening was probed by Dr. Humes with the finger, at which time it was determined that the trajectory of the missile entering at this point had a downward position of 45-60 degrees. Further probing determined that the distance travelled by this missile was a short distance inasmuch as the end of the opening could be felt with the finger.

Inasmuch as no complete bullet of any size could be located in the brain area and likewise no bullet could be located in the back or any other area of the body as determined by total body X-rays and inspection revealing there was no point of exit, the individuals performing the autopsy were at a loss to explain why they could find no bullets.

A call was made by the Bureau to the Firearms Section of the FBI Laboratory, at which time SA Charles L. Killion advised that the Laboratory had received through Secret Service Agent Richard Johnson a bullet which had reportedly been found on a stretcher in the emergency room of Parkland Hospital, Dallas, Texas. This stretcher had also contained a stethescope [sic] and pair of rubber gloves. Agent Johnson had advised the Laboratory that it had not been ascertained whether or not this was the stretcher which had been used to transport the body of President Kennedy. Agent Fillion [sic] further described this bullet as pertaining to a 6.5 millimeter rifle which would be approximately a 25 caliber rifle and this bullet consisted of a copper alloy full jacket.

Immediately following receipt of this information, this was made available to Dr. Humes who advised that in his opinion this accounted for no bullet being located which had entered the back region and since external cardiac massage had been performed at Parkland Hospital, it was entirely possible that through such movement the bullet had worked its way back out of the point of entry and fallen on the stretcher.

Also during the latter stages of the autopsy, a piece of the skull measuring 10 x 6.5 centimeters was brought to Dr. Humes who was instructed that this had been removed from the President’s skull. Immediately this section of skull was X-rayed, at which time it was determined by Dr. Humes that one corner of this section revealed minute metal particles and inspection of this area disclosed a chipping of the top portion of this piece, both of which indicated that this had been the point of exit of the bullet entering the skull region.

On basis of the latter two developments, Dr. Humes stated that the pattern was clear. That the one bullet had entered the President’s back and had worked its way out of the body during external cardiac massage and that a second high velocity bullet had entered the rear of the skull and had fragmented prior to its exit through the top of the skull. He further pointed out that the X-rays had disclosed numerous fractures in the cranial area which he attributed to the force generated by the impact of the bullet in its passage through the brain area. He attributed the death of the President to a gunshot wound in the head [italics were added by me].

 

            To reiterate some of the major points: The term that a piece of skull had been “removed” is unusual language. One would have expected words such as “blasted away” or “torn out.” The wound in the back was “below the shoulders” and shallow, “with a downward angle of 45-60 degrees.” This effectively rules out an exit through the neck in the area which was obliterated by the tracheotomy wound. In this regard it is also important to point out that the anterior neck wound, which was regarded by the Dallas physicians as an entry wound, was termed “small.” Although the tracheostomy involved a transverse incision to allow the introduction of the tube, it was limited to that diameter. It also was reported by nursing personnel that after removal of the tube the skin had closed over. From what I have read, tube sizes seem to range 7-10 mm and could hardly have produced the gaping, ragged, large anterior neck wound, which is now seen in the literature on all the photographs from the autopsy. This size and type of wound was apparently not present when the President’s body left Dallas and neither was an exit wound “at the top of the skull.” Furthermore, the location where the “magic bullet” had been found was not known at the time of the autopsy and only at some later point in time assigned to Governor Connally’s stretcher. In this connection the Parkland surgical report by Dr. Tom Shires is important. It is dated November 22, 1963 and reads in part

 

There was a 1 cm. punctate missile wound over the juncture of the middle and lower third, medial aspect, of the left thigh. X-rays of the thigh and leg revealed a bullet fragment which was imbedded in the body of the femur in the distal third. … Following this the missile wound was excised and the bullet tract explored….” 

 

It is therefore obvious that the practically intact bullet which was allegedly found on Governor Connally’s stretcher is not likely to have been the one which was described above. Let us now look what the autopsy report states in regard to the wound which was observed in the President’s back.

 

          The second wound presumably of entry is that described in the upper right posterior thorax. Beneath the skin there is ecchymosis of subcutaneous tissue and musculature. The missile path through fascia and musculature cannot be easily proved. The wound presumably of exit was that described by Dr. Malcolm Perry of Dallas in the low anterior cervical region. When observed by Dr. Perry the wound measured ‘a few millimeters in diameter’ however it was extended as a tracheostomy incision and thus its character is distorted at the time of autopsy. However there is considerable ecchymosis of the strap muscles of the right neck and the fascia about the trachea adjacent to the line of the tracheostomy wound. The third point of reference in connecting these two wounds is in the apex (supra-clavicular portion) of the right pleural cavity. In this region there is contusion of the parietal pleura and of the extreme apical portion of the right upper lobe of the lung. In both instances the diameter of contusion and ecchymosis measures 5 cm. Both the visceral and parietal pleura are intact overlying these areas of trauma [italics were added by me].

 

            We now need to know that the main official autopsy report was finished on Sunday the 24th and represents a final version of at least one previous draft. Dr. Humes stated that he had burned the original notes at home in his fireplace because they were stained with the President’s blood and he did not want them to become collectors’ items. But he also admitted that he had burned the first draft for reasons he was unable to recall later. By the time he wrote the final version, the currently official theory of connecting the wound on the back of the thorax with the anterior neck wound was already dogma to which the autopsy physicians apparently had to bow. Therefore we note the omission of probing the back wound, finding it shallow, and its downward path. The word “contusion” in regard to presumed bullet path also is unusual. “Laceration” of lung tissue might have been more appropriate had this indeed been the bullet trajectory. The signers of the final report were deliberately vague by using words such as “presumably,” and that “the missile path cannot be easily proved.” In other words, the “magic bullet” theory is conjecture but foisted as fact upon the American people and the world.         

          The appearance of the brain was provided in a Supplementary Report which was signed only by Dr. Humes and forwarded on December 6 to the White House physician. Relevant sections are excerpted below.

 

Following Formalin fixation the brain seighs [sic] 1500 grams. The right cerebral hemisphere is found to be markedly disrupted. There is a longitudinal laceration of the right hemisphere which is para-sagittal in position approximately 2.5 cm to the right of the midline which extends from the tip of the occipital lobe posteriorly to the tip of the frontal lobe anteriorly. The base of the laceration is situated approximately 4.5 cm below the vertex in the white matter. There is considerable loss of cortical substance above the base of the laceration, particularly in the parietal lobe. The margins of this laceration are at all points jagged and irregular, with additional lacerations extending in varying directions and for varying distances from the main laceration. In addition, there is a laceration of the corpus callosum extending from the genu to the tail. Exposed in this latter laceration are the interiors of the right lateral and third ventricles.

 

          The report continues with descriptions of the left hemisphere, which was regarded as essentially intact, and of a basal view, which showed considerable damage to the President’s deep brain structures. It then states “In the interest of preserving the specimen coronal sections are not made.” Since these are part of a routine evaluation of autopsied brains, and could have shown bullet tracks, one wonders why the brain was not sectioned and only some tissue samples were retained from portions of the brain for microscopic examinations. Again it must be emphasized that although the description of the damage to the brain is consistent with the overall autopsy report as well as the X-rays, it is completely inconsistent with what was seen in Dallas and what one would have expected had Dr. Rose, the Dallas coroner, been allowed to perform the autopsy. Previous authors also have commented on the brain weight; 1500 grams is the average of a normal human brain and not likely to be correct when major portions of it have been torn out.

          Since as the ancient Chinese said “a picture is worth a thousand words,” let me now show WC Exhibit 399, the “magic bullet,” and some of the graphs that were made on basis of the autopsy reports and X-rays. In the row below we see the “magic bullet” and a diagram made as part of the official death certificate which depicts the President’s wounds as seen from the back. This picture as well as the following ones were obtained from Horne’s Inside the Assassination Review Board and were digitized after he had given me permission to do so.  

 

This bullet is supposed to have: entered the President’s back, or neck, exited at the throat; entered Governor Connally’s back, destroyed the fifth rib, exited below the nipple; entered his lower forearm, destroyed bones and exited at the palmar surface of the wrist; entered the left thigh, lodged in the femur but was recovered from the Governor’s stretcher. In regard to the sketch please note that the back wound is clearly in the thorax rather than the neck and a bullet entering from above and behind could not have shown the trajectory as sketched for the Warren Commission and shown below. Therefore Dr. Boswell reversed himself for the HSCA testimony and sketched a neck wound, which is now compatible with the official bullet path. Yet this is clearly at variance with the autopsy report as well as that from the FBI agents.

 

 

Reversals of testimony at a later date by physicians who were either involved in emergency care or the autopsy of the President are not uncommon. As noted previously Dr. Perry had consistently regarded the small puncture wound in the front of the neck as an entry wound, but under pressure during WC testimony he agreed that it could have been either an entry or exit wound.  

  The next row of pictures shows a sketch of the fatal bullet’s trajectory, which was prepared for the WC, and a sketch of the head wounds as seen from the top which Dr. Boswell had made during the autopsy.

 

 

The sketch is complex and somewhat difficult to interpret. I am including it because it reflects what was seen during the evening of November 22 and is uninfluenced by subsequent political considerations. Apart from other damaged areas a massive skull defect at the vertex measuring 10 x17 cm, rather than 13 as in the written report, is apparent.

The next two pictures show a lateral and an anterior-posterior view of the President’s autopsy skull X-rays.

 

Please disregard the obvious dark areas. They do not necessarily mean missing bone and have been interpreted by expert radiologists as air which entered the skull at some unknown time. Although the X-rays appear to correspond to the verbal and written autopsy descriptions they are at profound variance with the observations made in Dallas. They show a shattered central parietal-frontal region with a relatively intact occipito-parietal area, which is the opposite of what was seen in Dallas.

At the time of the ARRB activities Mr. Horne had Dr. Boswell sketch once more his impression of the skull wounds and these are shown projected on a skull model in the following pictures.

 

 

These areas of large damage can now be compared with pictures drawn for Horne by Dr. Crenshaw who was present during the attempted life-saving measures at Parkland Hospital.

 

 

Although this wound is large, it is clearly not of the massive dimensions seen on Dr. Boswells’ sketch, in the X-rays and the autopsy report. It is also incompatible with the picture on Wikipedia which was “taken at the beginning of the autopsy.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_autopsy. A wound of that size would have been obvious to everyone who attended the President at Parkland Hospital. Horne also obtained sketches of the head wound as seen in Dallas by Dr. McClelland and Nurse Audrey Bell and both drew an occipital wound. A completely different sketch was provided to Horne by Dr. Grossman who had likewise been for some time in Trauma Room One.

 

 

One needs to realize that the sketches for the ARRB were made in 1996, more than thirty years after the event. They are drawn from memory which is not necessarily reliable  Dr. Grossman also appeared as co-author of a “Special Article” published in the November 2003 issue of Neurosurgery.  It contains an extensive description of the November 22nd 1963 Dallas’ events and I am extracting here some portions of Grossman’s personal recollections which raise questions about the accuracy of his memory.

 

We stood behind the President’s head, Kemp [neurosurgeon Kemp Clark and Grossman who was in Clarks’ neurosurgery department] Kemp on the left side and I on the right. The President’s hair was very thick and brushlike, making it difficult to see his scalp without parting his hair. However, without touching his head we could see that, in the right posterior parietal area, the scalp was lacerated and was avulsed outward (Fig.5). A large plate of bone had been lifted upward and was protruding from the wound. The protruding edge lay superiorly, parallel to the direction of the superior sagittal sinus. The plate was approximately 4 inches [10.2 cm] in length in the anterior-posterior (frontal-occipital) dimension and approximately 2 inches [5.2 cm] in width. …The tissue was very white, and there was no active bleeding. Brain tissue was exposed in an area that extended, in the medial-lateral direction from the plate of bone to below the level of the superior temporal line. … The President was lying supine, with his occiput on the stretcher. Kemp and I lifted his head to inspect the occiput. There was a laceration approximately 1 inch [2.6 cm] in diameter located close to the midline of the cranium, approximately 1 inch above the external occipital protuberance. Brain tissue, some of which I thought had the appearance of cerebellar folia, was lying in the laceration. There was no active bleeding.    

 

The mentioned figure 5 is inserted below as well as a drawing of the brain which was prepared from autopsy photos and published by Horne in Vol. I.

 



It seems that Dr. Grossman’s description, the picture, and his sketches for the ARRB correspond somewhat better to the autopsy report than the Parkland physicians’ chart entries. But even these sketches are clearly at variance with the above mentioned picture of the President’s head which is shown on Wikipedia. Dr. Grossman was not involved in any of the procedures which were carried out on the moribund President and I have not found a medical chart entry of his from that day. The absence of blood, which he mentioned twice, is incompatible with Dr. Clark’s statement which was quoted earlier and one cannot see cerebellar folia from a wound which is located above the external occipital protuberance. The report, therefore, lacks scientific validity.

The drawing of the brain is as mentioned a scan of Figure 35 from Horne’s Vol. I and the full caption states:

 

HSCA artist’s rendering of autopsy photographs showing the superior view of a brain represented to be that of President Kennedy.

 

Artist Ida Dox drew this image of one of the autopsy photographs of a preserved brain. This artist’s conception is representative of autopsy photos 20, 23, 24, 25, 50, 51 and 52. It appears that there are no ‘bootleg’ autopsy photographs of the brain, so the only visual image that can be published is this drawing commissioned by the HSCA for use in its public hearings. The official autopsy photographer, John Stringer, and former FBI agent Frank O’Neill both testified to the ARRB that the photos represented by this image cannot be images of President Kennedy’s brain [bold print and italics are in the original].

 

          Apart from the mentioned Neurosurgery article there are several others but for now I shall mention only two. One appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) of May 1992 with the title “JFK’s death–the plain truth from the MDs who did the autopsy.”  In the article Dr. Humes and Boswell provided their views on the autopsy and defended them against the criticisms which had been raised. The article is narrative and does not provide new data. On the other hand there also exists a brief article “The postmortem examination of President Kennedy is invalid: the evidence,” by Dr. Salerian in “Medical Hypothesis” of October 2008. The author uses as evidence three points: 1) the purported brain weight of 1500 grams is incompatible with the reported loss of 1/3 of brain substance. 2) The asserted bullet trajectory for the back wound violates the laws of physics because it cannot travel upwards after having entered on a downward path. 3) Dr. Humes “destroyed part of the autopsy records and personal notes inconsistent with accepted ethical and judicious medical practice.” Salerian concluded that, “President Kennedy’s postmortem examination conducted at Bethesda Naval Hospital by Commander Humes is invalid and unworthy of scientific reliability.”  

          The reason for the numerous conspiracy theories is the excessive secrecy of the government. Even the medical data were not released to the public until the ARRB had finished its work in 1998, and we still have been shown only a fraction of all the documents which are in existence. An example of what appears to be absurd secrecy is the fact that the report of Nurse Patricia Hutton, who had accompanied the transfer of the President’s gurney from the limousine to Trauma Room One, was stamped “Top Secret.” This was either automatic because everything surrounding the murder of JFK had to be top secret or because she wrote that she saw a wound in the back of the head and this was no longer acceptable. One also needs to know that as soon as the autopsy was finished, photographs and X-rays had to be turned over to Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman never again to be seen until the HSCA, the proceedings of which were likewise kept secret. Even Mr. Stringer never saw the developed photos he took because the camera film had to be given to Mr. Kellerman.

          I have deliberately refrained from conjectures as to why the autopsy findings differed so markedly from what the medical personnel in Dallas reported on the afternoon of that fateful day. The discrepancies are of a magnitude which practically forces one to conclude that the body had been tampered with. It appears that the head as well as anterior neck wounds were deliberately enlarged before Drs. Humes and Boswell began their reported work. This also means that neither the written autopsy report nor the photographs and X-rays can be used to establish the number and directions of the bullets which wounded and killed President Kennedy. This leads to the further conclusion that the entire literature, which uses autopsy material to either prove or disprove theories about the assassination, cannot be trusted. It appears that two crimes were committed. One involved the person(s) who planned and executed the assassination and the second which involved persons within the government who falsified legal evidence.   

          In the next installment I shall attempt to present a timeline for the period between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. EST, at which time the Humes-Boswell autopsy began, as well as Horne’s opinion when the chain of custody of the President’s body might have been interrupted. We owe our dead President, who saved us from nuclear disaster, the truth and remarks like Mr. Gopnik’s, as cited earlier, are not helpful in reaching  this goal.







December 1, 2013

THE COVER-UP CONTINUES

          In the two previous installments I have shown that there are serious discrepancies between the observations by medical personnel in Dallas and the official autopsy report of President Kennedy’s wounds. I have also mentioned in the November 15 article, which deals specifically with the autopsy findings, that the report by FBI agents Francis O’Neill and James Sibert, which was sent to the Bureau, differed from the official autopsy report as it was delivered by Navy Commander James Humes to his superior officer, and the assassinated President’s personal physician Rear Admiral George Burkley. In addition, I have pointed out that these differences were not random but apparently intentional in order to solidify the lone gunman theory.

There are numerous theories about who might have done what in Dallas and for what reason but I shall leave those aside because they cannot be proven and concentrate instead on what I have called in the November 15 installment the second crime – the cover-up. The various theories on the assassination are well known but the behind the scenes events which occurred later on that day are hushed up. But if we can demonstrate that there was a cover-up, which still persists, this is important because current political affairs can continue to be influenced by a misrepresentation of facts which are potentially available.

On the box which contains the DVD Superpower there is a quote attributed to President Truman: “The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.” It is most apt for what I now shall present. There will be no theories only data from official government sources which are available on the Internet. The information has been either supplemented by or compared with the following books: William Manchester’s The Death of a President: November 20 –November 25 1963, David Lifton’s Best Evidence, Vincent Bugliosi’s Four Days in November as well as Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and Douglas Horne’s Inside the Assassination Records Review Board. The four authors represent different viewpoints: Manchester and Bugliosi provide the official theory about the assassination while Lifton and Horne dispute it. 

In order to clarify in my own mind why the autopsy findings differ to such an extent from the observations at Parkland Hospital, as shown in the November 15 installment, I mentioned that I would present a time line of the Friday 22 events for the hours between 2 and 8 p.m. I was specifically interested in who was responsible for the autopsy to have been carried out at Bethesda Naval Hospital instead of Walter Reed, which would have been the more appropriate venue because it housed the nation’s foremost Forensic Center. I also wanted to know if there was any reasonable possibility that Lifton’s theory of the body having been switched to a different coffin and tampered with before the official autopsy began, contains even a shred of reason.

The only apt description of what I subsequently found is by Churchill referring to Russia: “A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma ….” When one compares official testimony among key witnesses one finds glaring differences which cannot simply be written off as memory problems. Because of the massive amount of material, as well as contradictions on most any item one wants to clarify, I shall limit myself to the time between 6 p.m., the arrival of Air Force 1 at Andrews Air Force Base (AFB), and around midnight when the autopsy formally ended.

 The decision in favor of Bethesda Naval Hospital was reached during the flight to Andrews Air Force Base but we don’t know who made it. Initially the autopsy was planned to be held at Walter Reed and transportation arrangements were made, but someone countermanded this order. The official version is that during the return flight to Washington Rear Admiral George Burkley the President’s personal physician, approached the distraught Jackie and explained that since her husband had been a Naval Officer Bethesda would be the appropriate place for the autopsy and she agreed. The change of venue from Walter Reed to Bethesda has introduced an additional element of confusion and led to the “mystery of the two coffins.” It is based on Lifton’s as well as Horne’s data and extensively discussed on the Internet. But the keyword “shipping coffin” does not exist in Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History.

The official version is quite simple and appears on pp. 229-233 of the Four Days book under the time 6:55 and the identical paragraphs are reprinted in Reclaiming History. It states that the presidential motorcade had arrived in a Navy ambulance which contained the bronze Dallas casket accompanied by Jackie, the President’s brother Robert, Rear Admiral Burkley, some members of JFK’s staff and Secret Service agents. The ambulance arrived at the front gate of Bethesda Naval Hospital at 6:55. Jackie and Robert Kennedy were taken to the Presidential Suite on the 17th floor where they awaited the release of the body for transport to the White House after the autopsy. Secret service agents as well as General McHugh, President Kennedy’s Air Force Aide, remained outside talking. While agent William Greer, the driver of the ambulance, remained in the car, Roy Kellerman, his superior, entered the hospital to find out where the entrance to morgue was. FBI agents James Sibert and Francis O’Neill, who had been tasked to stay with body of the slain President at all times, became concerned about the delay. According to Bugliosi, they then “approach the group of men and ask what the delay is all about. Larry O’Brien [Secret service] says they don’t know where the autopsy room is. The FBI men tell them to follow them around to the rear of the hospital.” They are led to the loading dock and in the process of carrying the extremely heavy bronze casket up a few stairs it suffered some damage. Bugliosi did not provide a time for the coffin’s arrival at the morgue and merely listed four references to the ARRB reports for this event. Of these the “After Action Report” by Lieutenant Bird, who was in charge of the honor guard, is the only relevant but also the most confusing one in this respect.

As mentioned, Bugliosi timed the arrival of the casket at “some minutes” after 6:55. But Bird’s official “After Action Report” stated the transport from the ambulance to the morgue occurred at “2000 hours.” This is also the time provided by Dr. Humes for when the autopsy had started. Yet, this presents us with a serious problem because it conflicts with the testimony of Dr. Finck which will be provided later. Bugliosi’s statement in regard to the discussion by the “group of men,” which delayed the drive to the morgue, was likewise inaccurate. Furthermore, although he mentioned in the endnotes Bird’s time when the Presidential party left from Bethesda for the White House, he failed to provide the time for entry of the coffin into the morgue which was clearly shown in the same document.

The following data come from Horne’s ARRB report and its appendices. The latter can be downloaded free of charge from http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=145280.

I would strongly urge readers who are seriously interested in what happened on 11-22-1963 and the subsequent cover-up, to consult this official information. The relevant data start at 4:05 when Gawler’s funeral home was contacted by Col. Miller, Chief of Ceremonies and Special Events of the Washington Military District. It was initially tasked to send a hearse to Andrews AFB for the transport of the body to the funeral home, while the military escort was to be flown by helicopter to that location. An honor guard, “the death watch,” arrived at Gawler’s soon thereafter and started practice drills. At some point this order was rescinded because it had been decided to transfer the body by ambulance to Bethesda. The discussion, which in part was quite heated, by the “group” outside the hospital entrance did not deal with the question where the hospital morgue was located but where the morticians were supposed to do their job. Was it to be at Gawler’s which had the facilities or at Bethesda which did not have them? Supposedly the Kennedy family insisted that everything be done at Bethesda and that portable equipment was to be used. This was abbreviated in Bird’s report to “After considerable confusion as to where the President’s body was to be taken the joint casket team removed the casket from the ambulance at the mortuary entrance in the rear of the hospital.” The report carried the date of December 12 which is quite late when one considers that the funeral, which ended Bird’s official functions, had taken place on November 25.

          Lt. Bird’s 8 o’clock arrival of the Dallas bronze casket cannot possibly be correct. It was contradicted even by Humes who testified before the Warren Commission (WC) that, “The President’s body was received at 25 minutes before eight and the autopsy began approximately at 8 on that evening. You must include in that fact that certain X-rays and other examinations were made before the actual beginning of the routine type autopsy examination.” He was not asked what these “other examinations” had consisted of.   

The two main autopsy physicians were Commander James Humes, Director of Laboratories of the hospital, and its chief pathologist Commander Thornton Boswell. When Humes had earlier been asked whether or not he might want assistance of forensic specialists from Walter Reed he declined because he felt that there would be no necessity for it. His job was delineated at the outset by Rear Admiral Burkley as “find the bullets.” It was not to be a complete autopsy in the conventional sense. Instead bullets had to be found which could be matched to Oswald’s rifle that had been displayed on TV during the afternoon. The single shooter theory had already been established and the autopsy was to be limited to its confirmation. Although Burkley and Humes had provided sworn testimony that it was a complete autopsy this was contradicted by Finck who initially refused to sign his name to that statement. He finally succumbed to pressure and justified his reversal in sworn testimony by stating that since the purpose had been to recover bullets and fragments therefrom this was accomplished. He, therefore, could put his name to the official autopsy report of November 24.

          “Find the bullets” as the main purpose of the autopsy was also used by the radiologist Dr. James Ebersole. He was officer of the day for his department on November 22 but quite junior and not yet Board certified. He was later criticized for his relative lack of experience but countered it by pointing out that since his task was quite circumscribed, he had no problem meeting it. After the skull X-rays were developed and only small bullet fragments could be seen, Humes and Boswell decided to seek assistance from Walter Reed Hospital. Humes telephoned Lt. Col. Dr. Pierre Finck of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), chief of the Wounds Ballistics Pathology Branch, at his home and asked him to come immediately to Bethesda. Finck testified that he had received the call at 8 p.m.

          Dr.  Finck also testified that when he arrived at 8:30 the autopsy was in progress and the brain, heart and lungs had been removed. Finck’s time data are undisputed and can, therefore be taken as valid for scientific purposes. But since he arrived after the brain had been removed he cannot have had firsthand information about the appearance of the skull upon arrival of the body. Although he was extensively pressed by the WC, the Clark panel, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), the Clay Shaw trial and the ARRB, on the interpretation of the skull wounds, his testimony is not necessarily valid because he was not present at the time the X-rays were taken and when the brain was removed. For this he had to rely on statements by Humes. This would have been hearsay and inadmissible in a genuine criminal trial.

          This brings us to the critical questions: when were the X-rays taken and at what time was the brain removed? The answers are of major importance for an accurate assessment of what the X-rays show. If the brain had already been removed before they were obtained they would be contaminated by the unavoidable damage to the skull in the process of removal and lose much of their value. Since they are the most important medical evidence it is, therefore, essential to know at what time they were obtained. Unfortunately this area is full of contradictions and vital evidence is not available. I now shall provide what can be garnered from the technicians who assisted at the autopsy. The official autopsy report does not provide this information, neither does the one by the FBI agents who were in attendance and Bugliosi likewise fails to do so. In regard to the time the autopsy was started we have only one sentence from the FBI report: “Upon completion of X-rays and photographs, the first incision was made at 8:15 p.m.” This statement is also only partially correct because photographs and sketches were taken throughout the autopsy as well as thereafter, during reconstruction of the head by morticians.  

          The two X-ray technicians were Edward F. Reed and Jerrol F. Custer, while the lab technicians were Paul Kelly O’Connor and James Curtis Jenkins. Their testimonies are typical for the depth of the problem one is confronted with in the search for truth. Let us remember that according to Humes’ testimony “X-rays and other investigations” had been performed between 7:35 and 8:00 p.m. The National Archives contain 3 skull X-rays: one anterior-posterior view (A-P) and two lateral views. Reed testified that he took only one lateral and an A-P view. Yet Custer, who was Reed’s supervisor, reported that he had taken five skull X-rays: the A-P, two lateral and two tangential views. The latter have apparently disappeared. The technician’s testimonies to the ARRB are in Volume II of Horne’s report but unfortunately neither one was asked for a clock time when they started to take the X-rays.

          We know that by 8 p.m. all of the skull X-rays, regardless whether they were three or five, had been taken and studied by the autopsy physicians because that is the time Dr. Humes called Finck for help.  Reed as well as Custer emphasized that the X-Rays were taken and developed one at a time rather than as a batch. If we accept Humes’ statement that the body had arrived at 7:35 it is impossible that even the currently existing three films had been taken and evaluated within 25 minutes. In those days developing one cassette required 5 minutes. To this must be added the time needed for adequate positioning of the body and the camera before the film is taken, the time needed to commute between the morgue and the main laboratory on the fourth floor as well as the return to the morgue, and an inspection of the developed films. Even if there had been only three films and they were developed in a batch (contrary to the technicians’ statements), rather than successively, the Humes 7:35 time of arrival time of the body cannot be correct.

          The problem gets worse when it comes to details of Custer’s sworn testimony. There were apparently at least two series of X-rays taken: First a set of skull and cervical spine films and subsequently others dealing with the rest of the body. This is the only way one can make sense of Custer’s otherwise unintelligible testimony. The confusing aspects start when Jeremy Gunn, the ARRB interviewer, asked Custer when the first X- rays were taken. “Approximately, I would say, it would have to –the first thing I remember–it would have to be after the Y-incision was made, so the autopsy was already in progress.” Gunn then asked “Approximately how much time passed between the time you first saw President Kennedy‘s body and the time you took the first post Y-incision X-ray?” Answer, “I would safely say within an hour. May be a little less. Maybe a little more, but it wasn’t any more than that.” It should be noted that the “Y incision” refers to the opening of chest and abdomen and indicates that the brain had already been removed by that time. Gunn then inquired about the number of skull X-rays and in what series all of the X-rays were taken. Custer replied that there were five different series, at the most, at different times. The set of skull X-rays had been taken first. When he then was asked if he had seen the Presidential party upon its arrival at the hospital, Custer affirmed it. He had seen “Jacqueline Kennedy in her bloody dress” when she entered the rotunda while he was on his way to the fourth floor to have the first X-rays developed. Gunn asked the question because Custer had previously reported this observation to Lifton, and Gunn wanted to have it repeated under oath.

          This testimony presents us, with an obvious problem. Custer could not have taken “the first X-rays” after the Y incision because the skull X-rays had come first. The post 8:15 X-rays dealt with the rest of the body.         If he was indeed on his way to have the first X-ray developed, the body must have arrived before 6:55. When Custer was asked if there were any other records which relate to the autopsy, he replied that there was a duty log in the radiology department. He believed that he had made an entry when he was dispatched to the morgue to take the films of President Kennedy. He was then told by Dr. Ebersole to eradicate the entry. “In fact, I was told to tear the whole page out.” Custer then said “I gave it to Ebersole and he destroyed it.”

One may now feel that this type of confusing testimony is just happenstance. Unfortunately it is the rule as the testimony of the laboratory technicians Paul O’ Connor and James Curtis Jenkins proves. O’Connor testified for the HSCA on August 29 1977 that he was on duty with Jenkins that night. He stated that

 

“The casket was a pink shipping casket and it arrived at approximately eight o’clock. He said the body was in a body bag and the head was wrapped in a sheet. O’Connor said he helped unwrap the sheet. He recalls seeing “… massive head wound …” and a “…gaping wound in the neck …” as well as “… two chest incisions.”

            O’Connor says he was choked at what he saw. He said the head had “nothing left in the cranium but splattered brain matter.” O’Connor said he noticed this particularly because it was “… part of my job to remove the brain and fix it.”  

 

          This is the type of testimony which has fueled speculations but at least the time must be wrong. Had the HSCA been a court trial one would immediately have attempted to corroborate O’Connor’s statements with those of his co-worker Paul Jenkins since both of them were together at all times. Jenkins’s testimony was, however, quite unrewarding in this respect. He was interviewed on August 29, 1977 per telephone, and I shall present only relevant data. He “told Ms. Boland in their phone conversation of August 17 that he was very hesitant to talk over the phone because he had information which was controversial. He indicated to us that he will apply for a government insured loan for his graduate medical education.” His autopsy companion usually was Mr. Miller but he was for some reason unavailable and Mr. O’Connor had filled in. Jenkins logged the autopsy number in the ledger book but was told not to put the name in the log.  He stated that he helped put the body on the table, but was never asked about the time and the type of casket the body was removed from. In regard to the appearance of the head he said that he couldn’t recall whether or not the brain was already removed when he first saw the body but did state that “… it is normally my function to remove the brain and infiltrate it,” indicating that in this instance someone else had done so.

          Mr. Jenkins reticence to provide controversial information is understandable when one considers his life situation. But it is also apparent that during the HSCA information gathering process there was no clear line which would have allowed comparing the statements of one witness with those of the other as would have been appropriate for the X-ray as well as the laboratory technicians. We are left with snatches of information which are not corroborated. There is, however, additional testimony about the shipping casket and time of the arrival of the body in the morgue.

          The first call sheet of Gawler’s funeral home listed a casket order for a Marsellus 710 mahogany casket to be delivered to the Naval Medical Center. Under remarks we find “body removed from metal shipping casket at USNH Bethesda.” A former mortician of Gawler’s, Tom Robinson, was interviewed for the ARRB on June 18, 1996. He was one of the three “hands on” embalmers who worked under the supervision of Mr. Joseph Hagan on that night. He confirmed the original plans of having the work done at Gawler but “About suppertime plans changed.” He was told by Joe Hagan to get the portable embalming equipment and at “high speed” they drove the hearse with the flag draped mahogany coffin to Bethesda. They arrived early, prior to the chest incision and “just as the gross examination of the head was starting.”  He recalled seeing the damaged bronze coffin and confirmed other witnesses’ impression of the chaotic atmosphere in the autopsy room which he likened to “a cocktail party” or “like a circus.”  He stated that “he saw the brain removed from President Kennedy’s body and that a large percentage of it was gone ‘in the back of the head from the medulla.’”  The large open wound in the back of the head had to be covered with a rubber sheet so that embalming fluid would not leak. He estimated its size as a large orange. Although this seems straightforward the early arrival was contradicted in separate testimony by Hagan who stated that he drove the hearse with the casket to Bethesda, accompanied by Mr. Joe Gawler, “sometime near midnight,” although some members of the team had arrived earlier around 11 p.m.

There are two additional documents which further confuse the issue as to the time when the casket with President Kennedy’s body arrived at the morgue. Sergeant R.E. Boyajian sent on November 26 a memo to “Commanding Officer, Marine Corps Institute Company,” on the Subject of “Security detail, Bethesda Naval Hospital, 22 November 1963.” The sergeant stated that “at approximately 1700 hours a detail of 10 men was sent to Bethesda Naval Hospital with orders to report to Admiral Galloway,” the Commanding officer of the Bethesda Medical Center. It arrived at “approximately 1800 …. The word was changed several times as to which entrance the ambulance was going to utilize and as a result a cordon detail of seven men was seen several times double-timing through the hospital on the heels of the Security Officer…. At approximately 1835 the casket was received at the morgue entrance and taken inside.”  It is noteworthy that Bugliosi was aware of Boyajian’s report because he correctly listed when the autopsy was finished and the time of return of Kennedy’s body to the White House, but he failed to give the arrival time at the morgue. One may now wonder if there was a typographic error and the time should have read 1935 instead of 1835. But that this is not necessarily the case was documented by Naval Petty Officer First Class Dennis David who was Officer of the Day for the Medical School.

         

During his deposition for the ARRB in February 1997 Mr. David reported that at about 5:30 he was called to the office of the Chief of the Day for the National Naval Medical Center (NNMC– the entire Bethesda complex including the medical school and the hospital), a Chief Ledbetter, who had 3 or 4 Secret Service agents in his office. The Secret Service agents told the Bethesda duty officers that the autopsy would be at the NNMC Bethesda, and directed them to secure all entrances and exits to the Bethesda complex which could lead to the morgue and laboratory areas.… At about 6:30 p.m. Mr. David said he received a telephone call in which someone said, “Your visitor is on his way; you will need some people to offload. He then got  his own duty sailors together, borrowed some more from the dental school, and assembled them outside the morgue at the loading dock  by about 6;40 p.m. Five or six minutes later, at about 6:45, he said a black hearse drove up at the morgue  loading dock. He said the driver ‘and the person riding shotgun’ (i.e. front seat passenger) were wearing OR (operating room smocks). Four or five men in blue suits, whom he assumed were Federal Agents, exited the back of the hearse, and supervised and observed while the navy sailors (approximately 7 or 8 people) working for him offloaded the casket which was in the hearse. He said it was a simple, gray shipping casket such as he frequently saw used later during the Vietnam war. His group of sailors took the casket into the anteroom directly adjacent to the morgue. He then dismissed them and went back upstairs to an administrative office on the second floor of the tower building, ‘out front’ toward the lobby.

            … About 30 minutes later, he said, he saw a motor cavalcade, including a gray Navy ambulance, drive up outside the front of the Bethesda Tower. He looked out on the curved, open second story balcony above the Bethesda Tower Lobby and observed Jacqueline Kennedy, Robert McNamara and several others immediately enter the Bethesda lobby from the motorcade, and go directly up to the 17th floor suite on the elevator (without stopping or pausing for anything). Mr. David knew what their destination was by watching the number indicators on the elevator. He was firm in his recollection that the motorcade out front with the gray ambulance arrived well after the gray shipping casket at the rear of loading dock.

 

          There are some obvious inconsistencies in this testimony. If the hearse was unloaded at 6:45 this would have been only 10 rather than 30 minutes before the arrival of the ambulance. While this is a relatively minor point it does show that it is impossible to establish a precise time even for the arrival of the President’s body.

Bugliosi did not enter into the substantive aspects of David’s testimony but only discussed aspects in regard to a memo he had been asked to type, by an unnamed FBI agent, in regard to bullet fragments which were found during the autopsy. Since the statement was not corroborated by others Bugliosi dismissed it for lack of credibility because David’s name did not appear among the attendees in the morgue. But David had never claimed that he was in the morgue during the autopsy. He only testified that the event had occurred “late in the evening” and in the vicinity of the morgue.” More serious for credibility is what Bugliosi has correctly pointed out in regard to the final paragraph of David’s report, although he omitted mentioning that the statement was made voluntarily to the ARRB. In 1992 Dennis David, James Jenkins, Paul O’Connor, Jerrol Custer, Floyd Riebe (assistant photographer) and Dr. Cyril Wecht (forensic pathologist) underwent hypnosis to recover further memories. As we know false memories can readily be implanted under these circumstances making any testimony based on them unreliable. Bugliosi used this fact to discredit David’s account but did not refer to the rest of the five page document which contains the above quoted testimony: http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/master_med_set/md177/html/md177_0005a.htm. But the conclusion of false memory cannot be sustained. Bugliosi knew of Lifton’s book, derided its contents, but failed to mention in the text of Reclaiming History, as well as in the endnotes, that David had provided the identical information about circumstances surrounding the autopsy in a telephone conversation with Lifton on July 2, 1979! The full account can be found on pages 571-582 of Best Evidence.  

In this report I have provided only some of the examples which show the inconsistencies in official documents to which several others could readily be added. Let us summarize what we have been told: Sergeant Boyajian received “the” casket at the morgue entrance at approximately 6:35; Petty Officer David received “a shipping casket” at about 6:45; the navy ambulance arrived at the front of the hospital at 6:55 and Dr. Humes met a coffin outside the morgue at about 7:35. The official autopsy with inspection of the body was listed as having started at 8 p.m. which was also the time Lt. Bird had delivered the bronze casket and the phone call to Dr. Finck was placed. The Y incision, which led to access of the body cavities, was reported at 8:15 and Dr. Finck arrived at 8:30.

There were two coffins delivered and it is obvious that only one could have contained the body of the President. Lifton, Horne and others believe the timetable which corresponds to the arrival of the shipping casket and this has led to the inevitable “body snatching” idea. As shown above, one can arbitrarily pick a given time above any other and arrive at the conclusion one desires. The only point most everyone who was present at the autopsy agreed upon was that this was “no ordinary autopsy.” It was chaotic and most of the lower ranking observers felt that it was intended to confirm a preconceived outcome. All participants also agreed that they were sworn to secrecy in regard to anything they had observed during the autopsy. This demand was only lifted for HSCA testimony and thereafter, which enabled Lifton to write his book.

In all this chaos, confusion, duplicity and secrecy there was one voice of human compassion which now needs to be mentioned. The problem was how to break the tragic news that their father had been murdered to Caroline and John Jr. The latter presented no difficulty because he was only 3 years of age, but Caroline was six and dearly loved her Dad. William Manchester provided us with the information. Jackie as well as Bobby was devastated by the event and incapable of bringing the news to Caroline. Jackie’s mother, Mrs. Auchincloss, thought it would be best to have the children’s nurse Miss Shaw, who had been with Caroline since she was 11 days old, perform this sad duty. She tried to refuse but had to give in at the end. Caroline had looked forward to the birth of her baby brother, Patrick, and was quite distraught when he had died only 3 months earlier, two days after birth. This would be the second time where she was suddenly confronted with the death of a beloved family member. Here is how Manchester described the scene:

 

In Caroline’s bedroom Miss Shaw said slowly, ‘Your father has been shot. They took him to a hospital, but the doctors couldn’t make him better.
            There was a pause.

‘So’, she continued, ‘your father has gone to look after Patrick. Patrick was so lonely in heaven. He didn’t know anybody there. Now he has the best friend anyone could have.’

She paused again.

‘God gives each of us a thing to do,’ she said. ‘God is making your father a guardian angel over you and your mother, and his light will shine down on you always. His light is shining now, and he’s watching you, and he’s loving you, and he always will.’

 

These comforting words to a child are indeed the best anyone can come up with. But our government has treated, and continues to treat, all of us as children who must not be allowed to know the awful truth of what happened on that November day fifty years ago. We don’t know what the government is hiding; we only know that we are not given the full truth and, as Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History demonstrates, the cover-up and distortion of important documents continues. If we cannot even know when the President’s body arrived at the morgue, and whether the X-rays were taken before or after the removal of the brain, all the conclusions in regard to bullet tracks, which are based on them, are scientifically worthless. This applies also to the autopsy photographs because we don’t know at what stage of the event they were taken and some which look like photos are actually sketches by medical illustrators.

According to a Salon article of May 31, 2012 more than 50.000 documents were still being withheld in full, while numerous others have been partially released with relevant data blacked out. This secrecy not only does not enhance national security, but actually diminishes it because nefarious acts, for which we are held responsible, can occur without our knowledge. We must insist on full disclosure lest we lose our remaining constitutional rights.

The third week of November was also the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address which concluded with these words “… that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” It is now more urgent than ever that “we the people” act on this resolve and demand full accountability from our government.  







January 1, 2014

THE 2013 CHRISTMAS SEASON

Initially I had considered continuing the discussion of questions related to the government’s cover-up of President Kennedy’s assassination, but then decided to postpone this task until the February installment. This is still, after all, the Christmas season and it is more appropriate to discuss its meaning in contemporary America.

          According to Wikipedia, a Gallup poll conducted in 2011 showed the following breakdown of Americans’ religious affiliations: 76.1 per cent of the population Christian (Protestants/ other Christians 52.5 per cent, Catholic 23.6 per cent), Jewish 1.6 percent, Muslim 0.5 per cent, other non-Christian religion 2.4 per cent, none/atheist/agnostic 15 per cent, no response given 2.5 per cent. As a Utah resident I was surprised to find that “Mormons” had been given a separate slot apart from “Christians” and showed up with 1.9 per cent somewhat ahead of the 1.6 percent who regarded themselves as Jews. Inasmuch as the official designation of the “Mormon” religion is “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints” and belief in Jesus as savior is the common denominator of all Christians it is reasonable to add this 1.9 per cent of the population to the Christian 76.1 percent. This brings the total to 78.0 per cent. One might now expect that this overwhelming proportion of believers in Jesus Christ would reflect itself in the conduct of our political representatives and the media. But unfortunately this is far from the case. During the past few decades our society has become “sensitive” to the feelings of non-Christians and it is now officially the “holiday season.” Christian religious displays have become banned on public property. Whenever some intrepid souls defied these ordinances there were plenty of lawyers willing to take up the challenge. Needless to say we who don’t mind seeing a crèche in front of City Hall will have to foot the bill in taxes.

This year there was a new wrinkle in the Church-State separation: in Utah same-sex couples got a holiday present. Our state is known for its “family values” and in the 2004 elections Utahns voted for an amendment to the Constitution of the State which reads: 1. Marriage consists only of the legal union between a man and a woman. 2. No other domestic union, however denominated, may be recognized as a marriage or given the same or substantially similar legal effect. The vote was 66 per cent in favor of the amendment, which, with similar wording, was also passed in ten other states. But on March 25, 2013 three same-sex couples, including one already married in Iowa, filed a law suit seeking to overturn this vote as unconstitutional. The case was heard early in December in District Court and on December 20 Judge Robert J. Shelby struck down the ban as violating the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The State appealed to the next higher court which upheld the ruling and it is now scheduled to go to the Supreme Court. Approximately 1000 same-sex couples have by now achieved their goal and it is obvious that lawyers will have another bonanza. Not only in fighting the legal battles but since divorce rates among heterosexual couples hover around 50 percent we can expect a similar phenomenon for homosexual couples.

For Utah the irony is that the “peculiar institution” of polygamy led to the Mormon Exodus in 1847 from the U.S. into Mexico which had no objections to this practice. But President Polk’s War (1846-1848) which cost Mexico about half of its territory, landed Brigham Young and his followers back in the USA in what was then Utah territory.  Statehood had to be postponed for more than 50 years until President Wilford Woodruff, Prophet and Seer of the Mormon Church, received a revelation in 1890 that polygamy was not part of the divine plan for his flock and had to be abandoned. The way was then clear for statehood in 1896. This surrender to U.S. moral principles was due to financial considerations. The Church had lost a great deal of money in its legal battles and was in danger of disenfranchisement as well as seizure of property including the temples. O tempora o mores the ancient Romans said. In the middle nineteenth century a man having several wives was regarded as the height of iniquity and the idea that same-sex people could marry each other was not even dreamt about.

The mentioned 14th amendment to the U.S Constitution was passed in 1868, as part of post-Civil War legislation, in regard to issues resulting from the abolition of slavery. The critical passage states: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The extension of this formula to justify same-sex marriages seems to be a stretch but inasmuch as marriage is no longer entered into for procreation but also financial advantages it is likely that Utah will fight another losing battle for which we will be taxed. On the other hand this will open the floodgates. When the 14th amendment is reinterpreted in the above manner there seems to be no reason why polygamy should not become constitutional again. While “love” is regarded as the mainspring for marital desires the reality is more mundane and also has to do with tax and other incentives.

In the popular culture Jesus had to give way to Santa Claus who is considerably more marketable. Several decades ago I heard a joke which roughly went like this: A man approaches a priest and asks him to petition the pope to include a mention of Coca-Cola in the liturgy of the mass. The priest was obviously taken aback and asked why he should do this. The reply was: Well; you are doing it for Fiat why not for Coca-Cola. By now some Catholics have forgotten their Latin and it needs to be explained that the comment referred to the Lord’s Prayer: fiat voluntas tua – Thy will be done. When I first heard the joke I smiled but was not aware of an important antecedent. I didn’t know that “Santa” is a relatively recent addition to the Christmas scene and his first job in the 1920s was to sell Coca-Cola in advertisements. Over the years his tour of duty has expanded from the day after Thanksgiving in November till December 25. Since the economy is still relatively depressed the holiday store season started this year even before the third Thursday of November. With increasing commercial pressure we may even see it advance to soon after Labor Day.

Some of us do, however, retain a fondness for Jesus and want to celebrate his birth at Christmas time. During the night of the 24th we watched three season related programs on TV. The first one was on CNN where four worthy pundits discussed the U.S. diplomatic achievements of the past year. Although they were rather meager and consisted mainly in the avoidance of military intervention in Syria and Iran I found it remarkable that all four, plus the interviewer, agreed that even these successes had only come about by credible threats of war against the regimes of these countries. In essence we were told that unless we bully people we don’t like, they will not do what we want them to. That our so-called enemies, adversaries, rogue states, terrorists, or whatever name they go by, may have reasons of their own why they act the way they do, is something we don’t want to hear about.  The idea that we might listen to what our adversaries want to tell us, and then to adjust our actions accordingly, seems to be positively un-American

The second program was on the Brigham Young University channel. It featured a Christmas presentation by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and was exceedingly well done. There was singing, dancing and some scripture reading with St. Luke’s Christmas story as the highlight. The performers were mostly young and exuded happiness. This was followed a while later by Midnight Mass at St. Peter’s in Rome which I viewed on the Internet because I didn’t feel like staying up till the wee hours of the morning. The contrast between the Mormon and the Catholic celebration of the same event could not have been more startling. While the Mormons were young and happy, the mostly elderly Catholic clergy was solemn and dour looking. I know that High Mass liturgy does not lend itself readily to evoke joy and that Exultate, Jubilate is not necessarily to be taken literally, but the contrast between these two events was startling. Although the Basilica featured a crèche with a cherubic little Jesus, upon whom the pope bestowed a tender kiss on one of its knees, the overall tone impressed me as more funerary than, to coin a neologism, birthdayish. Seventy-seven year old Pope Francis put forth his best effort but I had the feeling that these two hours were more of a duty than an expression of joy. It was also clear that Pope Benedict, who had resigned from the office earlier in the year, probably would have dreaded the occasion.

  Since I am familiar with Catholic liturgy there were no surprises but inasmuch as Pope Francis is a warm, genuinely humane person I was wondering if he might even make some changes in next year’s celebration. He is clearly reform-minded but when one looks at the faces of the senior clergy it is obvious that he will have great difficulties in achieving his goals. Nevertheless there would be a biblical justification in the Gospel of Luke. As all of us know, the shepherds were told by the angel that he is bringing them “good news of great joy.” It now needs to be pointed out that in Latin, the language of the Church, there are two words for “joy.” Laetitia is quiet inward happiness while gaudium (from which the Viennese “Gaudee” is derived) denotes outward happiness or “jumping with joy.” It is the latter connotation which is used in Luke’s Christmas story. I realize that change in an ancient liturgy is not going to come over night but it might not be a bad idea to introduce some gaudium into the Church for Christmas and Easter. 

Like Pope John XXIII, whose encyclical Pacem in Terram I discussed in a previous essay (Peace on Earth; April 2007), Francis stands up for the underprivileged and tries to bring the fundamental tenets of Jesus’ message to the powerful, not merely by preaching but personal humility and good humor. As such he might be the person to effect some changes, which a more doctrinaire pontiff would not even consider.

On the international scene Pope Francis could also play an important role. The efforts of the Polish born Pope John Paul in hastening the demise of the Soviet Union are, of course, well known. The trio: John Paul (supporting Poland’s Solidarity movement), Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan succeeded in persuading Mikhail Gorbachev to let the Germans dismantle the Berlin Wall which brought freedom to the USSR’s European satellites. I had not known, however, that in the summer of 1963 there existed a definite possibility for an end to the Cold War. When I wrote the April 2007 article I had not yet read the books about Kennedy’s presidency and therefore had not known the context out of which Pacem in Terram arose. Since it is important and relevant for our current situation I shall now discuss it.

The missile crisis of October 1962 had brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster. Kennedy and Khrushchev had stared into the abyss and stepped back. Both statesmen realized that this insanity, where the world could be destroyed by a touch on the proverbial button, must end and sought means to do so. Kennedy, therefore, established, via the KGB, a secret back channel with Khrushchev. Pope John XXIII, although already terminally ill, also served as intermediary between the two warring nations. Secret negotiations for nuclear arms control were in progress and the Pope’s mentioned Easter encyclical was intended to hasten them along.

As a result of the work of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) and the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), which I mentioned in the previous installments, we now have considerably more information on the hidden history of the Kennedy years which was so unfortunately disrupted in Dallas. Khrushchev and Kennedy had come to respect each other during the missile crisis and were convinced that only cooperation between the two social systems could save the world from disaster. But in both instances the internal power structures were opposed to “peaceful coexistence” and argued, especially in the U.S., for complete victory over the foe. Those of us who remember the movie “Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb,” will recall how Air Force General Buck Turgidson jointly with Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper had launched an unauthorized bomber attack on the Soviet Union. The film depicts the frantic but futile attempts by the American President and his Soviet counterpart to recall the planes. It was satire and few of us who saw the film realized that the two generals were modeled upon the real live Air Force General Curtis Le May. Ironically, the screen test for Dr. Strangelove was scheduled for November 22, 1963 but had to be postponed for obvious reasons. The film “Seven Days in May,” which deals with  a coup d’état by a rogue Air Force general who opposes detente, was likewise to be released in late 1963 but had to wait for its debut till February of 1964.

          Wikipedia tells us that Curtis Emerson Le May, whose nicknames included: “Old Iron-Pants,” “The Demon,” “Bombs away,” and “The Cigar” was born in 1906 and during WWII was responsible for the massive destruction of Japanese cities as well as the mining of Japan’s inland water ways. From 1961 until his retirement in 1965 he was Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Wikipedia, however, does not tell us that during the 1950s and early 1960s, when the U.S. had clear nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union, Le May argued for a first strike not only against the USSR but also its European satellites, and for good measure China as well as Southeast Asia. Since in 1954 President Eisenhower had rejected the suggestion by the military of a “preventive war” against the Soviet Union the word “preventive” was changed to “preemptive.” This still allowed for a first strike by the U.S. in case it was deemed that the Soviets were about to launch an attack. To appreciate the seriousness of the situation one also needs to know that President Truman had kept the nuclear arsenal within the jurisdiction of the civilian Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) but in 1959 President Eisenhower had allowed himself to be persuaded to place it under the Strategic Air Command (SAC) where Le May was in charge. Even the launch codes were in his, rather than the President’s hand. There was no “failsafe” mechanism in place at that time. This situation was only beginning to be remedied during the brief Kennedy administration.

            Douglas Horne provides extensive documentation of these dangerous times in his ARRB volumes and he also quotes from James W. Douglass book, JFK and the Unspeakable – Why he died and why it matters.” Douglass wrote that: “At the July 20, 1961 NSC meeting [after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion], General Hickey, chairman of the ‘Net Evaluation Subcommittee’ of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, presented a plan for a nuclear surprise attack on the Soviet Union ‘preceded by a period of heightened tension.’… Vice President Lyndon Johnson’s military aide, Howard Burris, wrote a memorandum on the meeting for Johnson, who was not present.” The memo stated that Kennedy listened to the presentation and then asked about the casualty figures which were expected on both sides and for how long Americans would have to sit in fall-out shelters. When told he abruptly stood up and left the meeting. On his way out he said to his Foreign Secretary Dean Rusk: “And we call ourselves the human race.”

          As mentioned, Kennedy had by the end of 1962 come to an understanding with Khrushchev who in turn had to patch up relations with Fidel Castro who was furious at not having been consulted before the Soviet missiles were removed. He, therefore, invited Castro for a one month trip to the Soviet Union where he not only explained the high stakes of the nuclear arms race but also informed him that Kennedy’s word could be trusted and direct negotiations between Cuba and the U.S. were feasible. Although Castro was in the beginning doubtful about this prospect, he kept an open mind and by the middle of 1963 a back-channel to Cuba had been opened. A French journalist, who was authorized to feel out Castro on this topic, was actually with the Cuban President when the news from Dallas arrived over the air waves. Both were shattered and Castro said: “This changes everything.” The irony as well as tragedy of 1963 will be further discussed in the next installment because now is the time to consider prospects and hopes for this New Year.

          In the concluding chapter of The Jesus Conundrum I wrote

 

When we look at the ethical essence of the messages the great sages of our world have sent us, we find remarkable similarities, and with those as our base we could construct a more humane society. East and West are no longer incompatible and the best of both can be taken to form a worldview which will benefit all. Yet organized religions, as they exist today, have historical roots in different countries and cultures. They are burdened with past histories of conflict and are not likely to become universal in their present form. The currently established Churches would be well advised to reflect on the original teachings, their origin and their purpose. They could subsequently retain the universal aspects and gradually discard the parochial ones. This will not occur over night but is a process that ought to be set in motion. The world has become too interconnected and what now hurts one hurts all. We will either live together in relative harmony or die together in distress. While organized religions divide, the “religious experience” unites. It is universal and can be tapped into.  

 

Inasmuch as the Catholic Church is the largest of the world religions with 1.2 billion members and now has a pope who puts the welfare of human beings above dogma he could begin this process. The Holy Father could initiate a personal dialogue perhaps first with his Holiness the Dalai Lama and subsequently with representatives of the other major religions. Theoretically, by temperament, Pope Francis would be in an ideal position to assume this role but in this world peace makers are not popular. We don’t know if the Curia would support him and what fate may have in store. But hope springs eternal and the people of the world are weary of constant wars.

Those of us who call ourselves Christians have a special duty. We should reflect on the meaning of the Evangelion which translates into Good News. What is this “good news?” The overarching message is “don’t be afraid!” This was the preface by the angel Gabriel at the annunciation, to the shepherds in the fields and on other occasions. But our political leadership tells us that we are in dire danger which we have to guard against by expanding what Eisenhower had called “the military-industrial complex,” to which now a vast structure for spying on our citizenry, as well as everybody abroad, has been added. It is assumed that a fearful population will be docile but this violates the principles of a free society we are supposedly standing for. In the Gospel of Mark we read that Jesus’ first words of his ministry were: “The time has been fulfilled, the Kingdom of God is approaching. Repent and believe in the good news.” The original Greek word which was translated into “repent” is “metanoia” which goes beyond a religious context. It denotes “think differently,” a profound change in thinking patterns or colloquially: think outside the box.

From Christmas we now turn our thoughts to the hopes and wishes for 2014. My hope for our country in this upcoming year is that we change our mental attitude from paranoia to metanoia. For Pope Francis I wish that he will be able to continue on the path he has set out which includes unstinting efforts towards the resolution of international conflicts. For our President I wish that he can, just like Kennedy, stand up to the pressures by the military to bomb and invade countries that have done us no harm ostensibly because we don’t like their societal structure. This is Vietnam all over again: we have to destroy the village to save it! Let President Obama justify his premature Nobel Peace Prize and the world will be grateful. From the politicians and other agents, who work behind the scenes and hold our fate in their hands, I devoutly request: Give Peace a Chance!

To the world’s athletes and sports lovers I wish joyful Winter Games in Sochi without political disruptions. To my readers I would like to extend best wishes for health, a degree of economic security and contentment in their family lives. In addition I have a request. Please don’t just believe what is written in these pages or what is proclaimed by the media. Limit the time spent on TV shows as well as electronic “apps.” Use it instead to gain information, via the Internet and relevant books, on the critical issues of our time. Only an informed citizenry can make informed decisions which help all and hurt none.

At the end of the second part of “Faust” Goethe discussed the efforts by the people of the Netherlands to wrest arable land from the sea and proclaimed, “Das ist der Weisheit letzter Schluss: nur der verdient sich Freiheit wie das Leben der taeglich sie erobern muss.  I am not a poet and therefore will present only a somewhat literal translation: This is wisdom’s final conclusion: Only he deserves freedom and even life itself who conquers its difficulties on a daily basis. Let this be our program for 2014.







February 1, 2014

THE ENEMY WITHIN

Part I

 

          In last month’s installment I mentioned that I would continue to discuss the government’s cover-up of the Kennedy assassination. The reason why this is not “ancient history,” which is “dead and buried,” as our media want us to believe, resides in the fact that it set a pattern which persists to this day. Only if we can uncover the forces that bear the major responsibility for the continued disinformation campaign which we are exposed to, can we hope to achieve a degree of genuine security. It will be shown why our government is inherently incapable of providing it regardless of huge financial expenditures and the imposition of measures which increasingly infringe upon our constitutionally guaranteed rights. It will be demonstrated how the Kennedy murder cover-up provided the blueprint not only for the Warren Commission but also its successor the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) and most recently the 9/11 Commission.

          Before doing so it is, however, necessary to discuss briefly the annual ritual of the President’s State of the Union speech, which took place last Tuesday evening. As pointed out on a previous occasion (The Humpty Dumpty Society, February 1, 2010) not only is the content quite predictable, but so is the frenetic applause at the time of the President’s entry; when he is trying to start his talk, and after every few sentences. For the latter event there is, however, some difference. When Democrats applaud their President’s laundry list of programs, Republicans largely remain unmoved and when Democrats stand up to applaud, Republicans tend to sit on their hands. This year was no exception. The only interesting aspect was to watch the Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, as he sat next to Vice-President Joe Biden. For the most part he appeared rather bored and when his seat-mate, Joe Biden, stood up and clapped his hands furiously Boehner remained phlegmatically unmoved. His demeanor actually reminded me of the bygone era of “Mr. Nyet,” the Soviet Union’s Andrei Gromyko. On occasion he did feel obligated to applaud but this was likewise mainly done in a perfunctory manner. The only exception was the ovation to Army Ranger Cori Remsburg at the end of the President’s hour-long speech. Sergeant Remsburg had suffered a severe brain injury in the line of duty in Afghanistan and was in the process of a slow and difficult recovery. His efforts were applauded by Democrats and Republicans alike and were cited by the President as an example that Americans never give up. I am mentioning these observations because they suggest that regardless what President Obama wants to get enacted, the Republicans are likely to balk.

          On the whole there were no surprises and since the economy is still not up to par and the gulf between Republicans and Democrats shows no signs of diminishing, the President did his best to put a good face on a reasonably bad situation by adding vigor to his speech and the promise of “a year of action.” He told us that if Congress were to find itself unable to get meaningful legislation done, he’d simply ignore these ineffective lawmakers and issue executive orders. That these may have a life expectancy of only about three years, because they can be rescinded by the next incoming President, doesn’t matter because by that time he no longer bears the responsibility for what his successor(s) do. The speech was mainly devoted to the domestic agenda which, apart from “Affordable Health Care,” had been stalled in the previous years. But even this achievement is still vigorously assailed by Republicans who continue to do their best to get rid of it.

          In regard to foreign policy there were only three points of interest. The main one was the statement that it is time “to get off the war footing” and let diplomacy do its work. This would be a welcome relief if the real powers that run this country were to allow it. A specific point was his warning to Congress that if it were to place further economic sanctions on Iran while delicate negotiations in regard to their nuclear program are in progress, he would veto them. While making the usual optimistic pronouncements on the moribund Israel-Palestinian “peace process,” with the goal of an independent Palestinian state next to a Jewish state, he also by necessity reaffirmed our unwavering commitment to Israel’s security. Anyone who has taken the trouble to inform himself about the historical background and the current facts of Israel’s political structure will know that these goals are quite unrealistic and that Israeli politicians have absolutely no interest in having a truly independent state of Palestine as their neighbor. I have discussed this topic previously on several occasions with the April 1, 2002 article, “Palestinian State or Israeli Protectorate?” the most pertinent. Although written nearly twelve years ago nothing has changed to invalidate the opinions expressed at that time.

          This brings me to the main topic as shown in the headline of this installment. There exist actually two books with this title. One was published in 1960 by JFK’s brother, Robert (Bobby), and deals with his efforts as Chief Counsel for the McClellan Committee (United States Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management) to expose the infiltration of the Labor Unions by organized crime. He pointed out that Hoover’s FBI had no interest in the matter because it was chasing communists as the major internal enemy. When Bobby became Attorney General in the following year after his brother’s accession to the presidency, he continued his campaign against organized crime with great zeal and there is good reason to believe that this may have been a contributory element to JFK’s assassination. 

The other book with the same title was authored by Rev. Kris Lundgaard, a Presbyterian minister. As the subtitle Straight Talk about Power and Defeat of Sin shows, the book concentrates on intrapersonal problems. I shall not deal with this important subject at this time but devote the rest of this installment to the hidden domestic political forces which shape the history of our country. We are not being told about those by our media which harp instead exclusively on various real as well as imagined foreign enemies.

It is a common misconception that the President is in complete charge of the country. He is not. His powers are quite limited apart from the initiation of wars which used to be, according to the Constitution, the privilege of Congress. But even when a war is unleashed the President does not have the power to end it as even President George W. Bush learned. This fact had already led President Johnson to the rueful conclusion, when he found himself unable to get out of Vietnam, “They talk about the awesome power of the presidency. The only power I really have is nuclear and that I can’t use.” This should be a powerful lesson to all of our politicians who dream of America’s military might and they also ought to reflect on what happened in Europe during that fateful summer of one hundred years ago. 

          There is another aspect to the presidency which tends to be ignored. It is a fundamental axiom that the higher the position within an organization a person has reached, regardless whether it is government or private industry, the less he knows about what is really going on inside it. He is absolutely dependent on what he is told by his aides. This is where the problem arises. These “briefers” may well have their own views on what the chief executive is supposed to know and what should be withheld. This is the point where mischief can readily occur because groups of individuals within the government may not agree with their President’s program and quietly sabotage it.  

          This fact was most eloquently presented by Colonel Fletcher Prouty in his book The Secret Team. The CIA in Control of the United States and the World (October 1, 2011; 9/11 Remembered). The book should be required reading because it demonstrates how our government really works and how its policies are achieved through a variety of pressure groups. Of these one of the most effective is the CIA.

When we talk about the CIA we have to realize that we are talking about two quite distinct segments. One is the intelligence gathering and interpreting component which is entirely separate from the other “clandestine” or “black ops” segment. Although the CIA director is responsible for both, the latter has created real problems for our conduct of foreign policy and standing in the world. The “black ops” budget is largely off the books and oversight by Congress negligible. Whenever Congress tries to assert its prerogatives, investigations are thwarted. Potential witnesses who are regarded as cooperating with the investigative agencies are either intimated or may even get killed, while those witnesses whose allegiance is to the CIA rather than the official government are free to lie under oath.

          I realize that these are harsh allegations but they do explain the otherwise unexplainable from the Kennedy assassinations (Jack and Bobby) up to 9/11. While individual CIA operatives may or may not have been actively involved in the plots, the organization was demonstrably part of the subsequent cover-up of the real facts. The first example is the Warren Commission and its investigation of President Kennedy’s murder. The official report lauded the CIA for its cooperation but this was based on a deception. Former CIA director Allen Dulles, who had been fired by Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs disaster, had a seat on the Commission and was, therefore in a position to influence what data would or would not be allowed to come to the Commission’s attention. An example is Oswald’s CIA files which were withheld and their existence denied. This culture of secrecy and deception was highlighted by none other than Allen Dulles in a conversation with colleagues during the Commission’s tenure as reported by Anthony Summers in The Kennedy Conspiracy. The question was how a CIA official would deal with inquiries about an agent he had recruited:

 

                   Dulles: … he wouldn’t tell.

                   Chief Justice Warren: Wouldn’t he tell it under oath?

                   Dulles: I wouldn’t think he would tell it under oath, no.

                   Chairman: Why?

                   Dulles: He ought not to tell it under oath. Maybe not tell it

to his own government, but wouldn’t tell it any other way [sic].

                   Chairman: Wouldn’t he tell it to his own chief?       

                   Dulles: He might or might not.

 

          It is obvious that under these circumstances we have allowed the creation of a segment of government which regards itself as above the law and thereby provides ample opportunity for rogue operations of which only a few people may be aware. Congressional oversight is a sham because members of Congress are only told what the agency wants them to know in order to extract appropriations. But when some operations go sour, the official military is supposed to step in and rescue a botched undertaking. This was the essence of the Bay of Pigs disaster.

The Cuban invasion was planned and executed by the CIA with the understanding that if it were to be in peril of failure U.S. military forces would come to the rescue. When the newly minted President was informed about the invasion plans he also was told by the CIA that the Cubans would rise up against Castro and military aid would not be needed. Kennedy approved the plan with the proviso that under no circumstances would he authorize U.S. armed forces to participate, regardless of need. His words were not taken seriously and the CIA trained Cuban invasion force was assured by its CIA handlers of U.S. military help. When Kennedy stuck to his word, because he did not want his new presidency to be tainted right from the start with “Yankee Imperialism,” the disaster ensued. But the CIA’s duplicity which a) had provided false information about the internal affairs in Cuba, by denying Castro’s popularity in the island; b) executed a risky military adventure without adequate means and c) pressured the President to come to the rescue, was not allowed to see the light of day. Kennedy shouldered the responsibility, which left him open to the charge that he had abandoned the freedom fighters who had counted on him. He received the undying hatred of the Cuban exile community, was branded as ineffective by others and the Editor of a Dallas newspaper stated that when a man on horseback was needed Kennedy came on Caroline’s tricycle.

It took the Watergate scandal and the subsequent Church Committee (1975-1976; officially known as “The United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities”) to bring some of the CIA’s most egregious activities to light. Among which were the assassinations of several foreign leaders who were popular in their country but not ours, creation of terrorist armies to fight legitimately elected governments,  as well as false flag plans to overthrow the Cuban regime. Operation Northwoods (Abuse of Secrecy, August 8, 2008) which was actually endorsed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but rejected by Defense Secretary McNamara, was only one of them which have been declassified.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations is another typical example of how Congress was deceived by the CIA. The HSCA was an outgrowth of the Watergate scandal. Initially Representative Henry Gonzalez, who never believed the Warren Commission’s conclusion, had introduced a Resolution in the House to investigate the murders of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and the attempted assassination of Governor George Wallace. It was never acted upon. But continued pressure from various sources including Dr. King’s widow, Coretta, did succeed in the formation of the HSCA in September of 1976. Its charter was, however, limited to the investigation of JFK’s and Martin Luther King’s murders. I have previously discussed some aspects of the Committee’s work but had been unaware of the behind the scenes activities.

 In regard to the Kennedy assassination even the official Committee Report faulted the Warren Commission for having “failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President.” It laid the blame on “the failure of the Commission to receive all the relevant information that was in the possession of other agencies and departments of the government.” In other words vital information had been withheld. In addition it was noted that the “Warren Commission presented the conclusions in its report in a fashion that was too definite.” When one translates this into everyday language one could say: the conclusions should not be regarded as the last word on the matter. Since the Committee was aware of these shortcomings its own Conclusion stated:

 

The Committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy.

 

Please note the rather vague terminology of “believes” and “probably,” while the last sentence could be translated colloquially as: “after all of our efforts in regard to time and money we don’t have the faintest idea what really happened.” Why should this be so?

The Internet provides some of the answers but I was surprised to find out that Wikipedia, which ordinarily provides reasonably accurate information, failed to mention important data. But before quoting the relevant section, a potential source of confusion must be mentioned. There were two persons by name of Richard Sprague connected with the Committee: Richard A. Sprague and Richard E. Sprague. The former was a noted prosecutor who served as chief counsel of the HSCA, while the latter was a computer specialist who had done work with photographs of the Kennedy assassination and acted as consultant for the committee.

Although the Wikipedia entry noted that the Committee’s work started in 1976, it merely stated under the headline Committee Staff: “G. Robert Blakey was Chief Counsel and Staff Director to the 1977 House Select Committee on Assassinations. He was appointed by Louis Stokes and succeeded Richard A. Sprague.…” This omits crucial information on why Richard A. Sprague was replaced and when one tries to find biographic information in Wikipedia there is no entry. One is referred instead to Richard E. Sprague.

For data on Richard A. Sprague one has to consult not only the Internet http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKsprague.htm but also Gaeton Fonzi’s book: The Last Investigation: What Insiders Know about the Assassination of JFK, which deals with the workings of the HSCA. Fonzi was a highly respected investigative journalist who worked on the staff of the HSCA and the book provides evidence for how the investigations were waylaid. I intend to discuss it in more detail in the next issue and for now concentrate only on the two persons called Sprague.

The bare bones account about Richard A. Sprague, as reported here, comes from the Spartacus website. He was appointed Chief Counsel and was determined to overcome the shortcomings of the Warren Commission. He envisioned an unbiased approach which impartially examines all available evidence regardless where it might lead to. In pursuit of this goal he assembled in 1976 a staff of 170 lawyers, investigators and researchers. But when he submitted his budget of $6.5 million for 1977, the chairman of the Administration Committee, Frank Thompson, regarded it as excessive. The press as well as House members started to impugn Sprague’s character and described the investigation as a multi-million dollar fishing expedition. This led first to the replacement of Committee Chairman Thomas N. Downing with Henry Gonzalez who “immediately sacked Sprague as chief counsel.” Sprague objected, Gonzalez resigned and was replaced by Rep. Louis Stokes who in turn appointed G. Robert Blakey as chief counsel.

          For the essence of the conflict which drove Richard A. Sprague from his position we can now consult Richard E. Sprague’ book, THE TAKING OF AMERICA, 1-2-3. It is no longer in print but the author has placed it on the Internet under http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ToA/ToAauthor.html. One may or may not agree with all the author’s conclusions and the names of supposedly guilty parties cannot be readily verified, but the main point is quite clear. The problem was not merely money but secrecy and specifically that of the CIA. The proceedings of the committee were to be kept secret from all outsiders and the files were to be sealed for 50 years. Why this should be so in an “open society” like ours is a mystery, but it demonstrates what we really permit to occur and are paying for.

          The Appendix of the book contains as Exhibit A the detailed 16 point non-disclosure form which Robert Blakey had ordered all staff members to sign. It is a lawyer’s dream and a layperson’s nightmare. Subsequent Exhibits are mainly correspondence with the Committee chairman and show Sprague’s increasing frustrations. In Exhibit F, a letter to committee member Rep. Yvonne Burke dated September 22,1978 , he pointed out that after having originally met with Committee Chairman Stokes he had great faith,

 

but I now have lost all of that faith. The farce that is going on is almost unbelievable. All witnesses (except Cyril Wecht), all panels employed by the committee, the staff and the committee members doing the questioning, obviously made up their minds a long time ago that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin, and that the Warren Commission was right.

 

He continued with a plea for Ms. Burke to insist that a number of witnesses, who would testify to a conspiracy and whose names he provided, be called and that the photographic evidence be introduced. As we know the Committee did settle on Oswald as having fired all the shots and for the conspiracy aspect relied only on acoustic evidence which has subsequently been challenged. Sprague was correct. What had begun as a serious investigation under Richard A. Sprague had indeed turned into a farce.

Chief Counsel Blakey, who subsequently re-joined academia had been loath to tangle with the CIA and had tried to remain in its good graces throughout the years. But by 2003 even he had an epiphany and in a postscript to a PBS interview he had given earlier he declared:

 

I no longer believe that we were able to conduct an appropriate investigation of the [Central Intelligence] Agency and its relationship to Oswald.... I do not believe any denial offered by the Agency on any point. The law has long followed the rule that if a person lies to you on one point, you may reject all of his testimony. We now know that the Agency withheld from the Warren Commission the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. Had the commission known of the plots, it would have followed a different path in its investigation. The Agency unilaterally deprived the commission of a chance to obtain the full truth, which will now never be known. Significantly, the Warren Commission's conclusion that the agencies of the government co-operated with it is, in retrospect, not the truth. We also now know that the Agency set up a process that could only have been designed to frustrate the ability of the committee in 1976-79 to obtain any information that might adversely affect the Agency. Many have told me that the culture of the Agency is one of prevarication and dissimulation and that you cannot trust it or its people. Period. End of story. I am now in that camp.  

 

Better late than never one can only say, but why do we have to read this on the Internet instead of seeing what is reported here on our TV screens? The media have abrogated their responsibility as the “fourth estate” and now are complicit in the cover-ups. This bodes ill for the future and responsible citizens have to continue to do their best to bring the truth to the general public regardless of cost. Part II of this series will discuss Fonzi’s book on the workings of the HSCA, as well as inside reports from the 9/11 Commission, and Part III will deal with the enemy who resides in each one of us.        







February 15, 2014

THE ENEMY WITHIN
Part II

 Sabotaged Investigations

 

          Previous installments provided some documentation which demonstrated that not only the Warren Commission Report on the Kennedy assassination was misleading but so was the last and final investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Investigators who studied these two documents concluded unanimously that government agencies, foremost among them the CIA and FBI, had deliberately impeded both investigations in order to prevent the full truth to come to light. These cover-ups were crimes against our democracy and have enabled a similar cover-up for the 9/11 catastrophe. The reaction to 9/11 with the resultant invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the War on Terrorism was based on deceptions of the American public by its government. Inasmuch as they persist to this day not only in regard to the Kennedy assassinations (Jack and Bobby), but also to 9/11, it behooves us to learn as much as possible about how the cover-ups were perpetrated. Unless we recognize that our republic’s main enemies are not assorted terrorists and rogue states, but forces which are operative within our own government we will be doomed to perpetual war instigated by hidden self-appointed oligarchies, which under the slogans of national security and freedom will provide us, our children and grandchildren with neither.          

These are serious matters and all of us who care about the future of our country will need to shed our lethargy and assume the responsibilities citizenship in a “free” country demands. The first step is to raise the public’s awareness to the fact that our official news media, print as well as TV, present us with biased information, which deliberately omits crucial data.

In the November 15, 2013 installment I demonstrated why the single bullet theory defies logic as well as the laws of physics. To repeat once more: the theory requires us to believe that the bullet first entered Kennedy’s upper back and exited through the low neck. This means that the bullet fired from above and behind must have changed course after its entry and traveled in an upward direction in order to exit in the low neck. In addition it was asserted that it then entered Governor Connally’s back, exited at the chest, entered his wrist, lodged in his thigh and was subsequently found in nearly pristine condition on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital. This flight of fancy requires more faith than most of us can muster. But it had to be maintained by the government because an additional bullet, which hit the governor, could not have been fired by Oswald. There simply was not enough time to do so. Since two bullets hit the President and a splinter of a third one, which went astray, had hit a bystander, at least four shots must have been fired. This was the problem Arlen Specter, the Commission’s counsel and future Senator, had to overcome. He solved it with the ingenious “magic bullet” idea. But Specter and the Commission deliberately disregarded Governor Connally’s testimony that he had been hit after he had turned around to see what had happened to the President when he heard the first shot. Four bullets would mandate more than one shooter and would, therefore, be clear evidence of a conspiracy. While the government’s motive to hide a conspiracy, which led to the murder of the President, may be understandable the fact that the official media to this day endorse Specter’s theory as fact speaks volumes about our so-called free press. 

As mentioned in the February 1 installment the HSCA was intended to put all the doubts, which arose from the contradictions within the Warren Commission’s Report, to rest. The most relevant section of House Resolution 1540 (published on September 15, 1976) reads,

 

The select committee is authorized and directed to conduct a full and complete investigation and study of the circumstances surrounding the death of President John F. Kennedy and the death of Martin Luther King, Junior, and of any others the select committee may determine.

 

The language is unequivocal and everyone assumed that this was to be a complete investigation where the world would be told the full truth. But as mentioned this goal was not achieved. Richard E. Sprague’s experience, who was consultant to the Committee, was mentioned in Part I and so was, briefly, Gaeton Fonzi’s. The latter served as an investigator for the HSCA and wrote a book, The Last Investigation ­­- What insiders know about the assassination of JFK, The book is important because it highlights the profound problems within our democratic system when it comes to the investigation of malfeasance within its own ranks.

Fonzi was by profession an investigative journalist who had initially taken the Warren Report’s conclusions at face value. But when serious discrepancies, between the actual data and the conclusions of the report had been pointed out to him, he began his own investigations. He did so first as a private citizen, and subsequently for Senator Schweiker of the Church Committee. Fonzi lived in Miami and was in close contact with the Cuban exile community. It was a hotbed of hatred for Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs debacle and especially after his subsequent failure to invade Cuba during the missile crisis. Fonzi’s contacts with the leaders of the various anti-Castro groups made it apparent that they were not autonomous but functioned largely under the aegis of the CIA, which provided money and resources. Additional funds came from wealthy private right wing individuals who had their own reasons to hate Castro’s Cuba.

Fonzi had high hopes for the HSCA and thought that it would allow him to conclusively demonstrate CIA ties to the anti-Castro Cuban community as well as to Oswald. He was encouraged when Richard A. Sprague (not to be confused with the consultant Richard E. Sprague) was appointed Chief Counsel. But in concert with other staffers he became progressively more disenchanted later on and wrote:

 

The truth is, the last investigation was simply not broad enough, deep enough, ambitious enough, nor honest enough to yield any firm conclusions about the nature of the conspiracy. To give the impression that it was, is a charade.

 

Let us now look at why this was the case. In chapter 21, under the title, “Programmed to Self-Explode,” Fonzi wrote: “What Sprague discovered when he arrived in Washington was that his first order of business was not to set up an investigation but simply to keep the Assassinations Committee alive.” Congressional Committees legally expire at the end of each Congressional year and Congress has to authorize their continuance for the subsequent year.  Ordinarily this tends to be automatic. But this was not an ordinary situation and on February 1, 1977 the House Rules Committee provided funding of the Assassination Committee, under the Chairmanship of Rep. Henry Gonzalez, for only two months during which time it was to show why its work was needed at all.

The problem was compounded by the fact that there was bad blood between Committee Chairman Gonzalez and Sprague. In December 1976 Gonzalez had told Sprague that the Committee could operate with a monthly budget of $150,000 until it was officially reconstituted. But Gonzalez had been mistaken because House Rules permitted only a monthly expenditure of $84,337. Gonzalez then ordered Sprague to fire some of his newly hired staff and claimed that Sprague had done the hiring behind his back. This was not true. Friction continued between them as to how the investigation was to be performed and on February 11 Gonzalez fired Sprague. He also ordered the Capitol police to evict him from his office. But Gonzalez had overstepped his authority and within hours the Committee overruled its chairman and rescinded the order.

Money had not been the only area of concern. Sprague had begun to investigate CIA connections and had thereby stepped on extremely sensitive toes. Public attacks appeared in the media and his integrity was questioned. Nevertheless, the Committee stuck with Sprague. Since Gonzalez had lost the Committee’s support he resigned on March 1, and Rep. Louis Stokes of Ohio became chairman with Sprague remaining at his job. But the attacks against Sprague had taken their toll. By the end of March Stokes concluded that Sprague had acquired too many critics and if the Committee was to survive Sprague would have to resign.

Stokes’ concern was realistic because Congress did not really want an impartial investigation. 1976 had been an election year and members of Congress had yielded to pressure from its Black Caucus to investigate the Martin Luther King (MLK) murder. But elections were over and therewith any sense of urgency. Since no political gain would accrue from either JFK’s or MLK’s murder investigation, Congress would henceforth go through the motions of appearing interested but without putting its shoulder to the wheel.

 On March 29, when it was apparent that the Committee might lose the vote for its reconstitution, Sprague resigned. This fact, in combination with the apparent suicide of a key witness the day before his expected testimony to the HSCA, ensured the Committee’s survival, albeit on a much reduced annual budget of $2.5 million. This was far short of the projected $6 million Sprague had felt was needed in order to do justice to the Committee’s mandate of a “full investigation.” 

In September 1976 the duration of the Committee’s work had been projected for two years, but the new Chief Counsel, Robert G. Blakey, was not appointed until June 20 1977. Nine months had been frittered away. This hardly left enough time for the Committee’s investigative tasks, public hearings and to write a report. In contrast to Sprague, who was a seasoned prosecutor, Blakey came from Cornell University where he taught criminal law and he was also in charge of its Organized Crime Institute. Since he had previously served in the Justice Department under Robert Kennedy ferreting out organized crime, he was regarded as the top expert in the country on that topic. This background inevitably influenced the direction of the committee’s work because it was evident to Blakey that in any potential conspiracy organized crime would be a, if not the major component.  

In contrast to Sprague, who was street-wise in the pursuit of solving crimes but the proverbial “babe in the woods” when it came to the Byzantine machinations of Washington, Blakey was fully attuned to them and knew “how to play ball.” At his first general staff meeting in August 1977 Blakey explained that he had to promise Chairman Stokes that the staff would finish its investigation and write its report by December 31st 1978. There was absolutely no possibility that the Committee would be extended beyond this time. Fonzi was flabbergasted because it was obvious that a complete investigation could not possibly be performed within this time frame. But Blakey went on: “Our primary duty, he pointed out, was not to conduct a criminal investigation.… Our goals were to gather evidence to be presented at public hearings and, after that, produce a final report.”

          This was a new learning experience for Fonzi. He, like the rest of us, had assumed that Washington was serious in establishing the truth of what had happened to JFK and MLK but this was obviously not the case. As Fonzi found out that in government

 

What’s important is not what you do, but how what you do looks while you are doing it, how it looks after you’ve done it, and how it will eventually look in relation to everything else you’ve done looks. The inside of government is a funny house of mirrors and it was instant frustration [italics in original].

 

          While Sprague had given his investigators leeway to follow leads, Blakey insisted on a strict protocol. The staff had to define, over a period of weeks, key issues which were to be investigated. Any deviation which might result from new information that had been gathered required permission from Blakey and was usually withheld. This approach might work if one wants to prove a theory but cannot lead to the discovery of the truth in a situation as complex as the assassinations. The reason was time pressure as well as financial. In June of 1978 the budget was slashed further and 25 staff members had to be let go. This left only four Kennedy investigators. While this seems incredible to an outsider who believes that his government is serious about its business it does have logic of its own. This was explained to the staffers when Blakey took over. His lead coordinator for the JFK murder was Gary Cornwell who was attuned to the ways Washington works. According to his advice to the staffers “there was the real world” and “the legislative world.” Here are excerpts of the conversation as reported by Fonzi. Cornwell stated

 

‘Congress gave us a job to do and dictated the time and resources in which to do it. That’s the legislative world. Granted it may not be the real world, but it’s the world in which we have to live’…. Then it dawned on me: ‘Realistically, that doesn’t make any sense [italics in the original]!’ I almost yelled, struck by my sudden realization. Cornwell let go a loud whoop of a laugh, ‘Reality is irrelevant!’ he yelled back with a big grin.

 

          It was not a joke this is the reality of the legislative process. As a result of outside pressure, investigations are ordered with a broad mandate which looks good to the public. But Congress subsequently impedes the process and the final report becomes the goal to which everything else is subordinated. In addition, the fundamental conclusion of the report is frequently preordained regardless of what the actual investigations show. It is small wonder that the people who do the investigating in good faith are frustrated, become cynical and conspiracy theories are inevitable.

          When I subsequently looked at the Appendices in the Committee Report it became clear what had happened. Congress had deliberately sabotaged the Committee’s original mandate! Please look again at the original HR Resolution 1540 as quoted here on the second page. The paragraph in question ended with “… any others the select committee shall determine.” The next paragraph dealt with procedural details. This was the charge the staffers and investigators believed they were to work on. But even Fonzi apparently had failed to read early on the Congressional Record. Congress had pulled what is proverbially called “a fast one” in HR 9 of January 7, 1977 when it gave the Committee another two months to show results or else.

          The mentioned resolution looks on superficial reading quite similar to HR 1540 but instead of the period after “… shall determine” the sentence continues without break and radically alters the committee’s purpose. It now reads

 

… any others the select committee shall determine in order to ascertain whether the existing laws of the United States, including but not limited to laws relating to the Safety and Protection of the President of the United States, assassinations of the President of the United States, deprivations of civil rights, and conspiracies related thereto, as well as the investigatory jurisdiction and capability of agencies and Departments of the United States Government are adequate, either in their provisions or in the manner of their enforcement; and shall make recommendations to the House, if the select committee deems it appropriate, for the amendment of existing legislation or the enactment of new legislation.

 

          With the stroke of a pen the original purpose of “who had done what?” was completely changed into “forget that; just tell us what new laws we should pass!” This explains why Cornwell roared with laughter when Fonzi objected with his common sense argument. Cornwell was right. Reality is irrelevant for Congress and we are fools to believe otherwise. This lesson is not taught in Civics class, neither are we so told on our TV screens or from our elected representatives and senators who profess to be servants of the public. Yet it needs to be shouted from the rooftops in order to save whatever is salvageable from Washington’s current mismanagement. 

          It is obvious that we can no longer rely on our government to ever tell us what is really known about the CIA’s involvement not only in the cover-up but JFK’s assassination. Lying under oath is not only permissible in this subculture but as former CIA director Richard Helms declared: “A badge of honor.” Loyalty, as a former CIA agent explained to Fonzi, does not extend to Congress which constantly changes, but to the Agency which weathers all storms.

          I have discussed the 9/11 Commission on the fifth and tenth anniversary of the 9/11 catastrophe on this site (October 1, 2006; The 9/11 Cover-up; October 1, 2011; 9/11 Remembered) and the Commission Report, in spite of its inadequacies, is still dogma. It followed the pattern set by the Warren Commission and the HSCA. Neither the Republicans in Congress nor the President and Vice-President had any interest in setting up the Commission in spite of the fact that the attacks had been the worst ones ever within the continental United States. The White House did actually everything in its power to prevent an investigation. When the families of the 9/11 victims were relentless and a major scandal brewed, Bush/Cheney had to yield. They retained, however, control by appointing chairmen who were attuned to their ideology. First it was Henry Kissinger but the families revolted and he had to be replaced with the less well known Philip Zelikow, about whose close ties to the Bush administration the public was not informed. The White House also insisted on being privy to the investigation’s proceedings and the final Report had to be submitted for editing prior to its publication. When the Report stated in its Preface that “We have sought to be, independent, impartial, thorough and nonpartisan,” we can grant the commissioners the intention, but the outcome was predetermined and did not conform to what the sentence states.    

          The Warren Commission had to prove the deranged Oswald lone assassin theory. The HSCA had to write a report which gave a semblance of an honest investigation without having been able to do so. The 9/11 Commission had to a) firmly establish Osama bin Laden and the 19 hijackers as the sole culprits and b) demand a new bureaucracy for our national security. According to the Commission the hijackings had succeeded because “the dots were not connected.” Had the FBI and CIA talked to each other, the disaster would never have happened, was the short answer.

The Commission Report is also similar to the mentioned precedents in other respects. The main text presents a cohesive story and contradictions are relegated to endnotes. For instance in regard to AA Flight 77 which supposedly hit the Pentagon while piloted by Hani Hanjour, we read that he had obtained a private pilot’s license in 1997 and in 1999 received “a commercial pilot certificate issued by the FAA.” This leads one to believe that he was a competent pilot and that the accompanying endnote would endorse that conclusion. But the opposite is the case. The endnote does not mention how Hanjour obtained his commercial pilot license and stated instead that he “was nervous, if not fearful in flight training” and that his instructor regarded him as “a terrible pilot.” The report did not mention that his license was no longer valid, because he had failed to renew it. Even more damning is the news report that in the second week of August 2001 Hanjour was denied rental of a Cessna in Maryland because he was unable to control and land it, http://web.archive.org/web/20020405020924/http://www.newsday.com/ny-usflight232380680sep23.story. It is inconceivable that an individual, who could not even fly a Cessna, would three weeks later perform a highly complex maneuver in a 757 in order to hit the Pentagon at ground level. As the website “Pilots for 9/11 Truth” points out, even 757 pilots with military training admit that it would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, for them to do so. By the way, the pilots also stated that hitting the Towers at the reported speed of the planes was no mean feat.

In addition, and this is again an item the official media didn’t tell us, the Pentagon section which was hit housed Naval Intelligence whose personnel was engaged in finding $2.3 trillion (!) which Secretary Rumsfeld on the previous day (September 10) had declared missing, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU4GdHLUHwU. Furthermore, it was no secret that not only were the Twin Towers reduced to rubble on the 11th, but so was WTC7 which had not been hit by a plane, but this event also failed to show up in the Report. Why do we have to read about these vital pieces of information on the Internet and in books by genuine truth seekers rather than in the official report?

In line with the mentioned precedents the Report also expressed thanks to the White House and various government agencies for their help. The obstruction from the White House has already been mentioned but obstruction, prevarication and destruction of evidence had also occurred by other government agencies.

John Farmer, Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission, published in 2009 The Ground Truth – The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11. The book specifically explored the question how it was possible that the most heavily defended air space in the U.S. could have been so readily breached. Let us remember that for the hijackings to succeed the following security measures had to be overcome: the hijackers’ visas had to be granted by the State Department, their names must not have shown up on the no-fly list, they had to pass airport security and on board they had to overpower experienced airline pilots who had military training, not once but four times! After the hijackings the FAA had to be unusually slow in recognizing them and notifying NORAD, which in turn responded only when it was too late. If all of this can happen so readily without inside help, then we really ought to stop paying taxes for defense related expenses.

Farmer and his staff were absolutely amazed by the contradictions they turned up in their investigation and the testimony that some of the most important FAA documents had been destroyed. He wrote:

 

It was difficult to decide which was the more disturbing possibility. To believe that the errors in fact were simply inadvertent would be to believe that senior military and civilian officials were willing to testify in great detail and with assurance before Congress and the Commission, to be interviewed by major media, to appear on national and international television and answer the same detailed questions, to cooperate in preparation of an official Air Force history, and to brief the White House on what happened on 9/11 without bothering to make sure that what they were saying was accurate. Given the significance of 9/11 in our history, this would amount to an egregious breach of the public trust. If it were true, however, that the story was at some level coordinated and was knowingly false, that would be an egregious deception.  

 

          Farmer, who is currently Dean of the Law School at Rutgers University, had to leave the question open because the Commission had neither the time nor the money to pursue this most important aspect. But he was emphatic in another respect. 

 

9/11 was the product of a government that doesn’t work, and the false story put forward about the event of that morning allowed the government to avoid the kind of searching reexamination of government that was appropriate to the situation, given the bureaucratic collapse that culminated in 9/11.… the principle response to the failure of bureaucracy was not an attempt to redefine government itself, but the creation of more government, more bureaucracy. 

 

          Domestically the result of 9/11 was the misnamed PATRIOT Act, which curtails civil liberties, and the creation of the “Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) as an independent agency to assist the DNI. The ODNI's goal is to effectively integrate foreign, military and domestic intelligence in defense of the homeland and of United States interests abroad.” The Director’s job is to ensure that 16 different agencies cooperate with each other and share their data. Here is the list from Wikipedia and underlining serves as a link to the respective agencies: “Air Force Intelligence; Department of the Treasury; Army Intelligence; Drug Enforcement Administration; Central Intelligence Agency; Federal Bureau of Investigation; Coast Guard Intelligence; Marine Corps Intelligence; Defense Intelligence Agency; National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; Department of Energy; National Reconnaissance Office; Department of Homeland Security; National Security Agency; Department of State;  Navy Intelligence.”

          Any rational human being will immediately notice that this is an expensive bureaucratic sham. Does anyone really believe that these agencies will tell Lt. General Clapper, the current director, everything he needs to know? How can he possibly be aware of what is really going on in the FBI, CIA, NSA etc., especially when they vigorously protect their turf against outsiders? In addition, even within these agencies groups of individuals act on a “need to know” basis, where even your closest co-worker, let alone the boss, may not know what you are up to. The ODNI has an impossible job and it is not surprising that in the nine years of the office’s existence there have so far been four directors and one interim director. 

          The major lesson from these three official investigations into the two recent pivotal events is clear: We cannot expect our government to give us honest answers regardless of how hard we try. The Kennedy assassination was a crime and so was 9/11, but in neither case was a criminal investigation allowed to take place. This is an indictment of all three branches of our government. The media have been co-opted, history is falsified and decent citizens who look for the truth are maligned. These facts must be faced and bode ill for the future of our country. In the March 1 installment I shall further discuss this situation and also report on efforts which are currently undertaken by private individuals and organizations to deal with our dysfunctional federal government.







March 1, 2014

REFLECTIONS ON SOCHI

          As noted in the previous installment I had intended to write part III of the “Enemy Within” at this time but as a former Austrian and skiing enthusiast I just can’t bypass the Sochi Olympics. Thanks to the powers above, the games went exceedingly well. There were no terrorist attacks, no scandals and the people of Sochi, as well as the officials, proved themselves competent, efficient, helpful and friendly.

          While one might expect this from other venues which have a long existing infrastructure this was not the case in Sochi. The city had previously been twice denied its bid for the Olympics and the IOC President, Thomas Bach, had feared a debacle. In his news conference prior to the closing ceremony he mentioned that he had visited the proposed site to assess its second bid and was appalled at what he found. “I came here and said ‘impossible.’”  “We were here and you saw (an) old Stalinist-style sanatorium city where you entered the room and you were looking at the roof so you would not be hit by something falling down. It was terrible.” But that was in the past and at the closing ceremony Bach said:

 

… Athletes - you have inspired us over this last 17 days. You have excelled in competitions and shared your emotions with us and the whole world. You have celebrated victory and defeat with dignity.

By living together under one roof in the Olympic village you send a powerful message from Sochi to the world, that of a society of peace, tolerance and respect. I appeal to everybody implicated in confrontation, oppression and violence to act on this Olympic message of dialogue and peace.

Tonight we can say Russia delivered all that it promised. What took decades in other parts of the world was achieved here in Sochi in just seven years. All the people of Sochi and Russia deserve our deep gratitude. …

 

             

          Twelve new events made the games the largest ever. The athletes performed phenomenally well and the acrobatics in the “half pipe,” were truly amazing. One is also grateful that no serious injuries had occurred under at times quite adverse conditions. Mikaela Shiffrin of Vail had remarked that she’d really think twice to come to a competition where “you ski on slush.” But on the next day she beat two Austrians for the gold medal in slalom. As a resident of Utah it was especially pleasing to note that 15 of America’s 28 medals were achieved by athletes from the Salt Lake valley and Park City area. The Salt Lake Tribune reported that if Utah were a nation we would have placed ninth in the overall medal count. This is a clear tribute to the success of the 2002 Olympics and the training facilities which were created at the time (The Mormon Olympics, March 2002). The Austrian team also did quite well with 17 medals which placed them number seven in the overall count.

The major disappointment was the reporting of the events by the media and especially television. NBC had the usual monopoly, and during the prime time viewing hours we were treated to a barrage of advertisements. We saw mainly events where American athletes had a chance to win a medal and after two runs of a given event the commercials were back. The closing ceremony was truncated and I wondered to what extent politics played a role. For our politicians and media people the Cold War has never ended and Russia is still painted as an enemy. That the Russians could do something right was difficult to swallow. Even IOC President Bach was censored by NBC and the line “What took decades in other parts of the world was achieved here in Sochi in just seven years,” was not heard but can be read on the Internet.

          NBC also did an abysmal job in other respects. For instance, they could have taken us on a tour of Sochi and its environs instead of showing an old film on the 1992 Nancy Kerrigan-Tonya Harding skating scandal. We might also have been informed that a world transforming event had taken place in its surroundings in April of 1963 and that Krasnya Polyana (which means red/beautiful) glade, where the Alpine events took place, was the site where Russia’s longest war formally ended in 1864. I regard it as rather sad that one has to consult the Internet and/or books to get this information and that our official media feed us propaganda and trivialities.

          Mr. Bach’s comment about the “Stalinist sanatorium city” sent me to the Internet for the context and it was quite interesting what one found there. The Sochi area was supposed to have been inhabited since 100,000 BC although I wonder how one would substantiate that claim. There is, however, a cave in Sochi with human and animal remains, as well as human artifacts, which has been dated to 50,000-30,000. In historical BC times it was an important trading post where Greeks exchanged their goods for slaves and in the 19th century it was hotly contested between the British, French and Russians who wanted to profit from the decaying Ottoman Empire. The city itself is quite new. It was incorporated in 1917 and was indeed devoted to sanatoriums. During WWII it served as the Soviet Union’s main convalescents’ center for wounded soldiers. Subsequently it flourished to some extent as a summer resort but with the collapse of the Soviet Union the city fell again on hard times.

          We have frequently been told of Putin’s comment that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a catastrophic event and he is chastised for it. Nevertheless, from the Russian point of view one must admit that he was correct. Not only did Russia lose the Central Asian republics with their immense oil and gas reserves, but Yeltsin also sold the previously nationalized natural resources of the remainder of the country to unscrupulous capitalists. Overnight obscenely rich “oligarchs” came to the fore while the common people sank into deep poverty. The social safety net was largely done away with and ordinary Russians were even worse off than immediately after WWII. The situation was apparently similar to that in Germany and Austria immediately after WWI when money was devalued by inflation; fortunes were made on speculations by some while the rest of the people had to sell whatever property they had to avoid starvation. It is small wonder that the majority of Russians have no problem with Putin who helped the country get on its feet again and has now shown the world what Russians can do if they put their minds to it. When we criticize Putin for not living up to Western expectations we should remember that his responsibility is towards the Russian people, rather than to the West and currently about 70 per cent approve of his performance in office.       

Krasnya Polyana likewise has an interesting history. It was regarded as the capital of various Circassian tribes who waged a fierce fight against Russia’s imperial ambitions. The battles of the so-called Russo-Circassian War for dominance over the Caucasus region raged from 1763-1864 when four Russian armies converged on the village which later became Krasnya Polyana and the Circassian leadership took an oath of fealty to the Tsar. The battles were fought with excessive cruelty and Tolstoy’s Hadji Murád provided a glimpse of what life was like on both sides. After the war “ethnic cleansing” occurred on a massive scale. The Muslim inhabitants were expelled to various provinces of the Ottoman Empire and mainly replaced by ethnic Russians.      

          While this may reinforce the typical picture of Russian cruelty we should remember that massive forced population exchanges were the rule not only in those days, but even during and after WWII in central Europe. Israeli leaders also were confronted with the same problem of what to do with a conquered population of a different faith, which became especially acute after the 1967 war. Although some championed expulsion of the Arab people from biblical Eretz Israel, international standards have changed and this option is foreclosed. The problem is currently allowed to fester but will inevitably come to a head in the not so distant future.

          In this connection we in this country also have no reason to cast stones when one considers how our Presidents disregarded the treaties made with the native population. I am not sure that events following the “Indian Removal Act” of 1830, which dealt with the relocation of five nations who lived in the southeastern part of the U.S. to west of the Mississippi, are given much prominence in our history classes. A good description of them can be found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears. Our self-righteous citizens who believe that evil only resides in others should read this article.

In regard to Russian cruelties during the Russo-Circassian war Tolstoy describes a scene in Chechnya where a Russian detachment comes under rifle fire. They respond with cannons and when the local fighters fade back into the woods the Russians come upon a deserted village which they burn to the ground. For good measure they loot whatever they can lay hands on, poison the well, desecrate the mosque, cut down apricot and cherry trees, destroy the apiary and stab an adolescent boy to death. On the Russian side the feeling was “mission accomplished,” because the Chechens who fought for their way of life were dzighits against whom one had to defend oneself. Have we not seen the same in recent wars where the enemy is dehumanized by a label? We know about My Lai but how many other atrocities have gone unreported?  The same applies to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars where segments of our troops and “contractors” behaved abysmally. We are not shown these scenes on our TV screens but examples can be found on the DVD The American Century by the Italian director Massimo Mazzucco whose 9/11 series I have previously mentioned (Shattered Trust; November 1, 2013).

We don’t want to see these pictures because they are profoundly disconcerting and we are content with President Bush’s answer to “why do they hate us?” with: “they hate our freedoms.” This is dangerous nonsense. They hate us because of our conduct in or towards their country! But in our current wars is it just hatred, or does it go deeper? Let me now give the word to Tolstoy who described the reaction of the villagers when they returned to their destroyed homes.

 

No one spoke of hatred of the Russians. The feelings experienced by all the Chechens, from the youngest to the oldest, was stronger than hate. It was not hatred for they did not regard those Russian dogs as human beings; but it was such a repulsion, disgust and perplexity at the senseless cruelty of these creatures, that the desire to exterminate them – like the desire to exterminate rats, poisonous spiders or wolves – was as natural an instinct as that of self-preservation.

 

This surely shows the timelessness as well as universality of human responses during war. Unless we realize that these feelings are a natural consequence of inflicting senseless violence on “terrorists,” to use current terminology, we will continue to ensure their proliferation. Put yourself into the mind of a young Afghan or Pakistani whose family has just been decimated by a drone strike. Put yourself into the minds of the people of Fallujah whose city we he have leveled and poisoned, possibly with radioactive dust from our “depleted” ammunitions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallujah_during_the_Iraq_War.  We won’t do it because it would require empathy and that in turn would get rid of war. But let’s face it; war is hugely profitable for those who really run the governments of this world. This is the reason why wars will persist and potential peacemakers have to be removed.

This brings us back from Krasnya Polyana’s 1864 treaty to Sochi and the events of 1963 as presented by Norman Cousins in The Improbable Triumvirate ­– An Asterisk to the History of a Hopeful Year, 1962-1963. The book is no longer in print, but since we prefer to spend money on war rather then education our libraries are cash strapped and they sell some of  their books which have limited readership to amazon. The book is clearly more than an asterisk because it provides insights into the minds of three men who were determined to steer the world into calmer waters after the October 1962 missile crisis.

Norman Cousins (1915-1990) was a remarkable person. Professionally a journalist and longtime editor of the Saturday Review he was also sincerely devoted to making ours a more peaceful world. This why in 1960 he formed, at the height of the Cold War, the little known Dartmouth Conferences where leading scientists and cultural representatives of the Soviet Union and the U.S. would get together for a week-long exchange of views how a peaceful co-existence between these adversaries could be achieved. The first one was held at Dartmouth College, hence its name, the second one in June of 1961 in the Crimea. These conferences, as well as other signs, had signaled to the Vatican a possible change of the Soviet Union’s rigid attitude towards religion and the time was felt right for potentially improved relationships. In addition, Pope John XXIII was extremely concerned about the possibility of nuclear war and although already seriously ill with cancer thought he needed to do everything within his power to forestall that event. In the spring of 1962 Father Felix P. Morlion, President of Rome’s Pro Deo Institute was, therefore, authorized to personally contact Cousins in New York in order to explore if he might be willing to serve as the Vatican’s unofficial emissary to the Chairman of the USSR, Mr. Khrushchev.

Father Morlion assured Cousins that the Pope had “profound respect for people of all faiths” and also explained that

 

From a theological point of view nuclear was not just a war of nation against nation, or even man against man – it was a war against God. Man was now on the verge of smashing at the conditions of life not just life itself. Nuclear war could alter man’s genetic structure; it could disfigure his life and create a deformed environment. If concern over such facts was not a matter for Papal intervention, it was hard to determine what was.

 

       He also mentioned that anti-war forces were gathering strength in the Soviet Union and it was important “to develop access to the Russian leaders so that the Pope’s appeal would carry weight.”

The conversations continued through the summer into fall, and Father Morlion asked whether he might be permitted to talk to some of the Soviet delegates at the time of the upcoming third Dartmouth conference, with the understanding that he could not be a formal participant in the proceedings. The pre-conference evening get-together on October 21 was, however, dominated by President Kennedy’s speech announcing the blockade of Cuban waters for Soviet ships carrying missiles to Cuba. Since this placed the Soviet delegation in a precarious position a vote was taken whether or not the Conference should be postponed, but both sides agreed that it ought to proceed.

During the week-long crisis the gravely ill Pope wrote a brief note which was broadcast by Vatican Radio.

 

We beg all governments not to remain deaf to this cry of humanity. That they do all that is in their power to save peace. They will thus spare the world from the horrors of a war whose terrifying consequences no one can predict. That they continue discussions, as this loyal and open behaviour has great value as a witness of everyone’s conscience and before history. Promoting, favouring, accepting conversations, at all levels and in any time, is a rule of wisdom and prudence which attracts the blessings of heaven and earth.

 

          This appeal was printed world-wide and even Pravda carried it in full under the headline: We beg all governments.” Commentators have mentioned that this had given Khrushchev the opportunity to appear as a man of peace by withdrawing the missiles. The Dartmouth Conference ended on a jubilant note and led to an invitation for Cousins to visit Moscow in December of that year as an unofficial representative of the Vatican. The most pressing immediate goal was to achieve the release of Cardinal Josef Slipy who had been imprisoned for several years.

As an American citizen Cousins had to clear this trip with our government and specifically President Kennedy who told him

 

… I don’t know if the matter of American-Soviet relationships will come up. But if it does, he will probably say something about his desire to reduce tensions, but will make it appear there’s no reciprocal interest by the United States. It is important that he be corrected on this score. I’m not sure Khrushchev knows this, but I don’t think there’s any man in American politics who’s more eager than I am to put Cold War animosities behind us and get down to the hard business of building friendly relationships.

 

The interview with the Chairman was fascinating because it showed him as a human being interested in family matters. For instance he chided Cousins for not having brought his children. When Cousins explained that they were in school, Khrushchev replied: “School? Nonsense! They don’t teach anything in the schools as important as they could learn traveling with Papa.” I am mentioning this because it had always been my opinion that concern for his grandchildren had been an overriding issue in the peaceful resolution of the missile crisis. Joint Chief of Staff Curtis Le May’s counterpart in the Soviet Union would hardly have had such scruples.

 Khrushchev then told Cousins about his problems with the press how they distort things and make life hard for him. He provided a specific example and for those of us who have been indoctrinated in believing that the USSR was a monolithic rigidly controlled society this conversation revealed a rather different picture. The interview was wide ranging, lasted several hours and at the end Khrushchev said that if President Kennedy really wanted peace he “would not find me running second in racing toward that goal.” He then penned two personal notes. In the one to the Pope he conveyed his good wishes for the “Christmas season” and in the note to Kennedy he used “holiday season.” It is these little nuances that define a person and the ostensibly boorish shoe banging at the UN was just for show.

          The apparent brief thaw in relations began to freeze again during the winter over the problem of the nuclear test ban treaty. The negotiators were deadlocked on the question how many on the ground inspections the Soviet Union would allow to take place. A second meeting with Khrushchev was therefore arranged in April, which took place at his country retreat in Gagra, about 30 miles from Sochi’s airport along the Black Sea shore. Prior to the visit Cousins had stopped over in Rome where he had received an advance copy of the Pope’s Pacem in Terris Encyclical (Peace on Earth; April 1, 2007) which he was asked to deliver to the Chairman. Also, heeding Khrushchev’s advice he had brought his daughters along and as the saying goes, “a good time was had by all” in Gagra. Cousins was shown the sports house with its facilities where they played badminton, which revealed Khrushchev to have been in excellent physical condition, and the swimming pool was enjoyed with and by the kids when the adults had to attend to more serious matters.

          Several substantive issues were discussed and again revealed the limitations a given President or Chairman is faced with. For me the Russian interpretation of the failed Paris summit was news. Khrushchev had intended to keep the Gary Powers’ shoot-down quiet so as not to endanger the summit, but when the papers published the incident he had to make it official. He nevertheless, wanted to continue with the summit because, as he told the Politburo, Eisenhower had been kept in the dark about the flight. When Eisenhower, after initially having denied the spy mission, assumed full responsibility he pulled the rug out from underneath Khrushchev’s peace efforts, who now stood exposed of having misled the Politburo. Under these circumstances there could not be a summit meeting and there is some speculation that Power’s provocative CIA mission on May Day was actually planned to result in failure in order to sabotage the summit (Abuse of Secrecy; August 1, 2008. Misguided Arrogant Incompetence; August 1, 2011).

          The interview takes up 27 pages of the book and it is impossible to even present all the highlights at this time. I shall, therefore limit myself to the nuclear issue. The argument revolved about how many annual inspections were required to verify that the Soviets were not cheating. As Khrushchev told Cousins

 

People in the United States seem to think that I am a dictator who can put into practice any policy I wish. Not so. I’ve got to persuade before I can govern. Anyway, the Council of Ministers agreed to my urgent recommendation. Then I notified the United States I would accept three inspections. Back came the American rejection. They now wanted neither three nor even six. They wanted eight and so once again I was made look foolish. But I can tell you this: it won’t happen again.

 

          The Soviets had earlier been led to believe that the U.S. would settle for three inspections and this is what Khrushchev alluded to. The “once again” comment referred to the U2 Eisenhower experience. We also need to know that the Chinese had put pressure on the Soviets not to agree to any test ban deal. While Kennedy was attacked for being soft on the communists, Khrushchev was vilified for being soft on the capitalists. Those were the realities in 1963. But Cousins was a skillful negotiator and convinced him that the President was serious and these misunderstandings could be dealt with. Nevertheless, Khrushchev insisted that he needed some concrete action from Kennedy to demonstrate his good faith.

          When Cousins reported back on what had transpired, Kennedy requested that a proposal for a speech be drawn up. It became the “peace speech” in form of the Commencement Address before the American University on June 10 of that year. Wikipedia gives excerpts but in the introduction omits Cousins’ vital contribution to its genesis. I shall quote here only three excerpts which clarify Kennedy’s stance and speak to our current situation.

 

Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need them is essential to the keeping of peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles—which can only destroy and never create—is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace. I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary, rational end of rational men. I realize the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war, and frequently the words of the pursuers fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task….

First examine our attitude towards peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it is unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings….

For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal.

 

          Kennedy subsequently devoted his full effort to getting the nuclear test ban treaty signed and ratified by Congress. It went into effect on October 10, 1963 and is still observed today. Norman Cousin received the Pope’s personal medallion for his efforts of having achieved the release not only of Cardinal Slipy but also of Archbishop Beran, who had been imprisoned in Czechoslovakia, and U Thant awarded him the Peace Medal of the United Nations.

Kennedy and Khrushchev were well on the way towards détente. In his last two months of office Kennedy not only considered a reduction of American forces in Vietnam but also ordered NASA to explore how the moon landing program could be modified from a purely American space race into a cooperative enterprise with the Soviet Union. His speech to the UN on that point is known but that he was serious and had issued National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 271 to that effect on November 12 is not.

Peacemakers are not in demand. Kennedy was murdered ten days after the mentioned NSAM. The President’s death gave the hardliners in the Kremlin their chance to depose Khrushchev and he accepted “voluntary retirement” on October 14, 1964. Pope John XXIII died of cancer on June 3, 1963 leaving Pacem in Terris as his unfulfilled legacy. Norman Cousins continued his elusive search for peace and died on November 30, 1990. As mentioned, Cousins book was titled The Improbable Triumvirate, but there were actually four improbable allies. On reading the book I had assumed that Cousins was Catholic. He was not, and this is the final improbability: he was Jewish and was buried in a Jewish cemetery with members of his family.

Without the Khrushchev-Cousins meeting in Sochi’s environs there might not have been a test ban treaty of which the world still benefits.
So, thank you Sochi and good bye for now; may you continue in your role
not only as a venue for healing the sick and providing recreational joys, but may you also serve again as a meeting ground between conflicting ideologies in the cause of peace. For the immediate future we sincerely hope that the Paralympics, which will begin next week, will be crowned with similar success and that they will lend further luster to Sochi and her people.       







March 15, 2014

UKRAINE CRISIS

          During the past two weeks the focus of attention has shifted from Olympic joy on the eastern end of the Black Sea to disaster on its northwestern area, with the focus on the Crimea. Putin’s triumph of the “New Russia” was short lived, and the cuddly bear that shed a tear at the closing ceremony has given way to the more usual menacing one. The Cold War is in full swing again and the people behind the Project for the New American Century (The Neocons’ Leviathan, April 1, 2003; Albert Wohlstetter’s Disciples, December 1, 2005; 9/11: Context and Aftermath, September 2013) are experiencing a revival. We are again inundated with propaganda where evil, which resides purely on the other side, must be exterminated.

President Obama is portrayed as a weakling in contrast to “real men” like Senator John McCain who would teach the Russians to mind their manners. The cover of the March 6 issue of a popular magazine, pictured below, says it all.

 

 

Since we don’t get the full story on our TV screens and the print media, one has to resort to the Internet and books. When one does so a rather different picture emerges. Several years ago I bought Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism but had only glanced at it. I was in no mood to read 600+ pages so I put it on one of our bookshelves. For some reason late last month my eye was drawn towards it and here was a major explanation for the events we are witnessing today in Ukraine. Unless one knows the contents of this book, the current propaganda makes sense and this is why the large majority of the people in our country is apparently satisfied with the official explanations.

Briefly stated the media version is: Putin is a power hungry, tyrannical autocrat who wants to re-establish the Soviet Empire against the wishes of the former Soviet Republics that had declared independence when the USSR collapsed. The heroic people of the Ukraine now are standing up against Putin’s blatant imperialism. They have chased off Moscow’s corrupt lackey, Yanukovich, and are demonstrating their will to integrate with the West. The new interim Prime Minister Arsenyi Yatseniuk, who visited Obama earlier in the week, vowed that he will not give up one centimeter of Ukrainian soil and is praised for this stand. But we are not told that this stance presents us with a major Crimean problem.

From 1783, when Catherine the Great wrested the Crimea from the Ottoman Empire, the peninsula belonged to Russia. But in February of 1954 Khrushchev, for reasons only he was aware of, gave it “as a present” to Ukraine. Ostensibly it was a birthday gift “to mark the 300th anniversary of Ukraine's merger with the Russian empire,” but this was hardly the full reason. Speculation has it that a) he was drunk when did so b) he wanted to atone for the havoc he helped oversee during the famine in the 1930s when Stalin industrialized the eastern portion, c) he wanted to repopulate the Crimea with Ukrainians after Stalin’s mass expulsion of Tartars as punishment for their alleged cooperation with the Germans in WWII.

My own opinion is that there may also have been some other very personal reasons. He was born in Kalinovka, Russia, close to the Ukrainian border and his major political fortune had unfolded in that Soviet Republic. This led to considerable attachment to Ukraine. Sentimentality aside we must, however, also recognize Khrushchev’s political situation in Moscow at the time.  Stalin had died on March 6, 1953 and there was a power struggle for succession. Initially Malenkov assumed Stalin’s dual role as Chairman of the Council of Ministers (Presidium) and as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Politburo). But within one week Malenkov was made to resign from the post of First Secretary of the Party and Khrushchev assumed that post. The most serious rival for the top of Soviet hierarchy, Beria, was arrested in June and executed in December. Malenkov remained head of the Presidium but from his power base in the Party Khrushchev intensified his intrigues against Malenkov around February 1954 (dates are according to Wikipedia). The latter was deposed in January of 1955 in favor of Bulganin, while Khrushchev remained in the seat of actual power. Giving the Crimea to Ukraine during those crucial times might well have served the purpose of shoring up his credentials with the powerful Ukrainian faction in the Kremlin who would then help him rise to the top. 

We are told that Khrushchev had first ventured the “gift thought” while walking with colleagues to lunch, and the Council took only 15 minutes to turn a thought into the reality which currently presents us with a considerable problem. It was “no big deal” in those days because the Soviet Union was in their eyes sound as a rock, here for eternity, so what’s the difference which Republic the peninsula belonged to on paper. When the Soviet Union broke up and Ukraine declared its independence a future problem began to rear its head in form of Sebastopol which harbored the Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Its presence there is vital because it is the only way to get on short notice into the Mediterranean. Imperial Russia had paid dearly in 1905 at Tshushima for having had to send its major Baltic fleet all around Europe and Africa before it could reach its base at Port Arthur which had been taken over by the Japanese.

When Ukraine became independent it not only ended up with a fair share of the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal but also the entire Black Sea fleet. For the new rulers, who were actually old communist comrades anyway, it wasn’t a major problem. The nukes would go to Russia and as far as the fleet was concerned it was to be a share and share alike. In good comradeship it was split on a fifty-fifty basis. The friendly relations were anchored in the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation. It was ratified in May of 1997 has never been cancelled and is, at least on paper, still in force. Article One states: “As friendly, equal, and sovereign states the high contracting parties base their relations on mutual respect and trust, strategic partnership and cooperation.”

   The key word is “strategic partnership.” A strategic re-alignment of Ukraine towards the West cannot be tolerated by any Russian ruler worth his salt. If Ukraine were to join the West, it is likely that after a suitable interval it would also become a member of NATO, as was the case with Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Slovakia. But under those circumstances Russia would have NATO troops and missiles not only on its immediate eastern border, but also in the Crimea and Sebastopol, which for any Russian statesman is obviously out of the question. As long as there is confrontation between Russia and the West, the Crimea has to stay with Russia regardless what its people or the rest of the world want. Consider for a moment what would happen if the Hawaiians were to decide they wanted independence. There is no way we would give up our Pearl Harbor base. Instead, its sailors would just walk into town and take over the government. No help from the mainland would be needed and that is essentially what happened in the Crimea. Tomorrow the people of the Crimea are supposed to vote whether they want to belong to Russia or Ukraine. The outcome is a foregone conclusion and serves only as a fig leaf for keeping the naval base.

While the Crimean problem is mainly a military one, the one concerning the rest of Ukraine is predominantly economic. But the two are conflated because it makes for much better propaganda to dupe the masses. Let us remember the “liberation of Kuwait.” Saddam Hussein couldn’t pay his bills to Kuwait for his Iran war and the Emir was in no mood to reduce or cancel the debt. So Saddam simply moved in to take Kuwait’s oil. That was his goal and for him it was “mission accomplished.” But some of our folks saw an opportunity. They accused him of also wanting, for good measure, to take over that of Saudi Arabia.  Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense at the time, convinced King Fahd that Saddam’s tanks were about to descend on his country unless he granted us bases to evict Saddam from Kuwait. It was pure fantasy; there were no tanks on the border but the lie worked. We got bases in Saudi Arabia, evicted Saddam first from Kuwait and then from Iraq. In return, as blowback, we received Osama bin Laden who couldn’t tolerate infidels in his Holy Land and as they say: the rest is history. But since it is history as well as one of the reasons for our present War on Terrorism we ignore it at our peril.  

Similar to the Kuwait-Saudi Arabia situation there is no evidence that Putin wants to invade the eastern sector of Ukraine which has a predominantly Russian population. But military fears are stoked to allow economic shock therapy to proceed. It is a classic case right out of Naomi Klein’s book as will become apparent in a moment. As mentioned earlier the book, published in 2007, is massive and documents how the US has used serious economic pressures on countries which aroused our displeasure for whatever reason. The author is Canadian and the book is written from a European type social democratic perspective. While socialism is a dirty word here, practically equated with communism, the social democratic parties in Europe have found a sustainable partnership with capitalism in their countries. Especially the Scandinavian countries are quite content with this arrangement and the Danes have been reported as being the happiest people in the world in regard to their socio-economic situation.

During the past century two major economic models have been adopted by various countries. One was developed by John Maynard Keynes of the UK and can be taken as the prototype for a capitalist system tempered by government regulations. The other was propounded by Milton Friedman of the US who postulated that any government interference with the market leads to distortion of the free flow of goods and services and must be resisted. Friedman was in charge of the Economics Department at the University of Chicago and his principles of: free international markets, deregulation of industry and banking, privatization of government enterprises, as well cuts in social spending were absorbed by his students and subsequently spread to other universities before they entered the political mainstream. Since his students became advisors to governments, initially in the southern cone of Latin America, they were referred to as “the Chicago Boys.” In our country the Keynesian model was responsible for Roosevelt’s New Deal while Friedman’s gained ascendance with Reagonomics and is currently pursued by the right wing of the Republican Party as well as Tea party conservatives.   

Friedman’s model was first put into practice in Chile and The Shock Doctrine shows how economics, political repression and torture go hand in hand. One may not immediately see a connection between psychiatric experiments which were carried out during the 1950s at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, torture and the economic life of nations, but there is indeed logic to it.  The purpose of “shock therapy” in Montreal was to create in the patient a “clean slate.” It was not limited to electroshock in massive doses, but included sensory deprivation, prolonged isolation, sleep deprivation and administration of hallucinogens. The delusional thought patterns were to be erased and healthy ones implanted thereafter. Therapeutic results were nil and many patients got worse. But this did not stop the CIA from funding these studies and thereafter adopting them, with some further embellishments, in their training manuals for prisoner interrogations. We saw the result in the Abu Ghraib pictures, but not even the Members of the 9/11 Commission were allowed to find out what went on in Guantanamo.

As far as the economy is concerned, the Chicago Boys knew that the unregulated free market model, as explained above, would be highly unpalatable to the citizenry of a given country because of the inevitable rise in prices, inflation and unemployment, coupled with cuts in the existing social safety net. It, therefore, could not be achieved on a gradual incremental basis but must be ordered by government in one swoop over a brief period of time. Only a “shocked” populace that has been numbed by events would passively accept a fait accompli. The shock included terror in form of the arrest and torture of persons who had sympathized with the previous regime. The purpose of torture, apart from psychopathic joy, was not only to obtain names of other potential dissidents but also to add to the shock of the average citizens who would think twice before complaining about the terrible lot that suddenly befell not only the poor but also the middle class.

When in 1970 the people of Chile elected Salvador Allende, an avowed socialist, and possibly crypto-communist, for their President the Nixon administration became deeply concerned. One communist in Cuba was bad enough there must not be another one; not only because of the bad example it would set for other Latin American countries, but nationalization of industries was a direct threat to our multinational corporations in Chile. President Nixon took prompt action and ordered CIA director Richard Helms “to make the economy scream.” It took till 1973 until conditions were ripe in the country for a military coup by General Augusto Pinochet during which Allende was killed. A reign of terror ensued and the Chicago Boys immediately went to work on implementing their economic program. A number of state-owned companies were privatized, “cutting-edge new forms of speculative finance” was allowed, foreign import barriers were removed and government spending was cut by 10 percent except for the military which received an increase.  

The result was a disaster for the people of Chile.  Klein wrote:

 

In 1974, inflation reached 375 percent–the highest rate in the world and almost twice the top level under Allende. The cost of basics such as bread went through the roof. At the same time, Chileans were being thrown out of work because Pinochet’s experiment with ‘free trade’ was flooding the country with cheap imports. Local businesses were closing, unable to compete, unemployment hit record levels and hunger became rampant.

 

Friedman and his disciples had assured Pinochet in 1975 that these problems were temporary and he needed to go ahead with further implementation of the full program. Therefore, public spending was cut further “by 27 percent in one blow – and they kept cutting until, by 1980, it was half of what it had been under Allende. Health and education took the heaviest hits.” Between 1973 and 1983 177,000 industrial jobs were lost and “By the mid-eighties, manufacturing as a percentage of the economy dropped to level last seen during the Second World War.”

These numbers are not necessarily meaningful but André Gunder Frank who had received his PhD from the Economics Department of the University of Chicago in 1957 and had subsequently worked in Chile during Allende’s tenure, calculated the human cost of the Pinochet experiment. Klein quoted from an open letter to Milton Friedman, which Gunder had published in 1976.

 

Roughly 74 percent of a family’s income went to buying bread, forcing the family to cut out such ‘luxury items’ as milk and bus fare to go to work. By comparison under Allende bread, milk and bus fare took up 17 percent of a public employee’s salary. Many children weren’t getting milk at school either, since one of the junta’s first moves had been to eliminate the school milk program. As a result of this cut compounding the desperation at home, more and more students were fainting in class, and many stopped going to school altogether.… Friedman’s prescriptions were so wrenching, the disaffected Chicago boy wrote, that they could not ‘be imposed or carried out without the twin elements that underlie them all: military force and political terror.   

 

Pinochet ruled for 17 years and although the political repressions were uniformly condemned, the economic reforms have been lauded as the “Chile economic miracle.” But Klein pointed out that as a result of shock therapy financial speculations ran rampant and Chile’s economy crashed in 1982. The event was caused by the same forces which presented us with the 2008 market collapse from which we have not yet fully recovered.  Pinochet had to change course and re-nationalized some vital industries. As an aside I might mention that President George W. Bush had to resort to aspects of the Keynesian model in September 2008 in order to prevent a complete economic meltdown. If Friedman’s model of free market without any government intrusion had been adhered to, it would have been “tough luck” for the banks and the auto industry when they collapsed and taken all of us with them.

I have dealt so extensively with the Chile unregulated free market experiment because it set the pattern for the future. Among a host of other countries that were subjected to shock treatment, Klein details Russia’s bargain basement sell-out under Yeltsin and that of the Asian Tigers after false financial rumors had led to economic disasters. The pattern is always the same. The IMF and/or World Bank will provide needed funds but only with the stipulation that the Friedman formula of free trade, privatization and cuts on social services is adhered to.

This leads us back to Ukraine and its problems. At the present time we have only incomplete information about the background of the current crisis. President Viktor Yanukovich, who was elected in 2010, had initially pursued closer ties with the EU but broke off further discussions on the “Ukraine-European Association Agreement” (AA) last November. The primary reason for approaching Europe was money, because Ukraine was and is in difficult financial straits. Yanukovich wanted a loan of $20 billion but the EU offered $838 million with certain strings attached. Russia, on the other hand, offered $15 billion plus reduction in gas payments and no other conditions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan).

Although from a purely rational point of view it would seem that the Russian proposal was more to the point, protests broke out upon the news that there was to be no signing of the AA. People converged on Kiev’s central square, Maidan, and while the demonstrations were initially peaceful, clashes with the police followed in subsequent weeks and months. February 20 was a major turning point when indiscriminate shooting took place which killed at least 77 people and wounded about 1100. Yanukovich, who left Kiev the following day, was deposed by parliament on the 22nd and an interim government under Arsenyi Yatseniuk was established.

We are led to believe that this was all a purely European matter and that we had no hand in the events. But this is hardly the case. On December 13 of last year (during the Maidan protests) Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs at the State Department, gave a presentation at the National Press Club to the US-Ukraine Foundation where she stated:

 

Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, the United States has supported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation and good governance, all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations. We’ve invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.

… and we look forward to continuing to stand shoulder to shoulder with you as we take Ukraine into the future it deserves. http://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/rm/2013/dec/218804.htm   

 

            A leaked telephone conversation of February 6, 2014 between Nuland and the American Ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, which went viral on the Internet for a while because of a colorful phrase used by Nuland, shows who really was in charge of the Maidan demonstrations. An article by Tyler Dryden, http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-06/fuck-eu-us-state-department-blasts-europe-revealed-alleged-mastermind-behind-ukraine, reported on the conversation which dealt with the formation of an interim government of the Ukraine in case Yanukovich could not be made to see our point of view. The key excerpt is:

 

In apparent frustration with the EU – which has failed to join the US in threatening sanctions against Ukraine’s leaders if they violently crush the protests – the voice resembling Ms Nuland at one point exclaims "Fuck the EU". As the two US diplomats decide whether "Klitsch" or "Yats" should be 'in' or 'out', listeners will be reminded (uncomfortably) that the governments of Ukraine and Russia previously alleged that the protests are being funded and orchestrated by the US.

Needless to say, as the FT adds, "[this clip] could also bolster a propaganda campaign by the governments of Ukraine and Russia alleging that the protests that erupted against Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovich last November are being funded and orchestrated by the US." Its release ahead of the day the Sochi Olympics start is also somewhat disturbing.

An excerpt on the US meddling...“I think Yats [Yatsenyuk] is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience,” Nuland says. “What he needs is Klitsch [Klitschko] and [Oleh] Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know. I just think Klitsch going in, he’s going to be at that level, working for Yatsenyuk, it’s just not going to work.” Pyatt agrees.“Let me work on Klitschko,” he can be heard saying, “and I think we should get a Western personality to come out here (to Ukraine) and midwife this thing.”[bold print, italics and underlining are in the original]

          The conversation was authentic and Ms. Nuland has officially apologized to the EU for her bad language. But language is not the point. When she said “f… the EU,” she meant it and it reflected her true feelings as well as those of the people she works for. It is becoming apparent that the EU is the poster child and what is really happening is a continuation of “The Great Game” of the 19th century between Imperial Russia and the British Empire. With the demise of these Empires we have moved into the British slot while Putin tries to undo the damage caused by the collapse of the USSR.

          Yats” is indeed “the guy” we are working with and as mentioned he has reported for duty at the White House last Wednesday. Klitschko, the former boxing champion and current Maidan opposition leader, has been frozen out from the interim government. But there is more. The massacre on February 20 may not have been perpetrated by Yanukovich’s people. Another leaked phone conversation on February 26 between the Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and his EU counterpart Catherine Ashton, revealed that there is considerable doubt about what really had transpired on that day. The authenticity of the conversation was confirmed by Paet and it can be found on http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/05/ukraine-bugged-call-catherine-ashton-urmas-paet. The phone connection is established at about 1:58 in the video where Paet explains to Ashton what he had observed during a one day visit to Kiev. He stated that the Maidan demonstrators have no faith in the new government (some of its members have criminal and/or neofascist backgrounds) and that physicians who were on the scene at the time of the shootings testified that the same type bullets were recovered from demonstrators and police. This suggested that other forces than the government were responsible. Since the new government had not immediately called for an inquest into the massacre, the question of complicity was raised.

          The possibility that the February 20 event may have been the means to hasten along the sluggish February 6 process raises serious questions for us as US citizens. Keeping the Chilean example in mind we can hardly automatically expect clean hands from our governing circles. False flag operations are a common staple in everybody’s political hamper and so is secrecy. Since we don’t know what really happened, but are paying the bills for the still unfolding Ukrainian venture, we have the responsibility to call on our government to provide us with facts. I, therefore, believe that before we engage in further confrontations with Russia we should demand from our government: 1) an accounting how the $5 billion have been spent, 2) congressional hearings where Ms. Nuland and Ambassador Pyatt testify as to their role in creating the new government, 3) publication of the background of all members of the current Ukrainian interim government and 4) an international unbiased investigation into the February events on the Maidan which led to the current crisis.

We know that Yanukovich was a corrupt crook. The Ukrainians who had elected him in 2004 were well aware of his past criminal record but were willing to ignore it. They now should not act surprised at the luxurious mansion he built for himself and which has been opened to visitors. But the 60 minutes piece on the past Sunday provided us with propaganda rather than insights. We don’t know what we have bought with our $5 billion and for what purpose we are now about to provide another billion. Are the people of the Ukraine going to be “shocked” into compliance with the Friedman model where new oligarchs are created while people go hungry? Is this what we really want to happen? Looking back at Iraq there is considerable danger that we are again being herded into a serious East-West confrontation under false pretenses.

In War&Mayhem I mentioned that my first typing test for the US occupation forces in the summer of 1946 was to hammer out: “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.” It is not a political party that needs our aid now, because they are all a profound disappointment, we have to aid our country. We have to raise our voices to an extent that eventually the papers will listen and subsequently Congress. Naomi Klein is doing her share and she has even co-produced a full length video documentary based on her book. It can be bought on amazon or viewed on YouTube as part of one of her lectures https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iW1SHPgUAQ. She also co-produced a short film that can be seen on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPTBZrBmlfI. But lectures and video documentaries, although helpful, don’t have the impact they deserve because they are relegated to interested Internet surfers. What is needed is a full length feature film like Oliver Stone’s JFK. Although derided by critics it did lead to the previously discussed Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) which opened a treasure trove of previously secret documents. This suggested film dealing with the effects of misguided economic policies on the lives of average people should be shown in the theatres around the country and subsequently made available on DVDs. When people come face to face with the evil that we have created they would demand an accounting from our government.

Obama’s meeting with Yatseniuk on Wednesday confirmed that we are on a collision course with Russia. Sanctions are in the offing but nobody on our side seriously discusses the effects they will have on the people of the Ukraine, Europe, the US and Russia. Sanctions against Russia will lead to those against the Ukraine as well as the EU and us. They will not hurt the top leadership but us, the common folks, via stock market losses and consumer goods price increases. An additional feature length film which would show what our sanctions have done to the people of Iraq before we delivered the final invasion blow should also be produced. The general American public is blissfully ignorant of what is being done in its name and an appeal to our collective conscience is urgently needed.

 Since the Ukraine crisis is still in its opening stages the April 1 issue will provide further information on the topic.







April 1, 2014

UKRAINE: LET TRUTH BE TOLD

          The past month was again one for the history books. After the hasty referendum, where the majority of the Crimea’s people voted for a return to Russia, the peninsula was annexed by the Russian Federation. President Putin signed the treaty on March 18 and it was ratified by Parliament thereafter. Since then the American public has been bombarded through the official media with what amounts to a Kriegshetze. The German speaking people of my generation remember well the propaganda effort to make Hitler’s 1939 war palatable to the citizens of the “Third Reich,” who had absolutely no desire for a replay of 1914-1918. Unfortunately a similar situation pertains to our country at the present time. The Cold War has been re-vitalized and confrontation has replaced cooperation. TIME magazine’s cover of March 23 depicts the current American view.

 

 

 

 

 

Propaganda works on the principle that a) you personalize your opponent, who is to be portrayed as utterly evil; b) you present only your point of view as the single correct one; and c) you make exaggerated claims with inflammatory words to frighten the home audience. Realistic considerations which the other side to the conflict might have, are either not reported at all or ridiculed. The Crimean annexation is a typical example. It is portrayed in the US simply as a brutal “land grab” by Putin who wants to re-establish the Soviet Union on KGB lines. It is also asserted that he will not stop from taking further actions to aggrandize his country unless the West shows vigorous determination to prevent it. This point of view was exemplified by a series of cartoons in the Sunday March 16 edition of The Salt Lake Tribune, two of which are shown below.

 

 

In regard to personalizing the adversary as evil let us remember that only names change: in 1914 the Kaiser was the culprit, he was followed by Hitler, Stalin, Milosevic, Osama bin-Laden, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, the Taliban and, prior to Putin, Assad of Syria. All of them were and are regarded as prime villains for upsetting the Western World’s ideas of what their “World Order” should look like.

          During the past month we frequently read that Putin “invaded” the Crimea. For instance on March 3 our Foreign Secretary, John Kerry, opined on CBS: "You just don't in the 21st Century behave in 19th Century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext." This is a rather remarkable statement and the only excuse I can find is that he must have suffered from temporary amnesia. To ignore our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq is astounding. But this is how propaganda is intended to work. You are not supposed to remember the past! What is even more remarkable is that a usually sensible person such as Fareed Zakaria, who hosts a weekly session on CNN and writes for TIME, chimed in. On March 6 he wrote under the headline “Looking back in anger,”  Vladimir Putin may control Crimea, but his 19th century tactics do not bode well for Russia.” In this article, as well as an essentially identical one on March 26, headlined “Putin trapped by history,” he stated that the Russian President is looking back to 19th century geographic power politics instead of forward to the opportunities this new century offers.

I shall return to these statements later but please note that Kerry and others keep talking about an “invasion” of Ukraine’s territory. This suggests that a substantial force arrived from outside the province by land or sea, because paratroopers alone can’t “invade.” The word usually means foreign boots on the ground as for instance in Iraq and Afghanistan, to mention only 21st century US wars. But Russia has no common border with the Crimea and the only land access is the narrow Isthmus of Perekop in the northwest corner of the peninsula. The isthmus is easy to defend and has been the scene of numerous bloody battles throughout history. In 1941, it took the Wehrmacht and its Romanian ally more than one month to break through this 5-8 kilometer wide strip in order to reach the Crimea and its prize, Sebastopol. An invasion by land from Russia during the past month was, therefore, out of the question. If Putin had sent an invasion force by sea to Sebastopol we would have heard about it. So there was no “invasion.” Instead, Russian soldiers/sailors and paramilitary personnel who were already based in Crimea took charge of Ukrainian installations. A proper word for that event would have been “coup,” similar to what happened in Kiev after the February 20 events, which were recounted in the March 15 installment.

          On the other hand, “invasion” serves much better for propaganda purposes as the March 14 incident at Strilkove demonstrates. When one enters “Strilkove attack” into Google one receives 59,800 listings within 0.44 seconds. Some typical headlines read: Ukraine reports Russian ‘invasion’ on eve of Crimea vote; Ukraine army repels Russian troops in Crimea; Proof: Russia is about to invade? Pictures reveal tanks and troops; Russian troops invade Kherson Oblast. We may, therefore ask: What happened there? Well, it depends on whom you ask. On March 14 the Huffington Post reported:

 

Russian forces backed by helicopter gunships and armored vehicles Saturday took control of a village near the border with Crimea on the eve of a referendum on whether the region should seek annexation by Moscow, Ukrainian officials said.

The action in Strilkove appeared to be the first move outside Crimea, where Russian forces have been in effective control since late last month. There were no reports of gunfire or injuries. The incident raises tensions already at a high level before Sunday's referendum.

In a statement, the Foreign Ministry denounced the foray outside Crimea, and said Ukraine "reserves the right to use all necessary measures to stop the military invasion by Russia."…

A spokesman for the Ukrainian border guard service, Oleg Slobodyan, told The Associated Press the Russians, about 120 in all, took control of a natural gas distribution station in the village. The Foreign Ministry said the force consisted of about 80 and didn't mention the station, but said the village was seized.

 

We were also informed that this village is located about 10 kilometers (6 miles) north of the Crimean border in the Kherson region of Ukraine. Curious as I am I then went to Google Earth to find out where Strilkove really is. Within seconds the computer takes one to the northeastern corner of the Crimea and the western bank of the Sea of Azov. From this picture it is also obvious that this border is merely a line on administrative maps which separates provinces.

The next question was, of course, why would Russia have undertaken this action? The answer came from RT (Russia Today). There we read:

 

Crimean military and self-defense forces have prevented an attempt to sabotage and cripple the gas distribution center that feeds a number of socially critical facilities in the peninsula, including schools and medical centers, Crimean authorities said.

Around 11:00 GMT on Saturday the gas supply to Crimea was halted at one of the distribution centers near Strelkovaya, effectively cutting gas delivery to a number of areas in the eastern part of the Crimean peninsula. As a result a number of hospitals, medical centers, schools and apartment buildings were cut off from the gas supply. A group of gas technicians, escorted by the Crimea’s newly created military, comprised of former Ukrainian troops who have sworn their allegiance to the republic, responded to the supply disturbance and set out to check the gas station.

“There they encountered a group of at least 20 armed men in camouflage,” the Cabinet of Ministers of Crimea announced. “These people were planting explosives at the facility in order to knock it out of action completely.”…

The gas supply has been restored, Crimean authorities said, adding that the “distribution station was taken under control by self-defense forces of Crimea in order to halt similar provocations in the near future.” [Italics in the original].

 

            It is obvious that this throws a different light on the situation and demonstrates that one has to pay attention to both sides of a conflict in order to get a semblance of truth. What seems to have happened was that the Russians either acted proactively to avoid energy supply problems, or reacted to an interruption of essential services. In either case the military action was defensive rather than offensive in nature and did not justify the exaggerated claims of invasion of sovereign territory. This fact must be stressed and since we cannot be expected to know the location of small Russian or Ukrainian villages and cities, Google Earth is an invaluable tool to place events in perspective.

Another example is the mentioned “Proof:  Russia is about to invade?” headline.  Underneath a picture of Russian tanks is shown with the caption, “Military might. Russian tanks roll into the Belgorod region in advance of today’s Crimea poll.” Since the first print item after the headline is entitled “Russian troops seize village of Strilkove according to Ukrainian officials” one may be led to believe that Belgorod is somewhere close by. Again Google Earth comes to the rescue and shows that this town is in the southwestern corner of Russia on Ukraine’s border rather than in or near the Crimea.

          The Strilkove incident is important because unless Ukraine re-establishes friendly relationships with Russia it is bound to be repeated on a larger scale. For energy supplies the Crimea is dependent on southeastern Ukrainian facilities and any Russian government is duty bound to provide the necessities to their people. If the Ukrainian politicians, as well as the US do not recognize this fact of life, further seizure of Ukrainian territory by Russia will become inevitable and will be of necessity rather than purely of choice.

          This brings us to the question why Russia annexed the Crimea. Contrary to Kerry, Zakaria and most of our other pundits, Putin did not only look back, he also looked forward and what he saw was of great concern. His nightmare was NATO in Sebastopol! While we see NATO as a force for good, which defends democratic values, he remembers Serbia of 1999. The ties between Moscow and Belgrade stretch back to somewhat more than a hundred years and every European knows that WWI started with Russia coming to the aid of Serbia in 1914. These ties are cultural as well as religious and for Russia, because of its post-Soviet collapse weakness, having to impotently stand by while NATO did its unauthorized work was a hard pill to swallow. It may well have resulted in the resolve of: never again! For a view of what happened during Operation “Noble Anvil” please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia. Here is an excerpt:

 

The operation was not authorised by the United Nations and was the first time that NATO used military force without the approval of the UN Security Council and against a sovereign nation that did not pose a threat to members of the alliance. The strikes lasted from March 24, 1999 to June 10, 1999. …  

In the course of the campaign, NATO launched 2,300 missiles at 990 targets and dropped 14,000 bombs, including depleted uranium bombs and cluster munitions. Over 2,000 civilians were killed, including 88 children, and thousands more were injured. Over 200,000 ethnic Serbs were forced to leave their homeland in Kosovo. NATO airstrikes destroyed more than 300 schools, libraries, and over 20 hospitals. At least 40,000 homes were either completely eliminated or damaged and about 90 historic and architectural monuments were ruined. … 

 

There also exists a 2013 YouTube video which shows that some of the damage inflicted on Belgrade has not yet been repaired http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVGbIlLGhEc.

Our official sources, as well as the media emphasize that Russia’s actions in the Crimea were illegal according to international standards, but we set the precedent in 1999. The humanitarian purpose was more of an excuse rather than the cause for the war. Apart from this particular event our media fail to report that the interim Ukrainian government was in violation of a treaty when it turned away from Russia towards the West. The 1997 Russian-Ukrainian Friendship treaty stated in article 12 that the parties: “shall ensure the protection of the minorities on their territory of the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious originality on their territory, and create conditions of the encouragement of their originality.” This clause was violated by the proposed abolition of the existing language law. Key aspects of Article 13 are: “deepening economic integration …. Strive to coordinate, financial, monetary, credit ... as well as customs policies. …” This indicates that Ukraine has to look for its economic needs to Russia rather than the West. According to the treaty, Ukraine should have joined the customs Union of the Russian Federation with Belarus and Kazakhstan when it was offered earlier in the year. Article 6 is also relevant because a turn to the West tends to be associated in Europe with NATO membership. The article states in part “Neither of the parties shall permit its territory to be used to the detriment of the security of the other party.”  The full treaty and its discussion are available in a Master’s Thesis by US Army Captain Dale Stewart on http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a341002.pdf.

As mentioned above according to current punditry we are not supposed to look back. Are we to forget that Kennedy could not tolerate Khrushchev’s missiles in Cuba? Why should Putin stomach what we couldn’t? When Julia Timoshenko, immediately after her release from prison, said on March 5 that “the Russian Black Sea fleet should be withdrawn” and that “Russia’s Black Sea fleet is a threat to Ukraine’s independence,” alarm bells must have sounded in the Kremlin. The fact that Timoshenko is currently running for the Presidency of Ukraine in the scheduled May elections will hardly provide reassurance to Moscow’s leadership about Ukraine’s peaceful intentions. Last week one of her phone conversations from March 18 was leaked to the media where she revealed her feelings about the loss of the Crimea. The topic and anger were justified, but her language and attitude cannot be condoned. Among other comments she said, that she is personally ready to shoot “that scumbag [Putin] in the head,” as well as “We should take up arms and kill the f…ing Katsap’s [Russians] along with their leader;” and “I hope that as soon as I can do it I will raise all my connections and alert the whole world so as to turn Russia into a burned field.” Her phone partner, Nestor Shufrych currently a Member of Parliament, concurred and added that he had a conversation earlier in the day with other party members and they discussed “what should be done to the rest of the 8 million Russians still living in Ukraine. They are the outlaws.” Timoshenko: “Damn, we should fire nukes at them.” The conversation is on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te2E1R5YHBI, but I read it about it first on http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/timoschenko-kandidatur-in-ukraine-kritik-von-lammert-a-961106.html. The Kiev Post reported that Timoshenko had admitted to the conversation but said that certain portions in regard to Russia had been edited in order to discredit her. Be that as it may, the important point is that these feelings do exist in a certain segment of the Ukrainian population. Although Timoshenko is given little chance to win the Presidency that her party seems to share these profoundly hostile attitudes in regard to Russians, even when they are Ukrainian citizens, casts a serious pall over the future of the country.

Putin’s speech on March 18 to both houses of Parliament, where he proclaimed the incorporation of the Crimea and Sebastopol into the Russian Federation, has to the best of my knowledge never been published in full in our papers. We only saw brief comments, mainly of a derogatory nature. The full speech is, however, available in English via the Prague Post at http://praguepost.com/eu-news/37854-full-text-of-putin-s-speech-on-crimea. A key excerpt states:

 

          I want you to hear me, my dear friends. Do not believe those who want you to fear Russia, shouting that other regions will follow Crimea. We do not want to divide Ukraine; we do not need that. As for Crimea, it was and remains a Russian, Ukrainian, and Crimean-Tatar land.

I repeat, just as it has been for centuries, it will be a home to all the peoples living there. What it will never be and do is follow in Bandera’s footsteps!

Crimea is our common historical legacy and a very important factor in regional stability. And this strategic territory should be part of a strong and stable sovereignty, which today can only be Russian. Otherwise, dear friends (I am addressing both Ukraine and Russia), you and we – the Russians and the Ukrainians – could lose Crimea completely, and that could happen in the near historical perspective. Please think about it.

Let me note too that we have already heard declarations from Kiev about Ukraine soon joining NATO. What would this have meant for Crimea and Sevastopol in the future? It would have meant that NATO’s navy would be right there in this city of Russia’s military glory, and this would create not an illusory but a perfectly real threat to the whole of southern Russia. These are things that could have become reality were it not for the choice the Crimean people made, and I want to say thank you to them for this.

But let me say too that we are not opposed to cooperation with NATO, for this is certainly not the case. For all the internal processes within the organisation, NATO remains a military alliance, and we are against having a military alliance making itself at home right in our backyard or in our historic territory. I simply cannot imagine that we would travel to Sevastopol to visit NATO sailors. Of course, most of them are wonderful guys, but it would be better to have them come and visit us, be our guests, rather than the other way round.

 

This seems to be the problem in a nutshell. Should we believe Putin that he does not want to divide Ukraine? It is too early to tell. But assuming that he is a rational person who balances risks versus benefits it seems likely that for the time being there will not be an invasion of Ukraine unless events were to occur which adversely affected the Crimea, or a definitively hostile government were to take charge in Kiev. In my personal opinion the next sequence of events will not be initiated in Moscow but in Washington. If we persist on the current course of “punishing Putin,” as if he were a bad schoolyard bully, and also foment unrest in Eastern Ukraine, we and the rest of the world will be in for a great deal of grief. Our warmongers should remember that “Who sows the wind, will reap the whirlwind.” Have they forgotten that Iraq, although a military push-over has never lived up to the expectations which led to the invasion? Have they forgotten that Afghanistan is still not in our orbit and that the pipeline, which was the real cause for the invasion, has remained a pipe dream (Barack Obama’s Challenge, January 1, 2009; Misguided Arrogant Incompetence; August 1, 2011)?

The ultimate responsibility for Ukraine’s future should theoretically rest with the Ukrainians but this is unrealistic because they are bankrupt and at present have a country which is deeply divided. Even the EU, although used by us as a fig leaf to cover our goals, cannot act independently. Victoria Nuland’sf..k the EU” comment, prior to our installation of Yatsenyuk as Prime Minister, which was discussed in the March 15 issue, represents the true feelings of the Washington power elite.

One now needs to ask oneself: who is really behind this confrontational posture in our country, which makes a peaceful resolution of the crisis so difficult? It is not Obama who desperately tries to keep a lid on the situation. For his efforts he is criticized as being weak and not showing leadership. In the eyes of his critics “leadership” amounts to bullying other people and nations to toe the course we set for them. But this type of leadership is resented by those countries of the world which are not dependent on American help. True leadership would be if we were to provide exemplary conduct that other nations would want to emulate. But this is far from the case. The people in our country who promote America’s global “defense” policy for the 21st century where we have absolute superiority on land, sea, air and outer space, are the ones who are stuck in the past century when America ruled the world (9/11: Context and Aftermath; September 1, 2013). But times have changed and in order to get to the international space station our astronauts currently have to hitch a ride on Russian rockets with a price tag of $70.7 million for a seat. In regard to “the new world order” which we intended to initiate after the collapse of the Soviet Union I remembered that even Hitler was more modest in his ambitions. He only proclaimed a “new order” for Europe. The other continents he really didn’t care about.

It appears that the current agitation stems from the “military-industrial complex.” A war on terrorism hardly justifies the purchase of F35 fighter planes and other expensive hardware. According to Wikipedia the cost per plane depends on the model and ranges from $153-199 million. The total cost for the F35 fleet is projected at $857 billion over 55 years. This is, of course, Pablum for politicians because the planes will be regarded as obsolete within a decade or so and newer even more expensive ones will be demanded by the Air Force.

The current crisis may also be designed to stop further cuts in the defense budget including the aircraft carrier fleet. But the political forces in our country which preach hostility are making a fatal mistake. They ignore Newton’s Third Law of Motion which states that for each action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This also holds in world affairs except that the reaction may not be equal in strength. We must therefore ask: What will be the inevitable consequences if our country is allowed to persist on its current geopolitical course? By “isolating” Russia we will drive her into friendly Chinese arms! I assumed this on basis of common sense and was surprised to read last Friday evening in the German magazine Der Spiegel that a military treaty between Russia and China is already being discussed http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/militaerbuendnis-china-und-russland-naehern-sich-strategisch-an-a-959430.html 3-28.  Inasmuch as this has to my knowledge not yet been reported here, I shall translate a few key sentences.

 

            While the West attempts to isolate Russia, China places itself on Vladimir Putin’s side. Moscow and Beijing are already at work, behind the scenes, on a military-political treaty – an alliance which can dramatically change the power relationships of the world. …

In regard to Ukraine the Chinese leading medium comments: “Russia, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, has shown the West that there is no victory in a “Cold War.” The West, according to the Global Times, has underestimated Russia’s will to defend its essential interests in Ukraine. The West’s strategy, according to the paper, to support a pro-Western Ukrainian government does not work. This attempt leads to “a chaos for the removal of which the West has neither the ability nor the wisdom.” According to the Chinese prognosis, the West “will be the loser in the Ukraine fiasco.”

 

            While we may regard this preamble as Chinese wishful thinking, it was followed by hard data.

 

Experts in the Russian Foreign Office are currently working on a treaty draft in regard to “military-political cooperation” with China. … Both states are in the Shanghai Organization for Security which includes joint military maneuvers. Roughly 23 per cent of weapons exports from Russia went to China in the years 2004-2011. The Chinese bought, among other items, from the Russians, fighter planes, aircraft engines, diesel submarines and rockets.

In consideration of the Americans Moscow has up to now not acceded to the entire Chinese wish list.  This could soon change. Beijing would like to acquire atomic submarines of the Russian “Projects 949A,” which carry rockets. In case of war, they could sink even American air-craft carriers.

China’s interest in regard to armaments cooperation also explains Beijing’s attitude towards Kiev. According to estimates by the Stockholm Research Institute Sipri, Ukraine is the third largest weapons exporter to the People’s Republic. In 2012 alone Ukraine delivered weapons valued at $690 million to China. China is concerned that a closer relationship of Ukraine with NATO could end this cooperation. This is why China is interested that Ukraine remains within Russia’s area of influence.

           

            The Chinese, in contrast to some Western nations, are not given to knee-jerk responses. They deliberate, hedge their bets while keeping their long-term interests uppermost. When one is aware of these facts one wonders if our current warmongers have even a glimpse of the fire they are playing with.       

Is there a way out of the current imbroglio? Since a friendly Ukraine is currently not in the cards, the only realistic solution Moscow could live with is a genuinely neutral Ukraine on the model of Finland, Austria and Switzerland. In this connection it is of interest that Austria is actually trying to use her good offices to mediate in the conflict. The Foreign Minister, Sebastian Kurz, visited Kiev last week and tried to explain to the Ukrainians how to navigate through the dangerous shoals of East-West confrontational politics. The American public is unaware that Austria has considerable experience in this regard and Ukraine, or at least portions of it, is not necessarily a foreign country. The city of Lviv used to be called Lemberg in 1914 and was the capital of the Monarchy’s Province of Galicia. While the people’s language is currently called Ukrainian the term in those days was “Ruthenian,” which is etymologically linked to Rus /Russian. Although the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was unsuccessful in dealing with the nationalist feelings of the South Slavs and Checks, it had no problems with their Polish and Galician population because their rights were respected.

One should welcome the Austrian attempt at calming the waters in Kiev because if it fails the situation may well spin out of control. Within Ukraine the division between the eastern and western portions of the country is a major problem and if it cannot be resolved we may see a replica of the Syrian situation in Europe. Since this would inevitably bring about a military confrontation between the US and Russia it should be avoided at all costs.

Even under the best of circumstances the people of Ukraine are in for hard times. The country is bankrupt and since the Maidan revolt has alienated Russia no help is likely to be forthcoming from that quarter any time soon. The people of Kiev had been seduced by visions of sugarplums if they joined the European market, but that was a fantasy. The World Bank and the IMF are not charitable institutions. They are privately owned and dispense tax-payer money from contributing countries while making a profit. The loan conditions are stringent and Yatseniuk has already warned his countrymen that tough times are ahead. He should know, he is a banker after all. Prices will rise, taxes will go up and social services, especially pensions, will be cut. Whether or not the full “shock doctrine” as practiced in South America in the past century and discussed in the previous installment will be applied, remains to be seen. One aspect is clear, however: the rich will get richer and the poor poorer. This is what our economic model has produced at this time here and it is inevitable that it will do so elsewhere.  

As far as our country is concerned everything will depend on whether or not Obama can convince Congress and the media to “cool it.” Unfortunately he may not have the power to do so. His approval rating has hit a new low of 44 percent, Congressional elections are in November and the Democrats may be losing the Senate in addition to the House, which is already in Republican hands. Peace-making does not win votes and he is in danger of becoming irrelevant.

In order not to end on a completely pessimistic note it’s time to recount a joke which I first heard in July of 1950. Vienna was under allied occupation and the Korean War had just started. It went like this: “What is the difference between an Optimist and a Pessimist?” Answer: “The Optimist learns Russian and the Pessimist Chinese.” Today one might add: “The Realist learns both.”







Apri 15, 2014

WHAT DOES AMERICA REALLY WANT?

          This surely must be a question on the minds of people around the world who observe our conduct in foreign affairs. I have tried to answer it for the first time on these pages in October 2001 in relation to the 9/11 attack in an attempt to formulate what our response to this crime should be (September 11th). Re-reading the article with hindsight is interesting because it reveals the typical mindset of an educated American who believes in the goodness of his country and limits his information on current political events to the daily news programs on TV, newspapers and some magazines. Although the Internet was available I used it only for scientific purposes rather than in an attempt to get the view “from the other side.” 

          In the mentioned article I speculated what the key players wanted to accomplish by this attack and I am reprinting the relevant section here:

 

What is to be done now? In order to formulate a correct strategy we must first of all understand what each side to the conflict really wants. But In order to do so we must see ourselves through the eyes of the adversary. We will disagree with his perception but that does not make it less real for the perceiver. Osama bin Ladin, as the symbol of radical Islam, sees the United States as a decadent country bent on the pursuit of material happiness in disregard of the moral laws of God, and controlled by Jewish interests. America supports and props up the state of Israel as a colonial outpost in an area of the world which, apart from the Crusades' era, has always been Islamic. Jewish secular culture perverts established morals and customs while political Zionism strives for an enlargement of their state. In order to rid the land of Palestine from Infidels the power of the United States must be broken. This is best achieved by involving America in a drawn out war especially in Afghanistan where other superpowers of the past (Imperial Great Britain and the Soviet Union) have ground out their eye teeth. In addition, the Muslim masses who hate their non-elected secular regimes, as stooges of the Great Satan, must be mobilized, especially, if and when an Islamic country is invaded by foreigners. The disenfranchised young people in the Muslim countries are sufficiently restless to yearn for change and Islamic revolutions on the model of Iran are to be brought about. Therefore, major military action by the United States is a requirement to bring this plan to fruition and continued provocation through a variety of terror attacks is the only way to accomplish this objective. 

 

What does Israel want? Here the answer is less clear because there are too many factions in the country. The majority of the people just want to live in peace with their neighbors but this is at present difficult to achieve. We, therefore, have to ask what the leadership wants. Obviously it also wants peace but there are considerable differences of opinion as to how this can be accomplished. The governing Sharon faction believes that only a hard line military approach will succeed while the Peres group has not yet given up on a negotiated settlement. In addition, the country is quite divided as to what kind of state it is supposed to be. Is it to be a secular democracy with majority rule or a Jewish state governed by ancient Jewish law? Ever since the creation of the state there were two major factions which co-existed uneasily. These may be called political Zionism and religious Zionism. Political Zionism, which founded the country, was secular in nature and as such opposed by religious Zionists who felt that the state was illegitimate because only the Messiah can bring about the ingathering of the dispersed and the erection of the Third and Final Temple. Over the years political and religious aspirations were fused by some visionaries in the attempt to create a Greater Israel beyond the UN established 1948 borders. For them it is not Israel which is the intruder onto Muslim lands but Israelis are simply reclaiming their inheritance, promised by God, which they had lost temporarily. This goal has not yet been abandoned as the settlement policies of the various Israeli governments prove. Although the settlements have considerable popular approval, the problem what to do with a relatively large and probably hostile minority Arab population within the Jewish state tends to be ignored. There are, however, some fanatics who envision a Final Solution (to use a well known phrase) which in their eyes will ensure a permanent peace. The autocratic governments of neighboring Arab states such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and may be Jordan have to be toppled and regimes favorable to Jewish values installed. This can only be accomplished by war with the help, or at least the tacit approval, of the United States. To achieve this end terrorism against the United States can be silently welcomed because it is expected to lead to an intensification of hatred against Arabs in the U.S. and thereby a further identification of America's goals with those of Israel. America's current war on terrorism is to be not only fully supported in its present stage but needs to be expanded to other Muslim "rogue" states. With America fully occupied and radicalized by subsequent further acts of Islamic terrorism Israel, can then finally achieve its borders promised to Abraham. 

Let me make it unequivocally clear that the overwhelming majority of Israelis do not harbor such Machiavellian fantasies and are genuinely distressed about the loss of innocent lives on September 11; but it is also dangerous to ignore the latent streak of fanaticism in a small minority which pursues only its goals regardless of the costs to others.

 

What does America want? There is absolutely no doubt that the vast majority of the population just wants to be left in peace to pursue its own personal goals in freedom. This is why most of us came here in the first place. Even our leadership does not want war but to get the economy moving and to work for global prosperity. Nevertheless in spite of the current unity the country's opinion makers are split on how to set things right in the world. On account of the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition (a term which, by the way, is rejected by observant Jews), there are strong emotional ties to Judaism and the state of Israel. Powerful military action is urged by the majority of journalists. Currently in the minority is another group which regards war as folly but has as yet no strong support from the media. This is bound to change if and when body bags were to arrive in larger numbers. 
For these reasons a major war against Islamic states is not in the best interest of the United States but serves only the purposes of Radical Muslims and proponents of a Greater Israel. The Eye for an Eye policy which has been tried by Israel for decades is inappropriate for the United States and a paradigm shift has to take place. 

 

          The assessment of Bin-Laden, that he wanted to draw America into a war with Muslim countries, was correct and so was the observation that the 9/11 disaster benefited Israel’s security needs. I was, however, completely mistaken about America’s goals. In retrospect it is painfully obvious that I, with the rest of Americans, was what can only be called naïve, about what our leadership wanted.

          This naiveté included the assessment of the 9/11 events where I found no reason to question the government’s version. Our misguided response to them was the eye-opener which forced me to consult the Internet for the real reasons behind our actions. The unprovoked invasion of Iraq was the final straw that broke my confidence in what our government and media tell us. German generals were hanged after the Nuremberg trials for having carried out their government’s orders in planning and executing the attack on Poland and all the subsequent campaigns of WWII. Under this precedent George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks should have been subjected to a trial by the International Criminal Court. In a country that is ruled by Law, as we always publicly profess, we should have insisted that bin-Laden be tried by an international criminal court in order to unequivocally establish his exclusive guilt in the attacks. I am emphasizing “international” because it was not only Americans who were killed in the WTC Towers’ destructions. The fact that the Bush administration not only failed to initiate an unbiased investigation into the 9/11 events but actively obstructed the work of the 9/11 Commission showed that forces other than those that were seeking truth and justice were operative.

Although the information on “The Project for the New American Century” and its proposal for “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” were available on the Internet they had not been discussed in the standard media which made the subsequently unfolding events difficult to understand by peace-loving individuals. The word “Neocons” was not in my vocabulary at that time and neither did I know that neoconservatives were really in charge of the Bush administration. Thus, when my brother asked me in one of our phone conversations: “Who is Kagan?” I replied that I’d never heard of him. Robert Kagan’s “Americans are from Mars, Europeans from Venus” had made headlines in Austria, but in early March 2003 was known only to a few select people here. My brother’s question sent me to the Internet and it was answered in the April 1, 2003 issue “The Neocons’ Leviathan.”  This is also an example how a simple question can change one’s entire outlook on life because it started a learning experience which completely revamped my views of what stands behind America’s pious phrases of bringing “democracy, freedom and justice” to the rest of the world. I began to read more intensively the relevant books and immersed myself in the Internet to get the information which is either routinely hidden or distorted by our official news media.

The answer which emerged to the question raised in the headline was

POWER! All human beings want a degree of power to achieve what they regard as better life circumstances. But for some it is not only a desire, which can be modulated according to need and circumstances, it is a craving. It afflicts foremost politicians who want to shape the country and the world in their image. This is why they chose this profession in the first place. My will be done, is the rule and the solution to any given problem will be pursued, in Hitler’s favorite words, “entweder so oder so” (one way or the other). In today’s America we tend to be a bit more circumspect and talk about our goals in regard to countries whose leadership we dislike that “all options are open,” which amounts to the same mindset. The bombing or invasion of countries has simply become “the military option.”

Although neocons and their dreams of perennial American hegemony over the world are currently not in Obama’s cabinet, they have not vanished.  They have moved into academia as well as “think-tanks” and since money is plentiful for their cause they have the opportunity to influence the media in favor of their dreams. But the neocons are only the most recent incarnation of the desire to dominate others by any and all means and their ideation is not specific for Americans. On the other hand since America has, however, at present the greatest opportunity of influencing world history for good or evil it behooves us, as American citizens, to look at who directs the media chorus, to which politicians respond, and who instigates events which seemingly are initiated by the government.

In Goethe’s Faust there is a scene called the Walpurgisnacht (witches Sabbath on April 30 or May 1) and re-reading it recently I was struck by one sentence.  Faust found himself in the middle of a mass of beings all of whom   strove to get to the top of the mountain where Satan held court. It reads “Du glaubst zu schieben und wirst geschoben.” Translation: You believe that you are pushing when in fact you are being pushed. This insight needs to be taken to heart because it does explain a great many political events which otherwise seem to defy reason. It dovetails with Shakespeare’s: “all the world is a stage.” Our politicians and government officials are mainly the actors but behind them is the script writer, the stage director, the lights’ operator, the producer and the director. To assume that the official government, and especially the President, set the tone for what happens in world affairs is good for propaganda but only part of the truth. I’ll always remember Lyndon Johnson’s lament when he couldn’t end the Vietnam War: “They always talk about the awful power of the Presidency. The only power I have is nuclear and that I can’t use.”

Our current Ukraine imbroglio is the perfect example of where pure power politics leads to. But it is only the latest one and has been the cause of all wars initiated by America as well as the rest of the world. In the previous installment I mentioned that the current propaganda in our country, and there really is no other word for what the media are doing, assumes that history is irrelevant; that the 21st century has sprung de novo into existence and should be unencumbered by actions of past decades and centuries. This is dangerous nonsense. To put it in medical terms: you don’t get cirrhosis of the liver on Monday because you have gone on an alcohol binge over the weekend. It takes years of binges and that is your very personal history to which the body eventually responds. This is also the reason why the physician has to take a careful history of the patient’s previous illnesses and habits in order to arrive at the correct diagnosis. Nations are made of people and people’s emotions have not changed in thousands of years. This is why history repeats and technology makes wars ever more abominable.  

Inasmuch as Americans mainly tend to get what may be called a Reader’s Digest’s version of history which simplifies complex events for the lowest common denominator, let me now provide a glimpse from the history of my own lifetime. World War II is a perfect example. It is history for our children and grandchildren but living memory for members of my generation. Its European phase is portrayed in the US as a crusade of the “Greatest Generation” against a brutal Nazi dictatorship to finally achieve Wilson’s goal “to make the world safe for democracy;” while the war against Japan was entirely due to the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. The fact that victory over Nazi Germany mainly came about through the help of an equally brutal dictatorship, the Soviet Union, which carried the brunt of the burden for three years before the Normandy invasion, is minimized. So is the history of how Roosevelt had maneuvered Japan into this desperate act. It never made headlines and can only be found in books which require a person’s interest in history.  But the real irony of history was displayed in WW’s outcome for Europe.

Although I mentioned earlier that hidden operators, who work behind the scenes, are usually the dominant forces, which shape historical events, there are times when strong-willed personalities are at the helm of nations who have “making history” as their goal. This was the case for WWII, in contrast to WWI when nations drifted into that catastrophe.  Let us now look at the four key players of WWII, their war aims and what was accomplished.

Hitler started the war to re-establish a direct land connection with East Prussia which, as a result of the Versailles treaty, had been left stranded in Poland. In addition, he was obsessed with the then popular idea of gaining more “Lebensraum” for the German people which was to be found in the East rather than in overseas colonies. The war against England and France was for him a sideshow that had been forced upon Germany by “the Jews” who controlled their governments. His foreign policy conception had been spelled out in Mein Kampf  and he systematically pursued it once he had the power to do so. Gaining soil for the German farmer was the goal and we can follow his fantasies in that respect in his conversations during meal times which have been translated under the title: Hitler’s Secret Conversations. Reading these documents it becomes obvious that he wanted a free hand in Europe and was not interested in the rest of the world. The supposed threat to America was as non-existent as Saddam Hussein’s WMDs. In the envisioned peace treaty with England and France after June 1940 he intended to leave their colonial empires intact because the “inferior races” needed to be kept under control.

For Stalin the situation differed to some extent because his country was invaded and, at least in the beginning, it was merely a fight for survival. Later when the tide began to turn he attempted to re-establish the borders of Imperial Russia to the greatest possible extent. This also explains his subsequent war against Japan where the losses of the 1905 peace treaty had to be remedied.

For Churchill, who was an infinitely more complex person than the way he is portrayed here, Hitler was public enemy number one who had to be eliminated in order to save British influence on the continent and, in his view, to maintain the Empire. But after the fall of France it was obvious that England, even with the Soviet Union’s help, could not win the war and America had to come to the rescue; just as she did in 1917 when there was danger of the Central Powers emerging victorious.

Roosevelt may or may not have been interested in joining the European war in 1939 and 1940 because his focus was initially on negating Japan’s conquests of Manchuria and portions of China.  But by 1941, when England had shown resilience during the Blitz and Hitler had invaded the Soviet Union, Churchill’s pleas for help were answered with the lend-lease program, which effectively ended America’s neutrality. The Churchill-Roosevelt meeting at Nova Scotia’s Placentia Bay in August of 1941 was the time when Roosevelt not only committed himself to entering the European war in support of England and the USSR, but also revealed his post-war plans.

For this information we are indebted to Robert Smith Thompson’s: A Time for War – Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Path to Pearl Harbor, which was published in 1991. In the book Thompson reported on dinner meetings between these two leaders on board the Augusta as they were relayed by Roosevelt’s son Elliott, who was in attendance. Because of their importance I shall quote the relevant portion in full:

 

‘Of course, after the war, one of the preconditions of a lasting peace will have to be the greatest possible freedom of trade. No artificial barriers. As few economic agreements as possible. Opportunities for expansion. Markets open for healthy competition.

“’Churchill’s neck reddened and he crouched forward. ‘Mr. President, England does not propose for a moment to lose its favored position among the British dominions. . . .

“ ‘You see,’ said father slowly, ‘ it is along in here  somewhere that there is likely to be some disagreement between you , Winston, and me. I am firmly of the belief that if we are to arrive at a stable world peace it must involve the development of backward countries. Backward peoples. . . . I can’t believe that we can fight a war against fascist slavery, and at the same time not work to free people all over the world from a backward colonial policy.’

“Around the room, all of us were leaning forward attentively, Hopkins was grinning. Commander Thompson, Churchill’s aide was looking glum and alarmed. The P.M. himself was beginning to look apoplectic. Roosevelt ignored the danger signals.

“ ‘The peace’ he concluded, ‘cannot include any continued despotism. The structure of the peace demands and will get equality of peoples.’ With that said, he allowed Churchill hurriedly to change the subject.”

Elliott Roosevelt may have exaggerated but the leitmotiv of the Argentia Conference was clear to all present. America was going to make the rules.

 

This dinner meeting concluded the day which had started in the morning with Roosevelt joining Churchill for Sunday morning Services on the deck of The Prince of Wales which featured: For Those in Peril on the Sea; Onward, Christian Soldiers and O God, Our help in Ages Past.

During Monday’s dinner meeting

 

… Churchill apparently exploded in anger, according to Elliott Roosevelt. Pacing up and down the cabin and waving a ‘stubby forefinger,’ he burst out: ‘Mr. President, I believe you are trying to do away with the British Empire.  Every idea you entertain about the structure of the post-war world demonstrates it.’

 

That Churchill was correct in his assessment is borne out in another book: Churchill at War 1940-1945 by Lord Moran, Churchill’s personal physician. At the 1943 Teheran Conference Roosevelt confided privately to Stalin that “he hoped that Malaya, Burma and other British colonies would soon be educated in the arts of self-government.” Moran’s book which has previously been discussed in more detail (Churchill and Hitler; June 1, 2003) is important because it also shows a side of Roosevelt’s character, as seen by the British, which is not commonly reported in the US. In the US the partnership between these two leaders is portrayed as warm and friendly, when in fact the real partnership was between FDR and Stalin with Churchill on the sidelines as the junior partner. Moran’s book, which consists of diary entries at the time of the events, provides the details. FDR was focused on Asia and had no problem with leaving Europe to Stalin over Churchill’s vigorous but useless protests.

Roosevelt had decided on the demise of the British Empire with America taking over the inheritance. What he said about freedom etc. was phraseology which he may or may not have believed. The key war aim was to establish free trade throughout the world with unfettered access to markets and exploitation of the natural resources of any and all nations. This was the goal behind America’s de-colonization efforts. When some of the newly freed countries tried to assert their independence they were dealt with by economic strangulation as documented by Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine (March 15, 2014), and the Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins (Obstacles to Peace, May 1, 2007). When this “soft power” of economic sanctions failed to yield results, undesirable governments were removed by Washington instigated coups, or outright war. This was the pattern since 1945 and it continues unabated to this day.

The previously mentioned irony of history is that Hitler thought the German people needed more space to prosper and that he would eradicate Bolshevism. Instead, his war brought communism from the periphery into the center of Europe and the German people ended up with less space than they owned in 1939 but, nevertheless, are better off economically. The same applies to Churchill. He wanted to maintain British dominance in world affairs but bankrupted the country, lost the empire, had to see it become a second rate power and was plagued by remorse in his old age. In this connection it is important to read books published by British historians to get a better view of Churchill and his time of glory. America’s hagiography is not shared in Britain and in addition to the mentioned book by Moran I can recommend Clive Ponting’s Churchill as well as 1940 Myth and Reality. In Churchill, Ponting wrote:

 

Increasingly he came to view the Second World War, the period when he scored his greatest personal triumph, as a failure too. He mused for hours at a time on where it had gone wrong: he saw that one evil state had been destroyed but at vast cost and replaced by another almost as bad, with which Britain had been allied. He had been the great anti-Bolshevik but had finished up making agreements for their domination of half Europe. At the end of the war two world superpowers had displaced Britain and the world now lived in fear of an even more terrible war. Churchill therefore made a conscious decision not to bring his History of the English Speaking Peoples into the twentieth century. It would have been too painful to record the decline of Britain, two wars that at best were only partial successes and the replacement of Britain by the United States as the most powerful English-speaking state. He told Moran: I could not write about the woe and ruin of the terrible twentieth century . . . We answered all the tests. But it was useless.

 

These facts should theoretically be a lesson for American hawks who believe that the wars they work so diligently for will achieve the goals they have in mind. Unfortunately for us and the world these history lessons still have not been learned as current events prove. There was a real chance for a durable peace in the decade of the 1990s but it was squandered. If the US had offered a Marshall plan to Boris Yeltsin in 1992, instead of insisting on drastic economic measures, which further impoverished Russia’s people, and if we had abstained from putting NATO on their borders the present confrontation over Ukraine is likely to have never happened. We took advantage of Russia’s weakness and now are paying the price. We are upset that the Russian bear does not dance to our tune and that Putin is trying to re-establish the Russian Federation as a player that has to be reckoned with in world affairs.

In this connection it is also important to look at the 1999 Kosovo war from the Russian point of view. Ever since the battle at the Amselfeld in 1448, Kosovo had been part of Serbia and that country has always had fraternal ties with Russia. When Kosovo, under NATO’s auspices, declared its independence from Serbia, we and most of the other countries around the world recognized the new government although it had been established by the force of arms. But when the people of Abkhazia and South Ossetia declared, in a peaceful referendum, their secession from Georgia, this was regarded by us as illegal and the will of the people to re-establish ties with Russia was ignored. Senator McCain wanted to go to war with Russia when Russian troops came to the aid of the South Ossetians after Georgia’s President, and McCain’s personal friend Mikheil Saakashvili, had sent tanks into the secessionist province. The fact that the South Ossetians simply wanted to join their North Ossetian relatives in the Russian Federation is not mentioned here. Instead the Russo-Georgia War of 2008 is regarded as the first invasion of a former Soviet Union country and is used as an example of Putin’s imperial ambitions.

It is apparent that if a referendum or coup benefits the West it is applauded, as in Ukraine after February 20, but it is condemned if Russia is the beneficiary. This double standard bodes ill for the future and President Obama, who may be called our “Community Organizer in-Chief,” may or may not have the power and ability to hold in check the behind the scenes forces, which drive us to war. If he and his successor(s) are unable to do so it is likely that the 21st century will bring even greater catastrophes upon the world than all the previous ones.     







May 1, 2014

CAIN’S QUESTION AND AMERICA’S FUTURE

The headline is likely to be counterintuitive because on first glance it is hard to see how an ancient biblical myth could be relevant for the future of our country. Yet, as I hope to show, our personal conduct, as well as that of the politicians who are responsible for our fate, is not mainly guided by reason but by myths. So please bear with me on this journey from the present through the past to the future.

           For most of us the year 2064 does not carry any particular meaning because it is obviously in a distant future which we can hardly imagine. But for Martha and me, as newly minted great-grandparents, it has special relevance. During this past Easter season we were given the opportunity to not only see the baby but hold him in our arms and if God and our politicians allow it, he will celebrate his fiftieth birthday in that year. This thought was inevitably succeeded by others dealing with the type of world we are leaving for him. When one is holding a baby in one’s arms these are no longer abstract considerations but very real concerns.

While this event prompted the topic of the current installment the difficulty of prognosticating happened to be highlighted last Friday by Gail Collins in a New York Times article which carried the headline: “In ’64, the future seemed to be jet-packed with possibility.” The occasion for this reminiscence was the golden anniversary of the 1964 New York World’s Fair in Queens and she pointed out that “everyone was thinking about building stuff,” which would make life easier in the 2000s. In regard to reality she wrote, “And who would have imagined 50 years ago that we’d get to the moon and then gave up on it?” Instead of following through with this thought, Collins then switched to our current social ills in form of the shrinking middle class and pointed out that in this respect the Canadians are now better off than we.

Although this is certainly a problem there are two additional ones which will profoundly affect our future. One is the fact that our behind the scenes leadership has succeeded in resurrecting the Cold War from its ashes and the second is the increasing impact computers will have on our society in terms of dehumanizing us. I shall discuss this aspect more fully in a separate installment and only mention for now that we are in danger of computers graduating from their status as servants to becoming our masters. This is already the case with automated trading on Wall Street and glitches can lead to world-wide market crashes. Since our nuclear weaponry is also computerized the resurgence of the Cold War should be a cause of immense concern. As a result of heightened tension nuclear tipped missiles may be launched at any time, accidentally or on purpose, to create untold havoc which is not going to spare our country. Nevertheless this reality hardly causes a ripple in the media which welcome an increasingly harsher attitude towards Russia, regardless of potential consequences.

Parents, grandparents and great-grandparents ought to be protesting the course our politicians have embarked on in this new century, but whenever dissenting voices are raised they are stifled. We complain about Putin’s Russia where freedom of speech is curtailed, but fail to talk about what is going on here. A characteristic example how many, if not most, Americans still think about our country can be found in an interview with Rwanda’s President, Paul Kagame, which appears in the current issue of Foreign Affairs [FA]. The following exchange took place:

   

Question by FA: Can you give me concrete examples of how Rwanda is making progress in political openness?

PK: What does it mean political openness?

FA: Are you asking me?

PK: Yes, [Laughter.]

FA: Well, it means having a free press that’s able to function without fear of government reprisal. It means the freedom to register political parties based on ideology and to hold contested elections where parties can compete on an even footing. And it means the freedom for individuals to speak freely and openly, without fear of repercussions, except may be in extreme cases. In the United States, for example, you can say terrible things, but it’s still legal.

 

This is our official stance which is proclaimed around the world as the example all other nations need to follow. But is this the true state how our country functions at this time?  The brief answer is No and the reasons will be presented later in the appropriate context.

To understand the present it is axiomatic that we must take into account not only the immediate past but also more distant events because present decisions are to a large extent determined by past experience. This in turn leads to a future which is, within certain limits, predictable because it is based on the interpretation of present and past events. But past history which gave rise to the present and will influence the future is biased. It is selectively remembered for certain events which have become mythologized to present a glorified view of the achievements of one’s country. While we tend to think of history as a recitation of factual events, only the names and dates tend to be correct while the context in which they occurred is usually omitted or distorted. Only a partial picture is presented, which then is regarded as the correct one. In this manner myths are created and current decisions will be based on mythical rather than true history.

In the September 1, 2010 installment I have discussed “Mythistory” in relation to the history of the Jewish people but it is obvious that Jews are no exception in this respect; the process is universal. It, therefore, behooves us to look at what we regard as “myths.” There are two official definitions. One is: “A traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.” The other: “A widely held but false belief or idea.” The following discussion will deal with both of them and I shall start with the mythical Cain.

The story is, of course, well known. Cain, the older of the two brothers, was a farmer who tilled the ground while Abel tended sheep. Cain sacrificed to the Lord some of his produce while Abel offered lambs. The Lord, for unstated reasons, seemed to have preferred meat over vegetables and Cain got angry. An admonition by the Lord, that this was not useful and that he ought to look at his own conduct before blaming someone else, was ignored. To make matters worse he took the brother out into the fields and killed him. When the Lord then asked Cain: “Where is thy brother?” Cain lied, feigning ignorance, and added the question alluded to in the headline: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Punishment was then meted out.

This story is typical for religious myths and their purpose was to make people think about their conduct and its consequences. When we now look at the story from a psychological perspective we can discern the following mental processes in Cain: resentment that the younger was preferred over the older and when no explanation was forthcoming it changed to hatred. This was originally directed against the Lord as the cause of the preferential treatment but since the Lord was immune to punishment, hate was directed to the recipient, the younger brother. When Cain was taken to task the reflexive lie took over, protesting innocence to which insolence was added with the mentioned question. When we look at it from this point of view we can see that not only does the whole sequence make good sense but it is also played out with minor variations in contemporary society. This is what makes Cain’s insolent answer so important and I shall return to it later.

While past pseudohistorical myths can have the mentioned beneficial effects they can also become toxic if they are regarded as the proverbial “gospel truth.” They then turn into religious dogma, which must not be questioned and whoever has the audacity to do so will have to bear the consequences. These are at minimum ostracism and at maximum death.  But this process is not limited to religion it is also played out to our detriment on a daily basis in the secular realm. This is where the second part of the above stated definition: “A widely held but false belief or idea” comes in. It is most toxic in the field of foreign affairs because it gave rise to past wars and is now being played out before our eyes without most of us recognizing what is going on. In order to understand the modern parallels I would like to submit an expanded definition on the genesis of myth. It can be regarded as: An assertion that serves as a useful explanation of an event which, over time, comes to be regarded as full unalterable truth.

In the following examples I shall limit myself only to some key events which have affected my personal life. The first one was the “War guilt” clause of the Versailles treaty. Article 231 stated

 

The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.

 

It is hardly known today that this wording, which was merely intended to be the legal basis for reparations, was written by two Americans, Norman Davis and John Foster Dulles. For Germany this clause was unacceptable because it not only offended national pride but it was also untrue. Nevertheless it was enforced by the allies as absolute truth and became one of the major causes of Nazism and WWII. The true causes of WWI were infinitely more complex and since we are currently in the process of repeating the same mistakes which led to the outbreak of that catastrophe one hundred years ago. I shall devote the next issues to the history as it is known today.

While WWI and II are “history” we have been presented with another myth in the beginning of this century. I am, of course referring to the explanation which our government has provided for the 9/11 events. I realize that this will raise eyebrows but again please bear with me. It is inconceivable for me, who has seen massive destruction from firebombing during WWII that two solidly constructed towers can be turned within seconds into crumpled bent steel and the rest pulverized into ash, from plane impacts with resulting fires. Not only did one Tower disintegrate but both did so within minutes of each other in essentially the same manner. This was followed in the afternoon by the disintegration of Building 7 which had not been hit by a plane. The odds against such an occurrence are astronomical, yet we are supposed to believe that this was solely the work of Muslim terrorists. I realize that the government sponsored computer models confirmed the official opinion, which was first uttered immediately after the event, but we have to recognize that a model depends exclusively on the parameters which are included and NIST did not use a model dealing with the possibility of explosives having been responsible (Attempts at raising 9/11 awareness; August 1, 2011).

The improbable assertion for the cause of the disintegration of the World Trade Center buildings was compounded by the explanation for the disappearance of United Airlines Flight 93. Mark Danner discussed some books on the former Vice-President Dick Cheney in the current issue of the New York Review of Books (May 8, 2014). In regard to the question whether or not the plane had been shot down by one of our fighter jets, Danner wrote: “Indeed, despite a lot of misleading testimony to the contrary, the simple fact (italics added) is that if the passengers on that plane hadn’t desperately tried to seize control of it, causing it to crash into a field, the plane likely would have destroyed the Capitol or the White House itself.” If this were indeed a “simple fact” one would have expected to find large parts of the plane, as well as recognizable body parts of passengers, on that field. But this was not the case as early reports from the scene showed. (Crisis of Trust; October 1, 2009). First responders found only a hole in the ground and the coroner left after about half an hour because there was no work for him to do. This contrasts with verified airplane crashes such as the Pan American Flight 103 which was brought down by a bomb over Lockerbie, TWA Flight 800 which crashed off the New York shore into the Atlantic, and the Air France plane which was recovered from the bottom of the South Atlantic. In all of these instances, as well as numerous others, large plane parts were found on the scene, yet there were none in the field at Shanksville. The government reported that some small items were later retrieved from the hole but these assertions are open to doubt. Evidence can be planted and first impressions by reliable witnesses are the most important. There are, therefore, serious concerns about the official explanation. But the tale of heroic passengers was needed at the time to demonstrate that the American people are not sheep. They take charge of their destiny even if it means certain death. This story has now assumed mythical proportions. A Memorial has been erected and official commemorations, attended by our highest politicians, are intermittently held there. Yet, in all honesty we, the public, have no idea what really happened to the plane and its passengers.

To the above mentioned unlikely explanations we have to add the disappearance of American Airlines Flight 77 which supposedly had hit the Pentagon earlier in the day. Yet, Carl Cameron of Fox News, who was at the scene, reported that there was no evidence of a plane crash. There was only a hole in the Pentagon wall and a section of the building had subsequently collapsed. Some years later he retracted this statement, but so did Galilei and the truth is usually closest to the first observation. The fact that two large commercial airplanes have vanished in the timespan of less than an hour, without immediately leaving recognizable parts after impact, is unheard of in the annals of air crash investigations.
          When one considers all of these facts in toto, rational individuals will have to relegate the government’s 9/11 explanations to the realm of myth. But anyone doing so risks repercussions, because they are regarded as fact in spite of the real fact that no independent investigation has been allowed to take place. The truth of “what really happened on 9/11” has been hidden from us and we are reduced to guessing. When our government and the media, which have this information, deliberately withhold it from the public and insist on their version of events, we and the rest of the world are not only confronted with a serious credibility problem but become victims of false conclusions.
          9/11 was the excuse for “The Global War on Terrorism” with the people of Afghanistan and Iraq having been the first victims. Although we have removed ourselves from Iraq and are in the process of leaving Afghanistan, the havoc we have created lingers on in both countries. In Iraq we exchanged a secular dictatorship for a Shiite clerical one at a cost of over 4,000 US service personnel killed and over 33,000 wounded. For the Iraqi population it was a total disaster: the number of killed and wounded extends into the hundreds of thousands and mayhem continues on a daily basis. More than 4.7 million have been displaced from their homes and about 40% of the middle class have fled. Hardest hit was the Christian population which is now persecuted by Muslims of either the Sunni or Shiite persuasion. In dollars the war has by now cost us over $750 billion, which is a conservative estimate, and expenses continue to climb because of ongoing medical care for our veterans.
          This is hardly a record to be proud of and one would think that rational individuals would now think twice before engaging in another military campaign on an even larger scale either with Russia over Ukraine, or China over islands in the South China Sea. But the above named costs are already ignored and since the acquisition of expensive military hardware, such as F35’s, can hardly be justified by a war on Islamic terrorists, the mentioned new enemies have to be brought into play. This brings us to the embryonic myth of Putin’s sole responsibility for the disaster which is unfolding in Ukraine. It will enter post-embryonic life if the threatening war were to become reality.
          While it is true that Putin would like to see Russia restored to the status of a “Great Power” and the borders to those of the former Soviet Union, it is false to deny our hand in bringing about the current Ukraine disaster. I have mentioned in previous installments that we had given $5 billion to Ukraine opposition forces prior to December 2013 in order to install a pro-Western government. This largesse paid off because we had the opportunity to appoint key members of such a government after the February 20 shootout on the Maidan (Ukraine Crisis; March 15, 2014). But what have we accomplished? There is now a divided bankrupt country on the brink of civil war and in danger of a war with Russia, which is bound to involve us. How have the Ukrainian people benefited? They are worse off than before. Not only are they already subjected to insurrections but the oil and gas prices have shot up. Would they not have been better off had we allowed Yanukovich last year to accept Russia’s bailout which guaranteed continued cheap oil and gas? This also would have avoided all the current problems including the annexation of Crimea.
          Why was this path not followed? The simple answer seems to be that there are forces in our country which need war. I have already mentioned the material benefits for weapons manufacturers but in addition there is the long term strategic goal which insists on American hegemony over the globe and any fledgling newcomer who wants his rights respected will suffer our ire. Some newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal admit that the current Kiev government is regarded as illegitimate in the eastern portion of Ukraine. They also correctly point out that the country consists of two sections. The western segment had previously belonged to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and Poland. It has remained oriented toward towards the West, while the eastern part had always belonged to Russia and a portion of its population still has allegiance to Moscow rather than Kiev. The Russian proposal of turning the country into a Federation with greater autonomy for the provinces seems under these circumstances to make sense but it is vigorously opposed by us.
          These aspects can be gleaned from official media accounts, but for others which shed additional light on Russia’s behavior we have to go to the Internet. When I ask my friends and colleagues what they know about the Sea-Breeze exercises I draw a blank. The information exists on the Internet but one has to be diligent and spend some time.  I have mentioned on a previous occasion that the crux of the problem is NATO because Russia’s politicians feel betrayed by the West in this regard. An article in Der Spiegel pointed out that German re-unification hang on a thread. The European countries opposed it out of fear of a resurgent revanchist Germany. Only the U.S. insisted on it, but with membership in NATO, which would curb nationalistic ambitions. James Baker, our Foreign Secretary at the time, promised Gorbachev that if he agreed to this arrangement there would be no further eastward expansion. The incoming Clinton administration did not feel itself bound by a verbal agreement and NATO was enlarged to include the European members of the defunct Warsaw pact. Russia was reduced to protesting.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-s-unlikely-diplomatic-triumph-an-inside-look-at-the-reunification-negotiations-a-719848.html.
            To add insult to injury we then started in 1997, practically on a yearly basis, joint NATO maneuvers with Ukrainian military forces in the Black Sea off the Crimean coast near Sebastopol and Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. In 2006 the exercises were intended to include land maneuvers in the Crimea. On June 1 of that year Jan Maksymiuk reported for Radio Free Europe

The U.S. cargo ship "Advantage" anchored in Feodosiya on May 27, bringing what Ukrainian Defense Minister Anatoliy Hrytsenko described as U.S. "technical aid." Seamen offloaded construction materials to build barracks for Ukrainian sailors at a training range near the town of Staryy Krym, not far from Feodosiya. Two days later, Feodosiya residents, mobilized by local chapters of the pro-Russia Party of Regions, the Natalya Vitrenko Bloc, as well as the Russian Community of Crimea, began to picket the port. Displaying anti-NATO slogans written in Russian, they are continuing to block the U.S. cargo from getting to its destination. The BBC reported that several hundred people were present at the demonstration. "Advantage" has also reportedly left a group of U.S. servicemen in Feodosiya to guard the unloaded cargo, but their presence has not been officially confirmed. http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1068836.html.

       Subsequent reports mentioned that in addition to the “seamen” there were 200 U.S. marine reservists who, as a result of the protests, remained confined to Ukrainian barracks and were not allowed to venture outside. We don’t know what their intended job had been but it is doubtful that they were merely there to help build barracks for Ukrainian sailors. We had permission from Ukraine’s pro-Western President Victor Yushchenko for this excursion onto Crimean soil, but he had overplayed his hand and the Ukrainian parliament disavowed his decision. After two weeks the Advantage left with its marines having accomplished nothing except getting Putin as well as some of the Crimean population upset. President Bush, who had intended to visit Kiev in June of that year, had to cancel that trip. The incident was reported by various media outlets, including the International Herald Tribune, and can be found, apart from Russian and other sources on http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/world/americas/11iht-kiev.1947814.html?_r=0.
          The Sea-Breeze exercises were also canceled for that year but they were resumed in 2007 in the Black Sea, albeit off shore and from Odessa. In 2013 the US commanding officer congratulated everyone to the successful conclusion of the 16th exercise. As of April 2014 we were still planning to hold joint military maneuvers in Ukraine and the Black Sea during the summer of this year.
http://news.yahoo.com/russian-pm-medvedev-visits-crimea-reports-075219445.html.  Ask yourself now what would happen if the Russian Federation held joint naval maneuvers with Mexico in the Caribbean including the Gulf of Mexico!
          In April two more articles were published which painted a rather dark picture. One was by
Dave Hodges and appeared on April 3 http://thecommonsenseshow.com/2014/04/03/world-war-iii-is-imminent. The other by Rick Rozoff, entitled NATO’s Incremental Absorption of Ukraine http://www.voltairenet.org/article183470.html, was published on April 26. The articles are similar in content and differ mainly in extent. Both contend that we have been systematically baiting Russia to start a war with Ukraine which would then allow us to come to its aid and crush Russia’s ambitions once and for all. There is a deadline of about two month when the war is expected to break out. It was deduced from the planned maneuvers in the summer by which time NATO would have its forces in place to effectively counteract a Russian invasion. Since Putin knows this, he has a narrow time frame during which he still enjoys military superiority. Currently he can take over Ukraine in a Blitzkrieg type manner with a minimum of casualties. But if he misses this opportunity a long drawn out period of Cold War will ensue. To make the situation even more dire for Putin, Rozoff also mentioned that we have asked Romania’s permission to place extra ground troops into that country as well as more planes. The planes’ task will be to take out Russia’s Black Sea Fleet when Putin moves into eastern Ukraine and our land forces will re-occupy the Crimea for Ukraine. It is furthermore asserted that we have a secret understanding with Israel in regard to Iran. By locking Azerbaijan into the upcoming summer war games, Russia will be denied land access to Iran and will not be able to help that country when bombs start falling. I don’t know what the facts are and doubt that Putin will indeed invade eastern Ukraine in the near future, but it is obvious that the situation is highly dangerous and anything can happen at any time.
          We now need to consider the question: why do we have to read these obviously important reports of current events on the Internet instead of the papers and also hear them discussed on TV? The answer is that t
he ownership of the print media as well as of the TV stations has become concentrated into a few hands and the free expression “by the people for the people,” to use Lincoln’s words, has become limited to those who follow the ideology of the owners. In Russia, China and other authoritarian countries the state determines what the people are supposed to know; in our country the wealthy owners do it. The result is the same: the public gets unilateral propaganda and is “dumbed down.” Although we currently still have the Internet, where people can speak out, it seems that this freedom is likewise coming to an end. In authoritarian countries it is already censored. In the Western world censorship will in the near future not be enforced by the state but by commercial interests. There are likely to be fees for publishing and these may well eventually become prohibitive. But without a truly free press and the ability to express our opinions democracy becomes a sham. Our much praised freedom to vote for candidates of our choice, as mentioned above by Foreign Affairs, it likewise leaves much to be desired as was pointed out on this site in the March 1, 2008 installment: Voting in America.
          These are the realities which bring us back to Cain’s answer. The only way we can avoid the looming catastrophes of this century is if we were to start taking responsibility for our actions. Denials will not do because others know that we are lying and “Am I my brother’s keeper?” has to be answered with a resounding: Yes! Although the Bible as well as the Jewish Tanak use the word “keeper,” I didn’t like it because it reminds one of a zoo-keeper and the animals living there. The Septuagint employs the word phúlax which translates into watchman, sentinel or guardian. I believe we might be best served if we were to regard it as: responsibility. If we were to start feeling responsible not only for our private actions, but also as to how they will affect everyone else, we would indeed have made in Neal Armstrong’s words “a giant leap for mankind”.
          In addition we should take Epictetus’ advice on: “What is and is not in our power” to heart. He reminded us that the only power we have is over our own actions rather than those of others. If we were to extend this dictum to our nation and our conduct were to be truthful as well as beyond reproach in domestic affairs, our example would be followed by others. In this way we would accomplish the goal of bringing freedom to other countries without the constant attempt of imposing our will upon them which creates resentment. But this would require a mental paradigm shift on a national scale. Unfortunately we cannot expect this to   happen in the foreseeable future and we, together with the rest of the world, will continue to have to suffer the dire consequences of the dominant political myths.







June 1, 2014

WWI Part I
PRELUDE TO DISASTER

          For Americans WWI is distant history they read about in the papers or watch in movies but for my generation of Austrians the consequences of June 28, 1914 carry indelible personal meaning. So let me introduce this essay with a brief excursion to how my family lived a hundred years ago. June 1, 1914 was Pfingstmontag (Monday after Pentecost) and all of Vienna enjoyed the holiday. The previous day, Pfingstsonntag, my grandmother, who was in her early forties at the time, would have taken her two children in the morning to the nearby Gertrudkirche or the about equally distant Weinhauserkirche for High Mass while grandfather, who was likewise in his early forties, would have stayed home reading the papers. He was Gottglaeubig, had faith in God, but had no use for organized religions and their rituals. He had been born into a Jewish family in Hungary but at age 14 left for Vienna to seek a better life and later on converted to the dominant religion, Roman Catholicism. It was not necessarily love of Jesus which prompted him to do so but the girl he wanted to marry made it a precondition for the sake of their future children. Since he was, what the Viennese call, “a guater Latsch” – a kind person who easily got along with everybody, and since there is only one God anyway, it was no hardship.

          After a festive lunch of soup followed by Wienerschnitzel with rice and salad, Apfel - or Mohnstrudel afterwards, the family of four would have set forth to fetch “Gretl,” their horse, which would already have been hitched to the buggy to take them to the Prater where the kids would have had a ball with the numerous amusements and their parents enjoyed the restaurants. As a special treat they might even have gone to the Eisvogel which featured a Damenkapelle, a ladies orchestra. They would not have gone alone. Grandfather had a leather goods store with an attached small factory where they manufactured the goods which grandma sold in the store. They had worked hard and prospered. The store next to theirs belonged to Mr. Oesterreicher, a glacier, and a little further down the Waehringerstrasse was that of the furrier Mr. Petr. They also had children of similar ages and the three families were quite inseparable. For the Monday holiday, all of them would have taken a ride to the Wienerwald or even taken the Zahnradbahn (funicular) from Nussdorf up to the Kahlenberg.

          Life was not perfect but as good as it gets and although their kids, my mother who was ten and her couple of years older brother, were intermittently rather obstinate but that was something one had to put up with. Even the political situation had improved. There was talk of war the previous year but the crisis had passed. The economy was still in recession from the Balkan wars and the stock market was wobbly but the old Kaiser, the symbol of stability, was still in the Hofburg and there was hope that the domestic problems, most of all the fight between the various nationalities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, would simmer down, as it had in the past.

          If some Cassandra or Jeremiah had told my grandparents during those holidays that within 2 months there would be a catastrophic war, that not quite four and a half years later there would no longer be an Austro-Hungarian monarchy, no German Reich, no Ottoman Empire, and that Russia would be ruled by Bolsheviks, that person would have been declared as insane. If they had been told in addition that Anni Petr, the nineteen year old daughter of their friend’s family, would be dead of Spanish influenza in five years and furthermore that the Jewish Oesterreichers and Petrs would not only lose their stores 24 years hence but subsequently their lives, in what is now called the Holocaust, they could not possibly have believed it. Yet all of this became fact and shows how slender the thread is on which the expectations and hopes for the future hang.

          Apart from Anni, whose grave we visited intermittently on Sunday mornings, I knew all the people mentioned here and this lends poignancy. In the following pages I shall discuss how this catastrophe was unleashed in Vienna, and in subsequent installments how what was thought of as a strictly Balkan campaign against Serbia engulfed the rest of the world. The purpose is not to cast stones but to show how key people thought and I shall let the reader judge to what extent we are now going down a similar road.

          As mentioned grandpa would have spent the holiday mornings reading the papers, but his favorite one, the Neue Freie Presse, had given their employees Sunday as well as Monday off and did not appear until the following Tuesday afternoon. The Neue Freie Presse was the equivalent of the New York Times and read by the middle and upper classes. The workers had the Arbeiterzeitung and similar ones, while those citizens who hankered after Germany, the Deutschnationalen, read the Reichspost. There was no dearth of papers and information covering the various political and societal viewpoints from all of the provinces of the Monarchy was readily available, especially in coffee houses where they could be read for free. Just as grandfather could not have imagined the events mentioned above, he would likewise have been flabbergasted that one of his grandsons would have the chance to read these newspapers in America a hundred years later. But that is one of the boons of modern technology. The Austrian National Library has digitized all the major newspapers and if you go to http://anno.onb.ac.at and then hit Jahresuebersicht der Zeitungen you will find that papers are available from 1568 to 1943.  The earliest ones up to 1602 are merely letters and there are gaps. Annual continuity of actual newspapers, although not necessarily on a daily basis, starts in 1719. It allows one to follow the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, the subsequent Vienna Congress, as it was reported at the time rather than through the eyes of later historians. By January of 1848 there were three papers and as a result of the revolution later in the year, when censorship had been removed, the numbers increased steadily so that by Tuesday June 3, 1914 there were over 40. They represent a most valuable resource for professional and amateur historians especially for turbulent times, which now are overlaid by myths.

          Inasmuch as grandfather was prevented from reading the Neue Freie Presse on that holiday weekend he probably made do with  the Illustriertes Oesterreichisches Journal which was published by Moritz Deutsch on the 1st and 15th of the month. The front page carried a picture of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the major item was his upcoming visit with Austria-Hungary’s Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand at the latter’s castle in Konopischt (south of Prague) on the 12th. I shall now translate key sections.

 

After a period of serious danger to European peace, which was fortunately mastered only by the unity of the treaty partners, the Kaiser will certainly feel the need to discuss important foreign policy problems with the Crown Prince. The visit is more than one of friendship and an occasion for hunting but mainly to show that the world events have not only not strained the cordial relationship between the two courts and their peoples but, if at all possible, deepened them .… Even today  the  period of crises cannot be regarded as finished since Albania still  causes a great deal of concern ….

Austria-Hungary with its considerable Balkan interests could only energetically pursue these interests, without it resulting in the catastrophe of a world war, through the treaty with Germany and Italy…. The Dreibund has emerged newly fortified from the serious crises of the past year ….

 

Change “Albania” for “Ukraine” and you have arrived in June 2014. Please note that Weltkrieg, world war, was already talked about as having been avoided. Yet, it was an abstract thought just as we talk today about the possibility of nuclear war. The other main political item of the Illustriertes Journal dealt with the reasons why Parliament had been dissolved earlier in the year and the government had to work on basis of paragraph 14 of the Constitution i.e. by emergency decrees rather than popular consent. The paper insisted, however, that these difficulties will be resolved and Parliament will again be able to resume its functions.

For the following reconstruction of the situation the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, from now on abbreviated as the Monarchy, found itself in May and June of that year I shall rely largely on The Sleepwalkers – How Europe went to War by Christopher Clark, Franz Ferdinand Europas verlorene  Hoffnung by Max Polatscheck, newspaper articles as well as encyclopedias. All efforts to explain certain events must have some, largely arbitrary, starting point. Clark began his book with the 1903 murder of  King Alexandar and his wife Queen Draga in Belgrade. The Obrenovic dynasty, which had been friendly with the Monarchy, was replaced by the Karadjorjevic, who harbored thoughts of Serbia’s past glory and future greatness. Absorption into the Ottoman Empire, which resulted from the lost battle at the Amselfeld in Kosovo (1389), had deeply rankled the popular psyche and given rise to nationalistic poems and literature with the goal to redeem from foreign domination not only all Serbs, but all South Slavs. That this could only be achieved by war with the Monarchy, which held Slovenia, Croatia and Dalmatia, was obvious and accepted as a necessity. In Serb nationalist circles it was only a question of time when it would come about.

We may now wonder how intelligent, educated people, as some of the Serbs clearly were, could hold on to presumed past glory, dating back hundreds of years, and forever look for redress. But as the following will show this is not some peculiarity of Serbs. We have to conclude that the human race, when it acts as a political aggregate, is governed by myths. Under these circumstances it is largely immune to reason and emotions rule. To prove this point we need look no further than the current State of Israel which still wants to re-establish mythical borders that have disappeared millennia ago. In the context of the present topic it is the guilt for WWI. Although historians have shown that the causes for the war were quite complex, involving different motives by all of the participants, the popular mind has latched on to the German war guilt clause of the Versailles treaty. Here is a little vignette which highlights this statement.

A few weeks ago while driving home from Salt Lake City I listened to the Brigham Young University radio station which plays classical music throughout the day. Ravel’s PianoTrio in A minor was about to be broadcast and the announcer provided us with a little introduction. He explained that the composer had started on it in early summer of 1914. When war broke out he immediately intended to enlist but then decided to first finish the Trio. Upon completion of the work he wrote to Stravinsky that he had finished it in five weeks what should have taken five months. The announcer then said: “So if it sounds a little disjointed and slapped together at the end, I guess we can blame the Kaiser.” The comment was supposed to have been cute or funny but shows how stereotypes live on in the public mind.

Although the Serbian problem was indeed the proximate cause for the 1914 catastrophe, its roots can be traced back to at least 1848 when the 18 year old Franz Joseph ascended the throne after the revolutions of that year. On March 15 Hungary had revolted under the leadership of Lajos Kossuth, and full fledged war ensued thereafter. The Austrians suffered several defeats and Franz Joseph had to ask Russia’s Nicholas I for help. The Russians initially did not do well either against the Hungarian freedom fighters, but eventually the Austrians got the upper  hand and when Nicholas promised another  30,000 troops it was time for the Hungarians to surrender on August 13, 1849. The memory of this defeat remained a sore spot in the Hungarian psyche, Kossuth achieved legendary hero stature and the problem was only partially patched up by the Ausgleich in 1868, which created the dual Monarchy. When the Crimean War broke out in 1853 with Russia on one side and England, France, Piedmont-Sardinia and the Ottoman Empire on the other, Czar Nicholas thought that it was now time for Austria to show gratitude and asked for help. England on the other hand wanted Austria to join her coalition, which created a serious problem for Vienna. In the end the decision was to remain neutral. This, however, alienated both sides and especially Russia when it lost the war in 1856.

The 1848 revolution had not only spawned the Hungarian War of Independence but also that of Italy. It was, however, crushed by Austria’s Field Marshall Radetzky which inspired Johann Strauss, the father of the Waltz king, to compose the Radetzky march, which is still played today as the Finale of the annual New Year’s concert by the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra. For the Italians the motto was: if you don’t win the first time, try again but with an ally. Having successfully dealt with the Russians, the Piedmontese under Cavour and the French under Napoleon III were ready to tackle the Austrians three years later with the goal to achieve a unified Italy that was friendly to France. The war started on April 29, 1859 and although the armies were fairly evenly matched the Austrians, who in the later stages were commanded by Franz Joseph in person, suffered several defeats with the one at Solferino the most serious. Napoleon III was eager to finish the war before Prussia might enter on Austria’s side and in the ensuing peace treaty (armistice on July 12, 1859) Austria got by with the loss of Lombardy, although two of the fortresses in the area were retained. Carvour, who had been kept in the dark about the armistice negotiations, was furious about the precipitous end of the war because it deprived him from capturing the province of Venetia in addition. Nevertheless the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1862 under Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont-Sardinia. The battle of Solferino involved such carnage that a Swiss citizen, Jean Henri Dunant who had visited the battlefield, wrote a book about it, which set the process in motion for the creation of the International Red Cross and the Geneva Convention.

Fresh on the heels of this disaster came Austria’s next defeat by Prussia in 1866 over who was to have the dominant voice in German affairs. This war although equally short, lasting only seven weeks, had even more disastrous long-term consequences for Europe. Austria lost all influence over the various German states and eventually ended up as the junior partner in the alliance. This victory enabled Bismarck to push for the war with France in 1870. The outcome in 1871 was that the French Empire was replaced by a unified German Empire. France became a republic, lost Alsace-Lorraine and was saddled with a large financial burden of war reparations. Needless to say this settlement did not win Germany the hearts and minds of the French people, which came to haunt them in 1914 and its aftermath. On the other hand, for Germany the addition of Alsace-Lorraine to the Reich was simply a matter of justice because Louis the XIV had stolen Alsace in the 1600s from the prostrate Reich and Louis XV had then followed up with Lorraine in order to achieve the “natural border” on the Rhine.

To compensate for the loss of influence over German affairs in 1866, Austria then directed her attention to the Balkan Peninsula. But this had to bring her into conflict not only with the Ottoman Empire but also Russia and the newly emerging Balkan states. This was the era of the formation of nation states in central Europe with the idea that the various ethnic/racial groups all needed to have a country of their own. Obviously this required wars and equally obviously it left ethnic minorities in the newly formed countries, which then had to be dealt with in some form or another. Italian unification especially was taken as the model for the various Balkan states which lingered under Ottoman rule. Serbia achieved independence from Turkey in 1877, Romania in 1878, Bulgaria in 1908 while Greece had already achieved its freedom from Turkish rule in 1832. By 1914 the Ottoman Empire’s European possessions had been reduced to a relatively small strip west of Constantinople. The days of multinational empires in Europe were over and only Austria-Hungary as well as Russia remained. Yet, these two countries were the largest in regard to territorial extents.

In view of all of these changes, Turkey had become “the sick man on the Bosporus” and the Europeans wanted various slices of the rest of the Ottoman Empire. When Britain and France agreed to divide major portions of North Africa, still nominally under suzerainty of Constantinople, between each other, Italy saw potential gains and invaded Libya in 1911. Clark points out in The Sleepwalkers that this was the first war in which aerial bombardment, although in a rather primitive manner, was used. When the Balkan states saw that Turkey, which was still engaged in the war with Italy, was vulnerable, Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece formed a league in 1912 and drove Turkey out of Europe apart from the mentioned small sliver to the west of Constantinople. The war provided huge gains for Serbia as well as Bulgaria which practically doubled their land holdings. Nevertheless, immediately thereafter frictions erupted among these treaty partners. Serbia, Romania and Greece ganged up on their former ally, Bulgaria, and deprived it of major portions of Thrace and Macedonia in the second Balkan War of 1913.

These wars had brought Serbia onto the Adriatic coast which was intolerable for the Monarchy as well as Italy. Serbia had to remain landlocked! On Austria’s urgings a new country, Albania, was established as a buffer zone between Serbia and the Adriatic at the Conference of London in 1813. But two mistakes were made. When the borders were drawn the ethnic composition of the area was neglected; a great many Serbs remained on the Albanian side and vice versa, especially in Kosovo. If you think that this is ancient history it is not, because what was called in 1999 “Madeleine’s War [Albright, Secretary of State]” with Serbia was precisely over Kosovo. Russia’s humiliation by NATO in that war is part of the reason for our present troubles with that nation. The other mistake was that a German prince, Wilhelm of Wied, was put in charge of a predominantly Muslim country. That this would not sit well with the populace should have been a foregone conclusion. Finally, Serbia was enraged for having had to give up its conquests and access to the sea. War threatened, but the Serbs had to yield to Austria’s ultimatum in December 1913 because Russia was not yet ready for war.

I shall now limit myself to mainly portraying the events which led up to the assassination of Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand at the end of the month. I have already discussed the major antecedents of the war in War&Mayhem and since the book is available on this site, I merely refer the reader to it as well as to the Hot Issues of January 1 and September 1, 2008 (2008 Outlook; Images). They deal with the 1908 Bosnian-Herzegovina annexation crisis which brought Europe to the brink of war in that year. It was avoided by Russia’s weakness after the defeat by Japan in 1905 and the ensuing revolutions. To briefly recapitulate: the Monarchy had been awarded trusteeship over Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1878 and began developing the provinces on the European model, although they nominally remained under the suzerainty of the Sultan. When in 1908 a new government took over in Constantinople, the authorities in Vienna became concerned that it might call for elections in the trusteeship. To forestall this potential event, Austria’s Foreign Minister Aehrenthal and Russia’s Izvolsky hatched a plan. Austria would be allowed to annex the provinces and in return push for free access of Russia’s Black Sea fleet through the Bosporus and Dardanelles. The agreement was meant to be a secret until a mutually agreed time, but it was leaked to the press and created a public uproar. Izvolsky initially denied the deal but when Austria threatened to publish relevant documents, he was relieved of his job by the Czar. He was down but not out. He was subsequently appointed ambassador to France where he did his level best to poison the atmosphere between France and Germany as well as Austria.

In 1908 Serbia stood alone against the Dreibund, Triple alliance of Austria-Hungary, Germany and Italy. The Serbs knew that they could not win a war and reluctantly submitted to the Monarchy’s ultimatum which required her to cease anti-Austrian agitation. Although Serbia had to sign under duress this only intensified plans for revenge and led to a strategy which is today pursued in eastern Ukraine as well as in Syria. Weapons were smuggled into Bosnia-Herzegovina, volunteer fighters imported and terrorist acts instigated. Within the Serbian government a separate one was created by the Chief of Army Intelligence (Serbian equivalent of our CIA, NSA plus all the other intelligence operations by the various departments of our government) Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevic, nicknamed Apis after the Egyptian god for his bull-like characteristics. Its avowed goal was unification of all South Slavs under Belgrade’s rule. Since Apis’ ministry operated largely in secrecy it allowed the official government “plausible deniability” of its actions. The most important ones, in the current context, were providing the training and equipment for the conspirators of the Sarajevo crime.

As mentioned peace was saved in 1908 and 1913 by what was regarded at the time “firm action of the Dreibund.”  Italy had been added to the original German-Austrian partnership in 1882, largely on Germany’s insistence. There was no love lost between the Monarchy and Italy because both wanted pieces of each other’s territory, but Germany thought that Italy might be a counterweight against France which grieved over the loss of Alsace-Lorraine. Although Mr. Deutsch who wrote the article in the Illustriertes Oesterreichisches Journal, which I quoted above, credited the Dreibund  for the successful mastering of the recent crises, cracks had already appeared. Those between the Monarchy and Germany were not particularly serious because each side knew that they needed each other lest they would be totally isolated. It was different with Italy. To the previously mentioned conflicts of interests, Albania was added. Italy’s territorial ambitions could not be properly satisfied within the alliance but only through its adversaries the Triple Entente. Its genesis will be presented in the next issue and for now I shall only mention one additional aspect of the Dreibund treaty. It contained two critical points. Military help was to be provided only if one of the partners had been attacked and for any gains by the Monarchy, Italy had to be compensated with some territory. These points became crucial in July 1914.

To these external problems one must add the Monarchy’s domestic ones with its restive minorities, of whom the Czechs were the most vocal. They had never forgotten their loss in the battle of the White Mountain in 1618 (the start of the Thirty Years War) and the subsequent expropriations of the lands of their nobility. The Austrian half of the Monarchy had tried to placate its various nationalities by a series of compromises, but this only made matters worse. The language regulation which permitted each nationality to use its own language led to chaos in Parliament. Speakers filibustered in their mother tongue which might be Czech, Polish, Ruthenian (today’s Ukrainian) and a host of others which nobody else could understand. It needs to be pointed out that German was spoken by less than a quarter of the dual Monarchy (23.3 percent) and Hungarian by less than fifth (19.5 percent); even in the province of Tyrol 42 per cent spoke Italian.

While the Austrian half of the Monarchy pursued conciliation which, as mentioned, led to a breakdown of parliamentary procedures and rule by paragraph 14 after March 1914, the Hungarians followed the opposite course: Magyarisation. Everybody had to learn Magyar which was the only official language. This added to frictions between Vienna and Budapest. All of this was, of course, known to the rest of Europe and the spectacle of the Monarchy being apparently unable to govern herself led to the epithet of “the sick man on the Danube.” The impending collapse of the Monarchy was on everybody’s lips.

The major remaining hope resided in the person of the Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand. He was 51 years old, energetic, goal directed and knew how he would rescue the Monarchy from impending demise. He had no use for the dual monarchy with the incessant demands for more autonomy by the Hungarians and he also had no use for messy parliamentarian democracy. He intended to re-establish a strong absolutist monarchy with the help of the military. But for this program he needed peace and this could only be achieved through rapprochement with Russia. The goal was to replace the Dreibund with a re-establishment of Bismarck’s Drei-Kaiser-Bund, an alliance between the Monarchy, Germany and Russia which Germany had allowed to lapse in 1887. Inasmuch as Franz Joseph was already in his eighties, the crown was in sight and with it absolute power. Although details of these plans may not have been known at the time, everyone was aware that in addition to the government in the Hofburg and Ballhausplatz there was one in the Belvedere where Franz Ferdinand’s plans were hatched and the future government composition discussed.

Franz Ferdinand was not an easy person to get along with. In addition to the mentioned characteristics he was arrogant, brusque, suspicious of the motives of others, and an excellent unforgiving hater. For the people’s admiration he had little use and his love was limited to his family and the military. His personal love for Sophie von Chotek, was sincere and he fought for several years with the Emperor for permission to marry her. Although she came from an old Bohemian aristocratic family, it did not rank high enough for imperial eligibility. Eventually the marriage was allowed to take place but only with the proviso that their children would never succeed to the throne. Needless to say this quarrel had further embittered Franz Ferdinand and he kept score on whoever had initially opposed the marriage and thereafter slighted his wife. The family life, blessed by three children, was exemplary, but they were embattled and subjected to constant humiliations by the powers in charge of court ritual. This extended even beyond death where Sophie’s coffin was placed lower than his in the Burgkapelle.

In retrospect it seems doubtful that if Franz Ferdinand had gained the throne he would have accomplished his goals. The times had bypassed absolutism and the Monarchy might well have collapsed in revolution. But these are idle speculations and for those who insist that the Monarchy was doomed anyway one can only say that this is a retrospective appraisal. In politics nothing is certain until it has happened and as the next installment will show the catastrophe could potentially have been avoided; even towards the end of July. 

When we look at June 1914 up to the 28th and compare it with the present, there are some unsettling parallels. America has replaced England as arbiter of world affairs and instead of two hostile alliance blocs, NATO, directed by Washington, is the dominant force. With taking advantage of Russia’s weakness in the past two decades and placing NATO on Russia’s doorstep we have alienated that country which now has to seek an ally in China. At present, as far as we know, the  alliance is economic, but a military one to counter America’s prerogatives in East Asia, may not be too far in the future, especially if Washington keeps pushing Russia and gloating over its success in Ukraine.

The ignorance of history and arrogance of our media pundits, as well as some members of Congress, is appalling. One hundred years have passed when peoples were led to slaughter on basis of myths and not only have we not learned from these events but we are busy creating new ones. In the last installment I mentioned the 9/11 explanations, but a column by Thomas Friedman of May 29 renewed one from 1962. The article carried the headline: “Eyeball to eyeball, and it was Putin who blinked.” Friedman referred to Secretary of State Dean Rusk’s comment when Soviet ships turned back at the conclusion of the missile crisis: “We’re eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked.” So it seemed to Rusk and all the others in government and the press who didn’t know that Kennedy and Khrushchev had arrived at a tit for tat: Soviet missiles came out of Cuba, American missiles came out of Turkey. If there was a blinking it was by both sides who realized that a nuclear war is unacceptable. These are by now well known historical facts, so why does Mr. Friedman perpetuate this “blinking myth?” He certainly should know better and he should also know that Putin, in all probability, never wanted to invade Ukraine proper. The reason for the annexation of the Crimea was to protect his Black Sea fleet in Sebastopol from NATO’s inroads and this was accomplished. The rest is hype by the West.

In contrast to Wilhelm II, for instance, who was impulsive, blowing hot and cold at a moment’s notice, or Nicholas II who vacillated and then did what the most recent advisor of the day suggested, Putin is deliberate and used to waiting. But it seems that similar to Franz Ferdinand he doesn’t readily forgive and forget. He is a Judo master and willing to wait for the time when conditions are right for his ultimate goals which he may or may not even know himself at this time. But whatever they are he, like Franz Ferdinand, knows that he now needs peace to strengthen his country and unless we push him into an extreme position he may well succeed. If this brief historical overview serves any purpose it should be obvious that wars hardly ever solve anything but carry the seeds for the next one. This will be further highlighted in the next two installments.







July 1, 2014

WWI Part II
THE DISASTER UNFOLDS

          In the previous installment I discussed some of the history which went into the making of WWI with special emphasis on the situation of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy (henceforth simply called the Monarchy) and her relationship to Serbia as well as Italy. I also mentioned the opportunity that has been provided for historians, as well as history buffs, by the Austrian National Library’s publication of the digitized versions of all the major newspapers of the Monarchy on a daily basis. It can be accessed at http://anno.onb.ac.at. This is important, because historians piece together past events, when the outcome is known. It is then inevitable that the pieces they chose, and those which they omit to mention, depend on individual bias. Even if the historian tries to be completely impartial an unconscious bias tends to intrude, because each book or article has the purpose to advance a given thesis. This trait of the human race has to be taken into account when one deals with the assessment of historical events. Churchill is reported to have said: “History will be kind to me, because I shall write it.” This is correct; the losers hardly have an opportunity to set the record straight because what they produce, if it gets published at all, will be classified as “revisionist history” unless it confirms the official versions.

          Although history, as reported in books and articles, can teach us certain lessons which should guide our thinking, we don’t live in the past. We live in the present, the immediate past – grammatically speaking the imperfectum and phantasies about the future. Events are reported to us by the media on a day to day basis, but we have no idea how they will play out in the long run. Once the outcome is known, hindsight will pronounce inevitability, although a seemingly minor change at a given moment might have produced a different result.

          This is the reason for studying old newspapers. They describe the contemporary scene on a daily basis as it is happening. The articles will still show the bias of the editor of the paper, but common sense and a general education allow one to sift facts from propaganda and to form a cohesive picture. I have mentioned in the past that the Neue Freie Presse (NFP) was the most widely read paper not only in the Monarchy, but also abroad. The editorial bias of the paper was conservative and largely supportive of the government. I am mentioning it because it was obviously not feasible to read all the newspapers (up to 61), from all corners of the Monarchy, that are available for a given day. A choice had to be made to depict the information middle and upper class Austrians received on a daily basis. In addition, I need to point out that the paper did not limit itself to report news from the Monarchy and abroad but intermittently quoted foreign newspapers on events of the day. The importance of this aspect will become apparent later. The cynic is now likely to say: so what; who cares? But this stance is ill-advised; the following material is not some exercise in futility, but allows the reader a comparison with the information we receive today from our media about the various trouble spots around the world which threaten to involve us in another war at any moment.

          I shall now summarize the information which was provided to the public for the last part of May and the month of June 1914 up to the 28th when two revolver shots from a 19 year old Bosnian changed our world forever. They not only led to WWI but WWII and now the Ukraine and Iraq crises. Thereafter I shall translate key statements from the paper for specific dates up to August 1 when the Serbian war, which had started on July 28, metastasized. This will be supplemented by information from Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers and Thirteen Days – Diplomacy and Disaster. The Countdown to the Great War, by Clive Ponting. Although these two books cover the same basic material, they complement each other in important details and ought to be studied by every American who is interested in the future of our country.

          My readings of the NFP started with the May 25 issue in order to provide the socio-political context of the June 28 assassination. Since the Albanian situation was the foremost news it is necessary to briefly recapitulate what was reported in Part I. Albania was established upon the Monarchy’s urging to prevent Serbia from getting access to the Adriatic. In the 1913 Second Balkan War, Serbia had wrested the northern portions of today’s Albania from the Ottoman Empire and had reached the Adriatic shore. The Monarchy could not tolerate a hostile Serbia on the Adriatic because it would have been a direct threat to Austria’s navy which was based at Pola, today’s Croatian Pula. One can compare this situation with this year’s annexation of the Crimea by Russia, because a potential NATO presence in Sebastopol was unacceptable. The Conference of London, therefore, created an independent Albania under the German Prince Wilhelm of Wied. Serbia was ordered to remove her troops but did not promptly respond. This created the December 1913 crisis when war appeared imminent. But Serbia failed to get the needed support from Russia and had to submit to an Austrian ultimatum. This precedent of Serbia yielding to the Monarchy’s demands became important six months later.

When reading the papers one has to keep in mind that they reported the events of the previous day(s), and that the date reported here is that of publication rather than occurrence. I shall also keep the present tense whenever direct quotes were used. The major item in the May 25 issue was that Albania’s Sovereign Prince Wilhelm, threatened by the revolt in his country, had to seek refuge on an offshore Italian battleship. This was temporary and he returned to his residence in Durazzo, today’s Durrës, later in the day.

On the 26th the Albanian problem was again topic number 1. The paper declared that the official optimism in regard to the situation was unjustified when one considered the daily events. A Christian Sovereign would not be accepted by the Muslim population. It was a peasants’ revolt, but they were well armed and “the question who pays for the weapons, remains unanswered.”

In the May 28 issue we read that France’s Baron Rothschild opined that the economic downturn had not yet reached bottom. France was especially affected because of its massive credits to Russia. Although Russia also experienced serious economic problems she planned to hold extensive military manoeuvers in the fall. With the call to arms of reservists, 1.8 million soldiers would be ready in the European section of the Empire and an additional 400,000 in Asia. Serbia also proposed a massive arms increase.

On May 29 it was noted that the Monarchy’s military budget was approved. Four battleships were to be added to the existing four. In addition there were to be three new cruisers as well as torpedo boats to be constructed. The next day’s issue reported frictions with Italy over Albania.

The May 31 issue carried the headline: “The Right to Joy, Suggestions, how Austria could experience joy again.” The article stated that the Balkan wars of the previous two years had not only engendered an economic downturn but had also created apprehension and uncertainty. The gist of the article was: The Monarchy’s borders in the East, North and South had become vulnerable. Germany was threatened by war on two and possibly three fronts. Italy stood politically isolated. Fearful France had extended obligatory military service to three years. The Monarchy’s governing by decree, rather than parliamentary procedures, raised doubts about the durability of public law and there was additional concern over the question of the Monarchy’s very existence.

          During the first week of June, Albania again dominated the news and the June 2nd edition pointed out that Italy not only showed no cooperation but open hostility. The other major news was the forthcoming visit of the Czar to Constanza, Romania. This was regarded as an ominous development because this country had been informally allied with the Triple Alliance and the Russian visit signaled a potential shift into the other camp. The paper asked:

 

Is this a deliberate step in the drive towards war? This can hardly be assumed. Such a decision has undoubtedly not been made in the highest responsible circles of Russia’s government and the economic situation is such that any clear thinking statesman must even regard the mere thought of war as insanity… No one of the leading political statesmen can ignore the dreadful economic and social dangers of war, which would produce a steady increase in the revolutionary mood of the working class. Yet, unfortunately, none of them has sufficient insight to bravely oppose those who are playing with fire and create the impression as if the apex of their ambition is the achievement of a position from where Russia can at any moment successfully attack the neighboring Great Powers.

         

          Concerns about Russia’s goals were, therefore, already prominent prior to the Sarajevo murders. During the following week Albania’s Civil War and the Greco-Turkish Conflict, which might erupt in warfare, was reported on, as well as the visit of Kaiser Wilhelm with Austria’s Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand at the latter’s castle in Konopitsch which was discussed in Part I. The NFP furthermore reported on dress rehearsals of Russia’s mobilization plans. For those, in addition to arms procurements, Russia was spending 216 million Austrian crowns. The Monarchy, on the other hand, spent 10 million for all of her maneuvers. During the planned Russian maneuvers in the fall, where the previously mentioned 1.8 million soldiers would participate, Austria would have 200,000 and Germany 300-400.000 men under arms. The Serbian military had asked for and received a budget of 123 million. The paper asked: “For what purpose does Serbia, a state of 4 million people, need this?”

During the week of 15-21, the highlight was the Czar’s toast during his visit to Constanza. It emphasized Russia’s concern for her co- religionists and the long-standing friendship with Romania. These comments were not regarded as reassuring, especially since the friendship had existed with the Monarchy rather than the Russian Empire. There also were the usual reports about the Albanian problems and the Greco-Turkish dispute over some islands in the Aegean.

The Albanian crisis persisted in the following week, but the Greco-Turkish conflict was nearing a peaceful settlement. On the 26th it was noted that England’s Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey refused to get drawn into the Albanian problem. Serbia’s King was ill and had handed over his duties to his son. Austria’s negotiations with Serbia over a railway link to the Aegean were proceeding. On the 27th the paper reported that 1200 Austrian volunteers had registered to fight in Albania and a brawl between Germans and Czechs was expected to take place on Sunday in Brno during a Czech demonstration.

The Sunday 28 entry stated: “In view of the upcoming holiday the next issue will appear on Tuesday.” It also was noted that efforts to recruit volunteers for Albania had been forbidden. From all of this it is noteworthy that Franz Ferdinand’s visit to the maneuvers in Bosnia, which took place on the previous Friday and Saturday, was apparently regarded as routine and didn’t merit any particular discussion.

The events of that Sunday morning in Sarajevo are well known and merely need to be summarized. The maneuvers had gone reasonably well and while Franz Ferdinand was busy with his military duties his wife, who had accompanied him to Bosnia, had gone shopping in near-by Sarajevo. For Sunday a brief official visit to the city was planned, and they were to return home later in the afternoon. At somewhat after 10 in the morning, while the motorcade was on its way to Sarajevo’s Town Hall, a Bosnian youngster, Nedeljiko Cabrinovic, threw a bomb at the Crown Prince’s car. It rolled off, exploded under the rear wheel of the following car and wounded one of its passengers, Colonel Merizzi. The motorcade sped off to the Town Hall where all the dignitaries, who had no idea of what had happened, were assembled. The mayor launched into his prepared speech which emphasized the friendly spirit of the Bosnian people towards the Monarchy and this, obviously, didn’t sit right with the Crown Prince. For a moment his well-known temper ran away with him, but he collected himself and the mayor was encouraged to finish his speech. At a private meeting thereafter the question what to do next was discussed. Some argued for an immediate return home, but Franz Ferdinand decided that it was his duty to defy adversity and stay with the official program. In addition he asked that before the scheduled visit to the Konak (the governor’s residence) he be taken to the military hospital to visit the wounded Colonel, although he had been told that the wound was quite minor. It was this humanitarian gesture which killed the heir to the throne and subsequently the Monarchy.

In order to avoid further mishaps the motorcade route was changed to avoid the “dogleg” at the junction of Franz Josef Street and Apple Quai. But somebody had forgotten to tell the drivers of the route change. When the first two cars turned into Franz Josef Street the driver of the third car, with Franz Ferdinand and his wife, who had insisted of accompanying him in spite of him having asked her not to, likewise began to turn. But General Potiorek, who was also in the car, stopped the driver, said that this was the wrong route and that he should instead continue at high speed on Apple Quai. But this was precisely the corner where another one of the six conspirators happened to stand. While the car was temporarily immobilized Gavrilo Princip fired two shots at the stationary passengers, killing both the Arch Duke and his wife. Princip was promptly roughed up by the crowd and arrested. But the plan had succeeded and Princip is still accorded high honors by some of his compatriots for having allowed the dream of Greater Serbia to come to fruition

Austrian authorities immediately began legal investigations and within a few days the details of the assassination plot became public knowledge. There was no doubt that certain circles within the Serbian government had been involved. As mentioned in Part I, it was known that the Chief of Serbian Army Intelligence, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijvić, was also the leader of the secret societies which attempted to achieve a Greater Serbia, at the expense of the Monarchy, through acts of terrorism. This was the reason why Austria insisted that her legal experts need to participate in Belgrade’s investigation of the crime. But since the Colonel’s activities were supposed to have been secret, the Serbian government had to reject the demand for what now would be called reasons of “national security.”

As mentioned in Part I Franz Ferdinand had been the peace advocate and Polatschek in his book Franz Ferdinand   Europas Verlorene Hoffnung quoted several comments the Crown Prince had made in February 1913. The Austrian military, under the leadership of its Chief of Staff Conrad von Hoetzendorf and the Minister of War Alexander von Krobatin, had constantly urged war with Serbia in order to rid the Monarchy of the pesky neighbor who kept agitating for a Greater Serbia. Here is an excerpt of how Franz Ferdinand saw the situation:

 

Without giving anything away, we have to work towards maintaining the peace. To get into the Great War with Russia is a disaster. If we engage in a local war with Serbia, we’ll cut them down in short order, but then what? What good will it do for us? First, all of Europe will be upset about us and regard us as disturbers of the peace and, may God protect us, we annex Serbia; a country that has massive debts and is chock full of regicides and scoundrels … We can throw billions into that country and will always have a dreadful Irredentism First of all we must create order in our own house, then others will  no longer regard us as a state which is about to collapse, then we shall again receive respect in the concert of nations, and can pursue a strong foreign policy.

 

          He furthermore stated that the best policy was to sit by and watch how the Balkan states “bash each other’s heads in.” On another occasion when he was told that the Chief of Staff had again urged immediate war, even at the risk of war with Russia, Franz Ferdinand exploded:

 

Conrad’s idea is insane. A war with Russia will kill us. When we go against Serbia, Russia stands behind them and we have war with Russia. Shall the Emperor of Austria and the Czar of Russia mutually shove each other off the throne and give free reign to the revolution? Tell Conrad that I shall decisively decline any further suggestions of this type.

 

          Those were his genuine feelings, but the good advice died with him. As soon as the burial ceremonies were over, the question how to respond had to be addressed. The Austrians, with Conrad in the lead, pushed for final tabula rasa, war with Serbia, regardless of consequences, if Germany were to approve. The Hungarians under Prime Minister Count István Tisza were more cautious. They were not only concerned about Russia’s attitude but also, and especially, that of Romania. Hungary had a large Romanian minority in Transylvania, which already was restive, and there was fear that open revolt might break out with Romania coming to their aid. In addition, there was Franz Ferdinand’s question: what do we do after we have won? This became a critical issue in July when Russia and England wanted an answer to this question. Furthermore, the Hungarians did not want any increase of Slavic people because it would threaten the dual nature of the Monarchy and a tripartite state, with corresponding less influence of the Hungarians, might emerge.

Since, as mentioned in Part I, the Austrian parliament had been suspended as of March 1914 and the government ruled by decrees, no information about its plans became public in the early days of July. But we now know from the historical literature that the tentative decision for war with Serbia was made in meetings on July 2nd and 3rd. The Foreign ministry’s Chef du Cabinet, Count Alexander Hoyos, departed for Berlin during the evening of the 3rd in order to ascertain Germany’s attitude. The sum and substance of the conversations, which included the Kaiser, was: do what you must, but do it fast while the world is still appalled by the regicide; we shall support you in the court of public opinion and if need be militarily. This has subsequently been termed Germany’s “blank check,” which allowed war preparations against Serbia to go forward.

          Germany’s reply was gratefully received in Vienna but now a glaring defect in Conrad’s fiery warmongering became apparent. As Christopher Clark in the Sleepwalkers reported, the option of an immediate attack on Serbia was rejected in the meeting which followed Hoyos’ return. Tisza, whose agreement on a matter of such importance was constitutionally necessary, insisted that before any military action Serbia should be diplomatically humiliated. In addition, this was summertime and the “Austrian General Staff had devised a system that allowed men on active service to return to their family farms to help with the crops and then rejoin their units in time for the summer maneuvers … troops serving in the units at Agram (Zagreb), Graz, Pressburg (Bratislava), Cracow, Temesvar (Timisoara), Innsbruck and Budapest were currently on harvest leave and would not be returning to service until 25 July.” These were the regions from which a strike force would have been assembled and this explains the month-long delay between the assassination and the declaration of war. It should be noted that in the mind of Austrian politicians, which included the Emperor, war with Serbia had already been decided upon on July 7, and by the 14th agreement was reached that Serbia should be served with a harsh ultimatum which contained terms it was unlikely to accept (e.g. Austria’s participation in Belgrade’s criminal investigations). Upon its rejection war would be declared. These discussions were meant to be kept secret, but the Germans were to some extent informed, and word about the unacceptable ultimatum also reached Russia. When the Czar was appraised he is reported to have said: “’In my view, no country can present demands to another, unless it has decided to go to war.”’

Clark noted that the Serbian authorities had also heard about it by the 17th and “this prior knowledge facilitated the formulation and coordination – in advance of the presentation of the ultimatum to Belgrade [italics in the original] – of a firmly rejectionist position, eloquently expressed in Pašić’s [Serbian prime Minister] circular of 19 July to the Serbian legations abroad: ‘We cannot accept those demands which no other country that respects its own independence and dignity would accept.’” The French President, Raymond Poincaré, was scheduled to arrive in St. Petersburg, for a long planned state visit, on the 20th and the Austrian politicians, still assuming that their war plans were secret, did not want to give the Russians and French an opportunity to coordinate their plans. This is why the delivery of the ultimatum was postponed to 6 p.m. of the 23rd when Poincaré was on his way home. Yet, as hindsight shows, both countries were fully aware of the game that was played and had ample time to coordinate their response. “The notion – promulgated by Sazonov [Russian Foreign minister] and later put about in the literature – that the news of the ultimatum came as a terrible shock to the Russians and the French on 23 July, when the note was presented to the Serbian foreign ministry, is nonsense,” Clark wrote. In Austria’s quest for secrecy the Germans were not even sent a copy of the ultimatum’s text until the day before it was delivered and the third partner of the Triple Alliance, Italy, was ignored. The Italians had to read it in the newspapers, although they were of course aware of the leaked general information. The Austrian authorities also assumed that even if Italy did not immediately join the war alongside its treaty partners, it would at least stay neutral. That the country’s desires for the Italian speaking provinces of the Monarchy, which were well known in Austria, could not be satisfied by a victorious war against Serbia, but only by the Monarchy’s defeat, was not taken into consideration.

In hindsight we, therefore, know that Austria had decided on war with Serbia no later than the 7th of July and everything thereafter was either eyewash and/or the attempt to limit the war to that country. We now can ask: what were the common people, who bear the brunt of the war’s burdens, told about the affairs as they played out in the chancelleries of the world? In its editorial of July 4 the NFP asked: “What is the crime of Sarajevo?” Here is the essence of the answer:

 

It is the result of a policy which believes that it can split itself into official responsibility and unofficial irresponsibility [amtliche und nichtamtliche]. The official policy puts forth its hands to show that there is not a trace of blood on it. It has only words of friendship and peace. With a harmless face it wants to leave the impression of good will. The unofficial one dares to play a demonic game with the worst passions, race-hatred and all animal lusts which the heart harbors, and when unleashed engages in the worst cruelties. Yet they are celebrated as national heroism. It prepares the next wars. It considers itself to be above all moral law and arms the criminals in its pay with bombs and revolvers. The unofficial policy wants war.

 

The words referred to Serbia but I am printing them here because the same applies to some extent to the “Intelligence Services” of most governments of major powers, including ours. On July 6 the paper expressed surprise that Russia had joined Serbia in the rejection of the request that Austrian legal experts participate in Belgrade’s investigation of the crime’s perpetrators. In addition, it wrote, “In Russia the drum-roll pronounces that Serbia will not be alone in its fight for independence.” The London Times was also quoted, but I don’t have the original English version only the German translation which I am re-translating into English. “It would be utter foolishness [nichts waere unweiser] for the Austro-Hungarian government if it were to leave the impression that it wants to use this crime for political purposes.”

On July 8 the NFP complained that the official report on the July 7 ministerial meeting, at which the government had made the decision for war, was scant [kaerglich]. Serbia had been mentioned in only two non-committal sentences. But on the following day the paper reported that Tisza had addressed the Hungarian parliament and the essence was that the Monarchy wants peace, but not at any cost. On July 13 further tensions between the Monarchy and Serbia were reported and memories of the 1908 annexation crisis were evoked. It might have led to war at that time had England not prevented it. In Hungary, Tisza had stated that the relations between Serbia and the Monarchy will have to be solved for good; mere words of good will were not enough. There had to be guarantees that the constant vicious agitation (Hetzerei) would stop. On the 16th it was reported that Tisza stated: “Serbia still has a choice and that he regards war only as the last measure if all else fails. Serbia and Greater Serbia are mutually exclusive.”

The July 17 edition dealt with Poincare’s visit to Russia, and in a previous article it had been noted that France had spent billions, on re-arming Russia after the 1905 defeat. She now wanted to re-direct Russia from the Balkans against Germany for the future World War. In regard to the overall situation the paper wrote that Serbia was tied to Russia. But neither Russia nor France would want to get sidelined in a corner of the Balkans. The edition also reprinted an article from the German press, which provided a glimpse into the thoughts of the military. It was written by Lt. Colonel Frobenius ret. and the headline was “The German Reich’s fateful hour.” Here is a translation of its essence:

 

In view of the military alliance between France and Russia the situation is beginning to look so serious for Germany that she will be unable to remain patient for much longer and one has to reckon with the probability of a military solution in the not too distant future. England’s goal is the destruction of our navy but not our power on land. Russia has no quarrel with Germany but will be involved through the Balkan problem of Austria-Hungary. Russia knows that her goals there will conflict not only with Austria-Hungary but Germany and she is, therefore, chained to the treaty with France. Pushed by France, Russia is preparing for an offensive war. France’s three years of military duty are nothing else but a constant readiness for war. This cannot be maintained for any length of time and France has to push for war in 1915 or 1916. Up to now there was no war because England did not see any potential profit. On the other hand, France is obsessed with revanche, and Russia with the elimination of Austria-Hungary. War readiness will be achieved in the spring of 1915 and one can then expect the armies to march at any moment.

 

The pamphlet had been sent to Germany’s Crown Prince who thanked the author and advocated its widest distribution. The NFP did not provide the date when it was originally prepared and published. On July 19 the opinion was offered that France and Russia wouldn’t go to war for Serbia and on the 20th that Germany and England didn’t want a world-wide conflagration. On the 21st it wrote: “There is still the choice between war and peace. The Monarchy has not the slightest desire to settle this conflict with the sword. The toasts in St. Petersburg by the Czar and Poincaré were peaceful.”

On July 24 the paper stated: “The ultimatum has been delivered. Serbia has done nothing in the past four weeks but spewed hatred against the Monarchy. War and peace is now in Serbia’s hands. We do not believe that its government was unaware that the assassins, who had confessed to it, were trained and equipped by Belgrade.”  The overall political situation was described in this way: England certainly did not desire that the quarrel with Serbia leads to World War. France was in Russia’s tow but her desire was for the maintenance of peace and the enthusiasm for Serbia had markedly cooled. France would work for moderation in Belgrade and St. Petersburg. Russia had the choice whether or not she would provide the spark for war between the Great Powers of Europe. The Czar’s peaceful intentions were known.

From the foregoing it is obvious that the editors of the NFP either had no concept of the real situation or, more likely, followed their government’s orders to “keep things cool.”  On July 26 Serbia’s rejection of the ultimatum was common knowledge and the NFP wrote of the imminence of the war with Serbia, but England would prevent a general European war. On the 28th: “A World War can come about only through a “heinous sin (frevelhafte Sünde) against humanity. Russia will engage in some hard thinking before she unleashes untold ruin.”

The edition from the 29th carried the Emperor’s War Manifesto from the previous day. He declared that although he had intended to spend the last years of his life peacefully, it had now become a matter of honor for the Monarchy. He was fully aware of the consequences that might follow, but he put his faith in the army and the Almighty that victory would be achieved. The paper then discussed the question of local vs. general war with the decision up to Russia. Count Andrassy of Hungary opined that a World War was not necessary; on the contrary it was not even probable. From Germany it was reported: “One hopes that, through the influence of the Powers, Russia will be obliging. On the other hand, if there were to be even a partial mobilization of her army the entire German army will be mobilized.”

From then on fate took its inexorable course. Although Wilhelm sent a personal telegram to Nicholas pleading for peace, and the Czar likewise responded in a peaceful manner, the events were no longer in their hands. The Russian military had already ordered a partial mobilization on the 28th and when on the 31st the message of full mobilization was received in Germany there was no turning back.  War on Russia was declared on the 1st of August and, in accordance with the Schlieffen plan, two days later on France. This military plan, will be discussed in relation to England’s entry into the war in the August installment.

It is, therefore, apparent that, for public consumption, the blame game was already front and center. Austria had early on decided that the Serbian problem could only be solved by war, which she hoped, against all odds, could be localized. But Serbia had Russia’s backing all along and could afford to remain defiant. The NFP also misjudged Poincaré who was from Alsace-Lorraine and wished for war with Germany in the hope of regaining the provinces. He, therefore, did his best to inflame Russia against Germany, although Russia’s real quarrel was with Austria. In France’s War Manifesto he had included “Vive Alsace-Lorraine.” But since these words smacked of revanche, they were omitted in the official publication. The guilt for the war had to be placed entirely on Germany’s shoulders.

In the next installment I shall discuss England’s role after August 1, while the war was still limited to the European continent. I also shall provide some instructive snippets of war propaganda as well as unlearned lessons of WWI. These affect our current political decisions in regard to the Middle East as well as Russia and China. 







August 1, 2014

WWI Part III
THE CATASTROPHE AND ITS AFTERMATH

In the previous installment I covered the events after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, up to England’s entry into the war. I also mentioned that I would discuss England’s reasons for doing so. But first let me return to Vienna’s newspapers on anno.onb.ac.at, and specifically the Neue Freie Presse (NFP), for the critical week of July 31 to August 6, while keeping in mind that the paper always reported and discussed the events of the previous day. The reports, therefore, deal with the period of July 30, when Germany had developed second thoughts about the Monarchy’s rush into war with Serbia and tried to use its influence to moderate Vienna’s rigid course, to August 5 by which time all the major European powers were at war. The reason for doing so is twofold. It removes impersonal history from books that were written after the fact and places it into daily reporting so that we can follow what the average citizen, who always bears the brunt of wars’ burdens, was told. It also allows a comparison with today’s news reports about the currently ongoing wars. The importance will become apparent in later pages. One more word of explanation: the translations are not necessarily literal because the editorial writer(s) used at times flowery language. I, therefore, tried to capture the meaning as it might be appropriate for our century.

On July 31, after the Monarchy had already declared war on Serbia, the NFP reported: “European peace is not yet dead; it lives with a feeble pulse and labored respirations…. The Czar does not want war and neither do the Russian people. But the military is pushing for war.” On page 2 we read: “Highest tension in all of Europe. The great international crisis is nearing its climax. Russia’s main concern is the Austro-Hungarian monarchy’s [henceforth abbreviated as the Monarchy] plans for Serbia after the war. It wants the Monarchy to abstain from its demand to participate in Serbia’s investigation of the Sarajevo crime and its attendant Greater Serbia machinations. It should never make Serbia its protectorate.” The paper then editorialized: “But we have no intention to do so, all we want is that we should at long last be left in peace…. But the question remains if the cabinets are still masters of the situation and whether there are already other considerations. The Russian newspapers are not belligerent and believe that peace can be preserved. Are Russia’s diplomatic efforts merely a smokescreen to drag things out so that military preparations can proceed? To expect from Austria to already declare what it will do when the war is over is a non-starter.”

The August 1 paper carried the headline: “General mobilization. The Monarchy and its ally Germany under arms.” The paper wrote:

 

Today’s events are too enormous for comprehension…. There are no historical parallels to provide guidance … only the feeling remains that the world stands before events for which no comparison exists. Russia has forced the war upon us because it hates the Monarchy and wants to crush it [herabdruecken]…. Reuters reported that on the 28th a partial mobilization of the Russian army had been ordered for the south and southwest. This does not mean that relations between the Monarchy and Russia have been severed and one confidently hopes that the European powers will succeed in achieving an accord. Russia’s attitude will now clarify itself through the German demand that it declares its intentions. Then there will be no doubt if the principle of the dual face, which on the one hand tortures domestic terrorists, but supports them with all of the state’s official power when another country is concerned, will be victorious.

France, obviously, will stand at the side of her ally Russia. It is, however, still highly questionable what stance England will take. If England also were to but in [sich einmengen)] then we would truly have, what a diplomat called, the greatest political crime ever. At stake is a struggle of armies of millions, the loss of billions [Milliarden], and the destruction of what decades of diligent efforts have created.”

 

The August 2nd Editorial stated:

 

Kaiser Wilhelm has ordered the mobilization of all of Germany’s military forces. Perhaps before this summer night has passed and dawn colors the sky, there will be the great event, the declaration of war, which has become unstoppable in the tumult of divergent views. Five major powers enmeshed in a war, battles on land and sea, under water and in the air, weapons of fantastic perfection, and the millions who, on this beautiful August day, when nature seems to be pleased about herself, leave their fields and meadows, offices and factories, to throw themselves against the enemy! All of this is on such a grand scale that it defies description. Only the sense remains that a Sophocles would be needed to put the looming tragedy for humanity into words which convey what now moves the hearts.

When the children in coming ages will ask what their fathers and mothers, who experienced these events, felt, the answers will depend on individual predispositions. But some might admit, that when the world lost its way [aus ihren Fugen geriet], they felt helplessness against the inevitable. In the knowledge that the individual is unable to exert any influence they became, so to say, spectators of themselves; full of curiosity what would become of them after all these convulsions [Erschuetterungen]. In analogy to the public which views a theatrical performance, accompanies it with compassion and tears, and yet cannot do anything other than absorb these streams of impressions [Einwirkungen].

 

In regard to England, the paper asked: “Is it conceivable that England will join the Czar in this imminent life and death struggle who is one of its most dangerous enemies? It seems that England is going to adopt a wait and see attitude. An alliance of the British Empire with Russia would be a monstrosity against nature.”

Under the date of August 1 we find:

 

This is the day when diplomacy leaves off and looks back in horror on a field of rubble [Truemmerfeld] where nearly all possibilities for a peaceful solution are buried. There was no reply to Germany’s 12 hour ultimatum for Russia to declare its intentions. Kaiser Wilhelm regards himself as having been shamefully deceived [schmaehlich betrogen]. On the Czar’s personal request he had begun efforts to influence the Monarchy towards a peaceful solution of the crisis, but this was undercut by the general mobilization of Russia’s army and navy. The German government has announced that unless Russia stops preparations for war within 12 hours and, in addition, will provide an official statement to that effect, Germany will mobilize her forces. France was given a similar ultimatum with a deadline of 18 hours. Russia, and no one but Russia, is responsible for this impending disaster by having fostered a Serbian megalomania which drove this state to crave the impossible and the arrogance to carry it to extremes.

 

By August 3 Germany had declared war on Russia. The Russians were “deceitful” because they mobilized while Germany was working with the Monarchy for preserving peace among the Great Powers. French planes were spotted over western Germany and Russian patrols had crossed the German border even before the ultimatum had expired. Bombs were thrown from a plane over Nuremberg, which was “a flagrant violation of international law and an act of barbarism.”

On August 4 the paper stated: “A general mobilization has never previously happened…. Millions are under arms…. France is dragged into the war against her will…. Russia has entered the war because of the Balkans and the people living there have the feeling of being stalked by a beast of prey. No one in the Monarchy could say that this war is not a defense of life itself.

The August 5 edition stated under the headline “Danger of War between Germany and England: A war between England and Germany would be the most dismal event for all of humanity. The war England intends to lead against Germany would be the ghastliest crime which has ever been recorded. This war would be insanity, nothing but insanity.”

On August 6 the NFP tried to explain why England did enter this “fratricidal war” against Germany: “England is addicted to monopoly, which is fueled by a sense of superiority through which it regards the entire world as destined to become British property.”

It is, therefore, apparent that England’s entry into the war came as a complete shock. The more so since relations between England and Germany had improved earlier in the year. Toland noted, in the previously mentioned 13 Days, that in January of 1914 Sir Arthur Nicolson, Permanent Secretary in the Foreign Office, wrote to Sir William Goschen, Britain’s ambassador in Berlin, “’I think there is no likelihood of serious friction among the big European powers.’” “On June 15 Germany and Britain finally concluded the difficult negotiations over a railway construction through the Ottoman Empire to Baghdad,” and “on June 23 a large number of Royal Navy ships arrived in Kiel on a courtesy visit as part of the Kiel regatta.”

This was the background against which England’s war declaration was seen by Germans and Austrians. It made no sense whatsoever. Yes, Belgian neutrality was violated by Germany, but that was a matter of necessity rather than choice and Germany had officially declared that Belgium’s integrity would be preserved, and reparations paid for damages incurred, if no hostile actions were taken and free passage was allowed for its armies. It was felt that there were numerous historical precedents for this and for England to insist on the letter of the law, which guaranteed neutrality, was hypocrisy.

To understand England’s action in August 1914 we have to go back to the Boer War of 1899-1902. The reason for that war was greed. England wanted the Transvaal gold mines and used grievances by hired workers, mostly English and Irish, as an excuse for a full-scale invasion. An 1895 half-hearted incursion (Jameson expedition), which had been expected to lead to an uprising by the workers, had failed and subsequent negotiations between the parties had likewise been fruitless. Britain then thought that overwhelming force would lead to a quick result, but it was not to be. The Boers defended their homeland with vigor, and when military means failed against the guerilla tactics of the Boers, Lord Kitchener employed more drastic means. Boers’ farms were burned to the ground and the women and children of the fighting men sent to concentration camps. This was meant to put pressure on the husbands to surrender. It didn’t work; the war went on. Conditions in the camps became increasingly worse and eventually even children’s rations were cut in half. When this became known throughout Europe, England was not only shamed, but stood abandoned by the civilized world. It is, however, to the credit of the British that their newspapers published these abuses of power. More than 27,000 civilians reportedly died in the camps of whom more than 22,000 were under the age of 16.

Eventually a peace treaty was signed and the damage to Britain’s prestige in Europe had to be repaired. This could only be achieved via France with whom it had mutual interests in North Africa. The relationship with Germany had already somewhat soured in 1895 after the Jameson raid when the impulsive Wilhelm II had sent a short congratulatory telegram to Transvaal President Krueger on the occasion of his success. It was only one paragraph, but thoroughly upset British pride and added fuel to the already beginning fire over German naval armaments.

The Entente Cordiale between Britain and France was signed in 1904 and, although it did not contain official military clauses, it was quietly agreed upon that France could send its fleet to the Mediterranean while England would defend France’s northern shore. This aspect became crucial ten years later. The presumed adversary was Germany which had offended both England and France. England’s concerns were not only in regard to the German navy but German industrial production had overtaken that of Britain. Russia was added to the Entente in 1907 when England and Russia came to an agreement over their central Asian domains specifically: Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet. Thus the Triple Entente was born and there were now two power blocks facing each other. While this sounds impressive the relationships within these alliances were not necessarily harmonious, as has been mentioned in regard to Austria and Italy, but it was also tenuous between England and Russia. The Triple Entente did not contain military obligations for England, but the agreement between Russia and France did stipulate military intervention if either country were to be attacked.

As mentioned above, British relations with Germany had improved by the summer of 1914 and there were no significant problems between these two countries even up to and including the Monarchy’s declaration of War against Serbia. During July, Parliament’s concern was over “Home Rule” for Ireland which was bitterly opposed by Ulster (essentially today’s Northern Ireland). Earlier in the month there was even talk about civil war in that country, which would have required British troops to put it down. Toland noted in regard to the July 25 London events that Prime Minister Asquith wrote to his friend Venetia Stanley about “the view in some quarters of the government that a [European] war might be a way out of the Irish crisis.” Negotiations continued but were subsequently postponed when war against Germany was declared.

Belgium’s neutrality was indeed a sore point for the British but, as both Toland and Clark (The Sleepwalkers; mentioned in the previous installments), pointed out, neutrality per se was not the sticking point. If Germany had merely advanced through the southern portion of Belgium, England might not have entered the war. But German control of the channel coast was deemed to have been out of the question and a casus belli. In addition there was Britain’s fragile relationship with Russia. There was no love lost between these two empires. On the contrary, as the NFP had correctly pointed out, they were bitter rivals. Russia had made inroads into Persia, controlled its northern portion, and England feared that if the Russians were to move further south the oil fields would fall into their hands. This would have been a serious problem because the Royal Navy, Britain’s only strength and shield, which already had to a considerable extent converted from coal to oil, would be seriously adversely impacted.

There was also the problem of India. Russia had, with French money, vastly expanded her railroad network that now reached to the frontiers with Afghanistan and northwestern India. This would allow the Czar to rapidly move his troops into that area. England would have to come by sea and her troop strength was, of course, no match against Russia’s. England could not rely on native Indian forces as the rebellion of 1857 had shown. The British suffered from Imperial overstretch, but had to defend the Empire the best they could. This was also the reason for the naval treaty with Japan in 1902. It was intended to curb Russia’s moves into China and Korea. The treaty was re-negotiated in 1905 and called for Japanese support of British interests in India while Britain obligated itself to support Japan in Korea. After having been renewed again in 1911, the treaty remained in effect in 1914 and led to Japan’s declaration of war against Germany on August 14 and against the Monarchy on August 25. As Toland pointed out, “Britain’s policy during the July crisis of 1914 can only be understood within this wider imperial context and the latent threat posed to the British Empire not by Germany, but by Britain’s friends France and Russia.”

Nevertheless, even during the morning of August 2 the British cabinet was still divided in regard to intervention because public opinion was against it. But by the afternoon some clarity began to emerge. A declaration of war would depend on the actions of the Belgian government. “If Belgium reacted like Luxembourg and made a token protest or did not resist the transit of German troops through the southeast of the country then Britain could not intervene – it was impossible to be more ‘Belgian than the Belgians.’” But the Belgians decided to resist and in their rejection of the German ultimatum on August 3 stated that “ … if they were to accept the proposals submitted to them, they would sacrifice the honor of the nation and betray at the same time their duties towards Europe …” In the afternoon of that day Foreign Secretary Grey concentrated in his speech to the Commons on “’British interests, British honor and British obligations,’” which meant that, “Britain could not stand aside and see France and Belgium defeated.” War was declared the following day.

We must now ask ourselves why did Germany not wait for a few days and let France make the first move, which its treaty with Russia required. France likely would also have gone through Belgium and the shoe would have been on the other foot. The problem was the Schlieffen plan, named after the former German Chief of Staff. It was a military operational plan in disregard of political consequences and there was no Plan B!

After the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894 it became increasingly apparent that if a major European war were to break out Germany would have to face both France and Russia. Furthermore, as a result of the 1905 defeat, Russia’s military forces were completely re-organized and it was assumed that by 1915, or the latest 1917, they would have achieved a size that would have made them unbeatable. Schlieffen’s original plan envisaged only war against France, but as a result of the Franco-Russian alliance a two front war had become inevitable. Since France was regarded as the weaker partner it would have to be eliminated first. But after the 1871 defeat, France had fortified its border against Germany, which made a rapid victory possible only if these fortifications were bypassed. This could take place either via Holland, as envisioned originally by Schlieffen, or Belgium as carried out by his successor, Moltke. Since full Russian mobilization was known to take about three weeks, time was of the essence. France had to be dealt such a serious blow in the first few weeks that some German forces could thereafter be withdrawn and thrown against Russia. That was the plan, and it seemed to initially have worked. But Moltke, confronted with the danger of a Russian invasion of East Prussia, reduced the Western forces prematurely and the four-year stalemate resulted. Hitler’s generals modified the Schlieffen plan in 1940, by adding a main thrust through the Ardennes, and France was defeated within 6 weeks.

In retrospect one wonders how all the belligerents could have expected “to be home by Christmas,” but such is the power of wishful thinking. When the carnage had become obvious it was too late for either side to end it, because propaganda had inflamed passions to an extent that made rational thinking impossible. The casualty lists in 1916 staggered the imagination and a German military song of those times was “In Flandern reitet der Tod” – Death rides in Flanders. During the Battle of the Somme approximately 1,000,000 men were wounded or killed. On the first day of the offensive there were 57,400 British casualties, 19,240 of whom were killed. At about the same time the Battle of Verdun resulted in estimates of casualties ranging from 714,231 to 976,000. The Brusilov offensive in the East, which led to a defeat of the Monarchy’s army and forced Germany to withdraw forces from Verdun, led to 1,446,334 total casualties. That was the insanity the NFP had envisioned before the outbreak of the general war and it had become reality.

Let us now look at the final outcome in terms of casualties and financial losses. It is estimated that the total loss of life for both sides exceeded 31 million, which made it the costliest war up to that time. When one considers only the military forces in terms of: killed, wounded, prisoners of war and missing in action, and furthermore limits them to over 50 per cent for a given country one finds that, on the Allied side, Russia lost 76 %, France 73 % and Romania 71 %. Among the Central powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey), the Monarchy lost a staggering 90% and Germany 64%. http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/resources/casdeath_pop.html.

While these numbers are chilling, they conceal an even greater tragedy. They deal with the mentally and physically best young men in their respective countries. What could these people have accomplished had they been allowed to pursue their careers in civilian life? What could their children, who never had a chance to born, have achieved? This is another aspect of this crime against humanity, which now is called WWI.

As far as financial losses are concerned, Wikipedia tells us that the Allies spent, in 1913 billions of dollars, about 147 and the Central powers 61. It is obvious that the Allies had more resources and, therefore, could be more generous in their expenditures but there is another fact which the popular media shy away from. On the Allied side the brunt of the financial burden was carried by the British. They financed, in addition to the empire’s war effort, all of Italy’s and two thirds of that of France and Russia. In as much as in those days the world’s currencies had to be backed by gold, London had depleted its reserves by the fall of 1916 and had to appeal to the U.S. for loans. If America had been truly neutral it would have had to deny that request. The war would have ended right then and there, probably with a victory for the Central Powers. This had to be forestalled and was the true cause of America’s entry into the war. The Allies had to win and the financial losses would have to be made up by the defeated countries in form of reparations.

What was accomplished by this human catastrophe? It brought us WWII and the current political instability, which could again lead to a World War at any time. The “peace treaties,” which followed the war, were dictates by the victors who drew arbitrary borders. The Monarchy was totally dismembered into its various nationalities, which became “successor states.” But they in turn contained significant ethnic diversities within their borders that made future conflict inevitable. The German speaking part of the Monarchy became the Republic of Austria. But when its leaders, Socialists at the time, felt that this rump country was not viable they wanted to join Germany. The Allies said no. Hitler temporarily redressed the situation, but Austria again regained independence in 1955. As a constitutionally guaranteed neutral state within the EU, the country is now at least as well off, if not better, as in the spring of 1914 and unencumbered by the woes of a multinational empire. Serbia temporarily achieved its dream of a Yugoslavia, but it fell apart during WWII and finally in the early 1990s. The Kosovo war of 1998-1990 reduced Serbia’s size again to about what it was after the first Balkan war in 1912. Russia lost major portions of its empire. The Czar, together with his family, was murdered during the civil war and the country had to suffer under Communism for nearly the rest of the 20th century. Germany lost Alsace-Lorraine and East Prussia was severed from the rest of the country by the Polish Corridor to the Baltic Sea. The German city Danzig (today Poland’s Gdansk) was established as a “Free City” under the protectorate of the League of Nations and became the proximate cause for WWII. France regained Alsace-Lorraine but the human and financial sacrifices were of such a magnitude that it never fully recovered its status as one of the “Great Powers.” England had turned into a debtor nation to its former colony and keeping the empire intact became increasingly difficult. WWII was fought for its preservation, but that effort failed and led to the national liberation wars around the world. Is this really what its statesmen had in mind on August 4 a hundred years ago?

Anyone who believes that WWI is ancient history and that mankind will not make the same mistake again is caught in wishful thinking. The U.S. has moved into the position of the British Empire and now regards itself as the arbiter of world affairs. But how many people know that Ukraine, currently one of the major “hot spots,” was first established as a client state by and for Germany in the spring of 1918? The Brest-Litovsk treaty carved it out of Russia, just as Belarus. The Soviet Union, after it recovered from its civil war, again reabsorbed these states and their current independence dates to 1991. At present Ukraine seems to have moved into a position somewhat analogous to 1914 Serbia. We want to pull it into our area of hegemony, but the Russians are not willing to let go of it. This weeks’ TIME Magazine carried on its blood-red cover page the headline “Cold War II,” and the Wall Street Journal proclaimed a few days ago: “U.S., Europe to Turn Up Heat on Russia.” This is the same insanity, there is no other word for it, that led to WWI. Instead of accommodating Russia’s, and I might add China’s, legitimate concerns and working with these countries to counter the common jihadist threat, we are deliberately antagonizing them. This can hardly end well.

In the Middle East, the Allies dismembered the Ottoman Empire according to their wishes, in disregard of those held by the inhabitants. The borders were arbitrary and in addition England created a “Homeland for Jews in Palestine” which grew into the State of Israel with its attendant unceasing wars. The Israelis thought, and still think, that they can enforce their will by military might. The current carnage in Gaza is only the latest example. But they disregard a fundamental fact of human nature namely, that permanent peace between adversaries can only be established by meeting mutual interests rather than by continued threats and intimidation. In the quest for a purely “Jewish state,” instead of a constitutional democracy, Israeli politicians neglect the feelings of the about 20 percent Arab population of Israel proper (pre-June 1967 borders). Although this segment of Israel’s people has so far been relatively quiescent, the current chaos in Syria and Iraq will not stop at Israel’s borders and even Jordan’s monarchy may have a limited life expectancy. All of this misery is the result of bad decisions, which were based on wrong assumptions, after the end of WWI and were perpetuated thereafter.

WWI and WWII, its inevitable successor, should have taught mankind that wars hardly ever achieve what those who initiate them intend to accomplish. It may now be argued that the wars did prevent the world from falling into the hands of Prussian militarism, which would have disregarded international law and snuffed out freedom all over the world. This prevalent Western view was again expounded earlier this year by Isabel V Hull, Professor of History at Cornell University in A Scrap of Paper – Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War. I shall discuss the sections that are relevant for America’s current conduct in the next installment.

Unless we learn that wars beget wars there will be no end and they will become increasingly disastrous. The tragedy of mankind is that we have achieved phenomenal technological progress, but have emotionally remained mired in the Stone Age. We have thereby now become the most dangerous species this planet has ever harbored. But we refuse to recognize this and speak today of atomic war as an abstraction, just as in the days of my grandparents one spoke about a World War. “It’s not going to happen they thought,” and that is what most of us now think.

Why is there a likelihood of a catastrophic WWIII? Because the fundamental lesson of WWI has not been learned. The war resulted from aspirations of hegemony (the Monarchy vs. Russia over the Balkan Peninsula) and alliances that created power blocks. This limited the ability of the various states for independent action. Each country had to show “strength, defend its honor, and stand by its ally,” lest it be regarded as weak and unreliable. Finally, and this is perhaps the most important aspect, the leadership of each country only looked for its potential advantage, disregarding how the other party(ies) to the conflict might feel and act. There was, and I must add there is today, a pervasive paranoia of what “the other” will do to one unless one forestalls it. This is a prescription for disaster. Regardless what calamity may befall us, we can deal with it, unless we escalate the problem by inappropriate responses as happened in 2001 and 2003 with the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions. Let us remember that the main cause for WWI was not merely the Monarchy’s quarrel with Serbia, but fear of Russia and its increasing military strength. It was automatically assumed that this strength would be used for offensive purposes and this is why Germany could not tolerate Russian mobilization, which started the unstoppable avalanche. The Czar told the Kaiser on July 31 that mobilization was only a precautionary move and need not lead to war. But Germany felt that it could not trust this promise and started the “preventive war,” on the next day before Russia could fully mobilize.

As mentioned above we are currently in a somewhat similar situation. Putin wants to re-establish Russia as a “Great Power” which has to be reckoned with. The U.S. seems to be determined to prevent it. Where this will lead is anybody’s guess. But one thing is clear, the suggestion by one of our senators that “we need to punish the Russian people” for tolerating Putin, so that they will depose him, is, to put it bluntly, nonsense. We in our democracy and our “freedoms” could not stop the Bush administration from its wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq, which were, since Nuremberg, war crimes under International Law. So, what are the Russians supposed to do in a more regimented society?

Wars, economic or military, should no longer be tolerated. They have become too dangerous. Belligerence needs to give way to awareness of “the other’s” legitimate concerns, and cooperation to reduce, rather than increase, frictions. Only when we come to recognize the Buddha’s ancient wisdom that everything, including wars, starts in the minds of human beings, and we carefully examine the validity of the assumptions which guide our course, will we have a chance to successfully emerge from our current perils. Had this been done in the early summer days of 1914 the people of the world would have been spared a tremendous amount of suffering which extends not only into our days, but also into the foreseeable future.

In the next installment I shall discuss relevant aspects of Isabel Hall’s book as well as some of the NFPs editorial comments that were mentioned here and demonstrate that our current policies are again shaped by assumptions and rush to judgments rather than facts; just as one hundred years ago.

 

 

P.S. Two days ago CNN informed us that our country will resupply Israel with the ammunition it is using at this time in Gaza. If this were to be the case it would be a crime against humanity and make us co-responsible in the eyes of the world for this carnage. Our name, including President Obama’s, would be besmirched for a long time to come and our word in regard to “standing for justice and freedom of the oppressed,” will have become a travesty. But, unfortunately, we can only protest and hang our heads in shame, although our tax money is being used for this nefarious purpose.

I, therefore, sent the letter, which is pasted below to The Salt Lake Tribune, although I doubt that it will be published.

 

George Will and Israel

On July 31 George Will [a well-known columnist] quoted Prime Minister Netanyahu to the effect, “The point [sic] of Israel is that Jews shall never again … depend on the kindness of strangers. Such dependency did not work out well for Jews, so Israel exists for Jewish self-defense.” But Mr. Will might also have quoted what Moshe Dayan said several decades ago, “The Americans give us money and advice. We take the money and ignore the advice.” This statement is still valid and it is time to take Netanyahu at his word. Let us stop the money and the advice, and let us not replenish the ammunition as well as other war material which is currently used in Gaza. Supplying Israel in this war makes us co-responsible for the carnage among civilians in Gaza.

In addition, the Prime Minister does not speak for all Jews, only for the Zionist segment of the Jewish population which has recruited the Christian evangelical community. But our citizens are a microcosm of the entire world with all of its diversity. They should not be equated with only one segment of society and be forced, through tax-money, to support a cause, which they cannot agree with.







September 1, 2014

AMERICA’S CREDIBILITY GAP

          In last month’s installment I concluded the essay with these words

 

Wars, economic or military, should no longer be tolerated. They have become too dangerous. Belligerence needs to give way to awareness of “the other’s” legitimate concerns, and cooperation to reduce, rather than increase, frictions.  Only when we come to recognize the Buddha’s ancient wisdom that everything, including wars, starts in the minds of human beings, and we carefully examine the validity of the assumptions which guide our course, will we have a chance to successfully emerge from our current perils. Had this been done in the early summer days of 1914 the people of the world would have been spared a tremendous amount of suffering which extends not only into our days, but also into the foreseeable future.

 

          While I believe this to be true, it obviously was wishful thinking. The reality of how countries which either want to retain or enlarge their power was expressed in a quote from Vienna’s Neue Freie Presse editorial of July 4, 1914, which I used in the July 1, 2014 installment. In regard to the question how the crime of the Archduke’s assassination during the previous week had come about it answered:

 

It is the result of a policy which believes that it can split itself into official responsibility and unofficial irresponsibility [amtliche und nichtamtliche]. The official policy puts forth its hands to show that there is not a trace of blood on it. It has only words of friendship and peace. With a harmless face it wants to leave the impression of good will. The unofficial one dares to play a demonic game with the worst passions, race-hatred and all animal lusts which the heart harbors, and when unleashed engages in the worst cruelties. Yet they are celebrated as national heroism. It prepares the next wars. It considers itself to be above all moral law and arms the criminals in its pay with bombs and revolvers. The unofficial policy wants war.

 

            It is painfully obvious that nothing has changed during the past 100 years and America is now steering Serbia’s and Russia’s course of 1914. Let us briefly recapitulate the major events. The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (the Monarchy) felt itself threatened by Serbia’s nationalistic fervor, which intended to incorporate all South Slavs into its regime at the cost of what was regarded as the decaying Monarchy. Serbia’s plans were backed by Russia which wanted to extend its hegemony over the Balkan Peninsula. The murders of June 28 (the Archduke’s wife was also killed on that day) led to the secret decision to use the crime as a pretext for war with Serbia after Vienna’s government had assured itself of Germany’s backing. It was warned by Russia and England that because of treaty obligations such a war could not be contained and would result in World War. But the Monarchy’s government felt that this consequence was still avoidable if Russia were to desist from its support of Serbia. In its quest for war it was motivated by the need for the respect a great power deserves, and if it gave way to continued Serbian machinations it would be regarded as weak and treated with contempt. National honor was at stake. The crucial mistake was not to realize that exactly the same situation pertained to Russia and that it could not afford to tolerate a change in the Balkans’ status quo which would benefit the Monarchy. Russia was in the process of recovering from the recent defeat by the Japanese as well as the attempted 1905 revolution and any show of weakness was deemed unacceptable. It is now regarded as historical fact that the Serbian government would have accepted the Monarchy’s ultimatum had they not been assured by Russia of help in case of need, just as the Monarchy was by Germany. In this way reason gave way to passion and the potential disaster became reality.

          When we now look at today’s world situation the parallels are obvious. America’s “official policy” is drenched with humanitarian phrases which will bring freedom and democracy to the oppressed of the world, while the “unofficial” supplies money and weapons to various rebel groups around the world in order to destabilize existing regimes, which our ruling class dislikes for some reason or another. This is done in the pursuit of the “New American Century” (April 1, 2003,The Neocon’s Leviathan; September 1, 2013, 9/11: Context and Aftermath) which requires absolute dominance on land, sea, air and outer space. Any potential threat from a rising power must be met and nipped in the bud. Officially we promote democracy and this is why Saddam Hussein as well as Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi had to be removed from power, and why we still insist that Syria’s Assad and Iran’s mullahs have to be deposed. Please remember that none of these rulers presented or present a direct threat to America and that we have absolutely no problem when the military overthrows a democratically elected regime in Egypt, which subsequently enforces its rule by brutally repressing all dissent.

          This gap between pious words and what amounts to criminal actions against international law has become increasingly apparent. There is a very efficient propaganda machine at work in our country which I have previously mentioned in these pages (July 1, 2011The Goebbels Trap). It very effectively hides the bloody hands, while professing good will. The currently most dangerous aspect is not necessarily the “caliphate” in the Middle East to which I shall return on a later occasion, but our confrontation with Russia.

As TIME magazine of August 4 declared, we are now in Cold War II against a resurgence of Russian might which under Putin, who has replaced Czar Nicholas II in American imagination, threatens the independence of its neighbors. Only a strong America with NATO as its guarantor can preserve the peace by resisting this aggressor who wants to annex Ukraine, if not the Baltic States, in order to re-establish the Soviet Union.

          This is propaganda, rather than fact. The major tool consists of asserting an assumption as fact without providing evidence. In America this goes back to at least the Spanish American War with “Remember the Maine.” While on a “goodwill mission” the battleship sank in Havana harbor as a result of an explosion and the press immediately announced Spain’s guilt, which Spain denied. There was no international investigation and war was declared on Spain. The additional humanitarian reason for the war was Spain’s maltreatment of Cubans who had to be freed. In the process of the war the Philippines were conquered because these barbaric people had to be provided with the blessings of Christianity, in spite of the fact that they had been Catholic since they were originally taken over by the Spaniards in the 16th century. That this war was one of bloody conquest was not mentioned. The real purpose was to extend America’s hegemony over the Pacific and this eventually led to the war with Japan; now clashes with China are on the horizon.

Another immediate jump turning assumptions into facts was the Kennedy murder in 1963. Within hours Lee Harvey Oswald was not only pronounced guilty but declared the sole assassin. A proper trial was thwarted by Jack Ruby killing Oswald and even an autopsy of JFK by civilian authorities in Dallas was not allowed. It had to be performed in a military facility in Washington where the participants could be sworn to secrecy and the official report made to conform to the government’s desires. The subsequent Warren Commission’s purpose was to prove the government’s assertion of the lone assassin. Testimony by Dallas physicians, who had seen the wounds first hand, and made a single bullet cause highly unlikely, had to be disregarded. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, which has accumulated in subsequent years and was summarized here last year, the official story of the lone assassin is still dogma (November 1, 2013 Shattered Trust; November 15, 2013 Monumental Medical Cover-up; December 1, 2013 The Cover-up Continues).

          There were other jumps to conclusions in the subsequent years of the last century but the most glaring and dangerous one occurred on September 11, 2001. The 13th anniversary is coming up and the crimes that were committed on that day, which have profoundly altered our society and America’s credibility in the eyes of the world, have still not been subjected to an impartial criminal investigation. Within hours the media and our government proclaimed Osama bin Laden as the only guilty party and this myth which flies into the face of facts and reason is still stubbornly maintained. Why is this so? The only explanation I can come up with is to hide the real “bloody hands” of perpetrators as yet unnamed, and to follow the policy of the “American Century.”

          Although I have repeatedly discussed the reasons why the official 9/11 explanation is mythical rather than factual, let me just point to a few crucial facts. Osama bin Laden’s people may well have organized the hijacking scenario, but they could not have turned the cement of the Twin Towers and Building WTC7 into dust and some of the steel beams into twisted metal. Plane crashes into buildings, or debris from falling structures, just don’t do that. This is a fact of physics and anyone who still believes and defends the government’s theories either acts on blind faith or has ulterior motives. The second fact, which the government hides, is the absence of recognizable passenger plane parts at the Pentagon as well and in Shanksville PA, as reported by witnesses who were immediately on the scene. This does not happen in real life. Crashed planes leave obvious fuselage as well as wing debris and the engines are of titanium which defies fire as well as impacts. These are facts and anyone who doubts this only needs to look at pictures from Malaysian Airline Flight 17 (MH17) debris, which litters the fields of Ukraine. When one puts this in context with the pristine lawn in front of the Pentagon after AA 77 had supposedly crashed into that structure, and the crater surrounded by minute particles supposedly from the impact of UA 93 in Shanksville, this just does not make sense. If we had a government which is not driven by ulterior motives it would admit to these impossibilities.

          Let us now look again at Putin whose shadow forms MH17 on TIME’s August 4 cover page.

 

 

 

Putin stands accused of violating international law by annexing the Crimea, supporting rebels in Eastern Ukraine and being responsible for the downing MH17. This required a response by the West in form of increasingly severe economic sanctions and threats of NATO intervention. What are the facts?

           I have discussed the Ukraine situation intermittently since March 15 in these pages and nothing has happened in the meantime to invalidate what was then written. As a matter of fact it has received validation from an unexpected source. The current September/October issue of Foreign Affairs contains an article by John J Mearsheimer on: “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault – The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin.” The byline tells us that Mearsheimer is “R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago,” and as noted on a previous occasion he is not afraid of speaking truth to power. Readers of the Hot Issues might recall that I have previously discussed his book, co-authored with Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (May 1, 2006, What are they smoking?; October 1, 2007, The Israel Lobby). In this book the authors pointed out that the “Lobby” has achieved a degree of dominance over Congress which impedes our conduct of a rational foreign policy in regard to the Middle East. As expected, it was severely criticized and its effect on official policy was nil, in spite of change from a Republican to Democrat leadership in Washington.

          Fortunately, Professor Mearsheimer is not deterred by adversity and although he is probably fully aware of the futility of his endeavors he deserves our gratitude for saying what needs to be said, even if no one will listen. In the current article he pointed out that the West had violated a tacit agreement with Gorbachev not to enlarge NATO beyond Germany’s borders. This was a precondition for his agreement to Germany’s reunification. The deal was further sweetened by Germany paying a substantial amount of money, ostensibly to help defray costs for resettlement of Russian soldiers from East Germany. The exact amount is unknown but estimates range between $31 and 50 billion. Although a hefty price, Gorbachev needed the money to help his country’s staggering economy and for Germany’s Chancellor Helmut Kohl it was the only way to get the deal done.

          The NATO agreement on non-expansion to the East was apparently never formally put on paper and existed in the form of a Gentleman’s Agreement between the Bush 41 administration and the Soviets. It is likely that had George H.W. Bush been re-elected in 1992 his administration would have kept their word, but it was not to be. He was defeated by the combined forces of Ross Perot, Bill Clinton and probably the “Lobby.” The latter never forgave Bush for having dragged Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, against his will, to the Madrid peace conference where the PLO was for the first time, in an unofficial capacity, represented. That Bush also had threatened to withhold loan guarantees, ostensibly to help resettle recent immigrants from the Soviet Union, was likewise remembered at election time. The May1, 2003 Hot Issue on “Power Politics or Statesmanship” is well worth re-reading because it also puts the current political scene in historical perspective.

          To what extent the Clinton administration was informed of the tacit agreement on NATO is unknown.  But even if it knew, it did not feel bound by it. In 1999 the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland were added. In 2004 Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined its ranks. Moscow protested bitterly but it was of no use. Mearsheimer notes 

 

During NATO’s 1995 bombing campaign against the Bosnian Serbs, for example, Russian President Boris Yeltsin said, ‘This is the first sign what could happen when NATO comes right up to the Russian Federation’s borders…. The flame of war could burst out across the whole of Europe.”

         

          During the Yeltsin period, Russia was too weak to pose effective countermeasures and by 2004 Putin also had not yet achieved the level of power which would have allowed decisive action. This changed in 2008 when NATO intended to include Georgia and Ukraine in its fold. These countries were direct neighbors and the red line in the sand had to be drawn. Wikipedia mentions in its article on “Background of the Russo-Georgian War,” that Putin told President George W. Bush unequivocally in June of 2008, that a NATO expansion to these two countries was unacceptable. “If Ukraine entered NATO, Russia would detach eastern Ukraine (and likely the Crimean Peninsula) and annex them and, thus, Ukraine would ‘cease to exist as a state.’"

Further details on the “Promise” not to expand NATO eastward in order for the Soviets to allow German unification can be found in the article by Mary Elise Sarotte, Professor of History at the University of Southern California, in “A broken Promise? – What the West really told Moscow about NATO expansion.” It follows Mearsheimer’s article in the same Foreign Affairs issue

          Yet, America was undeterred in its quest to turn Ukraine into a Western bastion. As mentioned here in the March 15 essay, and in Mearsheimer’s article, by December 2013, we had spent $5 billion to woo Ukraine away from Russia. The Maidan protests were not simply a local undertaking but had our support and the February coup which brought Arseniy Yatsenyuk to power also was engineered by us. These statements are not fantasies but documented by phone calls overheard by foreign observers, as mentioned in the March 15, 2014 - Ukraine Crisis essay and Mearsheimer’s current article. To date there has been no criminal investigation as to who was responsible for the February 21-22 massacre on the Maidan while Putin was basking in reflected Sochi Olympic glory. Since the new Ukrainian government unequivocally aligned itself with the West, and thereby raised the specter of NATO sailors in Sebastopol the home of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, he had to act. From Russia’s point of view Putin’s annexation of the Crimea forestalled this move and was a defensive rather than offensive act. His citizens agreed and his approval rating soared in the Russian Federation.

          The West under America’s leadership reacted with “targeted” economic sanctions and the confrontation leading to the current crisis in the eastern predominantly Russian speaking part of Ukraine was on its way. Secessionists, with Russian help, declared their own Peoples’ Republic of Donetsk and after a May 11 referendum the areas of Lugansk and Donetsk formed the Federal Republic of Novorossiya. But not even Russia has as yet officially recognized it. A full scale civil war in that region is at this time in progress and there is no sign that either side is willing to give way. The current fighting, in south-eastern Ukraine, which includes Russian “volunteers,” has the military goal of establishing a land bridge to the Crimea, which at this time is quite isolated and cannot be properly supplied.

          When one keeps these facts in mind, it is obvious that the U.S. and Russia live mentally in two separate universes which are about to collide. Last week William J. Perry and George P. Shultz published an article in The Wall Street Journal under the heading, “Helping Ukraine is a U.S. Imperative.” Mr. Perry was Secretary of Defense in the Clinton administration while Mr. Shultz held that post during the Reagan years and we, therefore, have a bipartisan U.S. view of the matter. The article declared that Putin has ignored the Budapest Memorandum on security assurances of 1994, which was “critical to Ukraine’s decision to give up almost 2,000 nuclear weapons.” The article goes on to state that the situation demands U.S. action. While no “boots on the ground” are needed, NATO should immediately help with training and equipping the Ukraine forces and in addition should “deploy a rotating force” to the Baltic States. This would tell the Russians “how seriously we take their military actions.”

          For the average U.S, citizen, it may be hard to see why Ukraine’s territorial integrity should be an “Imperative” for us, but Russians are likely to agree with Putin that keeping NATO out of Ukraine is indeed one for them. We did not tolerate nukes in Cuba, so why should Russia acquiesce to what they regard as a threat on their border? Perry and Schultz also conveniently ignored the 1990 “Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation,” which was violated by Kiev in the spring of this year when it aligned itself with the West. The Kiev government also violated the 1997 Russo-Ukrainian Friendship Treaty by these actions. Mearsheimer was correct when he wrote that, “U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border.” His solution to the problem, which I had also suggested earlier, was the neutralization of Ukraine on the Austrian or Finnish model. Unfortunately, it may be too late for that. Three days ago Al Jazeera reported that Ukraine was requesting full membership in NATO to meet the Russian threat. This is another prescription for disaster. Before NATO can act Russia may well recognize the Federal Republic of Novorossiya with a status similar to that of Belarus and establish its needed link to the Crimea. This would amount to a breakup of Ukraine and we may well see a bombing campaign by the Kiev government, with Western help, to prevent the secessionist forces from reaching the Crimea.

          A further international complication arose in early July when secessionists began to shoot down Ukrainian fighter jets and on July 17 the Malaysian passenger plane MH17 was downed. True to form our media and the government immediately declared that this was done by the rebels with Russian supplied BUK missiles. This assertion was repeated by Secretary John Kerry, who stated that he had evidence for it, but never produced it for public viewing. Nevertheless, the West keeps blaming not only the secessionists but also Putin in person, as the TIME picture shows, in spite of the fact that we have never seen any actual verification of that assumption. A different view which implicates the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior was published on July 18 by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky on globalresearch.ca. It can be found under http://www.globalresearch.ca/was-ukraines-ministry-of-interior-behind-the-downing-of-malaysian-airlines-mh17/5391909.

          Now the mystery deepens. The plane was on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, with the vast majority of its passengers Dutch or Malaysian citizens, and crashed in secessionist held territory. The “black boxes,” flight data recorders, were soon recovered by the insurgents and by July 21 turned over to Malaysian authorities who were on the scene. Lacking expertise to adequately assess the data, the Malaysians turned the boxes over to the Dutch who in turn passed them on to the British. They were then taken to the Air Accidents Investigations Branch in Farnborough and we were told that by the first week of August the results would be made public. The Kiev government provided a “summary” of the Farnborough data stating that shrapnel from a ground to air missile had caused internal decompression and loss of the plane. This was denied by the Dutch investigation team as premature and incomplete; a full assessment was to be made available by the middle or end of August. But as of this day this has not happened. Nobody should, therefore, be surprised that in absence of data, and obvious secrecy in the assessment of a highly politicized event, that this has become a fertile field for the rumor mills.    

          I shall not discuss the more outlandish assertions but there are some statements from responsible observers that deserve attention. On July 29 a Canadian citizen and member of the international OSEC investigation team, Mikhail Bociurkiw, gave an interview for CBC which can be viewed on http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/malaysia-airlines-mh17-michael-bociurkiw-talks-about-being-first-at-the-crash-site-1.2721007.  He had close ties to Ukraine, spoke the language, and had arrived soon after the crash, while debris was still smoldering. He described the terrible scene and around minute 6:04 of the 8 minute 19 second interview he stated  “…there have been two or three pieces of fuselage pockmarked that looked like machine gun fire, very heavy machine gun fire...“ He had not seen any rocket pieces but admitted that with untrained eyes he might have missed them.

On July 21 the Russian Defense Ministry held an international press conference where Lieutenant-General Andrey Kartopolov laid out what had been seen on Russian Radar at the time as well as satellite information. The conference can be viewed on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bNPInuSqfs and a transcript can be found on http://rt.com/news/174412-malaysia-plane-russia-ukraine. Kartopolov’s statements are in Russian with English translations. He said that the previously mentioned BUK system was not in the hands of the secessionists but under Ukrainian military control, and that Radar data had shown not only that MH 17 made an unexpected deviation from its course, and then returned to it just prior to the disaster, but also that a fighter jet had been seen approaching the passenger plane. It was implied that this jet may have shot down the plane. Satellite pictures showed a Ukrainian BUK missile system on July 17th, close to secessionist held territory and that it had been removed by the following day. General Kartopolov asked that Kiev should provide an explanation why the system was there on the 17th and why a fighter plane should have approached MH17.

           Chossudovsky’s above mentioned article had also asserted the military jet’s presence, sometimes stated as two jets, but this was denied by Ukraine’s government and branded as a lie concocted in the U.K.. Regardless of the truth of this aspect, retired Lufthansa Captain Peter Haisenko carefully examined pictures of the crashed plane parts and reached the following conclusions: bullet holes, resembling heavy machine gun fire, were seen on parts of the fuselage which had been penetrated from both sides, because some were entry and others exit holes. They were not randomly distributed over the entire fuselage and wings but only seen on portions which belonged to the cockpit of the plane, suggesting deliberate murder of the pilots. The relevant pictures that were originally shown on the Internet have now disappeared from there, but the article can be studied on http://www.globalresearch.ca/german-pilot-speaks-out-shocking-analysis-of-the-shooting-down-of-malaysian-mh17/5394111.  

          Although none of this was mentioned by our news media the Pentagon apparently felt obligated to respond to this assertion and explained that ground to air missiles are not designed to hit the plane but to explode above it and shower it with debris that can look like bullet holes. A picture was provided of the effects of a surface to air missile (SAM) hitting a passenger plane. It does indeed look quite similar but since the Pentagon is not in the habit of providing us with the full truth its provenance has been questioned http://www.globalresearch.ca/evidence-is-now-conclusive-two-ukrainian-government-fighter-jets-shot-down-malaysian-airlines-mh17-it-was-not-a-buk-surface-to-air-missile/5394814.    

On the other hand, if the plane was indeed shot down in the air, for whatever reasons, it might explain why we are not told what the flight data recorders revealed. The cockpit voice recorder data might be crucial because if a fighter jet had indeed appeared in the vicinity, and especially if it began firing, the pilots would probably have commented on it. Since this is an extremely serious matter, about which our media are totally silent, it needs to be immediately brought to the attention of the general public. The Malaysian government should press the Dutch authorities to publish the available data without further delay.

If the Dutch government were to stall on these requests Malaysia has a further opportunity to advance its case in the public arena. Former President Mohamed Mahathir, who is a fervent advocate of the truth in foreign affairs, established in 2007 the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal (KLWCT). Its purpose is to adjudicate cases involving individuals who have committed war crimes, but are in such high positions of power that the case will never be heard by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The Kuala Lumpur Tribunal has at this time no legal standing anywhere else in the world, but is not a “Kangaroo Court.” The judges are respected legal experts in their countries (mainly Asian) and the accused are invited to be present either in person or by their legal representative. It was apparently modeled on the Nuremberg post WWII precedent except that it is not the victors who initiate the proceedings and pass judgment, but aggrieved citizens who can bring their complaints. At present its verdicts can be ignored and as will be shown not even reported. But they do carry a moral dimension because when someone is convicted of war crimes this label does, if not now then eventually, come to be attached to his/her name. The person can then be arrested on travels to a foreign country which is not dominated by the influence the individual has in his/her own. The fate of the former President Augusto Pinochet is a case in point. Although not prosecuted in Kuala Lumpur, he was arrested in London on an international arrest warrant for crimes committed under his regime and extradited to Chile where he spent the major portions of his waning years under house arrest. Citizens do have, in some instances, legal power and this power should be exercised while there is still time.

In not quite two weeks it will be thirteen years since the 9/11 tragedy and no Western Court of Law had the courage to investigate this crime and its aftermath. But hardly any one of us knows, me included until writing this essay, that President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair were tried in Kuala Lumpur (November of 2011) and, using Nuremberg as precedent, found guilty of instigating a criminal war. The defendants were invited to appear or send their representative but this request was ignored. They were, therefore, convicted in absentia.

A second trial was held in the following year in regard to tortures committed during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. This resulted in the convictions of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington and William Haynes II. John Yoo et al. had been responsible for writing the legal opinions which allowed Cheney and Rumsfeld to give the orders. I found this information amazing because it shows the power exerted not only over our media but also those of the U.K.. For instance it is unclear whether or not The Guardian or The Independent, who must have known of these proceedings, had reported on them at the time. A key word search of these newspapers for “Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal Blair” did not produce a match. As mentioned, the convictions are at this time meaningless as long as the named persons restrict their travels to countries dominated by U.S. influence. But they could be in potential difficulties if they ventured into less friendly territory and eventually the Kuala Lumpur verdicts may even enter the history books.

Our government and media feel at this time that they can safely ignore the KLWCT because Malaysia is a small Muslim country and essentially powerless. But if some of Malaysia’s citizens, who have lost loved ones on MH17, were to bring the grievances to the KLWCT, which was created for just this purpose,                                                                                                                                                 the investigations might attract the needed attention.

It is highly unlikely that our satellites, which constantly observe all aspects of the globe, have no information on what went on in a Ukrainian battle zone on July 17. Why does the Pentagon, or any of the other “national security” agencies, not release all the information they have, so that independent experts can study the data? Our security is not enhanced by secrecy. Secrecy only leads to wars, as was shown for WWI. It does not make us safer and now threatens to engulf us in major disasters. Only by opening our data so that the world, including the Russians and Chinese, can study and evaluate them, is there a chance of restoring a degree of trust in our government. First impressions and assumptions are frequently wrong and one should have the courage to admit it when new information becomes available. If our cause is indeed just and our policies are correct we have nothing to fear from world opinion, but if they are tainted by lies it is utterly irresponsible to persist on a course that can only lead to another catastrophic war.   







October 1, 2014

LAND OF DECAY, DYSFUNCTION, DECEPTION AND DENIAL

          In the previous installment I mentioned the current issue of Foreign Affairs in connection with Prof. Mearsheimer’s article on the Ukraine conflict. But the issue also contains one by Francis Fukuyuma which led to part of this month’s title. The magazine cover page is reproduced below and Fukuyama’s article headline is “America in Decay – The Sources of Political Dysfunction.”

 

 

 

The article is preceded by an editorial written by Gideon Rose and Jonathan Tipperman headlined: Dysfunction Junction. The first paragraph states:

 

American politics today are marked by dysfunction, discontent, and ideological churn on both sides of the aisle. Since distraction and paralysis of the world’s hegemon has such obvious global significance, we decided to turn our focus inward, exploring the sources and contours of the American malaise.

 

            For this essay’s title I have kept the first two components but added deception and on suggestion of a colleague, Dr. Michael Johnson, denial. These are the additional ingredients which are not yet fully appreciated by those who are in charge of our republic as well as the media.

          Francis Fukuyama is “a Senior Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law” at Stanford University and the article is a synopsis of his new book, Political Order and Decay: From the French Revolution to the Present. I have discussed his previous one, The End of History and the Last Man on this site in the August 1, 2007 issue entitled: Our Need for Maat. Maat was the ancient Egyptian goddess of justice and order who was set against Isfet, the demon of lies and destruction. She saw to it that pharaoh, as head of the state, as well as the lowliest individual led morally correct lives. At time of death the individual’s heart (the sum total of life’s actions) was placed on one side of a scale with Maat’s feather on the other. If the scales balanced, entrance was granted to a happy afterlife. If they did not the person’s heart was devoured by the monster Ammut. I will not recount what I wrote at that time but merely suggest that you look at this article because whatever was then written is still valid today and the essence in regard to political dysfunction is the heart of Fukuyama’s current article.

In this respect it is useful to first look at his 1992 book and see to what extent his opinions have changed in the intervening two decades. The End of History was written in the excitement over the demise of the Soviet Union when America emerged as the world’s sole superpower and arbiter of its affairs. The book achieved The New York Times best seller status and was lauded with words such as: “Awesome … A landmark work … Profoundly realistic and important …”

The book was intended to validate Hegel’s idea that liberal democracy is the best of all possible forms of government to which all individuals aspire. It was defined as popular government with maximal individual freedom. When this has been achieved in the vast majority of the major nations of the planet there will no longer be wars, people will live contented lives, and political history, as we understand it, will have come to an end. Nietzsche’s “Last Man,” who docile like a sheep simply engages in his professional work and unfettered pursuit of happiness, will have arrived. Fukuyama, like Hegel and Marx, rejected a cyclical recurrence of history, as advocated by Plato and Aristotle, in favor of the unidirectional arrow, although he did admit to some intermittent speed bumps. In so doing he distinguished between the history of individual states and that of mankind. While individual states may undergo Plato’s cycles from aristocracy to timocracy (the state is ruled by the most honorable), to oligarchy, to democracy, to anarchy which then leads to tyranny; the global order is headed arrow-like for liberal democracy.

Timocracy never existed in any large state, especially in recent times, but for the descent of democracy into tyranny we have numerous examples with the rise of Fascism and Nazism the most glaring ones. Was this coincidence or actually inevitable as Socrates via Plato suggested?  It is instructive to look at Plato’s Republic Book VIII and read what Socrates told his listeners about democracy during after-dinner drinks in the home of Cephalus. These were the original symposia, which have been degraded in our scientific meetings to sitting and listening with some questions at the end. But I shall leave some of the most relevant morsels for later and also let future historians decide whether Plato or Hegel were right in regard to the future of global history.

Although Fukuyama was firmly on Hegel’s side this is less important than the main thrust of his book: the explanation of history on the basis of thymos. The concept came again from Plato’s writings on the Socratic symposia. In Book III Socrates discussed the aspects of the soul, which is nowadays referred to as mind. The first one is desire or the appetitive principle which serves the functions of the body, the second is the rational principle that distinguishes the good from the bad, the healthy from the sick and in essence presents us with choices and their potential outcomes. This, however, is not all because there is a third one, thymos, which has been translated as “spiritedness.” But thymos, just as logos, has several meanings some of which are: will, greed, spirit, soul, passion, decision, anger, rage; as well as several others. Fukuyama chose for his book “the individual’s need for recognition.” In other words, all of us would like to be paid some respect by our fellow citizens and when this is denied we get angry. Like Socrates, he agreed that what is true on the individual level holds also for nations because they are composed of individuals. When a group or nation is humbled, pride asserts itself and when thwarted anger results that can then lead to war. Self-worth or the French amour-propre, is indeed a powerful component of the human beings mental make-up. It is also the basis of Adler’s Individualpsychologie with the inferiority complex its best known aspect. Although not directly relevant to the discussion of the current state of our democracy the concept of “self-worth” is important for understanding our international conduct and especially the wars we are at this time engaged in. Remember: our current adversaries also have thymos and by disregarding it we pave the way for never ending troubles.

While Fukuyama’s first book was thoroughly upbeat, the devolution of our society during the intervening twenty years has left him rather discouraged. In the Foreign Affairs article he does not refer to the End of History but merely describes the decay of our institutions which were supposed to have provided the checks and balances that sound government requires. Especially interesting from my perspective was the fact that I had come to the same conclusions in the November and December 2011 issues: “A Plague on Both your Houses.” The September essay of that year (Follow the Money) dealt with our financial situation and the one of February 1, 2008 (Is America Fixable?) with the educational system. When taken together the articles show that our Republic suffers from multi-system failure. Unless this is forthrightly addressed it will have to lead to the demise of democracy and descent into autocracy. But since the Hot Issues readership is quite limited, it was good to see that an authoritative voice is now addressing the topic.

America in Decay – The Sources of Political Dysfunction starts with the establishment of the Forest Service as a “new model of merit-based bureaucracy.” It worked well for several decades but has recently fallen into such difficulties that some people now argue that it should be altogether abolished. The problem in a nutshell was that when people moved West they settled in wooded areas and when nature or careless individuals started fires homes burned to the ground. It became a matter of priorities. In previous decades fires burned themselves out and the forest renewed itself. Now fires had to be fought to protect homes and this change created another set of problems for the Forest Service. Fukuyama wrote:

 

It is still staffed by professional foresters, many highly dedicated to the agency’s mission, but it has lost a great deal of its autonomy …. It operates under multiple and often contradictory mandates from Congress and the courts and costs taxpayers a substantial amount of money while achieving questionable aims. The service’s internal decision making process is often gridlocked, and the high degree of staff morale that Pinchot had worked so hard to foster has been lost.

 

          With the Forest Service as an example Fukuyama then asked “Why Institutions Decay?” He provided two answers. All institutions are initially created for a specific purpose but over time conditions change and the institutions fail to adapt. In addition there is “group interest: institutions created favored classes of insiders who develop a stake in the status quo and resist pressures to reform.” This holds true over the entire range of our government.

          In theory “Madisonian democracy” was designed to prevent the emergence of a “dominant faction or elite that can use its political power to tyrannize over the country.” It was assumed that by spreading responsibility over a variety of branches of government competition among the different interests would lead to an equitable outcome. But this was theory and practice differs to a considerable extent.

          Modern liberal democracies have three main branches of government: the executive, the legislative and the judiciary. In theory, and enshrined in our Constitution, Congress makes the laws, the President carries them out and when disputes arise the Judiciary steps in. This may have been the case initially, but it is no longer. We are now in Fukuyama’s words, “A State of Courts and Parties.” There has been a “steadily increasing judicializiation of functions that in other developed countries are handled by administrative bureaucracies, leading to an explosion of costly litigation, slowness of decision-making, and highly inconsistent enforcement of laws.” In this way instead of being a check on government the courts have become a tool of its expansion.

          A similar situation exists in Congress. Interest groups have achieved inordinate power. They “distort both taxes and spending, and raise overall deficit levels by their ability to manipulate the budget in their favor.” In addition, the quality of public administration is undermined by multiple mandates they induce Congress to support. This also erodes the trust people have toward government, which in turn creates a vicious cycle. Distrust leads to calls for reforms and more “legal checks” on government. But since these have to go through the same process that created the original problem, the cure is frequently worse than the disease. At the same time the public demands from Congress new legislation for services that are difficult for the executive to comply with. As a result we are confronted with “rigid, rule-bound, uncreative and incoherent government.”

          Fukuyama then went into specifics. Under the headline “Judges Gone Wild,” he showed how judicial decisions have led Congress to establish numerous new mandates which resulted in new litigations. Conflicts, which in other countries are handled in an administrative manner, are now litigated in the courts. Private lawsuits in regard to the enforcement of certain pieces of legislation have risen dramatically over the decades. They grew “from less than 100 per year in the late 1960s to 10,000 in the 1980s and over 22,000 by the late 1990s.” Fukuyama did not mention an additional aspect. The legal opinions upon which the rewards are issued are indeed only “opinions,” although they carry the weight of law for a given time. Yet each “opinion” can be appealed from district court to circuit court, all the way to the Supreme Court where frequently the vote of one judge, in a 5:4 decision, declares what the law of the land is. But that is also an opinion dictated by the political climate and can be overturned on a later occasion. This is hardly a way to ensure effective, trustworthy government.

          Congress is in equally bad shape because it has been corrupted by the previously mentioned lobbying groups. There is no longer the old fashioned bribery where money changed hands but “reciprocal altruism.” Donors make contributions and expect to be rewarded by appropriate legislation thereafter. In 1971 there were 175 interest groups lobbying Congress. The number rose to “roughly 2,500 a decade later, and then to 13,700 lobbyists spending about $3.5 billion by 2009.” These are Fukuyama’s numbers and they are bound to have increased since.

          In addition to the inordinate influence of lobbyists Congress has become inoperative as a result of the polarization of its two major parties. There exists a de facto cold war where the members hardly talk to each other and can’t come to an agreement even on such a fundamental issue as the annual budget. Presidents prepare an initial proposal which is immediately declared dead upon its arrival by Congress that has ultimate responsibility.

 

[The] Office of Management and Budget has no formal powers over the budget, acting as simply one more lobbying organization supporting the president’s preferences. The budget works its way through a complex set of committees over a period of months, and what finally emerges for ratification by the two houses of Congress is the product of innumerable deals struck with individual members to secure their support – since with no party discipline, the congressional leadership cannot compel members to support its preferences.

 

          The most recent result is that Congress has failed to pass a budget for fiscal 2014 that ended on September 30 and the country limps along on ad hoc appropriations.

Fukuyama called our current political situation “vetocracy” because the various competing camps prevent constructive solutions. Although it is axiomatic in our country that one ends on a note of hope, he broke with precedent and the final chapter heading is, “No Way Out.” As he sees it there are two obstacles to reform. One is that neither political party is willing to cut itself off from special interest funds and the second “a matter of ideas.” Reformers pushed for more open primaries in the 1970s to make the electoral process more democratic but most people don’t take the time to educate themselves on the complex aspects of our society which require innovative solutions. The answer would be to “roll back some of the would-be democratizing reforms.” But this is politically impossible. His conclusion is honest and bound to be unpopular.

 

The depressing bottom line is that given how self-reinforcing the country’s political malaise is, and how unlikely the prospects for constructive incremental reform are, the decay of American politics will probably continue until some external shock comes along to catalyze a true reform coalition and galvanize it into action. 

 

            It is apparent that Fukuyama still does not want to give voice to the other looming alternative, of which he is obviously aware. That the “external shock” could, instead of an improved democracy, lead to tyranny, as Socrates predicted, seems too difficult to accept. Yet, the makings of it are ready to see for anyone who has eyes to see.

Deception is currently rampant on the domestic as well as the international scene. At home we are bombarded with advertisements which lure us into all sorts of dubious “get rich quick” schemes and “Identity theft” has become a serious problem. The CBS 60 Minutes program reported on the 21st of last month that Social Security numbers have been stolen and on their basis fraudulent tax returns, which claimed refunds, were submitted by these crooks. The IRS promptly paid and a lucrative income resulted. This is just one recent example, which could readily be multiplied, of how trust is abused and we are gradually turned into a paranoid society. 

The most important problem for the current century, as I have never wearied to emphasize and which is still not faced, is our response to the 9/11 tragedy. It did not bring about a quest for criminal proceedings against the guilty parties as “a country governed by laws” would have demanded. Osama bin Laden’s guilt was not established in a court of law, as would have been the normal procedure in a civilized country, but immediately and unilaterally declared by the government and the media. When bin Laden was eventually located in Abbottabad he was summarily executed and his body dumped into the Indian Ocean. He should have been arrested and sent to The Hague for trial by the International Criminal Court. Although the crime was committed on American soil, citizens from countries around the world were the innocent victims on 9/11 and a U.S. venue of the proceedings would not have carried the same weight because of obvious bias. The Obama administration failed to do so and we have to take its word that the person killed was indeed Osama rather than one of his family members.

On the domestic scene, the crime was used to create another expensive bureaucracy, The Office of Homeland Security, in addition to vastly expanding and funding the national spy agencies. It also allowed the passage of the mislabeled “Patriot Act” which can punish citizens who disagree with the way the government is run and who blow the whistle on obvious misconduct. These are only some of the deceptions our government has used so far and it is well on its way, especially with the Patriot Act, to Orwellian “double speak.” Let us remember Mark Twain: A patriot is someone who loves his country always and his government when it deserves it. Our government and media at this time deceive us to an extent that it has become nearly impossible for clear-thinking individuals to trust them.

There is an additional aspect, which is shrouded in secrecy and that is the “Continuity of Government” plan. The “undisclosed location(s)” to which Vice-President Cheney retreated on September 12, 2001 are listed on Wikipedia, but the rest of the plan, which deals with the management of the country after a disaster, remains hidden. Common sense suggests that martial law will be declared, our constitutionally guaranteed rights will become “inoperative,” and an autocracy will be instituted. It needs only another 9/11 type event, real or manufactured, and the days of our republic will be gone. This is the real danger rather than some terrorists who may want to do us harm. But fear of terrorism is the tool that paves the way for the mentioned scenario.

Internationally, just as the assassination of Franz Ferdinand was used by Austria as a pretext to settle scores with Serbia in 1914, 9/11 was and is used as a pretext to extend American influence over Afghanistan and via Iraq to the rest of the Middle East. The 9/11 victims were and are callously used to justify military operations. In addition, guilt by decree has become the norm in American foreign policy. Last year when Sarin was used on a civilian population, President Assad was immediately declared the guilty party and cruise missiles were about to fly before an inquest could be held. We still have not been told if a proper investigation of this tragedy has taken place and its results. On July 17 of this year Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over rebel held territory in eastern Ukraine. Russia and its rebel sympathizers were immediately blamed. The tragedy then was used to level new sanctions on Russia in spite of the fact that its guilt is based on allegations rather than established fact. Earlier last month the Dutch authorities released their report on MH 17 but it provided no information in regard to who did what and merely stated its preliminary nature with a final report to be issued a year from now.

On Wednesday of last week President Obama gave the annual address to the UN in which he tried to rally the world against Islamic extremism in general and ISIL in particular. Some of the sentences struck me as quite ironic and I have the feeling that even he has fallen victim to self-deception. For instance: “We have failed to enforce international norms when it’s inconvenient to do so” and “First, all of us  – big nations and small – must meet our responsibility to observe and enforce international norms.” The words were probably meant as an admonishment for Putin but the irony seems to have escaped him. Since when is it international norm to treat a crime suspect in the way his administration dealt with bin Laden and where is the international law that allows us to bomb any country in which activities are carried out which are not to our liking? Apparently only international ground borders are to be respected but the air space above seems to be a free for all.

In regard to events in Ukraine he said: “Here are the facts,” and then conveniently started with the Maidan protests and Yanukovich’s departure. But he ignored our $5 billion which fueled the events, as well as the massacre on Maidan, the guilt for which has yet to be established. Are we expected to assume that although some of us know these facts, he didn’t? Deception does not only consist in what is being said, but also in what is deliberately withheld. As mentioned on another occasion, the deliberate use of the half-truth is the most vicious lie.

In regard to MH 17 Obama repeated the statement that the insurgents refused access to the crash scene for days. But we have testimony by a member of the investigating team that he arrived soon after the crash while debris was still burning and found some of the wreckage “pockmarked that looked like machine gun fire.” Why did Obama’s advisors, who read the speech beforehand, not warn him to tread carefully because the facts are not clear-cut? Why did Moscow give an international press conference four days after the crash where the Russian government presented its Radar and Satellite data, but Kiev and Washington failed to do so? These are only some questions our President has avoided, but they feed the distrust of government (September 1, 2014; America’s Credibility Gap).

Referring to Russia, the President repudiated the “vision of might makes right” and insisted that “We believe that right makes might –  that bigger nations should  not be able to bully smaller ones; that people should be able to choose their own future.” But this also brings up a few questions. Who gave us the right to bomb Syria? Why did we not tolerate a democratically elected Hamas government in Palestine, and close our eyes when the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood is overthrown in Cairo? The same applies to the democratically elected government of Ukraine. The answers are obvious: democratic elections are in our eyes valid only if the result is a government which is to our liking.

I shall discuss ISIL, as well as other aspects of Obama’s speech, on another occasion and now return to around 300 BC in order to present Socrates’ views on democracy. The reader can then judge their relevancy for 21st century America.

When oligarchy is overthrown democracy is established. “It is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.” But unlimited freedom allows the emergence of unsavory passions that are called “by sweet names.” When the democratic man “is given good advice,” that some pleasures are noble while others are not, “he shakes his head and says that they are all alike, and that one is as good as the other.” “In households the father descends to the level of his sons and fears them, and the son is on a level with his father, having no respect for either of his parents and this is freedom. … The master [teacher, professor] fears and flatters his scholars [pupils, students].” The young and old are all alike. The young man regards himself on the same level as the old one; the old person descends to the level of the young and there is liberty and equality of the two sexes in relation to each other. As the insatiable desire for wealth was the ruin of oligarchy, the insatiable desire for freedom brings about a demand for tyranny. “The truth being that the excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction … above all in government. The excess of liberty … only seems to pass into excess of slavery.”

Is this not an indication that even the distant past can teach us lessons which ought not to be disregarded? The one which emerges here is that freedom unrestrained by responsibility will inevitably lead to its demise. It also points to a defect in our educational system which stresses science and technology. These are of practical use, but for a human being to become a valuable member of society more is required. This is taught in this country under the name of “humanities” while in German speaking countries it is called “Geisteswissenschaften.” For a properly functioning democracy both must be given equal weight. If you have only technocrats without a humanistic foundation Auschwitz and euthanasia are the prime examples of what to do with either “enemies” or “useless eaters” (nutzlose Esser).

America still has a choice before it descends into the abyss. But the country and its politicians live in a state of denial where they don’t want to see where the present course will lead. As the ancients said, whom the gods want to destroy they strike with blindness. With Congressional decisions hamstrung, the President now issues orders that include acts of war against other countries. Although we still have a republican form of government it has lost its inner substance. The rest of the world sees it and it will become increasingly difficult to convince even well-meaning nations to follow the example we set.

Fukuyama’s “external shock” may not necessarily be a replay of 9/11, but economic. When the dollar will lose its status as the world’s reserve currency a rude awakening from our current dreamy state of denial is bound to take place. This is no longer a question of if. “De-dollarization” is already in progress, as anybody can verify by typing the word into Wikipedia. The overarching task of our media should be to sound the alarm before it is too late.  But since they are also largely subservient to special interests we can only hope that some of the isolated voices, which currently present the true situation, will coalesce and become a force that can no longer be ignored.







November 1, 2014

EBOLA AND ISIL

          On first glance these topics hardly seem to be connected. Yet, they did dominate the news of the past month and there is a common link.

          The West African Ebola outbreak and its potential consequences are currently endlessly discussed on cable TV, especially CNN, practically to the exclusion of other news. The CDC provides continuously updated safety measures and to quarantine or not to quarantine asymptomatic persons in the U.S. who may or may not have been in contact with an Ebola victim is a hot topic for discussions. The fact that Ebola is only spread through bodily fluids of diseased individuals, which largely limits its danger to caregivers, tends to be minimized by fear mongers. That the likelihood of the average citizen to contract the disease is in the realm of being killed by lightning in the middle of Manhattan is also hardly ever spelled out in these terms.

          One may, therefore, wonder what is behind this fear campaign. There seem to be two possible reasons, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive. One is the push for immediately creating a vaccine that can then be sold worldwide at a high price. Our military personnel are likely to become the first recipients and since the vaccine’s long range side effects will be unknown they may suffer the consequences years or decades later. But America is the country of short term “quick fixes” and this aspect is likely to be ignored. The other has to do with next week’s midterm elections. The public has to be further convinced that President Obama is ineffective and that only Republicans know what’s good for the country. Voters will then make sure that both Houses of Congress are in Republican hands, which will further immobilize Obama. He will definitely become a “lame duck” and his inability to constructively govern will then be used in the 2016 campaign to put a Republican, as savior of the nation, in the White House. Thus, the link between Ebola and ISIL is not only fear-mongering, but the attempt to paint President Obama and his crew as incompetent and neglectful of national security.

          In all the TV sound and fury about Ebola there seems to be a question that has gotten lost. What caused this massive Ebola outbreak in West Africa during the spring of this year? One possible answer appeared in an article at http://www.globalresearch.ca/a-liberian-scientist-claims-the-u-s-is-responsible-for-the-ebola-outbreak-in-west-africa/5408459 by Timothy Alexander Guzman “U.S. is responsible for the Ebola Outbreak in West Africa.” This, obviously, suggests the usual conspiracy theories, and there is the axiom: When in doubt blame the US government. Guzman quoted from an article in the Liberian Observer, which is Monrovia’s largest newspaper, by Dr. Cyrill Broderick a Professor of Plant Biology, to the effect that our Defense Department gave a $140 million contract to Canada’s Tekmira Company in order to conduct Ebola research. The project, which supposedly involved injecting the virus into healthy humans in order to test a vaccine, was started in January, and the epidemic arose a few weeks later in March. Two precedents were quoted for this nefarious scheme. One was the by now well-known Tuskegee experiment, immediately after WWII. Healthy African-Americans were infected with syphilis in order to test the efficacy of penicillin. The other, a largely unknown one, was its precursor with healthy Guatemalans for which our government has officially apologized in 2010.

Since I could not vouch for the accuracy of the Ebola report and did not want to be accused of spreading rumors, I tried to check the sources and this Internet voyage proved rather instructive. Mr. Guzman’s quotes were accurate, but Dr. Broderick may have jumped to conclusions, when he said that the volunteers were injected with the virus. Broderick’s report is on http://www.liberianobserver.com/security/ebola-aids-manufactured-western-pharmaceuticals-us-dod. Breitbart News took issue and used a variety of invectives to discredit the article. http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/09/10/Liberia-s-Largest-Newspaper-Ebola-and-AIDS-Manufactured-by-US-Dept-of-Defense. One paragraph was of special interest because the source could be checked.

 

Perhaps most outrageously, Broderick attempts to cite a real source, The Guardian, alleging that a report in the paper said, "The US government funding of Ebola trials on healthy humans comes amid warnings by top scientists in Harvard and Yale that such virus experiments risk triggering a worldwide pandemic." A routine Internet search finds no evidence that such a sentence was ever written in the pages of The Guardian.

 

            Since Frances Martel at Breitbart News had struck out, I tried my luck with The Guardian and did find the origin of this sentence. The part of  US government funding … came from Broderick’s article in The Observer, but the warning did originate in The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/20/virus-experiments-risk-global-pandemic. Ian Staples, the Science Editor of the paper, wrote on May 20, 2014

 

Several groups of scientists around the world are creating and altering viruses to understand how natural strains might evolve into more lethal forms that spread easily among humans. But in a report published on Tuesday, researchers at Harvard and Yale universities in the US argue that the benefits of the work are outweighed by the risk of pathogenic strains escaping from laboratories and spreading around the world.

            Dr. Broderick’s statement in regard to U.S. government funding also could be checked.

Reports narrate stories of the US Department of Defense (DoD) funding Ebola trials on humans, trials which started just weeks before the Ebola outbreak in Guinea and Sierra Leone. The reports continue and state that the DoD gave a contract worth $140 million dollars to Tekmira, a Canadian pharmaceutical company, to conduct Ebola research. This research work involved injecting and infusing healthy humans with the deadly Ebola virus. Hence, the DoD is listed as a collaborator in a “First in Human” Ebola clinical trial (NCT02041715, which started in January 2014 shortly before an Ebola epidemic was declared in West Africa in March. Disturbingly, many reports also conclude that the US government has a viral fever bioterrorism research laboratory in Kenema, a town at the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

 

            When one now searches for NCT02041715 one finds under http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT02041715 that Tekmira indeed got the mentioned contract from the defense department and the trials were started in late January. The study was called: Safety, Tolerability and Pharmacokinetic First in Human (FIH) Study for Intravenous (IV) TKM-100802. Under current status one reads “This study has suspended participant recruitment” and in brackets “this clinical trial has been suspended following a clinical hold placed on the investigational new drug TKM-100802. The original protocol was sparse and merely stated that the compound was to be administered in a single blind manner initially as a single ascending dose, with the rather appropriate abbreviation “SAD”. This was to be followed by multiple ascending doses which led to the likewise highly appropriate: “MAD.” We were not told what TKM-100802 contained and why the trial was abruptly halted, although it stands to reason that the epidemic had something to do with it. When one now looks up Vancouver’s Tekmira, their website states that Phase I (SAD) of the TKM study had been successfully completed in May but Phase II (MAD) is on “partial clinical hold.” Nevertheless “The partial hold enables the use of TKM-Ebola in individuals with a suspected or confirmed Ebola virus infection.”

It, therefore, seems that Dr. Broderick jumped to conclusions when he wrote that the project involved injecting the Ebola virus into healthy Africans. It is considerably more likely that this was a test for short-term tolerability of the vaccine in humans and the attempt to establish an appropriate dose. But we don’t know the composition of the vaccine and to what extent it contained “attenuated virus.” We are, therefore, left to speculate how the current epidemic originated. There is, however, no doubt that it is a financial bonanza for Big Pharma and the makers of Hazmat suits. Tekmira’s stock went from $9 in mid-July to a high of $31.48; although at present profit taking is under way and warnings have appeared that no one knows if the vaccine really works. Other companies are also busy in their attempts to cash in on expected huge future gains. Ethan A. Huff reported earlier this week on http://www.naturalnews.com/047441_Ebola_vaccines_legal_immunity_Big_Pharma.html# that “GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) CEO Andrew Witty told World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Margaret Chan that his corporation, which is currently leading the way in producing Ebola vaccines, shouldn't have to shoulder any of the burden of responsibility for their safety.” In other words: the company should be allowed to reap all the profits, but if people were to get sick from the vaccine, that would not be GSK’s problem. Their officers want to be immunized against potential future law suits.   

There is another morsel of interest: The US holds “a patent on the invention of the Ebola virus.” How this can come about staggers the imagination but Mike Adams tells us on http://www.naturalnews.com/046290_Ebola_patent_vaccines_profit_motive.html, and the patent number is CA 2741523 A1. If the deadly Ebola virus were a natural mutation, as all of us are led to believe, it obviously could not be patented. But as the website http://www.google.com/patents/CA2741523A1?cl=en informs us, several strains of the virus have been “invented” and this merits a patent. We are now left with the puzzle: is the current epidemic due to our biologists’ ingenuity to create more and more lethal strains of viruses and bacteria or was it indeed a spontaneous mutation? We don’t know, but we do know that our scientists at Ft. Detrick, and possibly other places, are hard at work to “improve” nature’s ability to kill. There’s absolutely no telling what we taxpayers pay for in the name of national security and even if we were to ask we would be told it’s none of our business. Given this secrecy, it is no wonder that conspiracy theories flourish.

This applies also to Kenema, the city in Sierra Leone where the pandemic is supposed to have started. It is supposed to have housed a Bioterrorism laboratory, funded by the US government, which was closed in the summer of this year. But since I have only found sources for the existence of this lab during the crucial period which could not yet be verified, I have no opinion on the matter, except that Kenema is only about 320 miles from the Liberian border, the country that has seen the greatest number of victims. Was some type of mistake made, which facilitated the spread of the disease? Which Ebola strain caused the current pandemic; one of the “patented” ones? I doubt that the CDC or the DOD will open its book on this sad chapter and it would take an Edward Snowden to give us the answers.

 

As mentioned in the title, the other big news of the past month was the success of ISIL and the proclamation of an Islamic State in portions of Syria and Iraq. Let us, therefore, now leave Ebola and turn to this topic. The “Islamic State” is variously referred to as IS, ISIL or more frequently ISIS. I have chosen the acronym ISIL rather than ISIS in the headline because European readers, who still have a classical education, might think that I am talking about the Egyptian goddess.

In the beginning and middle of last month, before Ebola started to dominate the news, we were told that the terrorists were ante  portas and about to hoist the black flag of jihad over the White House. I am not joking; somebody in the organization said it as a propaganda ploy, and it was promptly snatched up by our news-media as an imminent threat. It reminded me of the absurdity during WWII when the American people were being frightened that Hitler was about to invade the US. How he would do this with his submarines when he didn’t even have a navy to cross the English Channel, was left unmentioned. But such is the power of propaganda and the gullibility of people. Regardless what we call this “Caliphat,” it is of interest that it has its most recent model in the Sudan of the late 1870s and the 1880s. When one reads about that situation one only needs to change the words “Sudan” for “Iraq/Syria,” “England” to “America” and presto one has arrived in the second decade of the 21st century where similar conditions prevail and the same mistakes are made.  

In War&Mayhem I mentioned that one of my ski instructors was Baron Slatin whose uncle was Freiherr Rudolf von Slatin. The latter had at first fought against the Mahdi in the Sudan but subsequently became his prisoner and remained captive for more than 12 years before a successful escape could be arranged through Austrian and British authorities in Cairo. It should be mentioned that “Mahdi” is not a personal name but a title for the “Redeemer of Mankind” who arrives immediately before Jesus and the last judgment. I published a synopsis of Slatin’s ordeal in the book and little did I know that this would be topical more than a decade later. Suffice it to say that Slatin had an adventurous spirit that first brought him to the Sudan at age 17, where he served the British in a number of ways. He was then recalled to Vienna for military duty in Bosnia, but upon completion was given leave to return to the Sudan where he was appointed by General Gordon as governor of Darfur Province. The Mahdi uprising was in full swing, Slatin’s forces were inadequate and although they personally liked him, as Muslims they ascribed their lack of success to being commanded by an infidel. Slatin confronted with this problem decided that the only remedy was to say in front of his troops the magic words: “There is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet.” The troops broke out in cheers but success against vastly superior forces continued to elude them. Slatin eventually had to surrender (1883) in order to avoid further useless bloodshed. Initially he was treated reasonably well by his captors but when he was asked to answer Gordon’s letter to the Mahdi, prior to siege of Khartoum, he added a few German words indicating that the Mahdi was not invincible and Gordon should hold out. This became known, Slatin was put in chains and after the fall of Khartoum (1885) Gordon’s head was triumphantly brought to Slatin, before even the Mahdi could view it. He remained captive for another 10 years but then succeeded to escape with the help of Austrian and British authorities in Cairo and the unceasing efforts of Father Ohrwalder who had been able to escape four years earlier. But most of all it was the money his Viennese family had sent to enable hiring trustworthy Arab guides who would lead him through the inhospitable desert from Omdurman to the Egyptian border and also pay for the camels as well as the provisions. This trek, during which they lived in constant fear of being discovered, took about three weeks and the conditions imposed by nature were brutal to say the least. Upon arrival in Cairo he immediately sat down and penned his notes from memory because writing material had been forbidden during captivity. He became instantly famous and remained in British government service. He was named by Queen Victoria an “Honorary Member of the Order of the Bath,” an honorary major-general of the British armed services and in 1909 by King Edward VII an Honorary Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order.” Emperor Franz Joseph raised him to nobility as Freiherr, which equals Baron.

Originally I relied on Slatin’s German edition of Feuer und Schwert im Sudan, which I found at the Marriott Library of our university, but for this essay I used an English translation Fire and Sword in the Sudan by his friend Major Wingate. The original edition appeared soon after his escape in October 1895, but he was then asked to shorten it for a popular version which was published in June of 1897. This is the version that has subsequently been digitized and is now available on Amazon. Unfortunately, numerous errors crept into the text during this process and the reader must have some patience and good will to overlook them. In addition, it is chockfull of Arabic names which are difficult to remember by Westerners because of our unfamiliarity with the language. Nevertheless, it is an excellent resource for a comparison with today’s events and should be studied by our politicians with its companion piece by Father Joseph Ohrwalder: Aufstand und Reich des Mahdi im Sudan und meine zehnjaehrige Gefangenschaft Dortselbst.  This book has likewise been translated by Major Wingate under the title: Ten Years of Captivity in the Madhi’s camp 1882-1892 and also is available on Amazon. I have not bought it because I prefer to read German speaking authors in their own language rather than in translations.

These two books complement each other because Slatin presents the military- political background, while Father Ohrwalder, a Catholic missionary priest, the human element. Furthermore, there is mutual agreement. Although they were hardly allowed contact, each one validates the story of the other. I shall now combine the information and present it in light of current affairs in Iraq and Syria.

The Sudan had been conquered by Egypt in 1821 which brought a degree of civilization to the tribal society. But the central authority in Cairo was weak. The provincial governors were to a considerable extent corrupt, tax collectors looked after their gains rather than those of the state, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. When under the influence of the British the slave trade was abolished, the local tribal wars, that had been going on for centuries, broke out into open rebellion against Egypt. To Cairo’s problems one must add that although nominally under the rule of the Ottoman Empire the government had become semi-independent. This was a mixed blessing because it now figured in the colonial power grab by Britain and France. Egypt had been under French influence ever since Napoleon’s aborted conquest (1798-1801) and the French built the Suez Canal, which opened for shipping in 1869. This made Egypt a prize piece of real-estate for England because it greatly reduced time and expense for travel to India, which had fallen to the empire earlier in the century. By the late 1870s French influence in Egypt had waned and the British were in ascendancy. When rebellion broke out in Sudan (1881) the Egyptian forces were commanded by British officers under whom a variety of other Europeans served. The local troops were only partially motivated and their reliability was not necessarily up to European standards. The situation got worse when the European officers tried to gain the allegiance of local Sudanese tribes, to put down other rebel tribes among whom was enmity. For the Sudanese the words coined by one of our troop commanders in Afghanistan were equally valid: You don’t buy an Afghan, you rent one!” In the Sudan loyalties were fluid and when one side appeared to be winning, other tribes joined them. Thereafter they fought just as willingly for their former enemies as they previously had fought against them. For a European or American this may be hard to understand, but when fighting is the prime goal it really doesn’t matter who you are fighting against.

There is another characteristic of the Arab mind I learned from the above mentioned books. In school we were brought up with the heroic deeds of the Spartans against Xerxes at Thermopylae. When the Spartan mother gave her boy the shield with which he went to war she said: “Come home with it or on it!” In other words don’t shame me by being a coward. The Sudanese had no such scruples and gave Slatin a piece of their wisdom. When roughly translated into colloquial English it says: “He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day.”  This explains the Taliban who didn’t uselessly sacrifice themselves in pitched battles. They used the hit and run tactics of guerilla fighters and merged into the mountains whenever things really got tough. It also explains the melting away of the Iraqi army earlier this year when confronted with superior ISIL forces. As the colloquial saying goes: They had no dog in this fight! They despised the Baghdad Shia government which had deprived them of all their previous rights and saw no reason to get killed for it. This is human nature. It is equally obvious that a fair number of these disenchanted Sunni youngsters, who see no future in an Iraq that is governed by Shiite Baghdad, may well join their Sunni brothers under the black flag of jihad which promises them respect and eventually freedom from Washington’s long hand and its mores. Preserving life, Slatin was told, is paramount: “He, who lives long, sees much.” Its companion advice, which allowed both him and Ohrwalder to endure their captivity, was: “be patient and obedient – God loves the patient.” This is easier for Muslims who are trained to regard everything, including brutality and misfortune, as the will of God. Westerners, especially Americans, still have to learn this virtue. But even Muslim patience and obedience is not infinite and can boil over into rage, some of which we are now beginning to witness, especially in Jerusalem.

The major mistake the British made in the 1880s was the attempt to run a large country with inadequate and potentially unreliable forces. If Donald Rumsfeld had read Slatin’s and Ohrwalder’s books he would have been duty bound to tell George W: Mr. President this will never work! General Powell, at the time Foreign Secretary, tried when he told him: “If you break it you own it!” Unfortunately, Powell did not have the courage of his convictions. If he had resigned, then gone on all of the national TV channels and explained the reasons, at least the Iraq disaster, with its attendant human catastrophe, might have been avoided.

When the Egyptians woke up to the fact that they might lose the Sudan altogether, they convinced the British to send a detachment of 10,000 men under the command of General Hicks to break the back of the Mahdi’s revolt. But Hicks had to rely on local guides who steered him into waterless desert country. When he finally met the enemy his troops were exhausted and dying from thirst. Like Custer’s Last Stand at Little Bighorn it was a slaughter rather than a battle. Father Ohrwalder’s book contains an excerpt of a diary by Major Hertl, an Austrian who served under Hicks, which had fallen into Ohrwalder’s hands. Here is an abbreviated English translation.

 

These are hard days, we are in some woods and all of us are depressed. The general orders music to be played to lift the spirits, but it soon stops. Bullets come from all sides, camels, mules and soldiers are hit. It’s impossible to miss because we are all so crammed together. We are helpless and don’t know what to do. … Today is Sunday, my brother’s birthday. May God allow me a few hours of talking with him. The bullets come ever closer and …

 

The diary stopped at this point and he was probably killed by the fusillade. Hicks kept firing with his pistol and when he ran out of ammunition he used his sabre to kill the assailants but it was useless and he was run through by a lance. The Prussian Baron Seckendorf, who was second in command, was decapitated and the trophy sent to the Mahdi. One of Seckendorf’s servants, Gustav Klosz of Berlin, who knew what was coming, had earlier deserted and gone to the Mahdi’s forces. Initially he was put in chains but the Mahdi ordered that he be brought into his presence where he reported on the sad state of Hick’s army, with Ohrwalder serving as interpreter. Gustav Klosz, who had become a Muslim to save his life, was renamed Mustapha, which seemed phonetically appropriate. He was then treated properly for some time but later during the rule of the Mahdi’s successor he landed in jail and died during an attempt to flee.

Once the Hicks expedition had been slaughtered most of the rest of the Sudanese tribes flocked to the Mahdi’s victorious banners and they headed for Khartoum. Again there was no pitched battle, they simply encircled the city with their massive forces and waited till starvation took its toll. The British made two other mistakes. They had only sent Gordon to rally waning spirits. When they saw that this valiant man couldn’t possibly accomplish anything, they sent a ship with some troops up the Nile, which was supposed to demonstrate British resolve and frighten the Mahdi.

The reason for British dilly-dallying, was that they were not all sure that the Sudan was worth the effort. They did want to keep Egypt, but they saw no gain in Sudan. Once the news arrived in London of Gordon’s death, the climate changed and war against the Mahdi became a necessity. By 1898 they had assembled a sufficiently large force to crush the Mahdists at Omdurman. The young Winston Churchill who was a war reporter at the time, rode into battle with the British army, and these days remained his most favorite memory even in old age when he had already forgotten most other events.

America is currently repeating the British mistakes in Iraq and Syria. Everybody knows that air strikes, and especially drone strikes, are not only useless but harmful. For every “rebel” or “terrorist” we kill five others will take his place and the supply is inexhaustible. In addition, our “advisors” or “trainers” of the new Iraqi army are also a waste of time, money and lives. The Iraqi’s know how to fight, but why should they want to fight for us?

Iraq’s fate is likely to be mirrored in Afghanistan when the major troop contingents have been withdrawn later this year. What are our remaining 10,000 troops really supposed to accomplish? They can’t defeat the Taliban. Pashtuns, will remain Pashtuns with their tribal ethos and continue to ignore the arbitrary border with Pakistan which was established by the British in 1893 (August 1, 2011; Misguided Arrogant Incompetence). Why should Afghans forever be bound by their colonial borders? The same applies, of course, to the current borders of the Middle East. Most of them resulted from the interests of British and French politicians after WWI. They are not carved in stone and there is nothing permanent about them as far as the locals are concerned. Those are facts our politicians and “opinion makers” disregard at our peril.

There is one more story in the above mentioned books that has direct relevance to the fate of our current hostages held by ISIL. It is independently reported by Slatin and Ohrwalder. The Mahdi’s forces were commanded by three Khalifas (which translates into successor) of whom Abdullahi ibn Muhammad was the most powerful. Slatin was given to him as a “personal servant” i.e. slave. One day in 1884 a rumor began circulating in the Khalifa’s camp that a French traveler had arrived and Abdullahi told Slatin to be present during the conference where he wanted to find out what the stranger wanted. Since the latter spoke Arabic quite poorly he was ordered to speak in his native language with Slatin serving as interpreter. He said that his name was Olivier Pain, a Frenchman, who like most of his countrymen were very interested in the Sudan and since there was rivalry between Britain and France he had come to offer French help in the Mahdi’s war against the British. When asked if he was a Muslim he affirmed the question and the Khalifa left to inform the Mahdi of the event. When they were brought in his presence Pain repeated his story but the Mahdi told him:

 

I have heard your intentions, and have understood them, but I do not count on human support, I rely on God and his prophet. Your nation  are unbelievers and I shall never ally myself with them. With God’s help I shall defeat my enemies through my brave Ansar [followers] and the host of angels sent to me by the Prophet.

 

          When the Mahdi then asked Pain whether or not he was indeed a Muslim, the latter replied “Certainly” and recited the Creed. The Mahdi gave him his hand to kiss but did not ask for the oath of obedience everyone else was obliged to take. They then adjourned for prayers to the mosque. Eventually, when Slatin was alone with Pain he got the real story. Pain was not an ambassador, but a journalist for a Parisian newspaper. He had come out of curiosity and thought that he would now be free to go home. Slatin had to tell him in so many words: don’t bank on it. These are not your usual people and you don’t know what they might do from one day to the next. Pain was then remanded to the Khalifa’s custody, but since he couldn’t tolerate the local food and water he developed dysentery.

The daily marches towards Khartoum further sapped his strength and his health deteriorated. When Slatin brought this to the Khalifa’s attention he was told: “If he dies here he is a happy man. God in his goodness and omnipotence has converted him from an unbeliever to a believer.” Pain died soon thereafter. When the Khalifa was informed he only said: “He is a happy man.” As mentioned earlier, Slatin’s report was validated by Ohrwalder who presented additional details, especially about the events prior to Pain’s arrival at the Khalifa’s residence.      

There is a lesson to be drawn from this. Westerners, especially private citizens, have no business in a war zone dominated by fanaticism. Our journalists who were recently executed by ISIL members meant well, but they did not belong in this part of the world. In this connection a recent report about the fate of Western hostages by ISIL is also revealing. Twenty seven people were captured during the summer by ISIL forces and the continental Europeans were released after their respective countries paid ransom. The British and Americans did not and seven of their citizens remained in captivity. To date three have been executed and the others are likely to follow in good time whenever the best propaganda result can be extracted.

If our country continues to insist that no ransom will be paid, it should also publicly order all of our private citizens out of danger in Iraq and Syria. Furthermore, it should be announced that if someone, like Pain, were to remain, the person will lose US citizenship and his/her future fate will not be mentioned by our official news media. This would on the one hand deter a great number of thrill seekers and on the other deprive ISIL of the propaganda value hostages can provide. Although the informal media such as twitter and Facebook will continue to publish and attempt to inflame public opinion, the official policy need not be swayed. In time the novelty will wear off and fewer people will be willing to risk their life when it is not necessary. If it were to be argued that we need Western information from the ISIL camp we should rely on trustworthy locals, such as the ones hired by the Slatin family and Ohrwalder’s church, who are fully familiar with the language, their country and its people.

In the next installment I intend to highlight the Mahdi’s personality with emphasis on aspects that lend themselves to becoming a religious fanatic, the daily life of the people under Mahdia, and the lessons for today’s events.







December 1, 2014

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S POLICIES

“Das ist der Fluch von unserm edeln Hauszu halber Tat

mit halben Mitteln zauderhaft zu streben.”

 

          The above excerpted quote appears in Franz Grillparzer’s drama Ein Bruderzwist im Hause Habsburg. The entire sentence is longer so I just presented the essence. Roughly translated it might read: This is the curse upon our noble house ... to hesitantly strive with half actions and half measures towards ill-defined goals. The drama was written in 1848 and dealt with events between 1606 and 1612 which initiated Europe’s Thirty Years War in 1618. Actions by our President during the past month brought this stanza back to mind because they proved again that classical literature is indeed immortal and insights gained by poets have lasting significance.

          On November 4 some of us went again to the polls to exercise our democratic right by voting for our representatives in Congress and State government. Martha and I did not do so because it would have been an exercise in futility. As mentioned on other occasions our State legislature which is, for practical purposes, a franchise of the Mormon Church and entirely Republican, had re-drawn/gerrymandered the borders of our district to ensure that we will no longer be able to elect a Democrat or Independent (March 1, 2008 Voting in America; December 2011, A plague on both your houses Part II). This was accomplished by including a large section of southern rural Utah whose people are unstintingly devoted to their Church and the Republican Party. Our lone Democrat, Jim Matheson, who had barely been able to keep his seat at the 2012 elections saved himself the money and effort and did not run for re-election. His shoes were filled by another Democrat who, although quite able, didn’t have the proverbial chance of a “snowball in hell.” The Republicans, who don’t suffer from the above mentioned curse, achieved their goal and Utah’s citizens are now exclusively represented by their views. But Republicans are not the only ones engaged in these shenanigans. When we lived in Michigan affluent Republican Grosse Pointe was included in poor and middle income Democrat Detroit and it was impossible for a Republican to represent Grosse Pointe voters. 

We were not the only ones who abstained from the November 4 charade, which called itself a vote, because as The Salt Lake Tribune reported last week Utah had the third lowest voter turnout in the nation. Only 28 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots. It’s no wonder when many of us have in effect been dis-enfranchised. Across the nation only 36 per cent voted and, since they represented the most ideological segment of our population, Republicans now control both Houses of the Legislature in Washington who will, come January, make sure that none of Obama’s agenda gets enacted for the next two years. On Inauguration Day in January 2009 Rush Limbaugh, a well-known Republican radio host, announced: “I want Obama to fail.” All Republican efforts were then single-mindedly concentrated on this task and even Obama’s re-election in 2012 did not make a difference. The effort now has paid off and we are faced with the prospect of another two years gridlocked government.

This wouldn’t matter if we were a small Central or South American country, but the self-appointed “leader of the free world” can ill afford this luxury. Yet, for truth be told, Obama has helped his domestic adversaries by the half measures he has hesitantly taken during his presidency. On July 1, 2008 (Barack Obama’s problems) I wrote in regard to the flap over his Pastor’s, Jeremiah Wright, “anti-American” comments that Obama needs to take to heart Malcolm X’s advice: “don’t let your adversaries define you or your friends …. This is a new game; you make the rules and explain why you do so.” The media circus of the day demanded that candidate Obama not only disavow Wright’s views but also condemn them and break all ties. He did, and this was the seminal mistake from which all others flowed.

We now must remember that it was Pastor Jeremiah Wright who had paved the way for Obama’s political career. If Obama had backbone as well as foresight the controversial remarks could have been the opportunity for a teaching lesson to the American public that explained the major differences between the “black church” and the “white church.” Pastors of the African American community do not only talk in abstractions about the world to come, they foremost address themselves to the daily political-societal issues their congregation is confronted with. Sunday services are emotionally charged and there is “hollering,” and jumping, which, apart from some Protestant Revival meetings, is unheard of among docile Caucasian parishioners. In addition, Pastor Jeremiah only lived up to the example set by his illustrious forebear in ancient Judea.

The prophet Jeremiah did not talk in soothing tones to his Jewish compatriots and their leaders. He told them frankly that if they were to persist on their present course their days would be numbered and they would lose everything to the Babylonians. Did they listen? Of course not; they threw him in jail for what might now be called “unJewish conduct.” Everybody knows what happened thereafter.  Nebuchadnezzar wanted the tribute which was owed to him and when King Hezekiah refused to pay, he came with his army to enforce his will. He had every right to do so because it was he who had put Zedekiah on the throne some years earlier and the annual tribute had been one of the conditions for this favor. Jerusalem refused to surrender so it, including its temple, was burned to the ground. As Sherlock Holmes might have said: Elementary my dear Watson! All Pastor Jeremiah did was to warn us that if we don’t address the lies which are consuming our society, a similar fate will be in the offing for us. A speech of this nature by Obama would have been wholesome and the cause of truth would have been furthered.

It was not to be. Obama caved in and the precedent was set. On the domestic scene he allowed his hallmark piece of legislation “Obamacare” to be changed by special interests into a monstrosity that became a windfall for insurance companies and increased the costs for the ever growing patient population of the country. In addition, the legislation provided for expensive bureaucracies which turned the lives of physicians into a nightmare, while lawyers experienced a bonanza. Numerous law suits to either kill the “Affordable Care Act” altogether, or modify it to unrecognizability, were initiated at the State and Federal level. Guess who pays for all of this. The answer is obvious: we the taxpayers! Our hard earned money is spent by unscrupulous politicians to the tune of billions on their pet projects which have little or nothing to do with our real needs. Obama sits on top of this chaotic, run-away bureaucracy and feels helpless to do anything about it.    

“Obamacare” is just one example of letting his adversaries dictate his response; the foreign policy arena is another. He promised to end America’s wars but is now engaged in prolonging them into the indefinite future. But before discussing these recent events, his address to the nation in regard to Immigration Reform needs to be dealt with. The November 4 election result left him with the prospect of inability to accomplish anything meaningful through the legislative route for the rest of his presidency. He, therefore, decided to get around a deadlocked Congress by wielding the executive pen. As other Presidents before him he can issue directives which have the force of law but they can be overturned by the next incoming President. This is the context in which the November 20 speech from the White House needs to be seen.

In his address to the nation Obama made several points. He acknowledged the fact that our country currently harbors several million immigrants who have walked across our southern border without having asked for a visa that would have allowed them to enter legally. Since the quotas for legal immigration from Mexico, Central and South America are minuscule they could not have obtained one anyway. “… give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free …;”  as penned by Emma Lazarus, and carved in stone at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty, was intended for Europeans and never considered to apply to the rest of the world. The President now declared as his major humanitarian effort that illegal immigrants who have lived in this country for more than five years and who have children who were born here would be able to “come out of the shadows.” All they needed to do was to register with the Immigration Service and they would get a temporary permit to live freely without fear of deportation for three years. In addition, he promised stepped up border security to prevent future illegal immigration, and that illegals who had committed a crime would promptly be deported. These two aspects are already current practice and hardly needed a White House speech occasion.

Let us now look closer at the “coming out of the shadows” aspect, especially in regard to unwritten policies that are already in effect. At present the Immigration Service is unable to track the millions of illegal immigrants because they have melted into American society and most of them perform vital functions for the service sector of our economy. They give no offense and, therefore, never come to the attention of the authorities. Faced with the inability to discern who is “illegal” the Immigration Service has adopted a pragmatic measure: anyone who has entered illegally but has lived in this country for 10 or more years, who has children born here, and has not had a criminal conviction, will no longer be deported unless he/she were to commit a crime.

This is a fact at present. Let me now put myself in the shoes of an “illegal” who has come here let us say six or seven years ago, lives unobtrusively with his family and has one or more children who were born here. He obeyed all the country’s laws, paid federal and state income taxes and even holds a State issued business license. You may wonder about this, but neither the IRS nor State government asks about the immigration status of individuals. All they are interested in is collecting the money and if a business license will produce more of it so much the better. Knowing, therefore, that he has to conduct himself properly without coming to the attention of the authorities for the next several years until the 10 year limit is reached, what interest does he have to register for a “temporary” work permit with the Immigration Service? What was meant by “temporary” is anybody’s guess, but if he were to register the authorities would now have his name and address and only the Lord knows what they would do with it. Obama’s executive order will undoubtedly be challenged in court and even if it holds up for the next two years, a Republican President may well rescind it in 2017. My hypothetical illegal immigrant, therefore, has nothing to gain by registering and may actually be worse off because a Republican administration can readily deport him at any time since it now knows his whereabouts.

It is, therefore, obvious that the November 20 address was an ill-considered political gambit which clearly fits the quote under the title of this essay. If Obama had really wanted to end the plight of otherwise law-abiding illegals he could have announced that they will have “guest worker” status which frees them from the fear of deportation but does not include a path to citizenship. Since I can think of this so must have numerous others, even those who are in political office, but since immigration is a useful political football common sense actions are shunned. Republicans are especially loath to establish meaningful immigration reforms because their WASP (White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant) image of America needs to be maintained. Mexican and Central-American immigrants challenge all three aspects and since they are the only ones who can arrive en masse on foot they must be stopped. But the country is already ahead of the WASP view as Obama’s election in 2008 proved, and this is why I called it at the time a tectonic shift. Unfortunately it will take considerably more time before this fact will be appreciated by our Republican “leadership” which stumbles behind the actual changes.

As mentioned, the curse also affects our foreign policy. As is well known Obama originally planned to end the Afghanistan war this year. It drains our resources and our continued presence in that country was regarded as useless. But the collapse of Iraq into four warring factions (Shiites forming the “government,” some Sunnis partially allied with it, other Sunnis in “The Islamic State” and Kurds) was extrapolated to Afghanistan. Our hawks now insist that had we not withdrawn prematurely from Iraq the current debacle would never have happened and that we have to prevent a similar one in Afghanistan. But they ignore the fact that it was the ill-conceived Cheney-Bush and their neocon advisors’ policy which created this chaos in the first place.

It is true that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was repressive and so was Saddam Hussein’s in Iraq, but this did not automatically impose upon us the duty to rectify this situation and bring “freedom and democracy” to their people. A threat to our national security had to be used to justify the invasions of these countries. But it was a pretext for ulterior gain rather than the true motive and the events of 9/11 were, and still are, used for that purpose. Unless our citizens wake up to this fact we will continue to be led in the wrong direction to our, as well as the world’s, detriment.

The majority of people in our country are unaware that our current problem in Afghanistan and the rise of Islamic fundamentslism is a self-inflicted wound. I have mentioned this aspect previously but it bears repeating and needs to become wide-spread public knowledge. The Soviet Union invaded that country in December of 1979 not in order to further imperialist dreams but to prop up a friendly secular government on their border that was threatened by Islamic fundamentalists. The concern was realistic because a fundamentalist regime in Kabul would have encouraged Muslim fundamentalism in their central Asian republics. But this event was used by our then National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, to convince President Carter that this was an opportunity to inflict a fatal “Vietnam” on the Soviet Union. Carter agreed and the Islamist mujahedeen became our friends, allies and ground troops in the war against the USSR. With our tax money the CIA established training camps in Pakistan. Money also flowed freely from the Wahhabi fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia. After 10 years of fruitless warfare Gorbachev realized that this drain of blood and resources had to be stopped and he withdrew the troops. The collapse of the Soviet Union followed soon thereafter and our historians are eager to connect it to the failed Afghanistan war.

          By now we have been in Afghanistan three years longer than the Russians and have equally little to show of it. We, therefore, should have a public debate on what we really want to accomplish there and what these 10,000 or so troops of ours are supposed to do. They cannot eradicate the Taliban and pacify the country at large because it would need a much larger force for that purpose. Even the 115,000 or so Soviets were unsuccessful against guerilla warfare. At present the countryside is largely under the control of the Taliban or various tribal chiefs and even Kabul is not safe but subjected to suicide bombers. When we are told that our troops are needed to train and advise the Afghan army many of us remember that the same excuse was used to justify our incremental buildup in Vietnam.  At this time our politicians get by with the Afghanistan war because American casualties are kept to a minimum. If body bags were to arrive in large numbers the country would demand an end. But since only volunteer forces are used, largely aided by drones, the country really doesn’t care about how many other human beings are killed. Obama has now decided that he won’t be charged with the onus of “having lost Afghanistan” and left that chore to the next President in 2017. This is a cop-out because the fundamental problem, as stated by an Afghan some years ago, remains: the Americans have the watch, but we have the time. Unless WWIII intervenes, the American public will at some point get fed up with this drain on our resources and we will leave this unfortunate country just as the British and the Soviets did in previous years.

Drones have become Obama’s chief weapon in the continued global “War against Terrorism.” But let us be quite clear on what we are really doing thereby. The drone war also falls under the mentioned curse. It cannot accomplish the goal of eliminating the Taliban, bringing down the Islamic State (IS) and/or the government of Bashar Assad in Syria. We now need to be honest and state unequivocally that it is worse than useless. Not only can it not achieve its goal of eliminating terrorism but it also is state sponsored murder. This is not ordinary warfare where one faces an enemy in the open and gives him an opportunity to defend himself. The “target” has no opportunity for defense and inasmuch as the individuals who are killed in this manner come from tribal societies, where blood can only be avenged with blood, we are creating more enemies than we can possibly kill. But this is not all. The perception is created that all of our rhetoric about “human rights and justice” is a farce because we disregard the lives of others, and “innocent until proven guilty” likewise does not apply. Some official, somewhere in the U.S. makes a decision that so and so in a given country is a terrorist. That name with some supporting information is then submitted to the President who signs off on the death sentence, knowing fully well that some bystanders may also be killed or wounded.  He thereby becomes what is called in German a “Schreibtischmörder,” a murderer by wielding the pen on his desk. This is in essence no different from what a Mafia boss does, but the American people don’t want to realize it. I am fully aware that these are harsh words but these are harsh facts which have to be faced. Especially since, as was reported last week, Court approval may be given for these extra-judicial executions.

On November 28 The Salt Lake Tribune carried on its front page a headline: A new Court to ok U.S. drone strikes?  The article dealt with a proposal by a University of Utah law professor, Amos Guiora and his University of San Francisco colleague Jeffrey Brand, to create a special court which would hear arguments by a lawyer for the government why a given strike should be carried out. An opposing lawyer would represent “the target(s)” in absentia. Please note that we are no longer talking about human beings that are to be killed but “targets to be hit!” This attempt to create a veneer of legality to state sponsored murder is based, as The Tribune stated, on Guiora’s 19 years of experience in the Israeli Defense Forces where “part of this time was spent as a judge-advocate general reviewing plans to kill terror suspects or combatants and determining whether the circumstances met the criteria for targeted executions.” This, what may be called,  “Israelization” of our security apparatus has become pervasive after 9/11 and extends into our over-all foreign policy as will be documented in a subsequent article. For now it is sufficient to point out that Israel’s targeted killings have not made its citizens more secure as suicide attacks, two Intifadas and a brewing third one prove. Why we should follow failed examples is hard to grasp. Instead of providing a pseudo-legal veneer, where the accused has no chance to answer the court, drone warfare which is currently touted as the aerial warfare of the future, should be outlawed, just as chemical weapons have been, and atomic weapons should be. Let us be quite clear: targeted killings by drones, even when carried out by states, are murders and need to be regarded as such.

In addition it needs to be re-emphasized that aerial warfare, although useful as tactical support for ground troops, fails miserably as a strategic weapon. The Third Reich did not collapse under the weight of all the hundreds of thousands tons of bombs that were released from above. It did so under the weight of Russian and Allied boots on the ground. “No flight zones” did not bring down Saddam Hussein, American boots did. Even in the Pacific Japan might not have readily surrendered after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs had the Empire not already faced an imminent invasion of the home islands. The war was already lost before the two bombs and the credit goes to America’s “island hopping” troops who had made utter defeat inevitable. Thus, when Obama now pursues the drone war in Yemen, Pakistan (there are no good “targets” left in Afghanistan), Iraq and Syria he does so out of desperation because Americans are unwilling to shed more of their own blood in these places.

The Syrian situation is even worse than that in Iraq. In the latter country our policies have a semblance of legitimacy because the Baghdad government, ineffectual as it is, at least wants us there, but this is not the case in Syria. Obama, with his past rhetoric of “Assad must go” has limited his options. He currently endeavors to fight both Assad and the Islamic State for the benefit of some nebulous “Free Syrian Army” and “moderate secular opposition” that exists mainly in the fantasy of émigrés. The locals would settle for any form of stable government that provides reasonable personal security and livelihood. The most recent example is Egypt. The protests got rid of Mubarak; democracy brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power, but this could not be accepted and a new Mubarak-type military dictatorship is now providing law and order. Since we have no problem with al Sisi it is difficult to see why Assad is a bête noire. Clearly other forces than “freedom and love of democracy” are at work.

The IS in portions of Syria and Iraq will likewise neither be “degraded” nor “destroyed,” to use the President’s words, by the means at his disposal. Massive American ground forces, the only way that could achieve this end, have been ruled out because our country wouldn’t stand for it. Therefore, the same useless Vietnam type approach of advisors to and trainers for the new Iraqi army, just as in Afghanistan, is pursued. But as has been pointed out in a recent New York Times article some of the officers in this new army are corrupt and sell to the opposition whatever material we provide them with. In addition, the local Sunni tribes will flock, just in the Sudan of the1880s, to the winning side as presented in last month’s installment. The current caliphate in portions of Syria/Iraq is, as pointed out in the November issue, best understood in the light of the Mahdi’s Sudan uprising and even the black flag of jihad was the one Khalif Abdallahi used as his standard in that country.

The reign of the Mahdi (Muhammad Ahmad) as well as that of his successor contains a useful lesson for our present problem with the new Khalif al Baghdadi, about whom we know far too little. Lord Acton was correct: Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. After the fall of Khartoum in 1885, which established the Mahdi as absolute ruler of the Sudan, he abandoned modest clothing and devotion to religious services. The days were spent lounging in finery surrounded by his favorite wives and concubines and only for the obligatory official prayers did he assume his previous modest attire. In other words he became a hypocrite which in the long run would have become common knowledge. But he lived only a few months before succumbing, to what probably was typhus, later in the year.

The real lesson can be drawn from the conduct of his successor, Khalif Abdallahi ibn Muhammad, who ruled the country with utter ruthlessness for the next 13 years. In the previous issue I mentioned that I would describe some of the conditions under his rule as experienced and narrated by Joseph Ohrwalder, an Austrian Catholic missionary priest, who was the Mahdi’s and his successor’s prisoner for ten years. The hallmarks of the regime were: terror and unpredictability. Minor offenses were punished by 80 lashes that drew blood and left the victim vulnerable to infections. Islamic law, Sharia, orders cutting off the hands of thieves but this was modified to removal of the right hand and left foot. The operations were adroitly carried out by butchers who knew where to cut at the joints. Many of the victims also succumbed to infections but as Ohrwalder reported a large number hopped around on one leg and continued stealing because it was the only way to get some food.

 Death sentences, either by decapitation or hanging, were liberally pronounced, at times even for trivial offenses, but could occasionally be mitigated to imprisonment by bribes or flattery. The conditions in the Khalif’s prison were abominable. The main one consisted of a mud and stone hut at the edge of the Nile surrounded by a wall the prisoners had built. Everyone wore iron chains and during the day they stayed in the open in the shade of the wall. During the night they were crammed like sardines (Ohrwalder’s term) into the hut which due to the day’s sunshine was infernally hot. There was only a small window opening insufficient for the heat and the body odor of the prisoners to escape. To make matters worse many of them suffered from diarrhea which further fouled the air. Scorpions that bit the unfortunates abounded, and this led to cursing and wild scenes. Sleep was impossible, because there was no room to stretch the legs. When door was opened in the morning the surviving prisoners, a number died each night, rushed into the open air. They did not receive regular food rations; it had to be supplied by relatives or friends. This is only a small excerpt of the atrocities committed by the regime and the totality of the barbarities, under the false flag of religion, is best read in Ohrwalder’s Ten years captivity in the Mahdi’s camp.

Small wonder that the Sudanese became restless and domestic order was only maintained by the Khalif through terror and reliance on his own tribe that had a reputation for special brutality. When in 1898 a force of 8,000 British and 17,000 Egyptian and Sudanese troops, equipped with the most modern weapons, appeared at Omdurman, Abdallahi’s local support had eroded to such an extent that defeat was inevitable. These events can provide a guideline to our strategy in regard to the IS. We should not expect a quick solution but prepare for the long haul, with minimal American involvement at this time. Initially we ought to be content with establishing a defense perimeter that prevents further inroads by the IS in Iraq. This can be done with Kurdish forces in the North and Shiite militias, as well as whatever the Iraqi army can muster, in the South. While the planned 2015 offensive may or may not be successful, we ought to be mindful that permanent pacification of the country can only be achieved through local effort. Thus, a great deal will depend on the conduct of the IS leadership. If it follows Khalif Abdallahi’s example of terror, corruption and reliance on one tribe, they will seal their doom sooner rather than later, because the other Sunni tribes that currently form their main support will become restive. That will be the time when outside military intervention will have the best chance of success, especially if the Baghdad government has been reformed and provides Sunnis with the same considerations that are given to Shiites.

Obama has two more years in office and over the upcoming holidays he should think deep and hard what his real priorities are. I have so far mentioned only the current wars, but Ukraine is an even more dangerous trouble spot. Talk by President Petroshenko of holding a public referendum on NATO membership is a deliberate provocation of Russia and should not be endorsed. It is a red line for Putin and in all probability he will enforce it. Since NATO cannot function without the U.S. Obama should reassure Putin that he can safely disregard this rhetoric.

Overall the President would be well advised to absorb a dash of Buddhist mindfulness as it relates to our conduct with others. The first admonition is: Clear comprehension of purpose! From it follows the second one: Clear comprehension of the suitability of means! If the purpose is clearly defined, the means to achieve it are available, and the cause is noble, the curse under which he currently labors will be lifted and all of us can breathe a sigh of relief.







January 1, 2015

STATE OF THE UNION

          In last month’s installment I discussed the failure of President Obama’s efforts to enact the goals he had set out in his Audacity of Hope and first Inaugural Address. Although a considerable portion of the blame for this failure can be laid at the feet of his opponents who were, for a variety of reasons including race, determined to prevent major achievements, his character structure was an additional factor. Although personally likeable he did not have Lyndon Johnson’s ability to persuade legislators to his point of view but relied on an inner circle at the White House for his actions. This came to haunt him especially in regard to his most cherished program the Affordable Health Care Act. Although the Act does provide health insurance to millions who had not previously been able to afford it, it is also riddled with bureaucratic problems. This not only makes it more expensive than needed but also negatively impacts on physicians and hospitals who are the care providers. On the international scene he found himself unable to justify the premature Nobel Peace Prize by enacting the goals set out in his Cairo speech of and instead has turned from conciliation to confrontation which earned him the epithet “Bush Light.”

          We may now ask ourselves to what extent this was avoidable and why he has disappointed many of those who had voted for him. This disappointment was apparent even before the mid-term elections. Democrats who were running for office distanced themselves from Obama and his policies at their campaign rallies rather than pointing to his achievements. The resulting defeat with the loss of Democrat majority in both Houses of Congress was, therefore, preordained. My personal disenchantment started when he declared that his administration “will not look back, but forward.” I felt that this was thoroughly ill-advised because by not facing up to the failures of the Bush years and investigating their causes the mistakes will be repeated. We cannot learn from the present or imagined future, we have to rely on the past and discern the lessons it teaches us. This is elementary but completely neglected by those of our politicians who actually shape events. I am exempting some better educated members of Congress in this indictment but although they may eloquently present their views on the floor hardly anybody is there to listen. What makes matters worse is that even the Press which is supposed to give us a complete picture of Congress’ proceedings on vital matters fails to do so. For instance on
December 3 the House passed a nearly unanimous resolution which urged the President to take actions against Russia, which are uncalled for and merely intensify the current hostile climate.  Former Congressman Ron Paul vigorously objected but the American public official media failed to report on it. One has to resort to the Internet and a Canadian website www.globalresearch.com to get this information.

          What is responsible for this state of affairs? There are two books that have come to my attention that deal with this question. One is by Sheldon S. Wolin, Emeritus Professor of Politics at Princeton University. In Democracy Inc. – Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, he showed how our government has been subverted by organized private financial interests groups. The book was published at the end of the Bush Presidency, but the 2010 edition has a Preface which deals with Obama’s political inheritance and his attempts to deal with it. The economic crisis forced a “scaling down” of some campaign promises but left the fundamentals of a rotting system, with the steady drift to totalitarianism, intact. He called it “inverted” totalitarianism to emphasize the difference from the more common occurrence around the world where totalitarian governments emerge as a result of popular revolutions or coup d’états. In our situation the process is more gradual and instead of starting from the bottom of society it arises from ruling circles that steadily widen their grip on the elected government to the point where the very word democracy has lost its meaning.

Similar to what has been pointed out here on previous occasions Wolin condemns, as one of the major flaws of our current society, the lies which we are inundated with on a daily basis.

 

In a preliminary way lying can be defined as the deliberate misrepresentation of actuality and the substitution of a constructed “reality.” The problem today is that lying is not an isolated phenomenon but characteristic of a culture where exaggeration and inflated claims are commonplace occurrences. For more than a century the public has been shaped by a relentless culture of advertising and its exaggerations, false claims, and fantasies – all aimed at influencing and directing behavior in the premeditated ways chosen by the advertiser. The techniques developed for the marketplace have been adapted by political consultants and their media experts. The result has been the pollution of the ecology of politics by the inauthentic politics of misrepresentative government, claiming to be what it is not, compassionate and conservative, god-fearing and moral.

 

          Wolin used the Iraq war as the prime example for political lying but as I have repeatedly pointed out it started in this century with the 9/11 crime which lies at the root of all our current problems. It is a genuine tragedy that academicians, even in retirement like Wolin, do not face up to the fact that fires from planes hitting the Twin Towers cannot pulverize cement and bend solid steel beams. It is likewise impossible for plane engines made of titanium to vanish as result of crashes into buildings (Twin Towers, Pentagon) or an open field like in Shanksville. These are facts of physics and until our government provides us with an explanation of what really happened on that day people who think about these matters will be unable to trust it.

Why successive governments, from Bush to Obama, who came from opposite parties, do not change policies in a fundamental manner is the subject of the other book; Michael J. Glennon’s National Security and Double Government. He is Professor of International Law at Tufts University and the book is unusual inasmuch as the text is contained in 118 pages while pages 119-234 are the endnotes that provide the documentation for the author’s assertions. This separation serves him well because most readers will be satisfied to extract the essence from the text and leave the Notes for specialists who may or may not want to examine them. This method is rarely used but deserves consideration especially in our hurried times where one wants to “get to the bottom line” with maximum speed and minimal effort.

In the book, Glennon presents a contrast between the type of government envisioned by the writer of the Constitution, James Madison, and the post WWII rise of what I have called the National Security State (May 15, 2011; The NS State). All of us are familiar with the Madisonian model for optimal government. It consists of the legislative, judiciary and executive branches where potential excesses by any branch are checked by the other two and in addition there is an independent press which serves as watchdog over the entire system. This ideal was never fully realized but did work to some extent during the first 150 years of our republic. Madison already realized, however, that something else was needed for his dream to become fully functional. As Glennon wrote

 

Essential to the effectiveness of these checks and maintenance of balance was civic virtue – an informed and engaged electorate. The virtue of the people who held office would rest on the intelligence and public-mindedness of the people who put them there. Absent civic virtue, the governmental equilibrium would collapse.

 

            Madison was correct and we now see the result of the decline of educational standards even among our college graduates, let alone the general public, that was documented in the February 1, 2002 issue (The Great Satan). When large portions of the voting public have no information in regard to world history and geography they readily fall victim to simple-minded slogans by politicians as well as the media.

          Madison’s model of government has now been supplanted by what Glennon called “the Trumanite model.” It came into being with the “National Security Act of 1947.” It not only unified the three branches of the military under one Secretary of Defense, but also established the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security Council, the CIA and the NSA. The ostensible purpose was to provide for greater efficiency in decision making by the President in the atomic age.  It was argued that Stalin could attack the country at any moment and there simply would not be time for the constitutionally demanded checks and balances to work themselves out towards a thoughtful response. But what may have seemed reasonable in 1947 has since grown into a monster that erodes the foundations of our country and is about to destroy what’s left of our freedoms, without making us more secure from overseas’ threats. By the time Truman left office he regretted this decision, but it was too late. This was also the basis of Eisenhower’s warning about the threat the Military-Industrial Complex poses to our freedom.

Glennon pointed out that this complex, which by now functions as a second government, should not be thought of as some cabal of a small number of certain individuals who are out to subvert the country. In actuality, it consists of a network of persons with common interests in and outside of government who have the financial means as well as the clout to enforce their will upon the policies and laws made by the elected members of government. This assures continuity of purpose and the resultant subversion of the democratic process. Similar to Fukuyama’s latest book, which was discussed in the October issue (Land of Dysfunction and Decay) he pointed out that all three branches of government including the media have been corrupted under the guise of serving national security and he thereby validated what has been presented in these pages over the past several years.

Although he details how Congress and the Supreme Court have been subverted I shall concentrate at this time on the Presidency as the ultimate authority. President George W. Bush told us that he is “the decider,” but we have to keep in mind that Presidents do not have first-hand information about events. They have to rely entirely on what they learn from the media and what their advisors choose to tell them. The CIA as well as the NSA frequently see no reason to inform any President, going back to Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs, about what they are really up to. Only when the failures become obvious or there are leaks by the media, such as the Abu Ghraib scandal and the Snowden revelations, does the White House become officially involved in damage control. When Bush 43 was asked by an aide in the summer of 2008 “what one thing surprised him most about the presidency his presidency” His reply was “without hesitation ‘How little authority I have,’ … with a laugh.”

When decisions, especially those dealing with military matter, have to be made, Glennon noted, the President is usually given three options. Two of them are so outlandish as to be unworthy of consideration and the third, the preferred one, is couched in language which will make it difficult to refuse. This is what happened for instance in regard to the Afghanistan troop surge suggested by the generals during Obama’s first term. He had to accept the basic demand in spite of the fact that he probably knew very well that it was useless. All he was able to do consisted of haggling about the numbers. The same applies to the decision not to withdraw our military completely from that unfortunate country but leave somewhat over 10,000 advisors and support personnel. What they are to accomplish is anybody’s guess. The inevitable casualties will serve no purpose and the noble slogan of “they are heroes who are defending our country” is devoid of truth. This is Vietnam all over again; Obama knows it but is helpless to do anything about it, lest he be pilloried for “losing Afghanistan” as he has “lost Iraq.” No President can afford to be regarded as “soft” on national security, this is the reason why the military-industrial complex can no longer be tamed but will continue to grow exponentially.

The tragedy for the future of our country is that these measures to improve security will lead not only to further restrictions domestically and eventually a totalitarian regime but will actually make us less safe. The Ukraine disaster is a classic example of seemingly good intentions having badly misfired. I don’t know what Obama was told about the State Department’s involvement in the Maidan protests and especially the coup which forced President Yanukovich to flee the country. Our proclaimed objective was to bring democracy and responsible government to the people, while the real one was to pry the country loose from Russia and exploit its markets in the manner described by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine (March 15, 2014; The Ukraine Crisis). But any clear-thinking person would have known and told Obama that this is a game of playing with fire because Russia will not allow a potentially hostile neighbor to emerge. As a result of our meddling there is now civil war in the country which serves as proxy for American-Russian rivalry. Although we publicly deny it, the purpose of the current confrontation is obviously “regime change” in Russia. Putin has to go because we need a pliable person like Yeltsin. This disregards the fact that the latter was a disaster for the Russian people while Putin has, in spite of restrictive measures on civil liberties, provided stability and still enjoys their trust. The sanctions imposed on Russia’s economy, although couched in terms of punishment for bad behavior in Ukraine, are really designed to make the Russian people feel sufficient pain that they will throw Putin to the wolves. This is the fantasy of our second government. The fact that they thereby pave the way for a decline in the European economy and probably eventually our own is ignored.  

While these books did not present data that had not been discussed here earlier in previous editions it was interesting to note that at least some of them, especially in regard to the government’s deceptions, are now receiving academia’s stamp of approval. The American people will have to come to terms with the fact that “double government” has become a reality and we must examine, in light of past history, what the outcome is likely to be. As a native of Austria the antecedents to WWI, as discussed here in the past June-September issues, immediately spring to mind. By spring of 1914, it was common knowledge that two forces were shaping political events in Serbia. One was the official government which proclaimed peace and good-will towards the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the other consisted of Serbian ultra-nationalists who worked towards the unification of all South-Slavs (Yugoslavs) under Belgrade’s rule. This could obviously only be achieved by the destruction of Austria-Hungary. While the official government was, of course, aware of these aspirations, it denied them, yet some of the key persons held government positions especially in military intelligence. They were responsible for the Archduke’s assassination but the official government could deny it. It is not clear to what extent the Serbian Prime Minister, Nikola Pašić, knew about the plot, but it is reasonable to assume that he was kept in the dark so that “plausible deniability” could be maintained. The group operated strictly on a “need to know basis” which ensured secrecy.

Secrecy, and lying about its true aim, subsequently was also the stance of the government in Vienna. A secret decision to go to war with Serbia had already been reached by July 5, after Germany had agreed to Austria’s local war, without considering the wider consequences. The Austrian ultimatum to Serbia at the end of the month, the rejection of which was expected, merely served as the pretext for beginning military operations. Throughout the month the Viennese government officially proclaimed that it did not want to dismantle the Serbian state, although this was, of course, the goal. Under this false pretense it tried to reassure Russia, Serbia’s unofficial protector, that Serbia’s current borders were to remain intact. The Russians were told that only a punitive expedition was planned in order to rid the country of its subversive elements, or terrorists in modern parlance. The Russian military obviously knew better, and they were loath to lose Serbia. When the Austro-Hungarians did declare war on Serbia, July 28, they felt that the Russian army needed to be mobilized. This precipitated Germany’s declaration of war against Russia, because of fear for its eastern provinces. In view of Russia’s alliance with France, war also had to be declared against that country and when the Germans marched through Belgium, the British had their excuse to join the fray. In sum and substance the real lesson of WWI, the consequences of which still haunt us in the Middle East, has not been learned and is denied. It boils down to this: fear of what the other might do and secrecy combined with lies about one’s own plans. Secret organizations start a catastrophic event. Instead of assuming responsibility and punishing the perpetrators the state protests its innocence. The aggrieved party uses the event as pretext for the long-held desire to rid itself of an irritant and secretly begins planning retaliatory action, lies about it, while totally disregarding all the existing defense treaties among the major powers.

This may seem like ancient history but may well be our potential future. The secret organizations, double government to use Glennon’s term, not only exist in our country, but have previously unheard of powers. They are in the Pentagon, the CIA and NSA. The Senate has just concluded hearings on CIA abuses in regard to torture. Although it condemned them, no punitive actions will be taken and as the New York Times reported on the 27th “its mandate” will remain “untouched.” The article also quoted from a dinner conversation the former Church Committee Staff member Loch K. Johnson, who is currently Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia, had with William Casey the agency’s director during the Reagan administration. “Mr. Casey told him that the role of Congress was ‘to stay [expletive] out of my business.’”

This clearly shows the abysmal arrogance of the people whose salaries we pay and who believe that they are responsible to no one. For anyone who might argue that this was then, and the situation now is different, here are the last three paragraphs of the article.

 

And as America’s spying apparatus has grown larger, richer and more powerful than during any other time in its history, it has become ever harder for those keeping watch over it.

‘We are 15 people overseeing a $50 billion enterprise,” said Senator King speaking of his fellow members on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

‘I can’t tell you I know with certainty every intelligence program this enterprise is engaged in.”

 

            Professor Johnson and other Church Committee Staffers wrote on March 17, 2014 an open letter to Congress, the President and the American Public that is available on https://www.eff.org/files/2014/03/16/church_committee_-_march_17_2014_.pdf . They concluded

 

                   A Church Committee for the 21st Century—a special congressional investigatory committee that undertakes a significant and public reexamination of intelligence community practices that affect the rights of Americans and the laws governing those actions—is urgently needed. Nothing less than the confidence of the American public in our intelligence agencies and, indeed, the federal government, is at stake.

 

Yes, indeed! But the Senate having just concluded its hearings on CIA practices has shown us how fruitless these efforts are. The people in responsible position do not regard the senators as their superiors or even equals and treat them strictly on a “need to know basis.” And as Casey pointed out what the intelligence community does is none of anybody else’s business! What this means in practice is that any of these officially unauthorized projects, which may well include assassination attempts of foreign leaders, may create a 1914 type catastrophe with NATO as the sequel of Europe’s alliances of the past century. Consider for a moment the vast defense obligations we have shouldered. Not only for all the NATO members, but also most of the Central and South American States, Israel, South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines. In addition we need to consider that ever since the 1999 Yugoslavia bombing NATO is no longer strictly a defensive organization but has changed from a shield to a sword. Russia knows it, and this is the underlying fact which makes our relations with that country, quite independent of Putin, so difficult. Any misstep by our intelligence services anywhere in the world might, therefore, have catastrophic results.

The CIA/NSA attitude of unaccountability and self-righteousness also makes all our hopes for a definitive government investigation into the 9/11 events illusory. But since it was a crime of international dimensions the International Criminal Court could possibly step into the breach. Yet even if this were to happen our government is likely to stall and/or sabotage the proceedings. This is the true state of our “democracy.” The rest of the world is fully aware of it and properly accuses us of hypocrisy when we proclaim our right to lead the world towards this blessed ideal. “Your actions speak louder than words” they will tell us, and they are correct.

          At the end of this month it is customary for the President to appear before a joint session of Congress to address the members, as well as the nation at large, with his notion of our country’s current state and the goals for the rest of the year. This ritual, as described in the February 1, 2010 issue (The Humpty Dumpty Society) has unfortunately lost all meaning and is not likely to provide us with new insights how the government might reform itself or how relations with our adversaries will be improved. My comments on the event and relatively realistic prospects for this upcoming year will be presented in the February edition when the transcript of the speech will be available. 







February 1, 2015

STATE OF THE UNION: FOLLOW-UP

          When a physician meets a new patient s/he is expected to first make an accurate diagnosis, provide a reasonable forecast  of what the condition will lead to if it remains untreated (prognosis), and then prescribe the best available treatment method. For some surgeons the job is finished after operation except perhaps for a brief follow-up visit. But those of us who are engaged in the non-surgical practice of medicine follow our patients, especially those with chronic illnesses, for months and years. This allows us to assess the accuracy of our initial diagnosis, prognosis and treatment efforts. Follow-up is essential and the only way to know if what we are doing has any value, and this is also the reason why I try to assess in these pages to what extent my prognoses of political events were correct.

          What I wrote last month about the President’s annual State of the Union address did not require particular foresight because the ritual is so well established, and the conduct of the actors well known. There were indeed no surprises. Mr. Obama read a speech, written by others, with appropriate emphasis, although an editor could have cut it down to half of its more than an hour’s length and still get the essential message across. The Speaker of the House Mr. Boehner sat impassively staring at the back of Obama’s head and when the Vice-President rose to enthusiastically clap his hands in support of one of the President’s utterances he stayed put. So did the rest of the Republicans who now have a solid majority in Congress. The signal they sent was: Work with us, or we’ll obstruct!

The President’s speech, which painted an upbeat picture of America’s health, can be summarized in regard to domestic affairs as follows: We have made great strides in overcoming the economic disaster of 2008; we have not yet reached our goal of full prosperity for all, but are well on the way. Instead of, as in past years, talking about “the poor” a new slogan appeared “middle class economics,” highlighted by the inevitable rags to some prosperity human interest story. In this instance it was the Erler family of Minneapolis.  In order to provide more skilled workers for needed jobs he will propose in his upcoming budget to abolish tuition fees for community colleges. In medicine he will be “launching a new Precision Medicine Initiative to bring us closer to curing diseases like cancer and diabetes – and to give all of us access to the personalized information we need to keep ourselves and our families healthier.” Every classroom and every community will have internet. Tax loopholes which only help the rich will be closed and the savings used to help families for childcare and send their kids to college. Later in the speech he touched on the reduction of the Guantanamo prisoner population, race relations and immigration reform.

In regard to foreign policy the President emphasized “that we lead best when we combine military power with strong diplomacy and … coalition building ….” “In Afghanistan we have trained their security forces, who’ve now taken the lead, and we’ve honored our troops sacrifice by supporting that country’s first democratic transition.” In Syria and Iraq ISIL is being stopped by a large contingent of international forces while the moderate opposition to the Assad regime is also supported. NATO will meet “Mr. Putin’s aggression” in Ukraine. “That’s how America leads - not with bluster, but with persistent, steady resolve.” Among the other issues he touched on were the new relations with Cuba, the Iranian nuclear talks, cyber-attacks, a warning to China to play by the rules, Ebola and climate change. He then pointed out that some Congress members are tired of “arguing past each other on cable shows, the constant fund raising, always looking over their shoulder at how the base will react to every decision. Imagine if we broke out of these tired old patterns. Imagine if we did something different.” The difference he wanted to achieve was that instead of argument, bickering and hostility there was to be a spirit of cooperation for the common good where differences are aired and resolved to a mutually agreeable conclusion. He did realize that he was talking to a hostile majority and that bills will be introduced which go against his convictions and, therefore, promised to veto them.

The routine Republican reply about a half hour later was delivered this year by Senator Joni Ernst from Iowa. She is a good example of how the American political system really works. Each party has its “headhunters,” or more politely “talent scouts,” who scour the country at primary season not only for who is electable but also of potential presidential caliber. For 2000 the Democrat contingent stumbled on Barack Obama of Illinois, for 2004 the Republicans on Sarah Palin of Alaska and in 2014 on the lady from Iowa. In each instance there is a specific purpose. Obama, although half-white, was to be the poster boy for the black community, Sarah Palin was to show the country that Republicans are not misogynists and Joni Ernst has the virtues not only of femaleness but being a Lt. Colonel in the Iowa National Guard and having been raised on a farm. This is to demonstrate that the Republican Party stands for sexual equality, and instead of being composed of Wall Street plutocrats they are in fact hard working middle class Americans. Another example for the pretense of color blindness is our newly elected Utah junior Senator, Mia Love, the daughter of Haitian immigrants. Her qualification for the rise to national stardom was mayor of Saratoga Springs, a city of not quite 23,000 souls on the northwestern corner of Utah Lake. I am mentioning her at this time because unless she were to have a sudden fall from grace we might well see her on the Vice-Presidential ticket at some future election.

Lt. Colonel Ernst’s rise to fame has been credited by Wikipedia to a campaign ad which centered on her prowess in castrating pigs. This down to earth activity endeared her with the press because of the promise to apply this surgery to the politicians who create bloated budgets in Washington and “make them squeal.” But how she is going to castrate the proverbial “fat cats,” who are really running the show, remained unsaid. The irony which eluded the press is that this type of surgery also makes the piglets fatter than they normally would grow to be. But let us now turn to what the lady said.

She assured us that she knows our priorities and the new Republican Congress will enact them. Her farming background from near poverty through hard work to modest incomes was duly emphasized to apparently serve as the model for future legislation. She then stressed projects like the controversial “keystone pipeline” from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, which has been held up by the Obama administration over environmental concerns, as the means to creating numerous jobs. Tax filing should be easier and loopholes closed which is, of course, what the President had said some moments earlier, but may have escaped Mrs. Ernst’s speechwriter(s). It is obvious that whatever she said did not come out of her ten fingers typing on a keyboard but was handed to her to read. She also stated in good old military fashion, “Let’s tear down trade barriers in places like Europe and the Pacific. Let’s sell more of what we make and grow in America over there so we can boost manufacturing, wages, and jobs right here in America.” But what happens if these obstinate “others” don’t want that and are more interested in keeping their own countries afloat rather than helping Americans out of the dilemma they themselves have created by offshoring and outsourcing their industries for greater profits? The threats posed by terrorists were duly acknowledged and “we need a comprehensive plan to defeat them.” Here is again the military mindset which ignores that we’ve been trying to do this for fourteen years under a Republican and Democrat administration with the result that the situation is worse than in the pre- 9/11 days. She then repeated the President’s theme on cyberattacks and that the new Congress will “work to confront Iran’s nuclear ambitions.” Please note that we will not try to understand Iran’s position in regard to the nuclear issue, but we will “confront” them with our demands. This is not how negotiations can succeed. In sum and substance the message was: Republicans are now in charge, the country can breathe a sigh of relief and “with a little cooperation from the President, we can get Washington working again.”

While Senator Ernst’s response did not outline any specific proposals, apart from the pipeline and repealing Obamacare, her colleague Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky also weighed in. He is the son of former Representative Ron Paul and like his father a physician. Although nominally Republican he does not blindly toe the party line but calls things as he sees them. He was not chosen by anyone to give this talk but simply went on YouTube and spoke from the heart. His vision, as an ophthalmologist, who takes out cataracts, was not as cloudy or rosy as that of the previous two speakers, but sharper, and he did not shy away from nasty details. The opening sentences were, “I wish I had better news for you but all is not well in America. America is adrift. Something is clearly wrong.”

Among America’s numerous problems he listed: the constant electioneering (my term), too much government intervention, worsening income inequality, pitting one American against another, the enormous debt burden, over-militarized foreign policy, racial strife, Obamacare, the Intelligence director lying to Congress and not getting punished for it, as well as collecting personal information without a warrant.

In regard to the proposed remedies he reminded us of the physician’s overarching principle: nil nocere; first of all do no harm. This indeed should be the prime consideration before any political and especially military action is undertaken. Rand only listed Libya as an example of military intervention without thinking through the consequences, but it goes all the way back to 2001. The Afghanistan war, the Iraq war, the current war against the Assad regime have not only been unnecessary but turned the mentioned countries into disaster zones with untold human suffering. The same applies to our meddling in Ukraine where we have succeeded in creating a civil war. The Senator did not talk about Ukraine and stayed with the Middle East, where “we are foolish to believe we will solve this puzzle [Sunni-Shia war]. We must defend ourselves and defend our vital interests, but we must not be deluded into believing that we can remake the Middle East in an image of Western democracy.”

His prescription to return the country to a reasonable state of health included: term limits for Congress; legislation that would make Congress live by the rules it imposes on the rest of the country; not only new blood in Washington but a new way of thinking; if Congress doesn’t balance the budget the Constitution should be amended to force the government to do so; repealing Obamacare; for defense “ a lean, mean fighting machine that doesn’t waste money on a bloated civilian bureaucracy;” a fair tax system; a plan to bring prosperity to our inner cities, and real justice to all Americans. He concluded his presentation with: “The President tonight and for the past six years, had the wrong diagnosis for what ails our country. I look forward to having a conversation with the American people about this throughout this next year. Thank you and God Bless America.”

There are a great many aspects in Dr. Rand’s address that need to be taken to heart and readers of these issues will know that they echo many of the sentiments that have been expressed here over the years. But he gave us the symptoms of the disease not its cause. I shall return to this aspect later. For now I’d like to stay with the medical aspects: Obamacare and what was not mentioned by the Senators, the “Precision Medicine Initiative.” When Republicans talk about abolishing Obamacare and tell us that we have to go back to the principles that guided medical practice in the past they are deluding themselves. There is no going back to the “good old days.” They ended when insurance carriers became the dominant factor in what is now euphemistically called “the healthcare industry.”

Let me give you a personal example. As previously mentioned in another context I had to undergo thoracic surgery in 1953 while in specialty training at the Mayo Clinic. In those days the Clinic provided free medical care for physicians and the clergy. The only cost accrued to me, who had no medical insurance, was for the hospital bill. Since we did not have the money to pay it there was the “Fellows Association” which provided an interest free loan for this type of emergencies. The bill was not exorbitant and I could pay off the loan within a year from my meager salary. In the early 90s I returned to the Clinic for a back problem. As a former fellow I was still not charged but my insurance carriers, Medicare and Blue Cross/Blue Shield, were. This was not greed on part of the Clinic but survival because costs for services due to technological advances and fear of law suits have skyrocketed. When one has to have a CT scan or MRI for every headache or back pain costs go up automatically. If the physician does not order these tests and the patient is later diagnosed of having suffered from a malignancy, a ruinous law suit will be the result. So “better safe than sorry” is the rule which leads to a tremendous amount of unnecessary tests, in some instances unnecessary surgery, and the insurance companies are legally obligated to pay anyway.

If Obamacare were indeed completely repealed, without a more reasonable substitute in place, it would be a disaster for millions of Americans who cannot afford the insurance rates. Does anybody really believe that the insurance carriers will lower their rates and improve services when “government gets out of the way?” “Healthcare” is a business and business has to show a profit! As long as the financial profit motive exists so will greed, and the individual patient’s needs will be secondary. There is no doubt that some aspects of Obamacare need to be changed or abolished, but it would be a tragedy for many if Republicans succeeded in getting rid of it altogether. You don’t throw out the baby with the bath water; you clean, swaddle, and feed it. That should be the prescription.   

When I heard the President mention the “Precision Medicine Initiative” I had no idea what he was talking about. Medicine is and always has been more of an art that relies on good judgment, than a mechanistic science which runs on formulas. People, regardless whether they are patients or physicians, are not “precision” machines, like a car where everything is programmed to function when certain actions are taken. We have only crude ideas in regard to the causes of various symptoms and all our remedies have some side-effects. They are negligible in most instances but can at times be “worse than the disease.”

When I then looked up on Wikipedia what the President was talking about, I found out that it involves creating everybody’s genetic blueprint and making it available to physicians and the patient. This will then change the practice of medicine from “guesswork” to scientific accuracy because the physician will not only be better able to point to the cause of a given illness but also provide the   knowledge which drug will be best suited with least side-effects. The article also mentioned that the Initiative has bipartisan support and is favored by the NIH. When I read this it immediately struck me as science-fiction. The past decades have abundantly shown that the fundamental idea: one gene for a given disease is wrong and it is worth recalling what I wrote about stem-cell therapy on these pages in August of 2001. The essay was in part a reply to the media furor over President Bush’s refusal to spend government money on the destruction of fetuses in order to harvest stem cells which will cure Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes and a host of other illnesses. I noted at that time that there was no ban on private industry to pursue this goal. There also were still considerable medical and ethical issues that had to be addressed and “it would be useful not to rush in where angels fear to tread.” The medical aspects discussed in the article are still valid but it also shows my faith in the Republican Party and the essential goodness of our political system which was fatally shattered during the next two months by the Bush administration’s reaction to the 9/11 tragedy.

With these reservations in mind it was good to see in the NY Times of January 29 an article by Dr. Michael J. Joyner: “‘Moonshot’ Medicine will let us down.” The byline states that Dr. Joyner is an anesthesiologist and physiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN. The substance of the article is that

 

For most common diseases hundreds of genetic risk variants with small effects have been identified, and it is hard to develop a clear picture of who is really at risk for what. … Several high profile attempts to use genetic variants to target patients with commonly used drug therapies have also failed in clinical trials. … For relatively rare diseases like cystic fibrosis, exciting new drugs have been developed using genetic information, but they have not been able to fix defective genes via gene therapy as originally hoped. … The push toward precision medicine could also lead to unintended consequences based on how humans respond to perception of risk. … We have been down this road before. The idea behind the “war on cancer” was that a deep understanding of the basic biology of cancer would let us develop targeted therapies and cure the disease. Unfortunately, although we know far more today than we did 40-plus years ago, the statistics on cancer deaths have remained incredibly stubborn. … Medical problems and their underlying biology are not linear engineering exercises and solving them is more than a matter of vision, money and will.

 

Dr. Joyner is correct and as he pointed out in regard to cancer the major breakthrough was the reduction of the use of tobacco, which highlighted the role of culture and individual human conduct. In his concluding paragraph he stated:

 

We would be better off directing more resources to understanding what it takes to solve messy problems about how humans behave as individuals and in groups. Ultimately we almost certainly have more control over how much we exercise, eat, drink, and smoke than we do over our genome.  

 

Although Dr. Joyner’s points are well taken they probably will be ignored and another program, with unforeseeable ethical-societal consequences, is likely to be launched with great fanfare. If this prognosis is correct there will be several reasons. The Democrats will point to their eagerness in improving the health of people and providing “transparency” of information between doctor and patient. The Republicans will emphasize that they are not against government spending for “worthy” causes and that they can cooperate with the President. While behind the scenes the drug companies of “Big Pharma,” who stand to gain substantially from government money, will do their level best on Capitol Hill to mute discordant voices.

In the three different State of the Union messages the speakers agreed on only one point: praise of our military. The President said that “our combat mission in Afghanistan is over. … And we salute the courage and sacrifice of every man and woman in this 9/11 generation who has served to keep us safe. We are humbled and grateful for your service.” Senator Ernst chimed in with: “We must also honor America’s veterans. These men and women have sacrificed so much in defense of our freedoms, and our way of life. They deserve nothing less than the benefits they were promised and a quality of care we can be all proud of.” There is no question that these young men and women who lost limbs and suffered irreparable brain as well as spinal cord injuries, in addition to the psychological traumas, deserve the best medical care we have to offer. It is, however, not true that they fought in Afghanistan and Iraq to “protect our freedoms.” They were sent on false pretenses and this is the ugly truth no one in power wants to face. The 9/11 crime needed an international judicial investigation rather than a series of wars from which there is now no escape. Let us not delude ourselves. Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are not going to be Western democracies in the near future. In Afghanistan the Taliban have not been defeated and at present the country does not even have a fully functioning government since, due a variety of reasons, vital cabinet posts could not yet be filled. The authority of whatever government does exist is limited and decreases proportionally to the distance from Kabul. Why should we expect our 10,000 “trainers” to accomplish what the more than 140,000 combat troops, who have served there over the past 14 years, could not? This is the question that needs to be faced but cannot, because it would expose the entire progressive system of lies that has brought us to the present sad state of affairs.  

Senator Paul did not discuss the fate of individual service men and women but mentioned “a military that is second to none in the world, and ready to defend us from all enemies.” He also promised to propose “the first ever Audit of the Pentagon, and seek ways to make our defense department more modern and efficient.” But here again good intentions are going to founder on the rocks of reality. The fundamental changes in our defense department resulting from the 9/11 tragedy, and its misappropriation for ulterior aims which are now irremediable, are hardly known by the general public. Yet literature on this topic is available for anyone who is interested in the real state of affairs and will be the topic of another installment.

The points Senator Rand made in his speech are valid but they deal with the symptoms of the disease rather than the cause. The latter was actually discerned by Sigmund Freud on his visit to this country in 1909. He did not like what he saw and coined a neologism: “America suffers from dollarrhea!” This was correct at the beginning of the previous century and has now reached calamitous proportions. Most every facet of public life has been transformed, or is being transformed, into a profit making venue. When profit is exclusively defined by the $ symbol, society has reached a dangerous crossroads. We were told 2000 years ago that one cannot serve God and mammon. If we leave, for the sake of our atheists, God out of consideration, I believe we can agree that even the physician cannot properly serve patients when the first priority is to make money either for him/her or the hospital. This is the fundamental problem none of our politicians dare to touch because their re-election money would immediately evaporate.   

The real State of the Union was shown the day after the speeches. Without consulting with anyone, apart from Israel’s ambassador, Mr. Boehner invited Prime Minister Netanyahu to address Congress in a special session during early March, just prior to Israeli elections. It was meant to show our President that he is irrelevant, relegated to “lame duck status,” and better get used to it. What this means in practice is that the proud ship USA now has a captain who is confronted by a mutinous crew! It is obvious that no good can come from this state of affairs and it is time to remind our “Christian” lawmakers that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”  







March 1, 2015

NEOMEDIVEALISM

          This article is all about “Back to the Future.” Not in the sense of the 1985 movie and its subsequent offspring but the bitter reality of our country and the world it pretends to lead. 

          One morning in late January, while driving home from the weekly Grand
Rounds presentation of the Neurology Department, I listened to the Diane Rehm show that usually has interesting guests. She was indisposed on that day and one of her colleagues sat in for her. He interviewed Sean McFate who had just published a book: The Modern Mercenary – Private Armies and what they mean for World Order. It was a fascinating interview and can be listened to on http://thedianerehmshow.org/audio/#/shows/2015-01-21/sean_mcfate_the_modern_mercenary/@00:00.

          Dr. McFate, who is currently a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, an Associate Professor at the National Defense University and also teaches U.S. National Security Policy at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Washington D.C., has led a rather interesting life. Originally he was an officer and paratrooper in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. He subsequently left the army for private military service as offered by DynCorp International. Initially he served as a contracted security officer to guard the President of Burundi from assassination threats and then moved to Liberia. Charles Taylor, the notorious warlord who had made himself President of the county had been forced to resign when the capital Monrovia was besieged by rebel troops, who already held most of the rest of the country, during what is called the 2nd Liberian Civil War (1999-2003). The new interim President, Gyude Bryant, decided, or was persuaded by the U.S., to dissolve the army as unreliable and build a new one “from the ground up.” Although McFate didn’t mention it, this is precisely what our “Vice-Roy” Paul Bremer did in Iraq and our appointee Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.

          We know what happened in these countries, especially in Iraq. The now unemployed young men needed other means of income. They became rebels, preyed on the civilian population and made trouble for the occupiers. It was a sure-fire recipe for civil war and our politicians were blind to this prospect. The situation differed somewhat in Liberia because there was no U.S. army in the country. It is now of considerable interest to compare how the Liberian situation is presented by Wikipedia and what McFate, who was our agent at the spot, writes.

          In the main article on Liberia Wikipedia spends only one sentence on the event. “The United Nations Mission in Liberia began arriving in September 2003 to provide security and monitor the peace accord, and an interim government took power the following October.” In the article on the Second Liberian Civil War there is more information.

 

On September 11, 2003, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan recommended the deployment of the peacekeeping mission, the United Nations Mission in Liberia, to maintain the peace agreement. The UN Security Council approved the mission on September 19 in Resolution 1509. Nigeria sent in peacekeepers as part of the interim ECOMIL Economic Community of West African States force. UNMIL was made up of over 15,000 personnel, including both military and civilian troops.

The bulk of the personnel were armed military troops, but there were also civilian policemen, as well as political advisers and humanitarian aid workers. On October 1, the first peacekeepers changed their berets and became a UN force, with many more troops earmarked. During three days of riots in Monrovia in October 2004, nearly 400 people were wounded and 15 killed. The UN slowly built up its forces in the country, with 5,500 projected to be in place by November 2003 [sic], and worked to disarm the various factions. However, instability in neighbouring countries, an incomplete disarmament process, and general discontent threatened Liberia's fragile peace.

 

            This is what the interested general public learns about the situation: The UN did the job and there is not one word about our contractors. This is also a good example why serious scholars are warned not to use Wikipedia as their sole source of information. The importance of Wikipedia articles resides not necessarily in the opinion of the article writer but the sources he/she cites that can then be checked. McFate’s book is not mentioned in either of the articles and they need updating.

          Since in 2003-2004 the U.S. armed services were fully occupied with Iraq as well as Afghanistan, Washington outsourced peace-keeping and building a new Liberian army to DynCorp. This became McFate’s “primary job.” In 2004 the State Department issued a request for proposals (RFP) to bid for the Liberian army contract.  Only two companies were regarded eligible: DynCorp and Pacific Architects and Engineers (PA&E). Eventually the contract was split for different types of activities with DynCorp becoming responsible for raising the new Liberian army and PA&E building the infrastructure. This became a problem. Funding was provided by the State Department and when money became in short supply because of the Darfur rescue operation, work on Liberian army building was temporarily interrupted. This meant that the recruits who had already been hired by DynCorp had no base to go to because it was to be built by PA&E. But the operation did turn into a modest success and so far the country has avoided slipping into an Afghanistan-Iraq type situation.

            Although the Liberian intervention worked to some extent it also demonstrated some of the problems when the hiring agency, in this case the US government, provides services as important as building an army for another country. DynCorp had no responsibility to the Liberian government and vital decisions, as for instance what to do with existing Liberian army soldiers, were settled between the State Department and DynCorp. Liberia’s president, as well as defense minister, had no say so and simply had to announce the fait accompli to their people. This was no particular problem in Liberia with its traditionally close ties to the U.S., having been founded by ex-American slaves, but is less likely to work in countries where America is eyed with suspicion.

Since McFate is one of the individuals who asks himself what am I really doing with my life, he quit DynCorp after the Liberian tour of duty and began the historical research which led to the mentioned book and interview. But before getting to his conclusions we may ask: What is DynCorp? The company’s website is impressive but bland in content and deserves to be visited, simply for the language that is used. http://www.dyn-intl.com/?gclid=Cj0KEQiApbunBRDs0fba3dz484cBEiQAMsx-p40Yn_sllLyiCyc5jF4hy5yMy2OFGrX9ebqHepDNSWgaAnHG8P8HAQ.

Under “What we do” we find two major headlines: Intelligence and Security. The section states

         

Intelligence

            The intelligence professionals of DynCorp International (DI) work daily, protecting the United States and its allies, enabling decision-making through agile, integrated intelligence solutions:

  • Educating, Training and Certifying tomorrow’s intelligence professionals
  • Enhancing Collection and Analysis to deliver decision-enabling intelligence
  • Assisting the Intelligence Mission Globally through service in all locations and conditions

DI proudly serves in all locations, environments and conditions to support optimal decision-making and effective national security action by delivering balanced and ever-improving cross-discipline capabilities as a part of a single integrated team.

Security

          The DI team works closely with customers around the world to assess risks and apply the right mix of professional services and advanced technologies, integrating the company’s full spectrum of capabilities to provide sophisticated security solutions. Whether the need is rapid response to meet surge requirements or a sustained presence to provide long-term security, we provide the right solution.

DI is an industry leader in providing experienced security professionals to missions around the world. A global recruiting network allows us to select skilled and seasoned experts who understand the professionalism required and sensitivities that come with working across all cultures.

 

            Reading this material one wonders why we have the CIA, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security in addition to all the other “intelligence services” by the various branches of the military, as well as the entire military forces. One now also needs to realize that DynCorp is only one of these “Security and Intelligence providers.” It competes with others such as: Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), LOGCAP (Logistics Civil Augmentation Program), the former Executive Outcomes, the former Blackwater and others. When I said “former” these companies didn’t just disappear when bad publicity arrived, such as in the case of Blackwater’s agents shooting 17 civilians in Baghdad, they merely changed names. Blackwater became Xe Services and thereafter Academi. Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, was a former Navy SEAL before he went into the contracting business and the term was derived from his underwater exploits. He is a firm believer in free market principles and declared the purpose of his company as: “Our corporate goal is to do for the national security apparatus what FedEx did to the Postal Service.” 

          As McFate points out the “private military industry has surged since the end of the cold war, and is now a multibillion dollar business.” So little is known about it because as private enterprises they can be even more opaque than the government’s security forces. They are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act and there is no Congressional oversight, “although Congress is writing the checks.” The companies trade on Wall Street and their “boards consist of Wall Street magnates and former generals, their corporate managers are seasoned Fortune 500 executives, and their ranks filled with ex-military and law-enforcement personnel recruited from around the world.” The market value of the companies is unknown but estimates range from $20-$100 billion annually. It is, however, known, that from 1999 to 2008 the US Department of Defense (DOD) obligations increased from $165 to $414 billion. In 2010 it issued contracts for $366 billion. This amounts to 54 per cent of the DOD budget and is seven fold that of United Kingdom’s entire defense budget. In addition this number does not include contracts issued by the State Department and other government agencies. The entire amount spent remains unknown but comes from our tax dollars. Let this thought sink in: You and I are buying ourselves services from companies of whom we know practically nothing, where there is no oversight, and who are accountable only to their stockholders! In addition the companies’ incomes are at least in part held in offshore accounts and we don’t know how much, if any, taxes they pay. 

So, why do we have this industry? The simple answer is that America can’t wage war without it. When the Army’s Chief of Staff, General Eric Shinseki, was asked in testimony before Congress how many troops would be required in Iraq for post combat occupation he replied: “something in the order of several hundred thousand soldiers.” He was ridiculed by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz who had been dazzled by Iraqi ex-patriates with the promise of a “cake-walk,” and they envisioned the immediate creation of a client government in Baghdad that would provide the needed muscle to pacify the country. Had Shinseki prevailed this war would never have been undertaken because Congress would not have provided the funds. Rumsfeld and company wanted war on the cheap and we now know the result: It’s called the Islamic State which requires more money to destroy. But Shinseki was right and in 2010 we had 175,000 troops and 207,000 contractors in that country. The reason for this is simple. With the abolition of the draft and the creation of an all-volunteer army we simply don’t have the manpower for extended wars. But war is business and business is good.

This brings me to the heart of McFate’s thesis namely the historical parallels. He pointed out that state supported armies, as the only legitimate force to wage war, is a relatively new concept. Ever since ancient times mercenaries were used and not necessarily only as auxiliaries. There were the legendary Ten Thousand Greeks of Xenophon who had been hired by Cyrus the Younger in his war against his brother Artaxerxes II, Hannibal’s 60,000 who crossed the Alps and roamed Italy, as well as all the various forces which waged wars in Italy during the high Middle Ages. Those were the days of the condottieri, private captains in charge of mercenary forces. It was this state of affairs that prompted McFate to adopt the term neo-medievalism because even the name has remained unchanged since it translates into contractor.  

The subsequent heyday came during Europe’s catastrophic Thirty Years War. The Emperor Ferdinand II, had outsourced the raising and commanding of the Imperial army to Count Albrecht von Wallenstein who had made his fortune with a rich marriage and subsequently extended it by expropriating Czech nobility after their defeat in 1620. As an aside I might mention that the Czechs never forgot and their revenge came in 1918. Wallenstein’s army consisted of mercenaries from all over Europe and so did the opposing army of Sweden’s King Gustavus Adolphus. At the critical battle of Breitenfeld only 20 percent of his troops were Swedes and at Luetzen only 18 per cent. Some 40,000 Scotsmen, 15 per cent of the total male population, fought on both sides of the conflagration. 

During the last 15 years the war had deteriorated into wanton murder, plunder and indiscriminate burning of villages and towns to such an extent that it was no longer sustainable and peace negotiations started around 1645. They were successfully concluded in 1648 with what is called the Westphalian peace treaty because there were two separate ones: the treaty with France in Muenster and the one with Sweden at Osnabrueck. France, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden achieved some territorial gains from what had been the Holy Roman Empire. Although it continued in name the Emperor lost all power over the numerous independent German states and mini-states that had resulted from the war and were only loosely confederated. This situation prevailed until 1866 when Prussia defeated Austria and thereafter unified North and South Germany in 1871. This left out the German speaking Austrians who had to seek compensation in the Balkans; with WWI the result. The dismantling of the Austrian Empire in 1918 and Wilson’s proclamation of “self-determination” for the various ethnic groups led to the Austrian attempt to rejoin Germany but this was denied by the Allies. Hitler then temporarily remedied the situation and the end of WWII brought about the status quo ante for 1919 Austria.

I am mentioning these historical facts because they clearly demonstrate that the current obsession of America’s politicians with the inviolability of borders is bereft of reality. It would be wholesome for them to get a copy of The Times Atlas of European History that shows how a given country’s borders have changed over the past 1000 years.  To believe that they can now be frozen by executive fiat is a dangerous delusion. So is the idea that history proceeds arrow-like to ever greater human perfection and happiness. It is a cyclical process of action and reaction, or to speak with Hegel: thesis and antithesis which is resolved by synthesis. The Marxists’ dialectic materialism was based on it but they forgot that the synthesis automatically becomes the new thesis which in turn provokes another antithesis and the whole process repeats until either everything will come crashing down or mankind comes to its senses and replaces strife for profit with cooperation and good will.

Apart from the geographic consequences of the Thirty Years War, the Westphalian peace had two other components that are highly relevant for today’s events and form the basis for McFate’s book. One was the abolition of private mercenary armies and the other non-interference into the internal affairs of another independent state. Both have become law and the latter is also enshrined in the UN Charter. But as he points out both of these concepts are now being ripped apart. We are beginning to return to the Europe of 1618, or possibly even to the era after the fall of the Roman Empire. McFate did not coin the term neo-medievalism but took it from Hedley Bull’s Anarchical Society:A Study of Order in World Politics. It “explores alternative models to the Westphalian system, including what he calls ‘new medievalism.’ For this he imagines a future where sovereign states ‘might disappear,’ replaced by ‘a system of overlapping authority and multiple loyalty.’”  In practice this would mean, that although states will continue to exist they will no longer have complete authority even over their internal affairs.

Bull assumed that when five conditions are met the result would then resemble the political order of the Middle Ages. These are: the technological unification of the world, the regional integration of states, the rise of transnational organizations, the disintegration of states, and the restoration of private international violence. In 1977 he saw little evidence for this to occur, but it is obvious that all of them are currently present to varying extent. The Internet connects the entire world; the UN is only one example which exists in addition to other regional economic and security organizations that have arisen; the transnational organizations are the “multinationals” from Exxon-Mobile on down, states disintegrate under our eyes in Iraq, Libya and Ukraine, and the documentation of the rise of private armies is the thrust of McFate’s book because it is the most troublesome. When anyone with enough money can buy himself an army that is equipped with the most modern weapons, even if they are of the conventional rather than nuclear type, and is not beholden to any government but operates strictly for profit, it is highly unlikely that our children and grandchildren will ever see peace.

The private military companies (PMC) industry, which even has a trade organization, International Stability Operations Association (ISOA) based in Washington D.C., live on and for war. They need war. This is no different from what went on in the 1300s. Instead of “DynCorp, Triple Canopy, or Blackwater” there were “the Company of the Star, the Company of the Hat, and the White company.” They also were organized as corporations, had a “hierarchy of subcommanders and administrative machinery that oversaw the fair distribution of loot according to employees’ contracts. CEO-like captains led these medieval PMCs.”’ Similar to the ISOA their trade association was the “confederated condottieri.” Although our PMCs may not instigate a war their unaccountable actions may create conditions for a given country that will have to make war inevitable.

We are deluding ourselves when we believe that our President or Congress have supreme authority over our country even in regard to the most important question of war and peace. The power resides with the multinational or more accurately “transnational” corporations of which in addition to the security industry the finance industry is potentially the most dangerous. Private bankers (World Bank and International Monetary Fund) control the flow of money and have ultimate say over the economy via interest rates and lending practices, with Greece the currently most flagrant example. Since the financial industry is just as transnational as the PMCs, the ultimate fate of Greece will have its repercussions here and so will the sanctions we currently impose on Russia. Whatever reasons our politicians and the media give us for their actions we must remember that they are merely pretexts for ulterior motives, couched in euphemisms while playing on fears. The real motivating factors lie in the human mind where those who have want to keep and enlarge their property, while the have-nots will endeavor to take some if not all of it. This is the way human conduct has been throughout recorded history and there are no signs that it will be different in the future. We now have to face the fact that the global transnational financial industry, with its concomitant funding of mercenary wars, is an ingrained feature of our society and serious thought is needed how to tame this aspect of the “free market.”







April 1, 2015

MARCH MADNESS

The past month was again one for the history books, demonstrating the incredible foolishness of the people who are in charge of our collective well-being. It started on March 3 with Netanyahu’s speech before Congress; was followed up on March 9 with an “Open Letter” to Iran’s leadership penned by the freshman Senator from Arkansas, Tom Cotton, co-signed by 45 of his Republican colleagues and full page advertisements in the New York Times (NYT) demanding that the U.S. government should not conclude a nuclear arms agreement with Iran. In addition, on March 27 an op-ed article by John Bolton, ex-Ambassador to the UN, called on the U.S. to bomb Iran. Furthermore, Yemen collapsed into civil war among rival Sunni and Shiite factions supported by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Gulf Emirates on the one side and Iran on the other. We tried to our wash our hands of the affair and evacuated all civilian and military personnel. In Iraq the government offensive against the Islamic State stalled in Kirkuk. We then started bombing IS strongholds, thereby killing civilians as well as members of the Shiite militia. The latter became incensed; major components ceased combat operations and withdrew to their bases. Unrelated, but still a sign of the times, Germanwings’ 27 year old co-pilot Andreas Lubitz locked the cockpit when his superior had to momentarily leave and then deliberately crashed the Airbus into the French Alps killing everyone aboard.

This tragedy was somewhat akin to the mass indiscriminate shooting sprees by single individuals that have recently occurred with increasing frequency. As yet we don’t know the full story. We do know that Lubitz had been treated for depression in the past and it was reported that a physician had declared him unfit to fly on the day of the tragedy. We were also told that he was on antidepressant medication although we will never know precisely which drug he took that morning and/or the previous night, in what dose, and whether or not he had ingested some other, additional, agent that could account for this irrational act.

We do know, however, that all currently prescribed antidepressant agents are based on “selective serotonin reuptake inhibition” (SSRI). Serotonin, like dopamine, is an important neurotransmitter substance in the brain and an imbalance leads to a variety of physical and mental symptoms. The dopamine effects have been portrayed in the film “Awakening;” one based on serotonin effects is sooner or later bound to be produced, possibly even as a result of the current tragedy.

It also was reported that Lubitz had been concerned about a recent onset of visual difficulties. If this had come to the attention of Lufthansa it might well have ended his career as a pilot. Since flying was the major love of his life he would have been devastated had his license been revoked. Unfortunately, apparently no one told him that visual difficulties can be a side effect of antidepressant drug intake, especially of Zoloft. Although vision problems are relatively rare, mental changes consisting of: confusion, seeing or hearing things that are not there, hostility, irritability, severe mood changes, unusual behavior, and suicide, are sufficiently common for the package inserts to carry special “black box warnings” to that effect. Caregivers are urged to closely monitor the patient while he/she is under the influence of these compounds. It is of special interest that suicide in conjunction with antidepressant medications is most common in adolescents and young adults up to age 24. The danger gradually tapers off thereafter and becomes negligible by age 65.

What makes this information even more pertinent is a study by Thomas J Moore, Joseph Glenmullen and Curt D Fernberg: Prescription Drugs associated with Violence towards Others.  http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0015337.

The authors studied 1527 case of violence and found that:

Acts of violence towards others are a genuine and serious adverse drug event associated with a relatively small group of drugs. Varenicline [used for nicotine addiction], which increases the availability of dopamine, and antidepressants with serotonergic effects were the most strongly and consistently implicated drugs. Prospective studies to evaluate systematically this side effect are needed to establish the incidence, confirm differences among drugs and identify additional common features.

                Although the study can be found on PubMed the general public has not been informed about it by the official media. On the other hand there is considerable information available on the Internet, which links antidepressants to the random shooting sprees, starting with the one at Columbine High School in Colorado. The prime initiator, Eric Harris, was under psychiatric care for depression and complaints of suicidal thoughts. He had initially been given Zoloft but this was later changed to a similar SSRI, Luvox. The implications of these correlates are, of course, staggering and drug companies will use, similar to the nicotine lobby, all efforts to minimize them. Nevertheless, psychiatrists will have to come to terms with the reality of the phenomenon and considerably more caution may have to be used by physicians who prescribe these compounds. Since patients can dissimulate and no one knows the actual dosage of the compounds they are taking we must be prepared for more such random acts of violence to occur in the future.

To prevent these in the case of airline pilots, they should be given a medical leave of absence while their depressive illness is being treated and at least two physicians should independently certify when a given pilot is able to return to duty. But since patients can hide their illness, as seems to have been the case with Lubitz, it may become necessary for physicians when they write a prescription for antidepressant agents to have to notify the employer if the individual is in a position that is responsible for the safety of other lives. I realize that legislation of this type faces numerous justified hurdles, but the problem must be faced and discussed because we are confronted with deliberate but at times involuntary acts of violence during which the individual is no longer in charge of his/her conduct. While this assessment might somewhat help assuage the huge burden of guilt and shame the Lubitz family is now carrying it must be admitted, however, that the role of antidepressant side effects in the current tragedy is an assumption that does not rise to the level of fact. It is reasonable, but proof is as yet missing and may never be forthcoming. Nevertheless an important lesson does emerge.

Our brains are electromagnetic-chemical machines that create patterns which express themselves in outward behavior. But the usually smooth interplay between voluntary actions and moral judgment – conscience, superego – can be disrupted at times for a variety of reasons. One psychiatrist has referred to the superego as: that part of the brain which is soluble in alcohol. As we know it is not only alcohol abuse that can disrupt normal behavior patterns, all psychoactive drugs can do so. In addition we have the phenomena of sleepwalking and actions that are carried out under post-hypnotic suggestions. For these we likewise don’t know the mechanisms. We also don’t know why some individuals commit suicide/murder in altered states of consciousness while the majority of others do not. But rather than be satisfied with the notion that the persons who committed atrocities are just “evil,” we ought to investigate how their brain functions differ from the rest of us. We now have imaging tools available that allow us to watch the living brain during some of its activities and these studies ought to be funded in order to better understand why we do what we do. If tragedies of the type discussed above could catalyze these investigations some good might yet come out of them.     

While Lubitz killed “only” himself and 149 others, some of our politicians, in and out of office, are embarking on a course that will kill thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, wantonly destroy property, and make hundreds of thousands more, possibly even millions, homeless. They are doing this even in absence of psychoactive drugs in their respective systems and this can only be called criminal insanity. While the legal definition for insanity is the inability to distinguish right from wrong at the time of the act, it has also been used when people keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome. Those of our politicians who advocate bombing Iran should have realized by now that bombs alone never achieve the hoped for regime change. Inasmuch as an extensive bombing campaign would have to be undertaken, with the inevitable loss of civilian life, it would be regarded as an unprovoked act of war and the responsible politicians could and should be indicted as war criminals based on the Nuremberg precedent. The Malaysian Tribunal has done so for ex-President George W Bush and senior members of his administration (September 1, 2014; America’s Credibility Gap), but the International Criminal Court in The Hague will not touch this proverbial Hot Potato and is content to prosecute small fry such as Milosevic of former Yugoslavia and some of his cronies who can’t do any more harm. 

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s thundering speech against Iran, as the arch terrorist that is about to set the world aflame with its intention of building nukes, received an ecstatic applause by our Republicans. Joe Biden, who as Vice-President and Presiding Officer was supposed to sit next to the Speaker of the House, chose to spend his time more fruitfully visiting the EU Council in Brussels. He was replaced by none other than our Utah senior Senator Orrin Hatch, which meant that the country was represented mainly by Republicans. Only 57 Democrats had the good sense to absent themselves from this affair.

There is a term in our country for people like Bibi, as he is so fondly called in Israel, and that is “political animal.” It is applied to politicians who do and say whatever they feel is useful at a given moment to achieve a goal and repudiate what they have said or done immediately thereafter. Netanyahu’s goal with his speech before Congress was twofold. One was to enlist the American public, via Congress, in his quest toward regime change in Iran regardless of cost. This has little to do with Iran’s supposed intention to build nuclear bombs because it goes back to the Iranian revolution in 1979, which deposed the Shah and established a theocratic regime. It, therefore, is part of the long-term effort to deprive all potentially hostile Middle East States of power, which has, so far, been remarkably successful. President George W Bush solved the Iraq problem for Israel and with our help Syria has become embroiled in civil war. This in turn brought Lebanon’s Hezbollah fighters to Syria’s aid, thereby removing another threat to Israel. Jordan never was a problem because the current king’s father already had come to an agreement with Israelis during the wars that helped establish the state of Israel in 1948. Egypt concluded a peace treaty in 1979 and the freely elected Muslim Brotherhood government was soon overthrown by the military that rigorously stands by the treaty. Saudi Arabia not only was neutralized but even became an ally in the continuation of Syria’s civil war and its hatred for Shiite Iran. The latter is, therefore, the only remaining foe, even without the nuclear issue. The current leadership has to be replaced by one that submits to Israel’s and America’s wishes and/or demands. But since the Israelis can’t do this by themselves they need us to do it either with or for them.

The second goal of Netanyahu’s address to Congress was to bolster his standing at home for the upcoming election. In this effort he also succeeded, but with rhetoric that has earned him disgust around the world. As an unintended consequence he has further divided American Jewry in relation to Israel. While many have very positive feelings for the country they are less enthused with Likud policies and its current chief spokesman. Rabbi Lerner, who is well known for his liberal magazine Tikkun, the counterpart to Podhoretz’ Commentary, published with more than 2400 co-signers on March 2nd a full page comment in the NYT under the headlines: “No, Mr. Netanyahu – You do not speak for American Jews.” And “The American People do not want a War with Iran.”  The next day it was followed by a similar page written by Jewish Republicans. It featured a large picture of a lecturing Netanyahu and the headlines were: “Watch Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Speech Today. Urge Congress to Deny Nuclear Weapons to Iran.” It was paid for by the Republican Jewish Coalition. The battle for the “hearts and minds” of American Jews in favor of Likud type policies is now in full swing. But the issue has wider implications.

Although Netanyahu won the election with a sizable margin and will form another coalition government mainly with other right wing groups, it may well turn into a Pyrrhic victory. His country will further slide toward pariah status in the eyes of most nations. Netanyahu is not stupid and realizes that to fulfill his dream of Israel becoming an internationally recognized powerful Jewish State he needs American help as well as more Jews to move to his country. Anti-Semitic outbursts in Europe and elsewhere are the potential vehicle to achieve the latter objective. He thinks that when Jews feel sufficiently threatened they will leave their homes and come to Israel. He has already told European Jews to “come home,” and the April issue of Atlantic features on its cover a fractured granite block in the shape of the Star of David with the caption: “Is it Time for the Jews to Leave Europe?” But Jews are for the most part pragmatists and if they were to be induced to leave Europe they would not necessarily go to Israel. Who in his right mind would at this time take his family to the cauldron of the Middle East? In addition Netanyahu and his followers are sorely mistaken when they believe that Israel’s current status, which includes the West Bank occupation and isolation of Gaza, can be maintained ad infinitum. The idea that the neighborhood wars between different religious and political ideas will stop at Israel’s borders is fantasy and so is Netanyahu’s statement that Jerusalem will be forever Jewish. Nothing lasts forever and even a spiritual Jewish Jerusalem will have to be shared with Christians and Muslims.

On the other hand, rabid Republicans agree with Netanyahu and believe in the “might makes right” proposition. The idea is that if America uses its military strength it can ride herd on the rest of the world. This is likewise a fantasy because neither Russia nor China will agree to permanent American hegemony. This makes the open letter Senator Cotton and fellow Republicans wrote to the Leadership of Iran not only foolish but it even rises to the level of criminal conduct.

I must admit that I was not aware of the existence of the Logan Act that prohibits private citizens from interfering with negotiations carried out by the government and was only alerted to it by a reader’s letter to The Salt Lake Tribune. The Act was adopted by Congress in 1799 and has never been repealed. It states under the headline “Private correspondence with foreign governments”:

 

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

 

Although Cotton is a senator and so were the 45 others who co-signed, they vented their “advice” to the Iranian government as private citizens because they had no official authorization for their act. They thereby violated the Logan Act and could be criminally prosecuted. More than 165,000 citizens have by now sent petitions to the White House to institute such proceedings, but they are unlikely to take place.  Even a million signatures would have no effect because the Act has never been enforced and some regard it as unconstitutional. Of course, the definition of what is and is not constitutional depends on who you ask and most importantly on the composition of the Supreme Court. It is unthinkable that a Supreme Court of let us say 1915 would have, for instance, declared voluntary abortion a constitutionally guaranteed procedure. 

One may now ask: why make a fuss about a letter? It was nonsense, so let’s get over it and go on with other business at hand. Unfortunately it is not quite this simple because Tom Cotton is a rising star in Republican circles and in 2013 Politico referred to him “as most likely to succeed.” It seems quite obvious that his eye is on the Presidency. His biography on the Senate website is quite short and the relevant section states:

 

Tom left the law because of the September 11th attacks. Tom served nearly five years on active duty in the United States Army as an Infantry Officer.

Tom served in Iraq with the 101st Airborne and in Afghanistan with a Provincial Reconstruction Team.  Between his two combat tours, Tom served with The Old Guard at Arlington National Cemetery.  

 

          When one now examines his life story further, as presented in Wikipedia, one becomes aware that he is, to use a phrase coined by a British observer of the American scene in regard to Hillary Clinton, “quite economical with the truth.”

Here is a condensed version of the Wikipedia article. He was born in 1977 in rural Arkansas, enrolled at Harvard Law School, but after his B.A. degree did not stay and instead went to Claremont College in California. This did not satisfy him and he returned to Harvard obtaining his doctorate in Jurisprudence in 2002. He then became a law clerk for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, but left after a year for private practice. This he found, likewise, unsatisfactory and joined the Army in January 2005. Although he qualified for the rank of captain in the Judge Advocate General’s Corp (JAG) he did not like lawyering and wanted combat. He, therefore, enlisted with the rank of Private. But after two months he reconsidered, began officer’s training and graduated with the rank of 2nd Lieutenant in June 2005. Instead of deployment he continued officer’s training and was sent to Iraq in May 2006. He led a Platoon whose task was to pacify the countryside, but since the revolt was already in full swing the assignment carried considerable personal danger. In June of 2006 during a rest period he had access to the Internet and found an article in the NYT which discussed the then secret government program in regard to the funding sources of terrorists and how to disrupt them. This incensed Lt. Cotton who saw his buddies blown up by the insurgents, aka terrorists, and he fired off an intemperate letter to the NYT accusing the newspaper of violating the espionage clause of the U.S. Constitution. He also expressed the hope that he would find the reporters as well as the NYT executive director “behind bars” when he and his fellow soldiers returned home.

The Army did not like this meddling in political affairs by a 2nd Lieutenant and Cotton was “given reprimands for lack of discipline, lack of adherence to protocol and refusing to respect his chain of command.” Nevertheless he was promoted to 1st Lt. in December, but re-assigned for two years of ceremonial duties here at home. In October 2008 he was deployed to Eastern Afghanistan where he remained till June 2009. He was honorably discharged from active duty the following September, but re-enlisted in the Army Reserve in July 2010. In the meantime he had been promoted to Captain. Although he seems to have liked war, active combat duties were limited to 18 months.

After leaving military service it seems that he didn’t quite know what to do with his life. He joined a business firm for consulting work but quit after a few months and returned home to help run the family ranch. Through a Claremont friend he was introduced to the Arkansas “Club for Growth,” a Republican Political Action Committee (PAC) which paved the way for a run for Congress in 2012. He won the race but Congress was only the first step on the political ladder. The second one was election to the Senate in 2014 and he was sworn in on January 6 of this year. 

From this brief review several aspects become apparent, but the most important one is that he is a young man in a hurry. He is basically restless and someone who wants to leave his imprint on the world; his current job is only a stepping stone towards the Presidency. He is not above slanting the truth when it fits his needs because in spite of jumping from one job to the next it took him about three and a half years to find out that he wanted to join the army “because of the September 11th attacks.” That he also has a streak of either Nazism or Old Testament fervor in him is documented by a bill he introduced in the House. Wikipedia states:

 

In 2013 Cotton introduced legislative language to prohibit trade with relatives of individuals subject to U.S. sanctions against Iran. According to Cotton, this would include "a spouse and any relative to the third degree," such as, "parents, children, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, grandparents, great grandparents, grandkids, great grandkids." When Cotton's amendment came under harsh criticism regarding the constitutionality of the amendment, he withdrew it.

 

          Obviously this is Nazi “Sippenhaftung,” and even the Nazis stopped with grandchildren in their definition of Aryanism. Whether or not the senator will decide to run for President as early as next year is not yet clear, but he is young enough to be able to build his base for 2020 and thereafter.     

Although Cotton’s Senate letter to the Iranians was ridiculed by Obama it served its purpose. The freshman senator achieved national name recognition as well as numerous fan letters urging him to run for the Presidency. But he is not the only one who tries to use the Iran negotiations for achieving this goal. On March 26 the NYT published an op-ed article by John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the UN, that also urged Americans to prevent a nuclear treaty with Iran and instead go on to bomb that  country’s nuclear installations. This obviously, is not only criminal recklessness, but foolish because he assumes that the Iranians will just acquiesce as Saddam did in 1981 when the Israelis bombed Iraq’s Osirak installation, or Assad after “Operation Orchard” which destroyed Syria’s budding attempt towards nuclear power in 2007.

Times have changed and the Iranians have made preparations for this eventuality. These include a military cooperation agreement with Russia that was signed in January of this year. But Mr. Bolton wants to run for President next year and is currently testing the waters. It now becomes apparent that the Republicans intend to model their campaign on that of Netanyahu and thoroughly frighten the American public with visions of impending terrorist doom which only a “strong” foreign policy can prevent. This will be Bolton’s chief campaign issue and “defense of Israel,” equated with that of the U.S. will be paramount. This has already started and the March 28 NYT full page ad which shows a picture of Obama in the foreground and on dark background the NYT article of September 1938 on the Munich pact and in an insert picture Chamberlain’s waving the accord upon his arrival at home. The title was: Mr. President: “Fighting al-Quaeda made you like Churchill. Appeasing Iran will make you like Chamberlain.” The Conclusion of the article stated: “Don’t allow Iran to become a nuclear power.” The ad was “organized, produced and paid for by The World Values Network” which according to its website is “committed to spreading the universal values of the Jewish people and making Israel a light unto the nations.” The Times also published on the same day an article by Peter Baker headlined: “For Republican Candidates, Support for Israel is an Inviolable Litmus Test.” In the article one can find “Anything but unquestioned backing of the Jewish state can mean trouble.” But that puts it mildly; a candidate who will not toe the Israeli-Likud policy line is likely to soon be out of money and out of the race.

Although Netanyahu currently has a majority in his country there are other voices in Israel which represent “Jewish values,” and these differ radically from those espoused by the ruling circles. To make Americans pull Israeli chestnuts out of the fire and subscribe to Likud policies is shrewd politics but morally reprehensible. The only outcome of the policies the World Values Network and numerous other similar organizations espouse is that the light they intend to bring to the world will be created by an immense funeral pyre. This is not hyperbole, but war rhetoric has always led to war and the future is unlikely to be an exception.

The demise of the nuclear talks in Lausanne would have been a fitting end to this eventful month. But Mr. Kerry was persistent and managed to persuade his partners to continue the discussions beyond yesterday’s midnight deadline. The negotiators went into overtime and the result will be reviewed in next month’s issue.







May 1, 2015

THE DEATH OF MONEY

          Before entering into the main topic a follow-up on last month’s issue is in order. In spite of the valiant attempts of Prime Minister Netanyahu and our Republicans, the negotiators in Lausanne did achieve an interim compromise that postponed the heavy lifting until the beginning of July. There was some agreement on vital aspects, but since there was no joint communique each side interprets the accomplishments in their own way. But this doesn’t matter because the longer the parties to the negotiations agree to talk to, even if not with, each other the better. It certainly beats the alternative of bombing, shooting and killing.

          While it is doubtful a definitive arrangement that pleases everybody will be reached in July, the nuclear issue is in the process of becoming a side-show. The Middle East is tearing itself to pieces, egged on jointly by us, the Saudis and Israel on one side, and Iran on the other, with Yemenis the latest victims. It seems that European history is repeating itself in the Middle East. The infamous Thirty Years War (1618-1648) had likewise started over religious differences but degenerated into wanton destruction by marauding troops and land grabs by the ruling circles. The fight between Protestants and Catholics could have reached the compromise embodied in the Westphalian Peace much sooner, had not the periphery especially Sweden, France, Denmark and the Netherlands joined in the fight against the fratricidal Germans and Bohemians. In a similar manner the Sunni-Shia war would play itself out in short order if the current periphery i.e. Israel, the US and Iran, with Russia behind her, kept their fingers out of the imbroglio. But, as pointed out in in the March issue, war makes money and is, therefore, highly desirable by powerful insiders, while one officially laments the carnage committed by the “other” side. 

          Since money, or more generally the hope for material gain in some form or another, has always been the driving force behind wars it is unlikely that they will ever stop in the current unenlightened mental state of the human race. The German language is considerably more precise in this respect than the English. The word “War” has only indirect meaning while the German “Krieg” is derived from the verb “kriegen” i.e. to get or obtain something. Likewise the English word “battle” is somewhat bland while the German equivalent “Schlacht comes from slaughter and that’s what it really is. This is also the reason why when in German speaking countries one is fed up with euphemisms one says: Jetzt wollen  wir endlich Deutsch reden  now let’s have some straightforward talk. When language obfuscates instead of clarifies we reach the current sad state of affairs in our country where trust has been eroded and cynicism, especially in regard to affairs of state, is the rule.

          In a certain way I am currently reliving aspects of my adolescence where, as citizens of Greater Germany, we were fed daily doses of propaganda. As mentioned in War&Mayhem my parents had no use for the Nazis but any expression of discontent was, of course, outlawed. We did have, however, an excellent radio set which received foreign broadcasts and in the years from summer 1941 to spring 1943, while my brother had already been drafted into Labor Service and the Wehrmacht, I was essentially alone in the afternoons in our apartment. The parents did not return from mother’s store until the evening while the maid was strictly relegated to the kitchen quarters and a small adjacent room far from the parents’ bedroom where the radio was kept. Fed up with propaganda I developed a ritual. At 5 o’clock I sneaked to the radio turned down the volume to an extent that only the pressed ear to the loudspeaker could make out the sounds and then tuned in to the BBC. After the first bars of Beethoven’s Fifth a voice announced: Hier ist London mit der Sendung  fuer die deutsche Wehrmacht. Intermittently I tried Moscow but the propaganda was so crude that I soon gave up and stayed with the BBC. It provided factual information why it was impossible for Hitler to win the war. This clandestine effort on my part to gain a glimpse of the truth was, of course, forbidden and had I been discovered I would immediately have received a one-way ticket to the nearest concentration camp. But, as the lyrics of the Hitler Jugend theme song told us: Jugend kennt keine Gefahren – youth knows no dangers, I was oblivious to potential consequences.

There was nothing I could do with the information so obtained but the era left an indelible imprint which is now again coming to the fore. In spite of, or maybe because of, my upbringing I trusted America’s leadership implicitly and it needed the shock of 9/11 to bring me back to reality. It was not the event per se, because I had seen worse disasters in my youth, but the lies by the Bush administration to cover up what really happened and which persist to this day. This was the catalyst, and instead of now having my ear glued to a radio set I sit down with the laptop most evenings and scan the Internet for the “news behind the news.” Currently this is legal but if one were to get too vociferous about one’s conclusions that were derived from the “other” news, one would be ostracized and lose one’s scientific credibility. This is the reason why official academia is silent on the blatant 9/11 cover-up. It finds itself in the position of the German people during the war years where it was much safer the keep one’s mouth shut and not makes waves. Although one’s physical life is not at stake here at this time, only one’s professional, this is sufficient motivation to keep quiet.

These visits to the Internet provide the information upon which these essays are based and in early April I came upon an interview on Money Morning where James Rickards, interviewed by Steve Meyers, explained the CIA’s Project Prophecy and the coming Death of Money. http://jimrickardsprophecy.com/pp-home1.php?ad=search. Rickards was very eloquent, made an excellent, informed, impression and at the end of the three quarter of an hour long talk he promised to send us his book, The Death of Money, as well as an unpublished updated chapter and six videos. These will inform us a) why a financial crash is imminent and unavoidable and b) how we can avoid the personal losses resulting from the crash. By simply pushing the button which appeared at the end of the presentation we would get all this information for free. Well, here was the proverbial gift horse, and when I clicked a personal “thank you for listening to the interview” appeared from Jim Rickards followed by a long series of explanation of what this “Prophecy 2.0 package,” that “will be rushed to your door” will do for me. But there was no button to activate the “free” gift and $4.98 shipping charge. Instead one was given at the very end a choice between “The Gold Package: Best Buy” for $79 or the “Silver Package: Great Deal” for $39.50. The difference apparently was that one would either get a two year digital and print version subscription to his newsletter in addition to the package, versus a one year digital one. I didn’t want a subscription, just the book and videos for “free,” apart from shipping charges, but there was no opportunity to do so. It had to be either Gold or Silver with the guarantee that in case one was not satisfied one would receive a full refund. The offer was signed with “Jim Rickards Financial Threat and Asymmetric Warfare Advisor CIA & The Director of National Intelligence.”  

Since there was apparently nothing to lose I signed on for the Silver package and then came the surprise. Instead of book and videos I received an e-mail “Welcome” message from the company which invited me to obtain newsletters from a group of other companies by not only listing my e-mail address but also my password with which I could contact them. This was amazing because the only time I had used the encrypted password was for the presumed $39.50 VISA purchase. But since it was the one I routinely used for all VISA transactions it now was obviously compromised and had to be immediately changed. It seems that encryption of passwords is also apparently eye-wash because anybody with a little savvy can read them! When I wrote to the company that I simply wanted book and videos rather than the subscription and wondered how they had gotten my password, I got a friendly letter back informing me that they did not share my password with others but it had been placed in the welcoming letter for “my convenience.” How they opened the VISA card encryption was never explained.

 From then on I received every day six or seven e-mails with “investment advice” from various agencies but no book or videos. By the middle of the month I remonstrated again and the book arrived on the 22nd. But instead of videos there were some small brown paper brochures that contained the advice. The daily deluge of e-mail advice persisted until I “unsubscribed” from all the other companies by hitting the appropriate buttons and then sent a personal letter to Money Map canceling my subscription. A nice letter came back regretting my decision but they would credit my account with the $79 annual subscription fee. This was the first time I heard that I was actually charged $79 instead of the expected $39.50 and when I checked my bank statement I noticed that the $79 had indeed immediately been withdrawn at the first contact. The lady was true to her word and the amount was indeed fully refunded within a few days. As a result I got the book, which sells at amazon for $19, free of charge. I am mentioning this background because it is a typical example of “Amerikana” with deceptive advertisement. The so-called “value” of the package, which was itemized, came to $322 when added up. How Mr. Rickards can give us a package gratis that is valued for over $300 is, of course, a mystery. Yet this deceptive practice is the rule for TV advertisements. They first promise to send an item supposedly valued for over a hundred dollars for a fraction of this cost and by the end of the commercial one gets two of them plus “a bonus” for about 19.99.  I don’t know who the companies think they are fooling with this game but it is epidemic. In the case of Money Morning there was no outright fraud because the money was refunded, but the transaction wasn’t honest either.

To refresh my memory for this essay I checked the Internet again and found the same interview on another website where one can scan it for relevant sections. This was not possible on the above cited one where one had to endure the entire 45 minutes. On https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYW5OGWfqJc one can choose selected portions and instead of “View the transcript here” there is a button for subscribing. But one doesn’t need it because the same information comes up on clicking “Get access here” which appears on the screen at the end of the interview. The “View Transcript” button on the original website is also misleading because instead of the transcript one gets the package description and subscription invitation, but without the Gold and Silver packages comment. http://jimrickardsprophecy.com/pp-home1.php?ad=search. What one really gets when one sends in the form I don’t know because I no longer want to have anything to do with Mr. Rickards and his friends.

So who is James Rickards? Wikipedia informs us that he graduated from the University Of Pennsylvania Law School and also got an LL.M in taxation from New York University. He then worked for 35 years on Wall Street and was also “Managing Director for Market Intelligence at Omnis Inc.” In 2009 he testified before the House of Representatives about the risks of financial modeling and the 2008 financial crisis. The article goes on to cite the Money Morning website and that there is no evidence that Rickards ever had an official association with the CIA or the Director of National Intelligence.

The provocative title of the book, published in 2014, The Death of Money obviously was intended to grab one’s attention but is likewise deceptive. Minted coins have been around for more than 2500 years and since it is a useful exchange medium it will continue to enjoy longevity. The subtitle of the book The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System may be more accurate. But what Rickards is really talking about is the reason why the world is beginning to move away from the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and the consequences thereof. The first chapter deals with “Project Prophecy.” It apparently was designed to establish the author’s bona fides in high finance and government and rivets the reader’s attention on the inside information he claims to possess. Rickards stated that it had become known to the CIA that there had been highly suspicious trading activity on airline stocks on the Chicago exchange, especially for United and American, during the days immediately preceding 9/11 which suggested inside information about a coming disaster involving these companies. I have mentioned this aspect of the 9/11 tragedy in a previous article (August 1, 2011; Attempts at Raising 9/11 Awareness: Richard Gage – Toronto Hearings) and Rickards did not add new information. But while he endorsed this aspect of the crime he felt obligated to otherwise stay with the government story of the 19 Saudis with Osama bin Laden in the lead, having caused all the havoc. In addition, Rickards felt obliged to pour scorn on the 9/11 Truth Movement. This was not only unnecessary but damaged his own credibility by unwittingly insulting professionals who have demonstrated that the events, as portrayed by our government, could  not possibly have happened in this way. The laws of physics stand in the way (October 1, 2006; The 9/11 Cover-Up; May 1, 2012; America’s Galileo Moment). The only reason I can imagine why Rickards did so is that he wanted to stay in the good graces of government agencies, and especially the Defense Department, which apparently provide him with consulting fees.

As Rickards explained in the book he had come to the attention of the CIA while attending a plush private high level conference of financial “movers and shakers.” This led to an invitation for a meeting at Langley where he explained to the powers in attendance the insider trading aspect of 9/11 and that suspicious trading activity can be a warning prior to another disaster of the 9/11 type. CIA director Tenet had noted that “the system was blinking red” during the summer of 2011 for other reasons, but the warnings were ignored. The CIA now wanted to avoid another such debacle and therefore authorized Project Prophecy where Rickards, in company with other financial wizards, would keep tabs on stock market trading and alert the CIA to suspicious activities. But since this amounted to spying on American citizens, which the agency is still forbidden by law from engaging in, the CIA distanced itself from the project soon thereafter and Rickards moved his skills to the Pentagon where no such scruples existed. As mentioned Wikipedia tells us that Project Prophecy never existed within the confines of the CIA and we are again in the position of not knowing who is telling the truth.

The next chapter deals with financial warfare and seems to be a condensation of Richards’ previous book, Currency Wars (2011). Instead of defeating a given country militarily the object is to ruin its economy by sanctions and debasing its currency. China caught on to this game and started buying gold to safeguard the yuan. In addition, assorted countries around the world, including ours, are routinely hacking into each other’s computers stealing their financial information and manipulating the markets accordingly. Rickards points out that capital markets are far from “fail-safe,” that our government knows it and is taking precautionary measures for the “Day After,” which will be discussed on a subsequent occasion.

I shall now proceed only with a few highlights of the book because some aspects are technical and I am not in a position to form an intelligent judgment on their merits. The main point is that finance and geopolitics are inseparable. He believes that, in spite of the economic problems of Greece and other Mediterranean European countries, the Euro is here to stay for the immediate future because it is a political tool to keep Europe unified. The driving engine is Germany and it will not allow a repeat of all the previous fratricidal wars that ruined the continent. “The Gang of Four,” US, Europe, China and Japan account for 65 percent of the world’s economic output. Among the other 35 percent we have various combinations of countries that form separate blocks. These are the BRICS, followed by BELLS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Gulf States and what Rickards calls the Island Twins. Membership in these organizations is not exclusive for a given country but can overlap with others. The common denominator is that all of them are supranational.

BRICS refers to economic agreements between Brazil, India, China, Russia and South Africa. The BELLS involve Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Although their economic value is negligible they are geopolitically important because they represent the fringe of Europe and act as buffers against Russia and Turkey. Next come within the Eurozone the GIIPS: Greece, Ireland, Italy and Spain. While BELLs and GIIPS may be arbitrary designations of the EU’s subsections, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is a more serious issue for the US. It was organized in 2011 and the original members were Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Uzbekistan joined subsequently. India, Iran and Pakistan have observer status. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was formed in 1981 and includes: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Iraq was not admitted because of its invasion of Kuwait and Shiite Iran has no place in an Arab Club. This now leaves what Rickards calls the Island Twins namely the UK and Japan. This seems quite arbitrary except that both serve as financial and military outposts of the US.

Rickards then discusses in detail the debt problem especially as it refers to the US. He points out that there is nothing inherently wrong with debt as long as it is sustainable by the economic output of a given country. He cites Japan as an example where the ratio of the national debt in relation to the country’s gross national product (GDP) is over 220 percent, while it is over 100 percent and climbing for the US and the UK. The countries can still function but there will come a point when as a result of excessive printing of paper money inflation will become rampant, trust in the currency lost with an ensuing financial crash. Although the exact time when this will occur is unknown the outcome is inevitable unless profound structural changes are made in the financial systems of these countries.

Other chapters deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the role of gold. The IMF is not just a bank that provides loans to needy countries, with considerable strings attached, but is also potentially on the way to issuing a one world currency. Its charter provides for “Special Drawing Rights (SDRs or XDRs)” which translate in lay language to printing paper money. The SDR value was originally determined in relation to the price of gold but subsequently based on the major contributing currencies to the fund. While the IMF’s SDRs are not yet ready to take over the function of the world’s reserve currency they are moving in that direction and Rickards believes that the IMF may become the “lender of last resort” when the expected crash comes. To prepare itself for this situation it is buying gold in large quantities. Gold is again becoming central to the financial markets because its value is universally recognized and the country that holds most if it cannot only keep its currency afloat but also dictate prices. This is the reason why China, for instance, is no longer investing mainly in US Treasury bonds but buying gold instead.

While Americans are kept in fear of China’s growing might, Rickards sees a day of reckoning also for that country. The massive housing boom investment over the past several years has resulted in entire cities having been built that include the most modern facilities but lack the essential ingredient: people. The cities are empty and the prices for apartments unaffordable. China’s current economic policies are regarded as a Ponzi scheme that will collapse under its own weight. Since the Chinese financial markets are less tied to those of the other major powers the immediate effect will not be catastrophic for the world but there will be adverse long-term consequences with devaluation of the yuan making exports cheaper leading to protectionist responses by the US.

To sum up the book one can say that the interconnected financial world stands on shaky ground and a small shift in any one country can have wide repercussion. The US is especially vulnerable because of its huge debt load that erodes confidence in the dollar. As major countries move away from the dollar its value will further depreciate. The only option is for the Federal Reserve Bank to issue more money but this has to lead to inflation, hyperinflation and the crash.

Rickards prescription for the average investor is to buy his daily advice which will allow one not only to survive the crash but let one prosper in adversity. The book provides only a sketch of what to do. One’s financial portfolio should include: about 10-20% gold, but in actual physical metal rather than gold stock certificates; 20 percent land; 10 percent fine art objects; 20 percent alternative funds (i.e. certain hedge and equity funds) and 30 percent cash.

The brochures that came in the mail, instead of the promised videos, were more specific. In regard to stock investing he recommended companies that will survive the crash because people can’t live without these commodities. They deal with water, food, pharmaceuticals and assorted others. Obviously, which given company one invests in is going to be a gamble and requires one’s trust in Rickards. There was only one aspect that grabbed my attention. From the 10 cities that are best suited for retirement Salt Lake City was listed as number three. Since the first two were in Texas, which for various reasons is out of the question for our family, I was glad to see that Rickards was right at least in this aspect because we had come to the same conclusion 25 years earlier.  

It is obvious that Rickards is likely to be wrong on a number of details but it must be admitted that our financial system is indeed “blinking red” as a spate of other books as well as the Internet testify to. The world is becoming tired of American hegemony and begins to bypass us. It is essential that our neocons and other warmongers start to grasp this fact and that their illusion of an American 21st century needs to be abandoned. If we are to prosper in this century it cannot be by domination, regardless whether it is military or economic, but only by cooperation. There are people, including President Obama, who realize this but there also are powerful adversaries who will do their best to frustrate all such moves with cries of “appeasement,” and “Munich” regardless of the fact that we no longer live in 1938.

There are currently two geopolitical models in play. The US relies on drones, bombs and sanctions to achieve its ends, while China is building a new “Silk Road” via high speed railroad to connect Beijing with Madrid. It takes little imagination which one has a better chance of succeeding. In addition, China had a very good month in April. Its new Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB), which was not mentioned by Rickards,  received a major boost when, in spite of America’s remonstrations, practically all of Europe joined it. The next installment will discuss this topic further and how our government is preparing for the “Day After.” 







June 1, 2015

CRONY-CAPITALISM
“Nobody understands these numbers”

          This memorable phrase was uttered by Reagan’s budget director John Stockman and the quote comes from an article in Atlantic magazine entitled “The Education of John Stockman” published by William Greider in 1981. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1981/12/the-education-of-david-stockman/305760/. The article is important because it imparts then current information about what is called “Reagonomics.” This is especially relevant because the word has become a Republican mantra and if they were to gain the presidency next year an economic re-enactment of Reagan’s first term becomes likely. It, therefore, behooves us to look at what really went on and the mentioned article provides the information. It was based on a series of discussions Stockman had with Greider after he had been appointed by the president-elect to the office of budget director. But Stockman made the mistake of regarding Greider as a friend to whom one bares one’s soul rather than a Washington Post reporter for whom this is the “red meat” journalists drool for. When Greider, somewhat prematurely, published the relevant aspects of these conversations a firestorm broke loose and headlines screamed that Reagan had taken Stockman “to the woodshed.” I remembered this headline and this is why I now bought Stockman’s book The Great Deformation – The Corruption of Capitalism in America. It was published two years ago and I shall deal with it later. The book led me to the Internet and the mentioned Atlantic magazine article. Stockman’s education consisted in the realization that as a member of the government one is not allowed to speak the truth, especially to reporters, and that politics, i.e. the quest for election/re-election, overrides all other considerations.

The country was in dire straits at that time. We had what was called “stagflation,” with double digit inflation, rising unemployment and President Carter’s famous “malaise” address, although he never used that word. During the campaign Reagan’s advisors came up with the answer, it was to be “Morning in America.” Tax cuts would make the economy grow again and “a rising tide will lift all boats.” The tax cuts also would allow for increased defense expenditures which would defeat the Soviet Union, and the budget would be balanced over the coming three years. It was a daunting task that had been described by George Bush, while he was running for the presidency against Reagan, as Voodoo economics. The question by John Anderson, another presidential contender, of how this miracle could be achieved also was left unanswered during the campaign.

          After the November election Stockman was charged with squaring this circle and to come up with a budget the president could present to the country after inauguration. He had only a little over two months to meet this massive task. But he was 34 years old, full of youthful enthusiasm for whom obstacles existed only for the purpose to be overcome. He came from a farming town in Western Michigan and the parents had instilled the values of truthfulness, hard work and thrift. For his education he first went to Michigan State University where he studied farming and then the humanities. After graduation he enrolled in Harvard’s Divinity School. But he wanted to make a difference in the life of the nation and switched to social sciences in order to satisfy his desire to find out “How the world really runs.” In this endeavor we are actually kindred souls because my professional choice of neurology, psychiatry and neurophysiology was dictated by the desire to find out why human beings do what they do, quite often in defiance of their better judgment.

          The Atlantic article showed how Stockman intended to achieve Reagan’s goals but he soon found out that the budget could not be balanced unless the projected military buildup was also on the block. But Reagan was adamant on that point and for Congress to agree with the proposed budget the individual members had to be cajoled and bribed with goodies for their constituents which increased, rather than decreased, the deficit. It had started out at $73.8 billion in 1980 and by 1983 it rose to $207.8 billion. Stockman’s conclusion: Reagonomics was a fraud and should not be repeated. This is why he wrote The Great Deformation.

          The book is a hefty one and I must admit that I have not yet found the time and energy to read it from cover to cover. Instead I picked his thoughts on the Great Depression, the Reagan years and the crash of 2008. There is a connecting thread which Stockman calls Crony-Capitalism and the Austrian equivalent would be Freunderlwirtschaft. Financiers, the large banks including the “Fed,” work hand in glove with politicians in government to bring about financial windfalls for themselves through dubious speculative enterprises, which inevitably create economic bubbles. Once a sufficient size has been achieved, they have to burst.

The terms Freunderlwirtschaft or crony-capitalism are, however, not sufficiently inclusive because they omit the shady aspects of the perpetrators conduct which border on criminality or are outright criminal. This is why Austria’s socialists came up in 1929 with the more descriptive Lumpenkapitalismus.” It was an analogue to the “Lumpenproletariat,” a term which denotes the lowest parasitic element of society that lives on theft, robbery and similar unsavory activities. Lumpenkapitalismus was meant to emphasize the ruthless criminal aspect of capitalist behavior where the only goal is financial profit regardless of means. This led to the Austrian pre-October 1929 situation where, as Hellmuth Andics in 50 Jahre unseres Lebens had pointed out, “industries were deeply indebted to banks, capitalists were without capital and the banks lent beyond their means.” Although the term was meant to characterize the Austrian situation, these conditions were also present in the US at the time and they persist to this day.

Most of us associate the Great Depression with the October 1929 Wall Street crash, but there were actually two events with the second one having occurred in March of 1931. For there ultimate cause we have to go back to WWI which had ruined the economies of Europe. Even the victors, mainly England and France, had become indebted to America and were expected to pay back their loans. They did, but at the price of ruinous reparations from Germany and Austria, that in turn paved the way for WWII. As soon as America’s initial economic depression, caused by the change from a war to a peacetime economy, had lifted, the “roaring twenties” ensued. Europe had to rebuild its industries and in the meantime all the necessities for daily living, as well for future growth, had to be imported from America. But Europeans had no money, and for that they likewise had to go to America where the banks were only too happy to loan some more. This led to the paradox that America paid the Europeans so that they could buy American goods. It was all along our money that made this round trip across the Atlantic.

A situation like this obviously couldn’t last forever. Later in the decade Europe began to stand again on its own feet, which led to drastic reductions of the need for foreign imports. But American industry had been vastly expanded to meet the temporary need and now was stuck with huge inventories in the farming as well as industrial sectors when the need for these exports disappeared. In combination with rampant speculation on the stock market and overextended loans by the banks the 1929 crash became inevitable. Nevertheless, as Stockman points out, even without government intervention the economy began to recover by 1931. But something else intervened which deepened the depression.

1932 was an election year and as usual big promises were made. Herbert Hoover was the incumbent Republican President and ran for re-election. His Democrat opponent was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The Democrat strategy for winning the election was to saddle Hoover and his laissez-faire economics with the exclusive guilt for the 1929 crash. While it can be understood that all is fair in war and election campaigns, the needs of the country should come to the fore once the election is over. This is the point at which serious questions can and have been raised over FDR’s conduct in the interval between election and inauguration, which in those days was on March 4. He not only deliberately refused to help Hoover during the transition to ameliorate the country’s problems but actually undercut him.

Bank failures were still a daily occurrence and something needed to be done. But Roosevelt not only failed to help, he made the situation worse in order to saddle Hoover with the exclusive guilt for the economic debacle, which would then allow him to implement his “New Deal.” Let me now quote an abbreviated version of what happened as presented by Stockman.

 

Indeed, the increasing hints and leaks from FDR’s radical brain trusters … that the incoming president would depreciate the dollar and pursue other inflationary schemes had already begun to trigger a run on gold and currency. Therefore, on February 18 Hoover penned an eloquent letter to FDR outlining the peril from these developments and the urgent need for a reassuring statement from the president-elect outlining his policies with respect to gold, currency, banking and the budget.    

 

          In spite of the urgency of the situation Roosevelt not only ignored the letter but became incommunicado until inauguration day. “According to an insider chronicle written at the time, by February 24 FDR and his inner circle had already embraced a purely cynical outlook.” They would let the national banking situation collapse and the responsibility could then be pinned on Hoover.

 

On Friday February 24 one of the new administration’s insiders leaked the “secret plan to place an embargo on gold exports, suspend gold payments to domestic citizens, and implement measures designed to inflate farm and industrial prices …. The following Monday the leak spread throughout the financial circles with resultant panic. Gold was bought at fever pitch and frightened depositors lined up for cash. By February 23, the daily increase in currency outstanding had risen from the $8 million early February level to about $40 million, and then in the crisis week soared to nearly $200 million on Monday and hit $450 million Friday, March 3, the day before the inauguration. 

 

          FDR’s total disregard of the acute needs of the people in favor of a chimerical “new deal” was reprehensible. As it turned out the deal did not work as proclaimed and the stock market remained in the doldrums. The economy was not rescued by FDR’s domestic programs but Hitler’s war when America became “the arsenal of democracy.” The “new deal” was not only a failure but also started to deform the capitalist economy into crony-capitalism with vastly increased public spending for political purposes and limited effectiveness.

          Reagonomics did not fare much better in the book. “The Reaganite legend begins with the false proposition that the Reagan administration stopped the march of “Big Government” and brought a new fiscal restraint to Washington.” The opposite was the case because the 1980 defense budget of $142 billion rose to $222 billion for 1982 and $386 billion were projected for 1986. Stockman was appalled by these numbers and asked what this Pentagon spending spree was to accomplish? What were we defending against? The only enemy was the Soviet Union and it was deterred by our nuclear arsenal. Since there was never any intention to invade that country and the Soviets had no interest invading ours, what did we need such a huge build-up for?

 

“What got built with the $1.46 trillion Reagan budget was a conventional war-making capacity and force projection ability that the only military expert to occupy the White House in the twentieth century, Dwight Eisenhower, had rejected as of marginal value against a nuclear adversary.  The fiasco in  Vietnam had already proven him correct, demonstrating painfully and tragically that massive conventional forces cannot successfully occupy, pacify and rebuild third world nations of the unwilling.”

 

Stockman points out that although the Reagan years had slightly increased the GDP this was the result of warfare economics and that the federal debt was only brought under control in the last years of the Clinton administration when substantial budget cuts that included the military came into effect. But even then all was not well on Wall Street and the first warning came with the bursting of the dotcom bubble in 2000. Greenspan, the Fed chairman at the time, had warned of “irrational exuberance,” but did nothing about it. The September 11 tragedy of the following year was then taken as the excuse for massive defense spending, leading to trillion dollar deficits although it was hard to conceive how tanks, rockets and submarines will deter terrorists. But there was now an additional new wrinkle. Intelligence failure was regarded as the cause of the event and the spying as well as “homeland security” apparatus had to be greatly expanded at further huge costs. As an aside I might mention that there was indeed an intelligence failure but it resided not in the FBI, CIA or NSA and other assorted government agencies. Its home was in the brains of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and their cronies who ruined the country.

The tech bubble was, however, only the tip of the iceberg; the housing bubble came next and with it the crash of September 2008. The causes of the crash were similar to 1929 with excessive Wall Street speculation and massively overextended major banks. They had not been satisfied with their traditional roles of accepting deposits, keeping them safe for the customer, lending a portion to businesses, charging a certain interest fee for this service and paying the depositor some monthly sum to incite further deposits. Although small banks around the country still functioned and prospered in this way, greed had taken over and the large financial institutions had gone into investment planning, speculations with leveraged buyouts, derivatives, options and so on. These activities not only do nothing for the real economy but enrich speculators and drive up Wall Street stock prices to create the illusion of prosperity. 

Stockman maintains that if the “conservative” Republican administration had stuck to their professed principles and kept their hands off Wall Street some banks would have gone under and so would some bankrupt industries, but the country at large was in no danger of sinking into a second “Great Depression.” A run on the banks as it had occurred in 1929 and 1931 was unlikely because the deposits were insured by the government and there was, therefore, no need for panic. Although the financial industry is deeply interwoven with that of the rest of world the danger was to the speculators rather than to ordinary citizens. With a hands off policy, the economy would have entered a temporary recession but corrected itself in a few years and the country would have emerged stronger. All the excess baggage would have been shed and the lesson: thou shalt not gamble with other people’s money, would have been learned.

The opposite was the case. The Republicans initiated the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), which allowed the Treasury Department to transfer up to $700 billion of our tax money to Wall Street speculators and failing industries. Stockman called it “Crony Capitalist Plunder” and put the major blame on Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and the Federal Reserve Bank’s Chairman, Ben Bernanke. Paulson had come to his government office via Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs financial institution where he had held the post of Chief Executive of its Chicago Office. When Lehman Brothers collapsed on September 5 and AIG appeared to be next. Paulson feared that a total meltdown of the major banks, including Goldman Sachs, would be next. This caused him paint an exceedingly dreary scenario for Bernanke in the hope that the Fed would bail them out. Bernanke was singularly susceptible to a threat of a Great Depression because he had been a university professor prior to becoming banker and the study of causes of 1929 and the prevention of its recurrence were his specialty. Together they conjured up a doomsday scenario that was immediately sold to Congress and led to passage of the act in record time.

    I cannot judge the validity of Stockman’s claim that the ship of state would have righted itself without TARP but it is obvious that a signal was sent to Wall Street: keep on speculating, your institutions are “too big to fail,” and in case of trouble the government will bail you out.

This brings us to May 2015 where a pre-1929 situation is again in the winds. When a reader from Heber City, a small farming community in rural Utah feels obligated to write to The Salt Lake Tribune a letter entitled “U.S. is bankrupt,” one knows that there’s something drastically amiss. His was not the only voice of concern last month. Headlines in The New York Times and the Salt Lake Tribune such as “Middle-class debt,” “Tech Investors See the Froth, But None Call It a Bubble,”  “Banks as Felons or Criminality Lite” one gets an inkling that changes are afoot. The situation is actually worse than in the summer of 1929 because at that time the federal budget was not encumbered by huge interest payments on its debt, the social security and healthcare expenses as well as the massive military cost, and the dollar was backed by gold. Our national debt has reached $18 trillion and keeps climbing. How this can ever be amortized nobody dares to even think about.

In last month’s installment I pointed out that the US no longer has the ability to impose its economic will on other countries through the IMF and World Bank. We have competition in form of the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB) which does not make demands on recipient governments’ a precondition for loans. The dollar is also no longer the only currency foreign governments accept for debt payment and how long the petrodollar, the sale of oil exclusively denominated in dollars, will remain undisputed is also only a question of time. A major correction from the current speculative economic environment is coming and the effects will not be pleasant. Our government knows it and is making preparations for how to deal with the resulting social upheaval that is likely to be a considerably larger replay of 1968.

The exact plans are secret but “Operation Jade Helmet 15,” which will take place during the summer in some Western States, may well be one of the first dress rehearsals. I was alerted to it by the Canadian site globalresearch.com which cited an apparently official document that set off a firestorm on the Internet. Below are the relevant URL and the main aspect.  https://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/258605525?access_key=key-dS1ZhJJ4ZgCH6XXhBqWp&allow_share=true&escape=false&view_mode=scroll

The Commander of United States Army Special Operation Command (USASOC) seeks a written invitation and approval from local officials to conduct a Realistic Military Training (RMT) within their jurisdictions for joint military exercise Jade Helm 15 (JH15). … to improve the Special Operations forces’ UW capability as part of the National Security Strategy ….

It goes on to provide details of the states involved and concentrates mainly on Texas Obviously I cannot vouch that this document came indeed from the government, but Operation Jade Helmet 15 is a fact as attested by numerous Internet articles which in part come from mainstream press sources. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=Operation+Jade+Helm. Although the government denies ulterior motives we have to keep the adage in mind that nothing is true until the government denies it. Since Utah will be part of this exercise I intend discuss it again in the fall when it will be over.

June is going to be another interesting month because three and possibly four major events will take place with impacts on our economy. Greece is essentially bankrupt and does not have the money to make the IMF loan interest payment that is coming due. The sanctions against Russia for the Ukraine problem will expire and the question of renewal, and in what form, will have to be dealt with. In addition, David Cameron’s new administration in Britain is likely to hold a referendum whether or not to remain in the EU. The common element is not only the effect on the Eurozone but on the continuation of the EU itself. To top it off the Iran nuclear negotiations are supposed to be concluded.

Conventional wisdom, as found in newspapers, magazines and TV, seems to have no solution for these problems so let us do what we are frequently encouraged to do: think outside the box, with leaving Iran aside for the moment. Let us assume that Putin and China’s Xi Jinping are rational people who weigh the advantages and disadvantage of a given course of action. They would then agree among each other that the AIIB would lend Greece the money and then gradually wean the country off its Western lenders. This would keep Greece officially in the Eurozone but make it friendly to its new patrons. This in turn would have the effect that the Greeks would vote against perpetuating the sanctions on Russia and since all member states have to agree to renewal, they would die a sudden death, as far as the EU is concerned. After his talk with Xi, Putin would next have a quiet conversation with Angela Merkel, Europe’s Mutti. They have the unique advantage that Putin speaks German and Merkel, as a former East German citizen, speaks Russian. They don’t need an interpreter and can come to an agreement under four eyes. The sanctions, which only hurt their countries, will be lifted and the Russian economy privately realigned with Europe. Europe is incomplete without Russia and it was the friction with Russia that caused the disastrous WWI. This needs to be avoided. If the Brits decide to leave Europe so be it; they can put 1776 in reverse gear and join their former colony. A continental Eurasian economic zone is unbeatable and human welfare would be assured.

This is obviously a daydream and our politicians here would do their utmost to prevent it. But it does sound rational. Here we come, however, to the real crux of the problem. Human beings, for the most part, do not behave rationally. They act on fears, real or imagined, and emotions top reason any day. This is also why economics is not a science and two different Nobel Prize winners have completely different theories how a given country would function best. They operate on preconceptions upon which they build mathematical models. These are then turned into actions that can plunge millions of people into disasters. Stockman wanted to know how the world works. He will find his answer in human emotions and since they have not changed in millennia neither has nor will human conduct.

In conclusion: Stockman wants us to know that political considerations by Presidents of both parties have deformed the economy to an irreparable extent. Although some social safety net is necessary, Social Security and Medicare should have been means tested which would have limited costs. The Democrat welfare state has been turned by Republicans into a “warfare state,” compounding our fiscal dilemma. The problem has become insolvable and one must get prepared for the inevitable “fiscal cliff.”

No one likes to end on a dismal note but unfortunately it does appear to be reality and in the next installment I shall discuss the probable consequences of our “warfare state.”







July 1, 2015

THE ZERO-ONE SOCIETY

          In the previous installment I mentioned that I would discuss the effect of the “warfare state,” so dubbed by David Stockman, on our society. But an event occurred during the middle of the past month that brought me face to face with another fact of our lives: The human race is literally outsourcing itself bit by bit! This may sound strange when put in this way but when one says that the fundamental unit of computer information is a “bit” that consists of a 0 and 1 this is no news. When one also says that computers are displacing human labor, this is likewise common knowledge. But have we really thought through where the road we have embarked on, when we started to rely on computers for our daily lives, will lead to?

The idea for the current installment was born out of frustration and in contrast to most of the others that have been published here it is personal dealing with facts as they impinge upon one’s life in the computer age. For more than half a century I have been submitting scientific papers for publication and the process was relatively simple. I wrote out the paper in long-hand, read it into a Dictaphone, gave the belt to the secretary, she typed it, I corrected it, and off it went to the editor of the journal via U.S. mail. Within a few days the answer came back that the manuscript had been received and within about three months the verdict came back. The paper was either accepted or more commonly conditionally accepted with some revision, but it was hardly ever completely rejected. This process worked to everybody’s satisfaction but computers have made it hopelessly obsolete. 

          Nowadays one has to transmit a given manuscript electronically and instead of simply putting it into the mail, which took less than a minute, one now has to spend at least a couple of hours, if one is skilled as well as lucky, on the electronic transmission process. In addition, it no longer goes directly to the editor of the journal but to the publishing company, which as a result of industry mergers has acquired a number of different journals, and it then sends it out to the one the manuscript is intended for. The journal I was in the process of submitting the paper to, states that authors will be notified in four weeks after receipt, of “conditional” acceptance or rejection. Please note that automatic acceptance no longer exists. Upon “conditional” acceptance the manuscript can be resubmitted and if it is accepted it then takes another several months before it appears as an electronic version and after some more months in print. Thus the whole thing now takes nearly a year before one sees the print version.

          The electronic submission process is strictly regulated by forms that have to be filled out. I no longer have secretaries that can do that and it’s a strictly “do it yourself” chore. Unless one does it on a regular basis this presents a challenge because different journals have different requirements and forms. I dutifully did everything that was required but when I hit “submit” I first got a warning that the artwork of the figures was not quite up to snuff but the journal would ignore it for now. Then came the message that critical information was missing in regard to authorship. I checked and rechecked the information I had provided found it correct but the computer wouldn’t budge and didn’t tell me what it was complaining about. The paper could not be submitted. Obviously, this “didn’t make my day,” as the saying goes here. This inflexibility by the computer reminded me of the “perseveration” one finds as a symptom in patients with brain damage. It forms part of what has previously been called the “organic mental syndrome” – in contrast to psychological based dysfunction. This led me to diagnose computers as suffering from the “inorganic mental syndrome.” There’s no arguing with patient or computer, they are stuck in their groove and that’s the end of the matter.

          The website did provide, however, a feedback section where one could contact the office for help provided one used the options that were available for this purpose. I complied and within nanoseconds the answer came back that a reply will be forthcoming in the next several days. Since within 36 hours nothing had happened and I was itching to get the manuscript off my hands, I called the office on the phone number that had been provided. As everyone who has even a faint acquaintance with today’s America knows, it is impossible to get a person on the first try. You get a “menu” of options and in this situation it was: “If you know the extension of the person you want to talk to please dial it now.” This was followed by a list of names with their extensions but the person I really wanted was not on that list. I gave up in disgust and instead decided to send another e-mail.  

          I should have remembered, however, that in many instances there is still a way out of this program. You can interrupt the “menu” at any time by hitting 0 and if you are lucky you’ll get a person who speaks understandable English. This is not a given because large companies, such as Comcast, which practically own the communications industry, have outsourced their “help” service to third World countries because they don’t want to pay American wages. Although these worthy souls try their best to speak idiomatic English, and even attend courses before they get the job, accents can’t be gotten rid of and when they speak rapidly and or softly, as is commonly the case, any genuine communication is difficult to achieve. Initially the 0 on the phone was meant to be an O for operator but computers don’t recognize Os and thereby provided us with a deeper truth: we are the 0 and the computer is 1!

          The submission process was saved by an e-mail from the publishing office which told me that I had not supplied the copyright transfer form which was on a different module of their website and the specific URL was listed. Hurrah I thought, that’ll take only a couple of minutes. I went to the site but instead of getting the form up came one which told me that the desired one would appear in a couple of seconds and if it didn’t I have to install another program. Now I really hit the ceiling because I’m not going to load up my computer with programs I’ll never ever use again and which may muck things up even more.

          So I sent the e-mail to one of the co-authors and asked her to open the thing and then send it to me. She tried with the same result. By that time it was evening I went to bed and as one says in German: “Den Seinen gibt’s der Herr im Schlafe.”  When I woke up the next morning I wondered that the problem might have been with my desktop which still runs on Windows XP. I, therefore, loaded the URL onto the laptop, which runs on Windows 7, and lo and behold the form came up on the first try.

          Then came the next surprise. It was not a simple one-page form which required an acceptance signature on the bottom of the page, instead there were five pages of questions that had to get their “x” or if this was not possible an explanation had to be supplied. The questions were totally repetitive and all stated in some form or other that I didn’t have financial support from anybody and would not make any money on the paper once it was published. As you can see this is one sentence, but now it took five pages and all conceivable funding or remunerative sources were listed separately. This is obviously a joy for lawyers, a chore for everybody else, and totally meaningless because if it ever were to come to court the opposing lawyer would still find a loophole and tear the document to shreds.

For me it was just a waste of time that had to be endured because I could “x” the document in good conscience. But one of the co-authors is employed by the software company that supplied the program upon which the paper was based. Being an honest person he had a problem with one of the questions. It dealt with receiving any financial compensation, past, present, or future resulting from this publication. His salary does not depend on the success of the manuscript, but it is conceivable that he might get a bonus at some time in the future which might be influenced by increased sales resulting in part from the publication. He, therefore, asked me what he should do and I told him “x” the thing as a no because his salary didn’t depend on it and any potential bonus that he might receive in future years was irrelevant. All in all it took about a week before the submission was sent off and its receipt acknowledged by the company. We are now officially in the four week waiting period before “conditional” acceptance or utter rejection.

In spite of trials and tribulations the submission process was at long last a success story. But this is not guaranteed in our electronic age, as another example from the fall of 2013 proved. Every week I receive at least three or four invitations on my university e-mail account to submit an original article to the journal the e-mail originated from. These are for the most part “open-source” where you pay for the privilege of authorship. I regularly immediately delete them but one struck my eye because it was personal, referred to work we had recently published, requested another one on that topic, and was signed by two professors. When I clicked on the URL to which the reply was to be sent the answer came back from our university “access denied.”

This raised my curiosity. I went to Plan B and tried to forward the message to my private e-mail account. This attempt was likewise unacceptable to the university computer so here came Plan C.  I copied the entire message, sent it to my computer for safe-keeping, and opened the URL on the private e-mail account. Now came the surprise. It was indeed a legitimate journal and the official publication of the Iranian Clinical Neurophysiology Society. Since, as everybody knows, Iran is officially branded as a terrorist state I had to give the matter some thought. The NSA computers, in neighboring Bluffdale, probably read my mail because I may well be on their list for talking on the phone to friends, relatives and colleagues abroad. But science should have nothing to do with politics. It is an international endeavor and since the journal reaches non-Western countries such as Russia, China and India and I do want to get the message on the clinical use of infraslow electromagnetic brain activity (< 0.1Hz) across to a global audience I agreed to write such a paper.

The decision was warmly welcomed in Tehran and the paper was ready for submission by the spring of last year. Now the problem started. Half-way through the submission process it required a format my computer does not support. I wrote to the journal explaining the problem and asking that one of their secretaries should accept the manuscript as is, since it was written upon special invitation and if there were to be a problem to let me know.  Well, this was rational but what I did not appreciate was that I was not dealing with human beings but with computers in some publishing house. There was no reply and over the next several weeks other attempts to e-mail the request likewise remained unanswered. Instead came a notification that I have an “incomplete submission” that should be completed and my reply would be appreciated. This would be reasonable except that it was an automatic “no reply” generated message and any reply that I sent anyway was, of course, automatically deleted. Now I was fed up and wrote a message to the original e-mail address notifying them that I withdraw the paper. Of course, there was no reply and instead am still getting every month the reminder that I have an incomplete submission. The most recent one came on Saturday of last week 

Theoretically I could still call the company because a phone number was provided but there is a ten hour time difference between Utah and Tehran, I don’t speak Farsi and there is no guarantee that the person on the other end of the line speaks understandable English. In addition it’s a publishing house rather than the journal itself and a phone call to Iran would surely perk up the electronic ears of the NSA as a potential terrorist suspect. Once you’ve got that label, deserved or not, there’s no way of getting rid of it. Since I don’t need these potential problems I just wrote off the whole thing as a learning experience and delete the reminders.

Remaining on Iran for a moment longer I need to point out that our daughter was last month in that country for three weeks studying archeologic sites. Her reports about the people, living conditions and government interference were most informative. The blog with stories and photos can be found at http://journals.worldnomads.com/krodin/country/101/Iran.

My love-hate relationship first with general purpose computers, then with specialized ones, and finally the personal computer started in 1956. At that time I was an instructor in the Psychiatry Department of the University of Michigan which contained, in addition to its regular functions, a Mental Health Research Institute and the EEG laboratory. Epilepsy had been my special interest ever since Mayo Clinic days and the question to what extent the slow injection of a convulsant drug (Metrazol-Cardiazol, originally used for treating impending heart attacks) could predict future spontaneous epileptic seizures was a hot topic. We paid student volunteers to undergo the test. By the way in those days were no Institutional Review Boards - IRBs- our conscience was the guide of what was and was not permissible. In contrast to previous studies that had been reported in the literature, we did thorough neurologic, EEG and psychiatric evaluations, coded the data and then subjected them to statistical analysis on the university’s IBM computer. Numerous statistically significant correlations were obtained and the findings were then published in the top international EEG journal. This set the pattern for all the subsequent efforts that involved statistical assessment of data.

While I did publish the correlations that made sense there was also one that I regarded as so outlandish that I did not include it. It had to do with the fact that slightly more than half of the subjects reported within a few seconds a strong sensation of an odor. It was usually unpleasant and its character differed with individuals. Since this was a known fact from patients whom we had given the drug to at Mayo to induce seizures and thereby study their origin, I gave no thought to it but did include its presence or absence in the correlation matrix. There was only one significant correlation: Marked subjective odor correlated with higher IQ. This was so incongruous with everything we knew at the time that I did not think it wise to include the finding in the publication because it would simply throw doubt on the rest of the data that were more in line with then current thinking. I stashed it away in memory, but became more curious later when I had myself injected with the drug in order to find out what my tolerance was. There was immediately a strong odor of “bitter almonds” and the recognition: oh, that’s what they are talking about. The drug had activated a childhood memory when I pried open apricot kernels from our tree and ate them. Since they contained cyanide, which I didn’t know at the time, it was my good fortune that I abandoned this practice after a few trials. But there it was, more than thirty years later. Why do I mention all of this? Because our fellow scientists have now found out that loss of sense of smell can be an early predictor of dementia. There’s a simple test: if you can’t smell peanut butter when the jar is about 10 centimeters (not quite four inches) from your nose you’re potentially in trouble of dementing. Loss of sense of smell preceded awareness of memory problems and what may be worse it may even predict death within five years. I don’t know how accurate these studies were but they are in line with the Metrazol experience linking a sensation of odor with IQ. In retrospect the linkage to memory is not entirely unexpected because the olfactory portion of our brains is intimately connected to those that are involved with memory. The ancient Greeks told us “Know Thyself,” so head for your peanut butter jar and if you don’t smell anything see your doctor who will probably refer you to a neurologist.

When I subsequently moved to Detroit’s Lafayette Clinic and Wayne State University everybody thought that I had gone slumming. One just doesn’t move from Ann Arbor to Detroit if one has any hope of professional scientific advancement. But the misnamed “Lafayette Clinic” had its lure. It had been given that name by some bureaucrat simply because the building was located on Lafayette Street. In reality it was the Psychiatric Research and Teaching Hospital of the State of Michigan and funded through its Mental Health Department. My job was to create a Neurology and EEG division within the Clinic in order for the budding psychiatrists to learn that the mind does not float in outer space but is intimately linked to the brain and its disorders.

The decision to move to Detroit turned into one of the better ones of my life and also was aided by the fact that the Chief of Outpatient Psychiatry was Dr. Peter Beckett a friend from Mayo Clinic days and distant relative of the well-known author. He was convinced that if he coded the histories, psychological test results and examination findings of schizophrenic patients he might unlock the secrets of that disease with the help of the computer that could grind out numbers with lightning speed. My goal was to do this for epilepsy. Since I had already started on that road in Ann Arbor, continued on it and modified his coding system for our epilepsy patients, as well as for children who presented problems in school. In 1961 we described it for the scientific community and presented initial results. But before going into print I wanted some feed-back from the computer community and presented the data at the annual IEEE meeting (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) in San Diego.

The memorable part was not the meeting but the cocktail party beforehand where everybody stood around chatting. Obviously, I was out of my depth but did strike up a conversation in regard to our respective work. When I told one of the engineers what I was doing, I got: “Oh, you’re just a consumer!” Well, that was and is correct, but if there were not these “consumers” the engineers would be out of their jobs. In addition the attitude of not listening to what we “consumers” want and really need, can lead them into all sorts of alleys and byways that then saddle us with equipment which only approximates what we’d really like to have. In this way medical and scientific research in general, is largely driven by the gadgets that are available and have to be made use of, rather than innovative thought which then leads to breakthroughs. There are, of course, exceptions and in my field the CT and MRI scans were truly revolutionary while EEG, although now digitally recorded, has so far largely stayed put in regard to clinical practice.

Without computers my scientific life would have flown into completely different directions and most of all I would not have had the type of fulfilling retirement that I currently enjoy. Colleagues from around the country and Europe send their data into my “drop box.” I analyze them in my home while intermittently glancing up at the mountains that remind me there’s another world out there that can get along perfectly well without me.

This is the proper role of computers. They should be our servants but are now on the way to become our masters. We behave like Goethe’s magician’s apprentice who changed the broom into a servant to prepare a bath for him. But this “servant,” kept pouring water into the tub although it was already overflowing. Cutting it in half was of no use because two brooms now kept fetching and pouring more water. It took the return of the magician, who knew the right words, to send the broom back into the corner where it belonged. There is a profound lesson in this poem. Without the master magician who puts a brake on our robotic engineers, who are busy creating “artificial intelligences,” we are about to lose our most essential ingredient: humane-ness. The servant is well on its way to become the master and most of us don’t even realize it.               

By coincidence the July-August issue of The Atlantic came at the end of the week and so did Foreign Affairs. Both deal with various aspects of our computer society. The Atlantic cover page proclaimed: “Technology will soon erase millions of jobs. Could that be a good thing?” The article itself, by Derek Thompson, was entitled: “A world without work.” It discusses the ways people might be able to cope with the impending massive lay-offs in our labor force. The Foreign Affairs issue also tackles the problem, and its harbingers for the future, in a series of four articles. The cover page shows a Robotic Hamlet pondering a robot skull and the title is: “Hi, Robot. Work and Life in the Age of Automation.” The Introduction by Gideon Rose, editor of the magazine, briefly introduces the authors of the articles as well as their topics and concludes:

 

Something is clearly happening here, but we don’t know what it means. And by the time we do, authors and editors may well have been replaced by algorithms along with everybody else. Until then, we offer these dispatches from the frontlines of the robotic revolution.

 

          While the majority of the articles discuss the profound economic and technological changes robots will bring about, the article by Professor Illah Reza Nourbahksh: “The Coming Robot Dystopia – All  Too Inhuman,” goes to the heart of the question of who we are as a human race and what do we want to be. Hamlet’s question needs an answer and Professor Nourbahksh provides a guideline. Computer Science departments should “require that every degree candidate receive sufficient training in ethics and some exposure to sociology.” In addition, some government regulation of the industry will be needed. To this I would like to add that the humanities in general, which are the foundation of our culture, should no longer be sidelined in high school and college curricula in favor of “math and science.” The production of technocrats was the desired goal of Nazis and Communists. The outcome was Auschwitz on the one hand and the Gulags on the other. Without an anchor in the past that allows us to discern what our race did right and where it went wrong we are likely to unwittingly create a future that will not be worth living in. At stake now is the fundamental question who we are and what we see as our purpose on this planet. All else will flow from the answer. Ignoring the question is also an answer because it amounts to an abdication of responsibility for the future of our children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren whose arrival some of us are privileged to witness.

          This article is intended to serve only as an introduction and our interaction with computers will be further explored in a subsequent issue. It may not be next month because world events, especially in regard to Greece and Iran, are coming to a head right now. They will require discussion in regard to their meaning for our future as well as that of the rest of the world.







August 1, 2015

GREECE, IRAN, AND THE POPE

          The title’s juxtaposition of events dealing with a Greek Orthodox, an authoritarian Muslim country and the leader of the Catholic Church may strike one as strange. But there is a common denominator: the human condition with all of its hopes, fears and prejudices. The past month was another example of the difficulties human beings have in order to come to some type of agreement. Fortunately reason prevailed over passion; although the situation in regard to the Greek bailout and the fate of the nuclear agreement with Iran is still hotly debated.

Regardless of cause or occasion it is always human personalities whose interactions decide the fate of countries and at times that of the world. Although in the case of Greece, the pundits in our country frame the situation as a conflict between Western creditors and Greek debtors, it was more than that. The major antagonists were the International Monetary Fund, IMF, and the European Central Bank, ECB, versus the Greek government. But banks and governments are run by people who may hold different world views and certainly have different priorities.

It is correct that in the past the affairs of the Greek people were thoroughly mismanaged by a series of corrupt governments. They bought favors with their wealthy constituents through much too lenient taxation as well as a pension system that was completely out of line with the rest of the world. When ship owners, of the Onassis type, were exempt from paying taxes it is no wonder that many of the common people cheated on paying their share. When the former group even managed to have its tax-exempt status anchored in the Constitution, future trouble was inevitable.

Regardless of country and political system it is, and always has been, a small group of people, the oligarchs, who really hold the purse strings and thereby political power. As pointed out on other occasions the official government is usually the front (Aushängeschild) behind which the power brokers go about their business, which has nothing to do with the welfare of the people of their country. For them the official government exists to provide the excuse for their actions and to keep the people from revolting. Shakespeare knew this when he wrote “all the world is a stage.” The politicians are the actors who dutifully recite the lines that are prepared for them by the play-writer (s). In a democracy they will be rewarded with re-election, but if they rebel they will be dropped or in some cases even assassinated, with President Kennedy perhaps the most recent example (Shattered Trust November 1, 2013; Monumental Medical Cover-up November 15, 2013; The Cover-up Continues December 1, 2013).

It should, therefore, not be surprising that the Greek public debt mounted and Western lenders were only too happy to provide more money. One now has to realize that banks are not charitable institutions. They have only one interest and that is to make money for their bank! The more they lend the more they hope to get back in form of the “interest” the debtor has to pay. This was the cause of the housing bubble in our country where banks provided indiscriminant loans to people who obviously would never be able to amortize them. It led to the 2008 financial collapse from which even we have not yet fully recovered.

The Greek lending and spending spree went on for several years until the debt had reached proportions when even interest rates could no longer be paid. In tried and true fashion of brutal capitalism, as discussed in relation to Naomi Kline’s Shock Doctrine (Ukraine Crisis March 15, 2014), the bankers now tried to extract their money through  “austerity” measures that threw people into poverty  and increased the unemployment rate to 26% and among the younger population to more than 50 %. Under these circumstances it should have come as no surprise that the Greek people got fed up with their government and elected the Syriza party, which is composed of a variety of left leaning elements who range from moderate Social-Democrats to outright Communists, with Alexis Tsipras at its head. He appointed Yanis Varoufakis as his finance minister whose hallmark was riding a motorcycle. This certainly did not sit well with the bankers who immediately vowed to bring down this elected government and re-establish a pliant one. It was not only the insistent Greek demand for debt forgiveness and the blunt confrontational attitude of Varoufakis that brought on the June crisis. The bankers correctly perceived that the Tsipras government presented a fundamental threat to what I like to call “robber” capitalism that had to be met.

Tsipras had promised the Greek people that he would bring an end to the increasing austerity measures, and he was elected last January on that basis. But he had underestimated his opponents who simply demanded their pound of flesh and couched the real reasons for their intransigence behind legalities. Their stance was that debt forgiveness does not exist in the Euro zone and if the Greeks didn’t like it, they could leave. The law had to be upheld and respected because an exception for Greece would then be demanded by other debtors and the whole building that had so carefully been erected for their benefit would come tumbling down.

Since Germany, via the European Central Bank, was the major lender, with the IMF playing a secondary role, the battle became personal with Angela Merkel and her finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, in one corner and Alexis Tsipras with his finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, in the other. One must now know that there has been bad blood between Greece and Germany ever since WWII, the background of which is not well known in our country. A brief summary to put the conflict in context is, therefore, in order because it shows how “der Fluch der boesen Tat” (the curse of the evil act), as Schiller expressed it in his Wallenstein trilogy, poisons the lives of the yet unborn.

The Greek tragedy started with Mussolini, Hitler and Churchill. Mussolini was miffed that his partner kept annexing or invading other countries in Europe without even consulting him. His goal was to re-establish, at least in part, the Roman Empire and in that pursuit had already conquered Ethiopia. After the German victory over France he felt that the time was right to add Albania to his rule. Since that country was a pushover he then tried his luck by invading Greece. But the Greeks were fighters. They not only threw the Italian army out of Greece, but during the winter pursued it into Albania.

The situation in the spring of 1941 was complex. Hitler was the dominant force in Europe and Churchill had few options to win the war. He, therefore, intended “to put Europe aflame.” By that he meant to create crises in  various European countries which would keep Hitler occupied in extinguishing these fires while he, Churchill, was assiduously working to bring Roosevelt’s America aboard and, hoping against hope, even Stalin. To execute his plan he offered the Greeks his help against Mussolini but that resulted in the now famous oxi, thanks but no thanks. Hitler then arranged for Yugoslavia to join the Tripartite Agreement (Berlin 1940, between Germany, Italy and Japan) in order to protect his southern flank for the upcoming invasion of Russia. The treaty was signed on March 25, 1941 in Vienna.

Now Churchill saw his opportunity and instigated a coup in Belgrade that negated the treaty with Germany. Within days Hitler not only rectified that affront but also took the opportunity to rescue Mussolini from his Greek debacle. In spite of valiant opposition, which even Hitler acknowledged in his Reichtstag speech of May 4, 1941, the Greek army succumbed to superior forces. Nevertheless, some elements of the populace kept the war going through guerilla attacks. This became a turning point. Had the Greeks accepted defeat and abstained from further hostile actions, in the manner of Vichy France, it is likely that Hitler may not have harassed them because he already had his hands full with the attempt to conquer the Soviet Union and to bail out Mussolini in Libya.

As mentioned above the Greeks are fighters and they now had an ally in Churchill who kept supplying the guerilla forces in Greece as well as Yugoslavia. Hitler’s answer was to relegate them guerilla fighters to the role of “bandits,” or in modern parlance “terrorists,” who had to be dealt with in the most ruthless manner lest the contagion were to spread. In pursuit of this goal, hostages were taken and murdered and villages were razed to the ground and the country was systematically plundered.

After the war the Greeks asked for reparations from Adenauer’s West German government, they knew that they wouldn’t get a penny from the East German government, but were told to wait until German re-unification. When that came they were told to be patient because Germany first had to solve all the problems inherent in integrating a run-down communist economy into the Western part of the country. Thereafter the German governments had other concerns until they were rudely reminded by Greeks, earlier this year that they have no business to talk of legalities when they themselves had defaulted on obligations towards their country. Debt forgiveness could be regarded as reparations for actions during WWII and one would be done with it.

This reminder incensed the self-righteous Schäuble and further negotiations were doomed. Even stiffer demands were made which in turn led to the Greek referendum that gave Tsipras its vote of confidence in his negotiation efforts. It was useless. Germany still had the upper hand, this time in financial rather than military power, and the Greeks had to knuckle under in spite of even stiffer “austerity” demands. Tsipras now had no choice but to accept defeat. Nevertheless, the German government had done itself a great disservice which will haunt the country for years to come. Instead of unifying Europe its “rectitude” led to animosities that will continue to linger. The fact is that the Greeks simply don’t have, and never will have, the $320+ billion to repay the debt regardless how much austerity is practiced because the latter will simply further ruin the country’s economy.

These events reminded me of Sophocles’ Antigone which dealt precisely with this theme of legal versus moral obligations. In Greek tragedies there are no happy endings and we will see how the current one will play out in the coming months and years. Will Chancellor Merkel, who has been dubbed Europe’s Mutti, have the will, courage and political skill to find middle ground even in the face of possible rebellion by her party’s doctrinaires? As Europe’s mother she has to take care of all her children in equal measure and some of them are fervently against a Greek bailout. It is an immense task, which may actually be beyond the capabilities of a human being. The people in Germany as well as some other European countries are largely against providing Greece with further loans, but someone should remind them that the entire “Western civilization” is built on the foundation laid by the Greeks and that this represents a moral debt than can never be repaid. Also: what would we say if our creditors were to demand the $18+ trillion we currently owe? This is an astronomical sum that as everybody knows, but doesn’t admit to, will never be repaid.

Western capitalism, as exemplified by U.S. conduct is at a crossroads that it apparently fails to perceive. How long can an economy continue to function when it is largely built on consumption which can only be financed by debt? How long will it be until the middle class fully realizes that it is being systematically robbed? Traditional savings accounts have been rendered useless because interest rates are kept at near zero. In order to save for retirement or major illness one has to “invest” in the stock market, which amounts to gambling in Las Vegas. There may be a winning streak for a while but it always ends in catastrophe. Our PhD economists need to put their heads together, lay the facts on the line, and present our politicians with a viable alternative to the current situation before it is too late.  

 The other major news of the past month was the treaty with Iran, which is so vigorously opposed by Israel and its cohorts in Congress. The treaty, as it stands right now, gives us some respite from constant wars in its attempts to normalize relations with the clerical regime in Iran. While most of the world breathed a sigh of relief, the Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu did the opposite. It stoked fears of what Iran would do next, once the sanctions are lifted. A doomsday scenario for Israel is depicted, because the Iranians will cheat and continue to gear up towards the bomb in secret and when the world wakes up to that fact it will be too late to prevent them from actually testing one.

Now comes the irony of which the American public is to be kept in blissful ignorance. Bibi, as he is so fondly called by some of his countrymen, speaks from experience. This is precisely the way Ben-Gurion handled himself while his scientists and technicians were secretly working on creating the bomb at the Dimona nuclear plant. I have referred to Seymour Hersh’s Samson Option previously (Netanyahu’s gift Part II, April 15, 2011) but it is remarkably how this same scenario is now playing itself out in the minds of the Israeli government and its adherents here. Even Iran’s insistence that the UN inspectors have to notify the Iranian government 24 days prior to their arrival had its Israeli counterpart. Ben-Gurion completely rejected UN inspections and only relented to an American team given access to the Dimona plant after Kennedy granted his wish for Hawk missiles and agreed that the visits would be announced well in advance of the Americans arrival. In order to mislead the inspectors Ben-Gurion built, as Hersh put it, a Potemkin village complete with control room that was then paraded before the Americans. Although they were shown around the fake plant, access to the reactor core was not allowed. Please read the book and you will understand what is really going on.

Netanyahu’s stance of fear-mongering may seem to be un-understandable by some well-meaning people who ask themselves: why can’t we all get along? The answer to that question came from another Jew in another context. Sigmund Freud found that many of his female patients developed a crush for him but accused Freud of having sexual interests in them. He called the phenomenon “projection” and didn’t seem to have realized that he had stumbled onto a universal aspect of human conduct.

Let me explain. All of us live foremost in our thoughts and expect others to conform to how we feel. Our thoughts are, however, personal and conditioned by heredity as well as life experiences. Since we are not fully aware of this fact we expect that the “other” will respond in the same manner as we would under a given set of circumstances. In other words, I will ascribe present as well as potential future conduct of the “other” to my concepts and if they go against my grain will accuse him/her of planning to carry them out against me. This scenario plays itself out daily in human interactions and is readily observable in marital partners. It becomes, however, dangerous when it involves leaders of nations. Unless one is aware of the ubiquity of this phenomenon world history cannot be understood.

The current Israel-Iran situation is a good example. Netanyahu ascribes nefarious plans to Iran, not only in regard to bomb building but overall aggressive impulses against Israel. He loves to point to the Book of Esther to show Persia’s rulers hatred of Jews. He fails, however, to point to Cyrus who freed the Jews from their Babylonian exile and allowed them to rebuild the Jerusalem temple. This is an inconvenient truth that does not fit into the perennial enemy image and must not be mentioned.

All the hostile plans the Iranian mullahs are supposed to have against Israel are assumptions based on actual Israeli plans against their country. The documentation for this statement was provided by Israel Shahak in Open Secrets – Israel’s nuclear and foreign policies, which I discussed in the August 15, 2012 issue. It was entitled The Impending War with Iran and occasioned by the belligerent speeches of then presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In retrospect it might have been wiser to end with a question mark rather than period. But the war of words is far from over and we don’t know if or when it will spill over into military action. Our Republicans are already announcing “that the treaty will be torn up by the next president,” obviously assuming that he will come from their ranks.

In the furor surrounding the merits of this treaty we should remember that, although not perfect, it was the best that could be achieved under difficult circumstances. For this our Secretary of State, Senator John Kerry, deserves our gratitude. He has worked tirelessly around the clock to get the best possible deal even in spite of a fractured leg. While on crutches he kept negotiating in a cooperative rather than confrontational manner. Having been able to establish good working relationships with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, he has already averted one potential war with Syria and its Russian sponsor during September 2013, and with some luck the current treaty may hold. The alternative is war which is in no one’s best interest. Thank you Senator Kerry.   

This brings me to Pope Francis who seemingly has nothing to do with these political fights. But when we think about it we realize that he represents the opposite pole of the human condition. The politicians who were discussed above tend to live on strife and some of them on stoking fears. Francis represents kindness, compassion and help to the extent help is possible. He is a true Catholic in the literal meaning of the word, as it was originally intended i.e. “Universal.” He does not erect barriers but tries to remove them. As Archbishop of Buenos Aires he formed a deep and lasting friendship with Rabbi Abraham Skorka, the shepherd of its Jewish community. Rabbi Skorka is also a role model since he is not wedded to a doctrinaire religious point of view but by profession a biophysicist. 

The friends, again in the original meaning of the word rather than its degraded form of Facebook correspondents, had a series of conversations about God and the world which were published in 2010 under the title Heaven and Earth. The book can be highly recommended because it covers all of the “sore spots” of contemporary society in an intelligent, rational manner. While it provides a glimpse into the thoughts of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, National Geographic Magazine gives us a close-up of his current life.

The August 2015 issue has as its cover picture the pope standing at the entrance to the Sistine Chapel looking at the distant altar and Michelangelo’s Last Judgment above it. In the Introduction to the article Susan Goldberg, the magazine’s Editor in Chief, wrote that Dave Yoder, the photographer, had unprecedented access to the pope for six months during last year which resulted in “67,000 pictures and plenty of stories.” The article itself was written by Robert Draper and is headlined “Will the Pope change the Vatican? Or will the Vatican change the Pope?” The subtitle is “As Francis makes his first U.S. visit, his emphasis on serving the poor over enforcing doctrine has inspired joy and anxiety in Roman Catholics.”

Yoder and Draper tell the story of a simple Buenos Aires priest who started professional life as a lab technician as well as, briefly, a bouncer at a club. But he was an intellectual and for a poor young man the best way to get a solid education and become a priest was the Jesuit Collegio Maximo de San José. His professors soon noted that this was no ordinary person. Bergoglio became “a spiritual advisor to students and teachers alike. He taught unruly boys, washed the feet of prisoners, studied overseas.” His habit of speaking truth to authority, his Jesuit supervisors, later got him into trouble but his career was redeemed “by an admiring cardinal.” In 1992 he was made bishop, archbishop in 1998 and cardinal in 2001. His rise to the papacy after Pope Benedict’s surprising resignation was not entirely unexpected because he had been the runner-up during Benedict’s election process.

Although this is an extremely brief sketch, and more information will be contained in upcoming book, it does provide us with a probable answer to the question asked in the title of the article. A person, who washes the feet of the poor as a student, falls to his knees to pray with Evangelicals at an ecumenical event as archbishop and rides the subway instead of a limousine as a cardinal, is not going to be awed by a Curia. He can say with Socrates: “Meletus and Anytus can kill me, they cannot harm me.” He will do his level best to change the system at a deliberate and measured pace and if God grants him the time he will be able to completely revamp this ancient institution.

The reasons why I believe that this will be the case are threefold. A 78 year old priest is no longer subject to the whims of the day and certainly not to the dictates of Vatican bureaucrats. The secret to his success is that he combines two facets of the Church in his person. What I am going to relate now is not well known in this country but common knowledge and even a matter of jokes in Catholic European countries. The major monastic orders of the Church are the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Benedictines and the Jesuits. The Franciscans practice the virtues of Saint Francis and do not concern themselves with worldly events over which they have no control anyway. They serve suffering humanity. On the other end are the Jesuits. They are the intellectuals who do involve themselves in politics. They tend to be practical but in defense of their order they erect barriers. They follow the law but bend it whenever it suits their purpose and then defend the change with equal vigor. The Dominicans and Benedictines tend to place themselves somewhere in the middle. Thus our pope, I am speaking as a Catholic, was always a Franciscan at heart but chose the Jesuits because he needed the education for a life in the greater world, which only they could provide. That he thereby would come into conflict with his Jesuit superiors was a foregone conclusion.  

Another reason is the fact that here was “a dour priest” who was, as if by magic, transformed into a joyful charismatic pope. Why this transformation? I believe he feels deep gratitude that he has been given the opportunity to serve, in addition to the poor and underprivileged, the wider needs of the suffering world. A burden he had carried throughout his life of not being able to do more for a world that is on its way to destruction, has been lifted. But he knows that he has only a limited amount of time at his disposal. This is why he published the Encyclical Laudato Si during the past month, which has been both praised and attacked.

The title will leave people wondering but it was taken from the AD 1225 Canticle of the Creatures by St. Francis’ The second strophe starts with “Laudato sie, mi’ Signore cum tucte le tue creature, …. Praised be You, my Lord, with all Your creatures.” It is a sign of our times that the pope is told he has no business of interjecting himself into the field of ecology, and foremost climate change, because that is something scientists and politicians have to concern themselves with. His critics, of course, refrain from saying that changing our attitudes towards the pollution of our planet and its inhabitants will cost money. We don’t have it because we have to spend it on arms to defend against an assortment of terrorists as well as China and Russia. Although the Encyclical is on the Internet for free I have ordered the paperback edition and after studying it, will provide an opinion on its contents.

Let me close for now with a joke that highlights the differences between the four Catholic monastic orders and why tearing down the wall between the two extremes by Pope Francis is so significant. On one of her trips to Europe our daughter brought me from Austria a small booklet making fun of the clergy. It was originally published in France translated into German and this is my translation into English: Four priests are sitting together when suddenly the light goes out. The Franciscan kneels down and asks the Lord for the gift of light. The Benedictine recites his breviary, which he knows by heart anyway, The Dominican starts a monologue about the nature of light and the cause of darkness. When the light comes back on the Jesuit has vanished. He had changed the fuse.

While this points to the practical nature of Jesuits they are also known for a streak of deviousness as the next little item shows. A Jesuit arrives in a town and asks a passer-by for directions to the Cathedral. The answer was: “Oh, my. I don’t think you’ll ever get there. You’d always have to go straight ahead.” The Cardinals hoped they would get a Franciscan pope, the Curia banked on Francis’ Jesuit credentials.  As it turned out he combines both aspects in his personality structure and this is why I believe that if he were given the time he would outfox the Curia.

In these difficult times beset by strife Pope Francis surely deserves our prayers. Given the chance, he may even be able to bring some sanity into our political-economic systems that are destroying the dignity of the human being in favor of the quest for money and power.







September 1, 2015

THE POPE AND THE WORLD

          The discussion in the previous issue revolved around the then most topical areas: Greece’s default on its loan interest payments, the nuclear treaty with Iran and Pope Francis attempt to arouse our conscience towards the world we inhabit. The Greek crisis was temporarily resolved with another loan. But this only postponed the final reckoning which inevitably has to come because one cannot indefinitely borrow oneself out of debt. The Iranian treaty is still hotly debated and will be taken up by Congress later this month. Pope Francis’ Encyclical has largely been given the “silent treatment,” but since he is a determined person he will bring his message later this month into the lion’s den of capitalism.

          As mentioned in the August issue there is indeed a common denominator to these seemingly different events. The first two demonstrate Nietzsche’s “Will to Power” by the ruling circles of our world, while the Pope re-interpreted “dominion” of Genesis I from domination to stewardship. We are dealing here with two completely different views about humanity’s place in the universe and the choice our societies will make between them will determine the fate of our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. At present we still have this choice, but opportunity is fleeting and unless it is grasped now, it will be lost for a long time and possibly forever.

These are serious problems which require serious discussion and the mentioned choice needs to be clearly formulated and then placed in simple language to the citizens of the various countries of the world. I am emphasizing simple language because even in our country the literacy level has sunk to an extent that a book like On Heaven and Earth, which presents the conversations of the then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Bergoglio-the future pope, with his friend Rabbi Abraham Skorka, has been called by some readers: “boring;” “hard to understand;” “highly intellectual-somewhat over my head.” Although these were the exceptions and the overall rating was 4.8 stars out of 5, they need to be taken into account because they now, unfortunately, represent a large segment of our society. This is also the explanation of what has come to be called the “Trump phenomenon.” Donald Trump, who wants to be elected president of our country next year, has achieved remarkable popular success. This is due to the fact that he seems to represent the quint-essential American success story. He also speaks bluntly and appeals to the lower instincts of his audience, rather than their intellects and ethics.

Let me, therefore, spell out the philosophical underpinning of our society and its current economic model. This will then be contrasted with that of the Pope. Some readers may immediately balk at the word “philosophical” and assume that what follows will be “over their heads.” Although this assumption is justified by current word usage, it is too limiting. Here is a little example from my life. In 1958 I was given the opportunity to set up a neurology unit that contained twenty beds, at the State of Michigan’s psychiatric research and teaching hospital, misnamed the Lafayette Clinic. The future head nurse of the as yet non-existent unit approached me with the question: “Dr. Rodin, what is your philosophy?” To put this question into context one needs to know that Mrs. Dixon was not only of African-American but also Sioux descent which proved to be a remarkable DNA mixture. I was immediately taken aback by the question because “philosophy” for me meant Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer of whom I had learned something in school but they had no relevance for day to day life and by then had neither the time nor the interest to study them. But obviously I had to come up with an answer so I said: “Well, we’ll teach the psychiatrists that the mind has something to do with the brain, carry out research on epilepsy, and at the same time help our patients the best we can.”  In other words the “philosophy” was: We’re going to do what is expected of us and we’ll do it right. This satisfied her and we got along famously. She did her part of the job well and I did mine in a truly cooperative manner to the satisfaction of everybody concerned.           

While writing this paragraph I was reminded of the question a reporter asked George W. Bush at some point prior to becoming President: “Who is your favorite philosopher?” Poor George W. who had hardly ever read a book in his life was dumbstruck for a moment and then replied: “Jesus Christ.” Well yes, Jesus had a philosophy of life, namely that as God’s children we have to take care of each other and it certainly would have been nice if Mr. Bush had really meant what he said. If he had adhered during his subsequent presidency, within reasonable limits, to what Jesus had wanted us to do, he would have spared the world, and especially the people of the Middle East, an immeasurable amount of grief. The question Mrs. Dixon asked me was, therefore, the most appropriate one in order to find out: who is this guy I’m supposed to work for.

So; what is the philosophy of our ruling circles? Obviously it is Capitalism with a capital C to which all else is subordinated. What is its official definition? “… an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.” The key words are private and profit, with the latter restricted to financial gain. In practice this means: He who has not only needs to keep what he has, but enlarge it to the maximum attainable extent. As long as the private individual engaged in this pursuit has a social conscience there is nothing wrong with this because it is in part a law of life. Everything wants to grow and as long as growth stays within limits and does not encroach on other living beings all is well. But when, for example, the vine chokes the tree, the tree will be mutilated. The tree can’t help itself; it needs a human being to deliver it from that fatal embrace. This is the lesson, which keeps getting ignored. Not only does nature need us, we need nature and each other.

We can take another example from nature: cancer. Our organism is a unit composed of a myriad of individual cells. As long as they are engaged in functions that sustain the organism all is well and the organism, with its individual organs, is regarded as healthy. But at times, for unknown reasons, a small group of cells deviates from the path of common good and starts ravaging other cells for their “profit.” The spread is initially at the cost of their neighbors but subsequently via the bloodstream the rest of the organism. They thereby destroy the organism and with it themselves. This can be regarded as the analog to our current excesses of capitalism which is largely devoid of ethical considerations. Although never expressed as crudely as in the movie “Wall Street,” the dictum is: Greed is Good.

Now comes the problem: our current capitalist model, which we try to enforce, either by war or economic “sanctions,” on the rest of the world is, due to its excesses, becoming unsustainable. Why should this be the case? Because it is exclusively built on debt. The Bible warns us for good reason: “Never a debtor or lender be.” Those of us who grew up during the Great Depression know that it was brought about by banks speculating beyond reasonable limits with their investors’ money. We, the common people who were then confronted with the result, learned the lesson and our parents taught us frugality as the proper way of life. It came in good stead and our generation was able to prosper not only in this country but also in Europe after the ravages of the war had been repaired.

 This model of living no longer applies. While we were encouraged to shun debt, the current generation is encouraged to assume an ever greater load. There are several reasons for this. One important one can be summarized in the word: Outsourcing! Our present economic dilemma, where the middle class is losing its footing and descending to lower levels, is to a considerable extent related to it. A shift has occurred in our economy that started in the 1980s when industries began to stop manufacturing their products and shifted the labor overseas where costs were lower and profits for their companies thereby greater. I well remember Ross Perot’s “giant sucking sound,” during one of the debates at the time of the 1991 Presidential campaign, where he predicted the consequences of the impending NAFTA Agreement. Ross Perot was correct; factories did open first in Mexico, then Southeast Asia and finally China. In our country workers were laid off and factories closed. I have quoted Ross Perot’s famous phrase from memory and here is the context as it appears on Wikipedia:

 

We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. It's pretty simple: If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, ... have no health care—that's the most expensive single element in making a car — have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south.
    ...when [Mexico's] jobs come up from a dollar an hour to six dollars an hour, and ours go down to six dollars an hour, and then it's leveled again. But in the meantime, you've wrecked the country with these kinds of deals.

 

Our economic planners reassured us that this would not be a long-term problem, but only a temporary re-location of the labor force while our economy shifts from manufacturing to the service sector. What they failed to tell us is that service jobs tend to pay less and they also failed to mention automation. While Silicon Valley produced jobs in the tens of thousands, workers were laid off by the hundreds of thousands and maybe millions (I don’t have exact figures) because their jobs could be performed so much cheaper and faster by robots. They have numerous additional advantages: they don’t complain about work hours, can’t unionize and don’t need healthcare or vacations. They are the maiden’s dream come true for a capitalist society that values financial profit as the ultimate good. Since the end of WWII to 2013 the labor force in the manufacturing sector has dropped from nearly 40% to about 10%; http://qz.com/53710/robots-are-eating-manufacturing-jobs. From factories robots have found their way into offices and as mentioned in the July Issue (The Zero-One Society) will increasingly displace middle management and entire professions. Why should I hire a CPA for instance to do our taxes when an on-line computer program can do them so much faster and cheaper.

All of this has consequences for the overall society. Computers don’t pay taxes, people do! In order to pay them there has to be some income but income is shrinking and people have become accustomed to a certain standard of living so they go into debt. Credit/debit cards, a boon for banks and potential nemesis for consumers, have become the norm and a great many users don’t have the money to pay their debt at the end of the month. It is then carried over into the future with ever rising interest costs. The website http://www.thesimpledollar.com/the-state-of-american-credit-card-debt-in-2015 reports that at present the average American household credit card debt is $7,281, but this number is misleading because it includes card owners who pay their monthly expenses. When these are excluded the debt rises to $15,609. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. “What’s more, as of early 2015, the total outstanding consumer debt in the U.S. has risen to $3.34 trillion. That figure includes car loans, credit card debt, personal loans, and student loan debt — but not mortgage debt. (That would add another $8 trillion to the pile.)” The student loan program, which was well-intended originally, has grown into a nightmare. College education has become a necessity and at the end of four years students have accumulated an average debt of $35,000. How this is going to be repaid with vanishing well-paying job prospects is a question only few dare to ask themselves.

          If one thinks that this is the end of the Jeremiad think again. The Robotics revolution is not limited to the U.S., it also affects the rest of the developed world including China. Since technology has interconnected the world what happens in one country immediately affects the rest of the world as the current massive swings in the stock market show. China is likewise undergoing an economic shift and how its leadership will tackle the problem will not only be interesting to watch but have immediate repercussions on what happens here. Let us, therefore, stay with China for one more moment.

          This ancient civilization is currently undergoing another transformation. The overarching goal of the country’s leadership is to retain power, but this is incompatible with an open society. Although nominally “communist” they have abandoned state control over all sectors of the industry and allowed some free enterprise which led to the massive expansion we saw in the past two decades. But while the economy did grow at a remarkable rate and a considerable segment of the poor moved from their small plots in the county into the urban middle-class, this created a new set of problems. Entire cities were literally stamped out of the ground to accommodate the expected influx from the rural areas of the country. But free enterprise only knows money and when the “poor” entered the low middle-class they did not have enough of that commodity to either buy property in these cities or even rent apartments. They are currently ghost cities and to the best of my knowledge the government has no idea what to do with them.

          As in the West, there are two centers of power. One is the official government and the other resides with some financially extremely well endowed oligarchs who, similar to the defunct Soviet Union, got rich on the bargain basement sale of previously state-owned property. I am now speculating, based on knowledge of human behavior, as to what currently goes on in the official and unofficial ruling classes in China. There is likely to be a power struggle between them and we can only watch and wait for the outcome. The oligarchs will continue to follow the U.S. model which will further enrich them without regard to the consequences for the rest of the people. The people in the official government, to the extent that they have not been corrupted, have become concerned and put the brakes on the overheating economy. In order to retain power they have to keep the people reasonably satisfied which amounts to a difficult balancing act.     

Let us now go back to the spring of 1989 and China’s Democracy movement. Our media concentrate on its brutal repression: the Tiananmen Square massacre. But earlier, in May, China’s leadership under Deng Xiaoping hosted the first summit meeting with the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev. It was intended to re-establish better relationships between the two countries without interfering with the developing rapprochement between China and the US. During this visit the authorities in Beijing were deeply disturbed by the ongoing protest in the center of the city and official ceremonies had to be re-routed in order to avoid Tiananmen that was occupied by the protesters. Gorbachev had instituted glasnost (openness) and perestroika (reconstruction) in his country and this had become the rallying cry of the Chinese students. But the communist leadership knew perfectly well where this would lead to. Chinese glasnost was crushed in order for perestroika to proceed at a measured pace. Their foresight proved correct because the Soviet Union collapsed two and one half years later. The Chinese leadership is now in a similar but even more difficult situation. The question is: are they going to find the golden mean between unbridled freedom and dictatorship? The answer they will come up with will have major world-wide repercussions.

          This discussion of current events has so far omitted, apart from  global warming and its consequences, another fact of life which has been accelerated by our response to the 9/11 tragedy. The occupation of Afghanistan, subsequently Iraq, the Syrian civil war and the overthrow of Kaddafi in Libya have set forces in motion that have become unstoppable. While our Republican presidential contenders rail against the wave of humanity that crosses our southern border, the situation is even worse for Europe. Thousands of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa arrive on a daily basis and there is a veritable Voelkerwanderung in progress which is somewhat akin to the one at the end of the Western Roman Empire. It cannot be legislated away, and Donald Trump’s 2000 mile wall on our southern border is a propaganda ploy and he knows it. 

          What does the Pope have to do with all of this? He is fully aware of the above cited facts and has issued a call to reassess our current conduct which unchanged can only lead to further human catastrophes on a global scale. In his Laudato Si’ Encyclical, referred to in the previous installment, he laid out the current global situation. Although his special emphasis was on global warming, our ravaging of the earth’s resources and the fate of the poor, he left no doubt where the major problem resides. It is human conduct epitomized by a system where people mainly care for financial gain and their personal well-being. There is by and large an absence of a sense of personal responsibility to society, especially in leading political and economic circles. When this is coupled with an undereducated apathetic public the outcome has to be disaster. When I say “undereducated” I do not mean the technical knowledge which our citizens do possess. But today the knowledge of the world’s cultural heritage is neglected in a quest for “practical” information that will provide a good income. Yet, as our founding fathers pointed out, it is essential if a democracy is to live up to its ideals. Our fundamentally faulty educational system cannot be remedied only by money. First of all it requires a rethinking of what high school and college, in contrast to trade schools, should be all about.  This necessity of re-thinking our priorities is what the Pope is trying to point out to us. 

          In contrast to the current society that is bent on exclusive individualism he would like see one where members genuinely care for each other. St. Francis viscerally felt the unity of the cosmos and of our world within it. Most of us cannot do so on an emotional basis but we should at least admit intellectually that this is correct and adjust our conduct accordingly. Pope Francis says nothing new. But he brings us face to face with the wisdom of past ages which has been shunted aside since the Industrial Revolution. It began to substitute humanistic thought in favor of the materialistic. The difference is profound. Humanism sees the universe and our globe within it as one organism. The earth and all its inhabitants are one part of the cosmos and all components should, therefore, cooperate with and nurture each other. Materialism sees the world as composed of different pieces which can be separated and arbitrarily re-arranged. It is the world of science and the splitting of the atom for knowledge and eventually profit. Mind you I have nothing against science. I am still occupied with scientific research in the hope to enrich our knowledge about the electromagnetic properties of our brain and their impact on our thoughts and feelings. But the scientist who does not know the limits of his/her craft and overvalues the results, which always require updating, has entered the arena of faith and dogma which belong to the religious realm.

          The Pope tries to re-establish a humanism that takes scientific developments into account but is not overawed and certainly not dominated by them. In Laudato Si’ he did not go to any extent into the dehumanization produced by our robotic society, but it is very likely that he will address the subject on another occasion, because the question who is the master and who the servant is of profound importance for the future of the human race.

          Pope Francis’ upcoming visit to Washington, New York and Philadelphia is slated for six days which will give him ample opportunity to make his views known to our leadership and diverse audiences. It will be most instructive to see how our media will react to his message, which flies in the face of everything official America stands for.  My guess is that he will be politely listened to, some phrases will be taken out of context to create controversy, and once he has left again for Rome it will be business as usual. Jesus could not change the conduct of his countrymen so some cynics will say what’s the use of trying? The reason why some of us, including the Pope, the Dalai Lama and others, persevere against all odds in stressing awareness of the impending disasters can be found in the Hindu Mahabharata which is the counterpart to the Greek Iliad. In it we are acquainted with the concept of dharma or, for this purpose, specifically our individual purpose in life. Once we grasp it we have to follow it “regardless of gain or loss,” simply because it is the right thing to do.

                In view of the above we can now put the choice before us, as individuals as well as members of a society, in simple terms. It is between “I and Mine” versus “We and Ours.” The first comes natural, requires no effort, but has landed us in the current situation. The second one is harder, but if intelligently pursued would offer the prospect of the “kingdom of heaven” right here on our earth.







October 1, 2015

OUR BROTHERS KEEPERS

          From the various events of the past month I shall only deal with those which are most characteristic for current world affairs and the message they convey for the future. Among them are: the Pope’s visit, President Xi’s visit, the Hajj disaster, the Syrian refugee crisis, President Putin’s re-emergence in a leadership role and presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s vision of America’s future.

          The Pope was warmly received wherever he went and there was not a single sour note during the entire six days of his visit. He did not get a state dinner at the White House that was reserved for President Xi, but he prefers to eat with the homeless and other outcasts of society anyway, who appreciate his presence more than self-righteous politicians. He did, however, get the opportunity to speak before a joint session of Congress, which was denied to Xi although its members could well have benefited from taking a personal measure of the man and listening to his views.

As expected, the Pope used the opportunity to acquaint our lawmakers with the essence of the Laudato Si’ Encyclical (August 1, 2015. Greece, Iran and the Pope). We have to take care of our planet, our common home, and all of its denizens because unless we do so, it will become uninhabitable for subsequent generations. The key words were: caring, responsibility and sharing which have to supplant the doctrine of domination. He also told Congress, not in these words but more discretely, stop your bickering over trivia and put your shoulders to the wheel in order to solve the urgent common problems.

Listening to his speech that was presented in a calm but deliberate manner, brought to mind his predecessor’s before that forum earlier in the year, Israel’s Netanyahu. The contrast could not have been greater. Netanyahu intended to achieve a political victory by spreading fear of Iran in order to derail a potential nuclear agreement. His demeanor was overbearing, and his speech pattern that of a teacher who is frustrated with disobedient pupils who have to be made to toe the line. This did not work. Americans resented being lectured on what they can and cannot do in the conduct of their foreign affairs. They ignored the warning of impending disaster originating from Iran and passed the treaty over Netanyahu’s vigorous protestations. Why did this happen? Because Netanyahu offered only fear rather than any positive alternative.

Although the Pope’s message likewise dealt with danger he did not exhort or lecture but in his quiet manner attempted to reach our conscience. He did not directly say so, but the underlying message was that caring for each other and the environment is not only a moral imperative but even a selfish one, because the choice in its simplest terms is either to live together in an optimal manner or die together miserably. As mentioned Netanyahu failed in his Congressional effort and time will tell whether or not the Pope’s message resonated in more than one soul.

While watching the Pope’s speech, I was struck by John Boehner’s demeanor. As Speaker of the House he had issued the invitation and for him it was a dream come true. It is known that he has hyperactive lacrimal glands and he was clearly overcome by the occasion. Born into a poor large Catholic family in one of Ohio’s small towns he had risen to his current position where he is third in line for the presidency if a disaster were to befall the President and Vice-President. For him this was very personal and one could see him intermittently wiping away a tear or two. The Pope’s speech apparently crystallized his views on a problem he had been wrestling with for most of the year.

As Speaker he is largely responsible for what legislation will or will not be passed by the House. With a sizable Republican majority this should not have been much of a problem.  But the Republican Party as I knew it upon arrival here, no longer exists. It now consists of three factions: the remnant of what may be called Eisenhower Republicans of the old guard, the tea party and the neocons. I have discussed the tea party and neocons previously and now only need to mention that the latter two are united in their zeal to oppose anything that does not fit into their narrow mental framework. Their agendas differ, however, and thereby they have little use for each other. The tea party supporters want to recreate an essentially Puritan America based on the “Old Time religion,” as the gospel song has it. But it is not the religion of Jesus: the New Testament and the Pope’s with stress on inclusion, love and forgiveness. It is that of Moses’ Pentateuch with a vengeful Yahve hailing down fire and brim stone. The neocons don’t care about these theological subtleties; they are consumed by the quest for raw power. In their opinion “The Project of the American Century” which was begun under George W. Bush and temporarily sidelined by Obama, needs to be brought to fruition. In its simplest terms, it consists of American control over the world and whoever doesn’t like it will be crushed. Since control requires the mineral riches of Central Asia the conflicts with Russia, China and Iran are preprogrammed.

Boehner came from the “old school” Republicans where cooperation and compromise rather than confrontation were still the art of politics. But over the past fifteen years he was sucked into the current maelstrom of intraparty fights and found it increasingly difficult to keep his ship on an even keel. Attempts were made to take the reins out of his hands which led him, earlier in the year, to consider resignation. But a budget fight with the threat of another government shut-down is again looming and Boehner thought that he would see it through before leaving office in January. Over the past months he seems to have realized that this impending battle is likely to further rent the party fabric and with it its chances for victory next November. This was the soil of the former altar boy upon which the Pope’s words fell on Thursday morning. The tears liberated him from this dilemma. During the afternoon he first confronted himself with the crucial question: what is my personal responsibility in this mess we are creating? He likely got the answer: what good is it to gain the world if you lose your soul! Having achieved inner clarity he discussed the decision to immediately resign, and thereby possibly stave off further party turmoil, with some friends. They tried to dissuade him but he remained adamant and made the public announcement on Friday morning. A burden had been lifted, his integrity had remained intact and after a long struggle he had achieved some measure of inner peace because it was the right thing to do. Obviously Pope Francis had no idea that his speech would have an immediate direct influence on the American political landscape, which was denied to Netanyahu. But this is a beautiful example how God works in human affairs. One person at a time! 

While the Pope hobnobbed not only with the high and mighty but mainly those who have to live on the margins of society, the representative of World Communism, President Xi, had other goals for his visit. For him, social problems are only of indirect relevance. They have to be dealt with not because of an intrinsic moral imperative but to prevent their assuming dimensions that are dangerous to the regime. China’s future success depends on stable sustainable economic growth and apparently the goal of the visit was to reassure America’s business leaders that they not only have nothing to fear from China but that there’s money to be made: lots of it. If Karl Marx had been able to see the scenes in Seattle and the White House he would have donned the biblical sackcloth and ashes. This is another example of the meaninglessness of political labels. While idealists come up with schemes of social utopias, hard headed realists, whose inner lives are dominated by Nietzsche’s “Will to Power,” soon take over. Gaining and retaining power become the only goals for which everything else is sacrificed.

This brings me to Beijing’s junior partner Vladimir Putin and another unanticipated role reversal. Putin still aches for an improved version of the Soviet Union and finds it difficult to accept Russia’s diminished role. While the ostensible foe is, for good reason, the US, I doubt that he has genuine warm feelings about having lost the influence over China as it existed in former years. To go from senior partner to junior is hard to swallow as even the Brits found out in relation to America. But he is trying to make the best of difficult circumstances as was shown in last Sunday’s 60 Minutes interview.

This program has degenerated since the days when Mike Wallace conducted hard-hitting interviews with the notables of this world, and now serves mainly propaganda Pablum to its viewers. But last Sunday was an exception because there were back to back interviews with Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Viewers had an opportunity to assess the personality of Russia’s leader versus that of America’s “want to be” President. Putin came across as: intelligent, well-informed, respectful, quick on repartee, friendly, thoughtful and self-assured. One may disagree with his views but after all he is the President of Russia and not of the US and thereby responsible to a different constituency. He parried all the barbed questions by Charlie Rose especially in regard to Ukraine, where he laid the blame for the Maidan coup squarely at Washington’s feet. Rose, who clearly was not familiar with the information on that coup that is readily available on the Internet, was taken aback and when asked for details Putin, the former KGB operative, assured him in a calm manner that Moscow has all the details. Rose saw himself on shifting ground and promptly changed the subject. As far as the other content was concerned, Putin made it clear that Russia cannot afford to let the Syria problem fester indefinitely. He pointed to ISIS as a danger for Russia because more than 2,000 fighters from Russia and ex- Soviet Union States have joined ISIS and instead of simply waiting for their return it is better to help Assad fighting them in Syria. When Rose confronted him with the official American position that Assad’s brutal repressive regime has to be removed, Putin calmly retorted with: what’s the alternative? Do you want a Libya?

Putin has, however, an additional military problem with Syria which he did not mention and Rose, who really acted only as a mouthpiece of the administration, failed to ask about. For geopolitical reasons Russia needs its naval base in Tartus which would be in danger of falling into ISIS’ hands if Assad were to be removed. Nobody mentions Tartus in our country, similar to Sebastopol in Crimea, which was the reason for the necessity of that peninsula’s annexation. These protectionist countermoves are simply portrayed as examples of Russian expansionism and aggression. Unfortunately the American public is by and large not sufficiently motivated to educate itself about the background of these events which allows our neocons to push their goals in the official media.

Where is Tartus and why is it important? When we go to Google Earth we find that it is on Syria’s northwest coast in the heart of the Alawite segment of the population that constitute Assad’s key support. Its fall to ISIS would spell the end of Russia’s only remaining naval base in the Mediterranean and this needs to be prevented. It seems, however, that Russia may not be acting alone. The Chinese may also be getting into the act. The website http://www.infowars.com/chinese-aircraft-carrier-reportedly-docks-at-tartus-syria/ reported on the 26th that, “The Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoining-CV-16 has reportedly docked at the Syrian port of Tartus, according to DEPKAfile website based in Jerusalem.” The article emphasizes that the sources could not be independently verified and one will need to wait for further information to arrive. The reason given for Chinese help to Russia is that ISIS fighters also contain a sizeable number of Uighurs from China’s northwestern predominantly Muslim province Xinjiang who need to be eliminated. The Russian contingent of the Syrian expedition corps, on the other hand, would be tasked to fight the Chechens, who reportedly represent the most experienced cadre of the ISIS forces.

Here we now have another example of unintended consequences or of the pigeons coming home to roost.  Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter’s national security advisor, persuaded Carter to arm the Afghan Taliban, mujahedeen, in order to deliver a fatal “Vietnam” to the Soviet Union. We know the outcome, and the fight against the Taliban is still consuming blood and treasure. That we also supported the Chechen fundamentalists in their war against Moscow is, however, not widely appreciated here. Furthermore, that our “our friend and ally,” Saudi Arabia, is one of the main financial ISIS supporters is not broadcast by our media, and neither is that the fundamentalist Sunni Muslim strain that is the ideological backbone of ISIS is Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia’s official religion. It has been reported that more people were decapitated this year, in accordance with Sharia law, in Saudi Arabia than by ISIS. Flogging is, of course also a routine punishment in that country although the cutting off of limbs has been abandoned there. Assad now finds himself in a Shiite Iran – Wahhabi Sunni Saudi Arabia proxy war which has absolutely nothing to do with the “Arab Spring,” a fight for democracy and human rights as our politicians and media try to convince us. This is not a civil war of Syrians against Syrians for a better life, as Assad already tried to tell us years ago, but of two “religious” ideologies for supremacy in the Middle East.

The Hajj tragedy where more than 4000 people were killed and at least 943 wounded also falls into this framework. The cause of the fatal stampede is still undetermined and currently the Saudis are blaming the pilgrims for having lost their nerve. Since the Saudi media are tightly controlled, it is not likely that we will soon get the full information and the promised Saudi inquest is probably going to be as fruitful as our 9/11 Commission was. It is, however, clear that the pilgrim traffic was not properly regulated. While the column moved towards the traditional site for “stoning the devil” it was turned back at an intersection to allow “VIP traffic” to proceed. Collisions with new arrivals were unavoidable and panic ensued. Regardless of the ultimate cause the tragedy will be taken as an excuse to remove the current King, Salman, from power. His conduct, as well as that of his son and deputy Mohammed bin  Salman, has become widely unpopular not least because of the Yemen bombing campaign that by now has taken thousands of civilian  lives in that country. In addition, Iran’s ruling circles now see an opportunity to challenge the Saudis claim to be the guardian of Islam’s most holy places. They obviously have learned from the West and are suing the Saudi government. If they were to be able to create enough havoc in the kingdom a major ISIS funding source would dry up and the Syrian situation might become more manageable.

Obama now finds himself trapped. In regard to the Saudis he cannot sever ties for fear that they would drive up oil prices which would hurt us and help Russia. His UN speech on Monday was an example of good intentions that failed to take America’s conduct during the past 15 years into account. Although he did allude peripherally to some of our shortcomings his main thrust was still that we are the guardians of law and order in the world and “cannot stand by when the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a nation is flagrantly violated. If that happens without consequence in Ukraine, it could happen to any nation gathered here today. That’s the basis of the sanctions that the United States and our partners impose on Russia.” But as long as our government does not admit that the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions were, under the UN charter, war crimes we have no moral standing in the world. The same applies to the repeated assertion that Assad must go because of his brutality against his own people including children. This self-righteousness rings hollow when we support Israel’s repressive actions in the West Bank and towards Gaza as well as those of al Sisi in Egypt. Most of all, however, it is our refusal of accepting responsibility for the humanitarian catastrophes our ill-conceived political destabilization of the Middle East has engendered, that is so blatantly apparent to the rest of the world. We are not judged by Obama’s good intentions but by the discrepancy between our professed values and actual conduct.

It should have been obvious to the Bush administration that simply removing a dictatorship without a viable alternative would lead to chaos. Colin Powell knew it when he warned the President: If you break it, you own it. He was ignored; the ensuing Iraq chaos spilled over to Syria and we now have a human catastrophe that dwarfs all the crimes and abuses of the Saddam and Assad regimes. We have set this human tidal wave in motion that is currently flooding Europe and act as if it had been an act of God rather than that of our politicians. While other countries provided refuge to tens and even hundreds of thousands of desperate people, our acceptance rate was limited to approximately 1500 persons, although we do provide considerable financial assistance to refugee organizations.

Putin, for all his faults, was more honest in his UN address, although he likewise put blinders on in regard to Russian conduct. While praising the efforts of the UN and pledging to strengthen them he also said “Whatever actions a state takes bypassing this procedure [the UN] are illegitimate and defy international law.” He referred to America’s conduct in the Middle East and North Africa, while completely ignoring Russia’s reaction to the Ukraine coup. He emphasized that the refugee crisis can only be solved by bringing stability to Syria and Iraq which in turn requires working with existing government structures rather than overthrowing them in the hope of some nebulous form of Western style democracy to materialize in the aftermath.

It is both easy and fashionable to blame Obama for the difficult straits America finds itself in at the present time. But this does not take into account the immensity of the problems he is confronted with. Not only does he have a hostile Congress to deal with, that is currently dysfunctional, but even his White House is divided against itself. About two weeks ago there was a debate within the White House whether or not Obama should meet in private with Putin during the upcoming UN session. The attitude was that Putin is beneath contempt who can only be treated with sanctions and must not be accorded the dignity of being seen on the same level as “the leader of the free world.” The absurdity of this stance seems not to have occurred to these “advisors” and media hacks. How can one   possibly hope to make inroads, especially on the desperate situation in the Middle East, without talking to the undisputed leader of a country that spans two continents? A decision was then arrived at that Obama would graciously consent but only because Putin was “desperate” for a meeting. The American public must be made aware that this meeting would be an act of kindness on our part rather than a geopolitical necessity. A 90 minute meeting did take place on Monday but it was far from private with numerous “advisors” from both sides sitting in. It’s obvious that this was for show. Under those circumstances nothing could be accomplished and the media on both sides immediately put their respective spin on it. The most glaring was perhaps the Drudge Report with “Red Planet: Putin                   Snubs Obama.” In Mr. Drudge’s mind the “snub” consisted in Putin advocating a coalition of major countries dealing with the ISIS problem in a concerted manner rather than the haphazard bombings that are currently carried out. Fortunately Kerry and his Russian counterpart Lavrov get along with each other and there is hope that they can work out a compromise that will not only be mutually beneficial but bring relief to the suffering Syrian people.

Whatever may be accomplished in this respect during the next several months there will be scoffers in our country because this is after all again election season with the current Republican “front-runner” grabbing headlines. The contrast between Putin and Trump in the mentioned 60 Minutes segment was stark. While Putin exhibited the above cited demeanor Trump appeared as what one might call the personification of the “ugly American.” He was the person who, in his opinion, not only knew how to rescue the US from its current doldrums but also was qualified to enact a prosperous future for everyone. This would be accomplished by a change in the tax structure with relief for the poor and middle income segments of society while some high rollers would pay higher ones. This would stimulate the economy to an extent that everybody would become prosperous. Industries that have gone overseas would be brought home and if they wanted to stay abroad their products would be taxed to an extent that they would readily reconsider. China would not be allowed to re-evaluate its currency because it hurts our economy. When Scott Pelley, the interviewer, reminded him that he would not be President of China and would have no such power he brushed it off with the mantra that he has dealt with politicians before and knows how to handle them. The 12 million or so illegal immigrants would be deported. A “beautiful” wall with a “big door” would be built to keep the unwanted out but allow for legal return of the expelled as well as others. That these schemes are fantasies, devoid of any basis in reality, does not occur to his ardent fans who seem to feel that anything is better than what we have at present.  

The essence of the interview was that we are confronted here with two different visions of how America should conduct itself during this century. On the one hand we have the Trump attitude of: my way or the highway, where America bullies the rest of the world into coercion. On the other there is the visceral, not only intellectual, recognition of our interconnectedness and interdependence. Unfortunately the awareness that problems can no longer be unilaterally solved by a given country, but require the cooperation of all affected parties, has not yet penetrated the American conscience as the relatively large following Trump has gained testifies to. Yet, Americans will have to be clearly shown that the Trump way will have to lead not only to more war but possibly a nuclear one. This would engender the destruction of not only what we now have but everything we want for our children. Each one of us, therefore, now needs to ask her/himself the fundamental question of our purpose on this earth: are we here to exploit everything and everybody for our immediate personal gain, or are we indeed our brothers’ keepers? The way the majority of us answers this question will decide how we vote next year.         







November 1, 2015

IN MEMORIAM
MARTHA RODIN R.N.; PhD.

          During the forenoon of Sunday October 11 a heart which only knew love and caring ceased to beat. When I say that we had been married for 63 years this is more or less commonplace. But she was not just my wife; she was my most trusted friend, comrade in arms, and soulmate through all the vicissitudes of a long life. We met two weeks after my arrival in the US and apart from professional trips, there was hardly a day we were not together.

I had found my first employment in this country on my 25th birthday as an intern at Staten Island Hospital and was immediately assigned to the Emergency Room. Although I spoke fluent English and knew medicine, inches, grains, ounces etc. were only words in my vocabulary without their meaning, because most of the world uses the metric system. In addition, although aspirin, digitalis, morphine and some other drug names are universally recognized, most of the rest are idiosyncratic. There I was alone in the ER with a patient when the door opened and a highly attractive 21-year old student nurse, Martha Kinscher, walked in for assistance. She had pity for this somewhat lost soul and guided me to do the right thing for the patient.

I was immediately smitten by her beauty and kindness, and when I started dating her, found out that horses were the great love of her life.

                                              

 

There was no thought of marriage because I had a girlfriend in Vienna, Erika, likewise a  recent medical graduate, with whom I was informally engaged and was trying to obtain an affidavit of support (needed at that time even for visitors) to bring her here to get married. I told Martha about this situation and we agreed to stay friends. When after a few months I had succeeded to obtain the affidavit from another Austrian physician who had emigrated years earlier, I immediately wrote to Vienna with the good news. Two weeks later came the reply that in the meantime she had agreed to marry an American officer stationed in occupied Vienna whom she had also known for some time, but had broken off the relationship when we started dating. Well, that was it; although there was an immediate twinge of regret, I knew that Erika had been important for my emotional growth but this was a new life and I was now free to get semi-serious with Martha.

I’m saying “semi” because she was a strong-willed young lady and what I wanted and what she wanted were not necessarily the same. We kept dating and in September of 1951 when the internship was over we went on a two week vacation to the Thousand Islands and talked of marriage. Earlier in the year I had been accepted for a fellowship in Neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN where I was to start in October. We continued to correspond and Martha thought that Easter of ‘52 would be a good time to get married. Why wait till Easter, I wrote back, let’s do it for upcoming Christmas; after some hemming and hawing she agreed. She and her parents may well have had some reservations about this brash Austrian who had, apart from his MD degree, no credentials in this country. When I asked her father’s permission to marry his only child, who was the apple of his eye, prior to the departure for Rochester, he agreed after I promised to take care of her for the rest of my life. So Christmas it was, and we got married on the 23rd in the Episcopal Church she attended during childhood and adolescence.

 

There had been some concern in her extended family that she was marrying a Catholic. But although both of us were friends of Jesus we had no use for church rituals regardless of denomination. Since her father was a member of the Freemasons in Brooklyn, decency of character was the criterion rather than formal religion. As soon as the date had been set I asked my mother to send me my skis because there was plenty of snow in Minnesota and I had started a friendship with a Norwegian colleague, Rolv Slungaard, who obviously also had skiing in his blood. They were sent to Martha’s family and her first Christmas as well as wedding present was a pair of skis we bought in Manhattan the day before the marriage rites. The honeymoon was a railroad trip to Minnesota in a “couchette”, ideal for newlyweds.

Neither one of us had any money because my salary was $150/month and she earned about $250 as a registered nurse, but we consoled each other with the words: We’ve got no money, but we aren’t poor and this is temporary. Prior to marriage I lived in a rented room and although the landlady liked me, when I brought Martha to stay with me she got her dander up and made life difficult for her. Both of us were brought up during the depression and the idea of taking a loan, thereby going into debt, was completely foreign to both of us. We’d make do, come what may.

Well, the Lord took pity on us and within a week or so we were asked if we would want to “house-sit” for the retired chairman of obstetrics and gynecology who intended to stay the rest of the winter in Florida. We obviously jumped at the offer. Not only was it rent-free, in walking distance of the Clinic and St. Mary’s hospital, but also very pleasant and of the right size.


 

Although Martha desperately wanted children, this seemed to be a vain hope. About a year and a half prior to our meeting she had suffered strep throat which led to serious nephritis and she was warned not to have children because of the danger of eclampsia. In addition there was potential danger for the baby because her blood type was Rh negative. This was fine with me, because I had wanted a girlfriend and as a result of my experience with fathers (see War&Mayhem on this site) felt that I was totally unfit for that job. As the German saying goes: Vater werden ist nicht schwer, Vater sein dagegen sehr – to become a father is easy, to be a father is tough. But what were my intentions against her will? Within two months she had conceived and our daughter made her first appearance in November.

                                                  

 

 To say the least, Martha was delighted while I was more skeptical. I was abruptly married to a mother and automatically relegated to number two, which took some time getting used to. But one learns. Peter arrived in 1955 and Eric in 1959. The family was now complete.

                                                       

 

While in Minnesota, Martha learned to ski. It was on a little hill where other fellows, the title of physicians in training at Mayo, had built a rope tow and a warming hut against the brutal cold. There we spent our Sundays with Martha carrying baby Krissie in a transport bag to the hut. Martha was a quick learner and since one of the other fellows, who also regularly skied there, kept talking about Colorado powder we decided to go there as soon as the occasion arose. It came in 1956 when we had already moved to Ann Arbor where I was working as a neurologist and electroencephalographer in the Psychiatry Department of the University of Michigan. Rolv and two of his other Norwegian friends, with whom we had stayed in contact, told us that they were going to Aspen for a couple of weeks and invited us to come along. Of course we accepted. Martha’s mother, Viva, came to stay with the children. We drove from Michigan to La Crosse, where Rolv had joined the Gundersen Clinic, and all five of us then piled into a car and drove to Colorado to test the snow. It was indeed as advertised and all of us had a marvelous time.

                                                     

 

In 1958 life changed again. I had, from the previous year, an offer from the newly established Lafayette Clinic to take the position as Chief of Neurology and Electroencephalography with an appointment as Assistant Professor at Wayne State University in the Department of Neurology. In addition, the offer included part-time private practice with Dr. Joe Whelan who was at that time the only neurologist and electroencephalographer in the city. It certainly was tempting but jumping from the University of Michigan with its prestige, where I had just been promoted from Instructor to Assistant Professor, into the completely unknown did raise some doubts. Both of us were never after money. My salary was sufficient to buy a house on a small pond and we had joined the sailing club of the university. In the summer we went sailing on Base Lake, initially in ten foot dinghies and later Jet 14s, and in the winter drove occasionally north to Boyne Mountain for skiing. We loved our little house and the pond where we could swim in the summer and ice-skate in the winter. We had our two children who likewise loved the pond and under Martha’s instructions became good swimmers at their tender ages. We were content. So when the offer came in 1957 I was only modestly interested, especially since the mental distance, by the cognoscenti, from Detroit to Ann Arbor was 40 miles but from Ann Arbor to Detroit infinity. You just don’t go slumming, especially when one is a reasonably bright young neurologist who wants to make a name for himself.  

There was another complication. The newly appointed chairman of Neurology, whom I had met at the Ski meeting of the Eastern EEG Society, while he was still working in Boston, was as strong-willed as I and we just didn’t hit it off after his appointment to Wayne’s chairmanship. We had pretty much of a row in Dr. Gottlieb’s office (director of the Clinic) over who would be in charge of the 20 Neurology beds of this otherwise psychiatric hospital. He insisted that he and his staff physicians would be rotating through on a monthly basis. I insisted on the European system where a given unit had its permanent physician in charge and that would be me because otherwise “Chief” is just a meaningless title. It was the proverbial Mexican stand-off. I went home, discussed it with Martha and we decided to stay put. My salary was sufficient for a modest life-style and she could stay home to raise our children.

In the summer of 1958 the university sponsored Hungarian refugees from the 1956 uprising to be temporarily placed in the homes of faculty members until permanent homes could be secured. Obviously we volunteered and a young student, who spoke no English, moved in with us. Then later in the summer my mother came from Vienna for a visit. All of a sudden my salary didn’t cover the expenses. I already had a Board Certification in Electroencephalography as well as Neurology and was in no mood to take out a loan. So I went to one of my bosses (I had two. One directed the Mental Health research Institute of the university, where I was his EEGer, and the other was the Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry because the EEG lab was in his rather than the Neurology department) and asked for a raise. The answer was: “For the money I’m paying you I can buy myself two good electroencephalographers.” Well that was it. I said to myself go ahead; went home discussed it with Martha and we agreed: o.k. let’s jump.

The decision was made somewhat easier because one of the staff physicians at the Clinic was a friend of ours from Mayo days, Peter Becket, and Jacques Gottlieb was a wonderful director. He saw his role as hiring good people and then letting them do their thing in addition to his lobbying the legislature for expansion of the facility and providing state of the art equipment for research. The mislabeled Lafayette Clinic was actually the psychiatric research hospital of the State of Michigan under the Department of Mental Health. In addition Joe Whelan was a wonderful person, competent and easy to get along with. He lived with his wife, Gloria, and their children in Grosse Pointe and when he took us along Lakeshore Drive on the shore of Lake St. Claire we knew that this was doable. It turned out to have been the right decision also for Martha. The Whelans were a wonderful couple who ever so often gave European style soirees in their home with guests from the university and other professionals. This became of vital importance for Martha six years later. As mentioned Eric came along in April of 1959 and Martha, who was actually my intellectual superior, had become somewhat unfulfilled. She went riding on Belle Isle and apart from the house, our first purchase was a 16 foot Rebel to sail on the lake. But her intellect did not have an outlet. Nevertheless, the children were her first priority and taking a job outside the home was never a thought until all three of them were in school during the day.

At that point the Whelan dinners assumed their destined role in her life. Martha had always wanted to go to medical school. She surely had the mental wherewithal and would have made an excellent physician. But Martha’s family was lower middle class where money was scarce but love abundant and they simply could not afford the exorbitant cost. This is after all, “Capitalist” America, where the buck rules and where you have to pay through the nose for higher education, especially since in those days there was no student loan program. Under the American system I could never have become a physician because my family was also practically destitute in 1945, having lost all valuables to the Russian occupiers and Viennese looters. But in “socialist” Austria all education, including university, was paid for through income taxes and essentially gratis. With medical school unattainable for Martha she had chosen the next best thing by becoming a nurse. But regret remained because the intellect remained unfulfilled. On one of the evenings at the Whelans the Chairman of the Department of Anatomy was one of the guests. He immediately took to Martha and after a brief conversation offered to enroll her into a PhD program in his department. She grabbed it with both hands, studied furiously and after graduation joined the department.

Her dissertation was on the adrenergic innervation of the heart valves. She had observed that not only the heart muscle receives nerves that can pour out adrenaline directly into the heart but so did the valves, which was unknown at the time. Throughout these years we always discussed our work and one evening she came home bewildered. All of her students loved her, but this was the hippie era. On that day one of them, who was clearly a member of the scene with the looks and eating a chicken during anatomy lecture, had approached her with the desire that “he wants to do brain research.” Martha wondered what in all the world do I do with this guy, and asked me for advice. Obviously I had no use for a hippie and just said: “Well, let’s sleep on it.” As we say in Austria: Der Herrgott gibt’s  den Seinen im  Schlafe – the Lord provides advice to His own during sleep. In the morning I had the answer. He’s a hippie, he smokes pot so let him and his cronies smoke to their hearts’ content government-provided marijuana, while he helps to run the EEG machine. In this way he’d get his wish and I can find out what the drug does under controlled circumstances. Martha immediately agreed, talked to the student who jumped at the idea and about a year later “The Marihuana Social High” was published in the AMA Journal.

Martha was always the co-worker. Some of my scientific work required the implantation of electrodes into the brains of animals and she subsequently verified the electrode positions for the ensuing publications. But she also did more than that. As a result of another series of experiments in the late 1970s she made a fundamental discovery. Her electron microscopic study showed that the first changes in brains that were subjected to repeated small doses of a seizure producing drug were not in the nerve cells, neurons, but in their supporting structures, the glia. This information was unknown and unexpected at the time. We published the data in a first line journal but the publication was ignored. The concept is only now being given serious consideration by others, using different methods, without mention of Martha’s previous work. A picture from a social gathering around that time is shown below.


 

Life moved on; we skied, sailed, swam, took trips and, of course, she engaged in her first love horseback riding, where she won numerous ribbons. When I reached my sixties we started taking where we would retire. I needed a place where I could continue with my hobbies: skiing, sailing and science, and she needed horse country. For mine I needed mountains with good snow, a sizeable body of water and a university. When one thinks about this, there aren’t too many places in this country which fulfill all of these criteria. But Eric, our pilot, had after his graduation from college earned his spurs in form of flying hours that would enable him to get a job at one of the major carriers, in Salt Lake. During the week he taught flying at the airport and on weekends skiing at Solitude. It was an ideal arrangement. He got his brother to come out for vacation to Solitude and that became their mountain. Mom and Dad had to follow their lead and Utah instead of Colorado became our ski destination.

I obtained a Utah medical license and in August of 1990 we moved to our permanent home in Sandy. I had intended to spend the first year of retirement on travel while Martha intended to remain at work. Since Peter with his wife lived only a few minutes away from our home he could have taken care of “Mom” in case of need, and I could have hopped on a plane to get back in no time. Of course, all of us know what happens to the best laid plans of mice and men. Our daughter had come back from Europe, where she had stayed and worked for about two decades after having obtained her PhD at the University of Salzburg. She moved to Salt Lake, got a job at the university, married and was now on her way to produce another grandchild for us. The latter fact I was not privy to at the time. This was the signal for Martha: We move now! Krissie needs me! While I was engaged elsewhere she came to Salt Lake ostensibly to ski, but in addition picked the house where we were to live. I had no idea because my fantasies were still on travel so who needs another house? She knew my problem in regard to an immediate move rather than waiting an additional year and was concerned about my reaction. So she used reverse psychology: “It’s such a nice house, I love it, that’s my house, but you won’t like it” was the refrain for several hours. Regardless whether I did like it or not, it was already a done deal because as the saying goes: If mother ain’t happy, nobody‘s happy. To make her happy I flew to Salt Lake looked at the house and it did indeed serve our purpose admirably. Thirty minutes to Alta for skiing, 30 minutes to the university and 45 minutes to the Great Salt Lake fulfilled all of the criteria for successful retirement even if it came a little earlier than hoped for. The house itself was large enough to shelter the entire family. Since all three kids were married and two with children of their own, it could accommodate them whenever they came to visit. The next ten years were the happiest of our lives. In the winter we skied together in the mornings and she spent the afternoons with her horse.

                                                  

 

At one point she developed kidney stones but these were taken care of with lithotripsy and hospitalization was not needed. Sometime later cervical cancer was diagnosed. She had a vaginal hysterectomy as an outpatient at Alta View hospital and after the three-hour procedure we went home. The gynecologist apologized that he hadn’t been able to reach the ovaries and this might become a problem later. The two of us, both trained in medicine, decided: so what; if and when it were to happen we’d deal with it at that time; right now let’s enjoy ourselves. We did, until one day while skiing at Snowbird her right leg gave way; she fell and fractured the femur. The fracture was taken care of within hours by an orthopedist at Alta View and two days later she was home again, but skiing was no longer an option.

She continued to ride but increasing age took its toll. She always had a slightly leaky heart valve, which gradually got worse and atrial fibrillation also ensued which made life quite difficult for her. The drugs against the fibrillation were useless and in view of her age, she refused to consider surgery for the mitral valve insufficiency. Pain from severe arthritis also became an increasing problem, to which was added last year a bout of shingles. She bore all of these afflictions with stoicism and her only concern was to take care of my needs, those of our children and our home. We had in previous years enlarged the deck, where she could enjoy the sunshine as well as shade from a magnificent maple tree.

                                                  

 

During the early part of this year she became increasingly incapacitated to the extent that all of us knew that her life expectancy was limited to months and possibly another year or so. Krista, therefore, applied in early August for a six month medical leave from the University of Northern Arizona, where she holds the tenured position of Professor of Humanities in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies, to help out with the household chores and other needs as they arise. It was granted and she has been living with us since the middle of August. It is obvious, however, that she also needs a life of her own and Martha, therefore, helped her find a house that is within 15 minutes driving distance from ours so that she can immediately be available when needed. On August 30 we had a party for family and friends to celebrate my 90th birthday. Peter’s oldest daughter, Lindsay, had earlier in the year given birth to her second child and Martha had the joy to see and hold her latest great-granddaughter.


 

The doctors had been wrong! Not only did she give birth to three healthy children, who grew up to be the pride and joy of any parent, but she outlived most, if not all, of her cousins and even met our fourth generation.  The third great-grandchild is on the way and more will be coming in due time from other grandchildren.

Martha and I, as rational beings, had over the years frequently discussed what to do at the time of dying and death. Legalities had to be attended to. Our Wills were identical, except for the different first names, with one’s entire property going to the surviving spouse. We also had a Living Will that specified that no artificial means (e.g. cardiac resuscitation, mechanical respiration, infusion of nutrients) are to be used to prolong the dying process. I had also made it clear to Martha and the children that if I were to suffer a debilitating terminal illness I should be allowed to stay at home, instead of being taken to a hospital, and no medications, except for pain relief, were to be given. Food or fluids were not to be forced into me and I shall die a natural death as our forebears always did. Martha was in full agreement and insisted that this also was her wish.

Nevertheless, this was still personal intention and no one knows what will really happen when the time comes. On Tuesday October 6 Krista and the two of us went for brunch to the Silver Fork in Big Cottonwood Canyon and on the way back I asked Krista to drive by the house which she and Martha had selected but I had never before seen. She did and it is indeed appropriate for her needs as long as I am alive. She will then move to our home so that the rather beautiful property remains in the family. On that afternoon the legalities in regard to Krista’s house were finalized and she became the legal owner. Eric had also called that he might be able to take a few days off and could come for a visit which I immediately urged him to do.

Wednesday morning I asked Martha for a phone number I should have remembered but had forgotten. She tried to recall it but gave up with an “oh shucks.”  I told her not to worry and went on with business at hand. But an hour or so later noticed that she was aphasic. As a neurologist it was immediately apparent to me that she had suffered a stroke that was limited to the speech area. At that point Eric walked in and all of us felt that we had to take her to Alta View. Instead of calling 9/11 we decided that we’d use her Subaru Crosstrack, which had plenty of room, and a wheelchair was in the basement since my leg fractures. Krista brought it up but when we tried to lift her into the wheelchair she fought us to an extent that we knew that she intended to have her previously announced wish respected. Her life was now complete, the children were grown with thriving families of their own, Krista was here to take care of my needs and now it was time to go.

Eric had come for vacation and was now confronted with a disaster about which we could do nothing. Since he has considerable problems of his own, with his wife currently undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer, I asked him to go up into the mountains in the afternoon. He went to our favorite Big Cottonwood canyon and observed an uncommon celestial phenomenon, which he photographed.

 

 

True; these are just two con-trails of fighter jets from the nearby airbase but for us they had meaning. In the evening we consulted with my friend and co-worker, Dr. Tawnya Constantino, about what to do next. There were two options: home care or hospice. These are separate entities with different responsibilities for the care providers. But this division is arbitrary and there should be one system because death of the elderly is becoming an increasing problem for the State and insurance providers. We decided on hospice and a nurse arrived on Thursday to start the formalities.       

Another unusual event had occurred earlier that morning. In spite of her general weakness Martha insisted on going to the bathroom under her own power and one of the three of us had to follow her to prevent a tumble. She refused a cane or even one of our arms. For the past several years she had slept on the couch in the family room in order not to disturb me with her frequent nocturnal trips to the bathroom and to be able to watch TV into the wee hours of the morning because due to relative inactivity her sleep cycle was disrupted. She had picked out the couch herself at the furniture store some years ago. It exactly fit her needs and under ordinary circumstances she always got up at 6:30 in the morning to go to the bathroom but on that Thursday there was a difference.

I slept soundly in our formerly joint bed when I had an unusual dream. A fully clad woman sat next to me on the edge of the bed with her back towards me. Surprised I cried out Oh (and her private term of endearment), tried to touch her, but woke up. I looked at the clock it was 6:18. While wondering in the dark what this could have meant I developed the feeling that Martha might be in trouble. Through the bottom of the closed door I then could see that the bathroom light was on. I got up and found her on the floor next to the toilet where she had fallen and couldn’t get up. She was fully conscious and I helped her onto the seat. Under her own power she returned thereafter to the couch with me in attendance.

The three of us then decided that we’d have to arrange some type of watch system as is common in long distance sailboat races where one of us is always at the helm and can alert the others in case of need. Since from Thursday on Martha shoved us away when we tried to give her some food, even a teaspoon of honey, or fruit juice it was apparent that death would occur within a couple of weeks. Her attitude was: I want to die, so please, please let me. We were in daily contact with Peter who said that he could come at any moment and had already made plans to come on Monday evening. Yet on Saturday I had the feeling that the situation might be more urgent and asked him to come instead on Sunday before she loses consciousness and enters terminal coma. He agreed.

On Sunday morning she was resting quietly with eyes closed, as usual, and slightly labored respirations. It was not clear if she was merely sleeping or comatose but it made no sense to do a neurological exam because if she were to be asleep it would be cruel to wake her up. So I sat in the armchair by the couch where I could watch her respirations and be available in case of need. It was my shift because the kids had gone to bed after theirs. After an hour or so, respirations had become more regular and I thought that even if she were to be in coma some sensations might get through to her consciousness. I, therefore, put on a CD of Mozart’s clarinet and horn concertos and when that had ended replaced it with one of his piano concertos. About a third of the way through, the CD started to stick keeping to the same notes over and over again as was common with the old gramophone records when they got stuck in a groove. I took the CD out of the player and saw that it had a slight smudge which seemed to explain the problem. In so doing I also noted, however, that Martha’s respirations had ceased. I got a mirror from the bathroom held it against her open mouth and indeed there were no respiration effects. Eric had in the meantime come up, brought me my stethoscope and there was only silence instead of a heartbeat. 

She had accomplished her goals in life and now was released from pain and suffering. It had always been her wish that the body be cremated and we honored it. After the Memorial Service later this month, which will be held at Millcreek Inn where our second granddaughter, Amber, was married, we will spread some of her ashes over places she had loved in the mountains. The main urn, which is very beautiful, we partially buried next to our favorite maple tree and a Buddha sculpture she had given me for the 85th birthday. It thereby remains visible to friends and family, while being protected against the deer. They roam our backyard and might accidentally break it if they were to flee in some panic. It will be joined by my ashes when the time comes. For us she is not dead but keeps living in our minds for the rest of our lives. The tears that intermittently well up in our eyes are not mainly an expression of grief, but of gratitude to have been allowed to share our lives with such a wonderful human being.

For her 80th birthday I wrote a little poem; it’s no great poetry but expressed the feelings of our family and is printed below.    

 

 

TO OUR MATRIARCH

 

Long ago and far away

A baby girl once saw the light of day.

 

The world around was rather bare

But she was nurtured by parents’ loving care.

 

They taught her, though the times were bad,

Important is the life you led.

 

Material things they matter not

What learning brings decides your lot.

 

With diligence, good will and faith

You overcome life’s wantonness.

 

Into a lovely maiden did she grow,

Admired for good looks by high and low.

 

To help whoever came her way

Became her life’s mainstay.

 

All creatures: creeping, flying, walking

She loved and cherished, without much talking.

 

Suitors came from far and wide

To take her as their bride.

 

In vain they labored one and all

Because she’s spotted a lost soul.

 

Across the ocean he had come

For fame and fortune to be won.

 

One glance sufficed to know, here was his fate:

A trusting, loving, caring mate.

 

Moved by pity for the stranger

She consented, unaware of danger

 

To become his wife

And share with him the rest of life.

 

He promised her what was their need

Steadfast love; security from hate and greed.

 

A girl friend he thought he’d won

But don’t you know: mother she would soon become.

 

Up and down life’s roller-coaster

She never wavered and only love did foster.

 

Children in due time did come

Who loved and honored her as Mom.

 

Grandchildren they produced for her

With whom unstinting love she’d share.

 

Now the eightieth birthday has arrived

No mean feat, considering what you’ve survived.

 

So on this day and future years

Remember always: There are no fears!

 

The love you’ve spread among us all

Will keep you safe regardless what may fall.

 

Inherent goodness never fails

And over sorrow joy prevails.

 

You have achieved what’s rare today:

The knowledge: that for you, we’re here to stay.

 

A family you have around

Where each of us is duty bound,

 

With gratitude to ease your body’s pain

And let peaceful charis reign.

 

WITH LOVE FROM YOUR

 

FAMILY

 

 

 

 







December 1, 2015

DYING AND DEATH

          Although I have discussed this topic on these pages as well as in the scientific literature on other occasions, the events of the recent past forced me to again face up to it in a personal manner. We all know that death is unavoidable but we don’t like to think about it mainly because it always happens to someone else, and most of us experience some inner revulsion against the mere fact of its existence. Since we can’t do anything about death, and might be afraid of it, we push it out of our minds, go on with our daily tasks and spend the leisure hours in what may well be called “trivial pursuit.” I shall try to demonstrate in the following pages, why this attitude is a mistake.

          For the reader who has not had the time or opportunity to study what I have previously published on this site I suggest that you do so now because it is impossible to condense the entire material  into a few pages and without becoming repetitive. The first article dealing with the topic was “Perceptions of Reality” in the August 26, 2004 installment. “Faith and Science” appeared in August 2009, “Knowledge and Faith were discussed in December 2012, and Eben Alexander’s “Proof of Heaven” was extensively dealt with in a trilogy from February 26, 2013- April 1 of that year (Proof of Heaven; NDEs, Cosmic Consciousness and Buddha; The Science of Consciousness – Mind). Additional information is available through downloading all the articles with “View all” and searching for key words, as well as in the chapter “What is Truth” in The Jesus Conundrum, that can likewise be downloaded free of charge. Although the information contained in these articles overlaps to some extent, each one discusses a related aspect that reflects my informed opinions on the subject. It will be apparent that I have thought and read a great deal about the topic and can now add some additional comments.

          First we must be clear in our language and steer away from euphemisms. Only when we stare death in the face can we liberate ourselves from the wishful thinking that dominates our current society. Death is a fact, but as the ancient Hindus in the Upanishads explained not necessarily the end of our life. We may think about this opinion in any way we want but the Greek Stoics, foremost among them Epictetus, told us that death is not an evil. I have discussed his philosophy on other occasions both here and in my books and it centers on the chapter “What is and is not in our power.” Once we internalize this teaching we stop being concerned about what others may or may not do and how this may or may not affect us. Instead we start to concentrate on our personal conduct and how it may be beneficial to others. Following this thought I told our children and grandchildren: What you do for yourself dies with yourself; what you do for others lives in others.

          Since the subject matter is vast and especially what happens after we have been officially pronounced dead is hotly debated, I shall now proceed in a somewhat systematic manner. Dying has two perspectives that of the individual undergoing the process and that of the family/caregivers who may want to help the dying person. Death on the other hand is exclusively observed by others and also has a societal component. In this installment I shall deal mainly with the personal, individual, aspect of dying and death. But especially in view of the recent terrorist attacks the societal aspects had to be included to some extent. Because of its importance this aspect of the article should only be viewed as an introduction and the topic will receive a more detailed discussion in January. 

During October I and two of our children had the opportunity to be with my wife, their mother, in her dying hours and we witnessed a truth: you die as you have lived. Anyone who has read the November installment had a glimpse of the type of person Martha was, and still is in our minds. She did not shrink from death. She willed it because her job on planet Earth was done! That was and is our perspective. Martha’s perspective we will never know because it is inherently forever unknowable. Even if I were to meet her in some type of hereafter it would still be my biased image and concept of her based on decades of having lived together. Another person’s self-image cannot be perceived by us and all we have to go by is that person’s conduct in word and deed. But the emotional processes that were their basis cannot be accessed and we, therefore, must admit that we don’t ever fully know the person whose life we share even if it is over many decades.

          Thus the question: Who this person we are married to “really” is has no answer because reality, just like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. In previous installments I divided our appreciation of reality into subjective, shared subjective and objective reality.  Subjective pertains to how we think  and feel about something, shared subjective reality is what John  C. Lilly termed “human consensual reality.” This may have nothing to do with objective reality because it is manipulated by politicians as well as religious figures often to our detriment, as the events of this as well as past centuries clearly show. I used the term “objective reality” not in the sense of an “end all and be all” but for facts that are indisputable.  As an example I have stated on another occasion that you can argue about the content of the various sentences that are printed here, but the argument stops when you ask how many words a given sentence or this essay has. Anyone can count them and the computer will give you the results in nanoseconds. This is also the difference between science and the rest of human thought and action.  Science measures and whatever does not lend itself to measurement is outside of its domain. If this simple statement were to become an active ingredient of human thought the argument of faith vs. science would have become meaningless.

          It is now important to realize that all of us live in two worlds, or states of consciousness. One is the eyes open state during which we perform our duties and engage in various leisure activities. The other is the eyes closed state where we indulge in ruminations, fantasies, expectations and so on.  The problem in our current society is that it devotes itself nearly exclusively to the eyes open state without realizing that it is the eyes closed state that lies at the base of all our actions and directs them to the intended goal. This type of thinking leads to an emphasis on math, science and technology in our educational system to the neglect of the “humanities” that represent our cultural heritage. This aspect is very personal for me because I see the result in our grandchildren and our daughter who teaches humanities at a university has noted that funding for her department is progressively curtailed. The generation of our grandchildren, even when they have a college education and are productive citizens, has a remarkable lack of what is called in Europe Allgemeinbildung (a well-rounded education). They are trained as specialists for a robotic society and this bodes ill for our country and the world.

          You may regard the above as a side-track but it is not. It is central to the topic at hand because during the process of dying, be it days or weeks, we live in the eyes closed state. This is the time when we are confronted with what Hindu/Buddhist society calls karma; the accumulation of all our hopes, fears and acts. But these are conditioned by our fund of information. Math, science and technology are irrelevant because we have left the material world and live in mental desires and images from the past and future. This mental activity is private and limited to the person who is dying. In contrast to dreams and NDE’s there is no subsequent awakening during which one could talk about the memory of the experience. I have italicized the word memory because that is what we are really talking about when we discuss NDEs and their meaning. The person believes that s/he is retelling the correct sequence of their visions and telepathic information, but this is retrospective and is likely to be tinged by the personality structure of the individual. Although the NDE experience is exceedingly vivid “more real than real,” as a number of experiencers testify to, the content does not, in all likelihood, come from outer space but is based on the religious/societal structure of the individual.   

          In previous correspondence with colleagues about this topic I have pointed out that NDE’s are akin to dreams over which we likewise have no control and appreciate them only as such when we awaken. The word “control” needs to give us pause because this is the crux of the problem. In the eyes open state we can exert a modicum of control upon our immediate environment. In the eyes closed state we have no control over the environment and that of our thoughts is limited to our personal concentration span. In the average person, who has not undergone specific training in what is called mind control, it rarely exceeds 30 seconds. The Greeks told us “Know Thyself” and I therefore suggest this simple test: Take a stopwatch, close your eyes, concentrate on a single simple thought or picture and hit the button. Hit it again the very moment another thought intrudes. You may be surprised by the result; but you must be ruthlessly honest with yourself in regard to the second button push.

          Since in most of us the concentration span, during the eyes closed state, is quite limited, our mental content is really most of the time beyond our control and our thoughts are similar to an ant heap with each one going in different directions. To this we now must add that this is what happens in the waking state in a healthy human being. But during the process of dying our organism, including our brain, is far from healthy. I have discussed the physiological changes during the dying process in “The Reality of Death Experiences” (Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 1980; reprint available on request). All of these processes, isolated as well as in combination, affect mental content. Under these circumstances we become passive observers of the scenes our brains play for us without the ability to change what we don’t like. Yet it is the mental content of our dying thoughts which determines whether we regard ourselves in heaven, purgatory, hell, paradise, the Buddhist Bardo, Nirvana and so on. We have to think about what Jesus meant when he told us: The kingdom of god is within you (emphasis added). In like manner the Tibetan Book of the Dead tells us not to be afraid of the visions in the “after death” state because they are “thine own consciousness.”

          For persons who are unshakably firm in their specific religious faith these comments may be irrelevant because as the Viennese say: wer’s glaubt wird selig, the believer will be blessed. However, those of us who have an inquisitive mind and cannot regard religious dogma as the final truth, they can be useful. Once one realizes the value of these admonitions one can begin to train one’s mind towards a longer concentration span and fill it, instead of the current pictures of sex and violence on our TV and movie screens, with the cultural wisdom of our world in word and music. This is a process that takes time but can be initiated at any moment and its reward may be in our final one. The Tibetan Book of the Dead, in the Evans Wentz translation, contains on the page prior to the Preface several pithy sentences and I shall quote only the two that are most appropriate. One is:

 

Against his will he dieth that hath not learned to die. Learn to die and thou shalt learn to live, for there shall none learn to live that hath not learned to die.

 

The other:

 

‘Whatever is here, that is there; what is there the same is here. He who seeth here as different, meeteth death after death.

‘ By mind alone this is to be realized, and [then] there is no difference here.  From death to death he goeth, who seeth as if there is difference here.

 

The first was a quote from The Book of the Craft of Dying and the second from the Katha Upanishad. 

          In the Middle Ages “the art of dying” was a favorite topic of Christian authors and The English ars moriendi is available on amazon.com. I only have the   texts from the Renaissance and Baroque era at this time, but the instructions to the dying person are not likely to have changed much from previous centuries. The book contains entries ranging from ca. 1490-1689 and I shall mention only some highlights from William Caxton’s on The Arte and Crafte to Know Well to Die.

It is written in Shakespearean English, but I shall use current language. The key points to be remembered are: one ought to die gladly; how to face the temptations at the hour of death; demands and questions that ought to be addressed to the dying person and the prayers that ought to be said.

          The “temptations” need some discussion because they overlap with Hindu/Buddhist thought, which at that time was unknown in the West. In Caxton’s article there are five main ones. The first is loss of faith in one’s religion. The second consists of despair and loss of hope in the goodness of God. The third is impatience especially in those persons whose lives had lacked love and charity. It manifests itself by complaining and bewailing one’s fatal illness. The illness should be borne with patience and regarded as a part of purgatory into which the person will enter after death. The fourth is complacency and pride in one’s spiritual maturity for none can be certain to have deserved the love of God. The fifth, when rendered into modern English, “troubles the secular and worldly men.” The hopes and desires for externals, even in regard to family members, can no longer be satisfied and must be abandoned. These worries are presented by the devil. But he is too weak to overcome a determined will, and God is too good and just to allow greater temptations than the person can bear. Pride must be abandoned and the victory over temptations will be achieved through meekness, humility and surrender into the hands of God.

          The “Judeo-Christian,” as well as the Muslim religion relies ultimately on the grace of God that will lead to entry into paradise or heaven. Buddhism seems to take a more intermediate position. Siddhartha Gautama, its founder, categorically denied the existence of a Deity who rules over our fate. We are free, but ignorant, individuals who shape their lives according to their desires. These should be kept in check during life. The overarching principle should be constant awareness that life is riddled with suffering and compassion towards all living entities has, therefore, to be developed. It seems, however, that this absolutist stance has been slightly modified in subsequent centuries and Buddhism now encourages prayers to one’s tutelary Deity, especially in the “After-death State,” the Bardo. Nevertheless the main work of liberating the soul has to be done by the individual. The Western analogue seems to be: God will help those who help themselves.

The goal of the devout Buddhist is to avoid rebirth in any of the various universes because even if there is initial happiness some type of suffering will eventually return. The reason for this thought seems to be that “forms,” be they human, animal, or whatever, are not constant and eternal but merely temporary. Forms, therefore, cannot be ultimate everlasting reality and their loss will be associated with unhappiness, if not outright suffering. But in order to be successful, the pursuit of the eightfold noble path has to start during life because the law of karma is absolute and immutable.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is an instruction manual for the dying individual so that one will not be afraid during the dying and after-death process. Contrary to Western attitudes where dying patients are frequently under sedation, the book insists that death must be faced fully conscious and in keen awareness. The reason being that this is the most important work the individual has to accomplish during a lifetime that is now about to end. The feelings that accompany the dying process are then described. They consist of:

 

“(1) a bodily sensation of pressure ‘earth sinking into water;’ (2) a bodily sensation of clammy coldness as though the body were immersed in water, which gradually merges into that of feverish heat ‘water sinking into fire;’ (3) a feeling as though the body were blown into atoms ‘fire sinking into air.’ Each symptom is accompanied by visible external changes in the body ….”

 

The mental accompaniment is the “dawning of the clear light,” which the dying person is encouraged to remain in. But since this requires extraordinary concentration ability the untrained person will not be able to do so and consciousness will now enter that of the after-death state the Bardo which lasts for 49 days (seven times seven). It is filled with some pleasant but mostly fearful images and the dying individual is constantly being reminded that these are products of his own mind and therefore nothing to be afraid of. Throughout the Bardo state the person is also urged to achieve “clear light consciousness” because it alone is immutable and provides permanent relief from suffering. I believe, however, that the word “light” should, in my current understanding, not be taken in its physical sense as it pertains to our world, but as formless total awareness, which is the substrate from which all subsequent forms arise. The Buddhist would therefore look at the NDE phenomena as well as the Christian and Muslim heaven or paradise only as a way station rather than final destiny of the human soul. Karma has to be totally expiated, and this cannot be achieved in one life-time.  

The Book of the Dead” is, however, an inadequate translation because the original title is the Bardo Thödol or Liberation through Hearing in the Intermediate State. In Tibet specific portions, as they pertain to the time that has elapsed during and after death, are read to the dying person and subsequently when the body has been disposed of to its effigy. I shall not discuss its contents further at this time but suggest that you buy the book and study it for the lessons it might teach. I used the word “study” because it should not be read as one would a novel. It should be examined for the meaning that may be contained in each of the paragraphs. There are several translations available. My personal favorite is one that has been edited by Evans-Wentz, in spite of its partially archaic language. It contains a Foreword by Carl Gustav Jung and extensive footnotes to clarify meanings that would elude the untrained Western mind.    

Anyone who is interested in what might happen after death can also consult the Katha chapter of the Upanishads, Plato’s story of Er in The Republic, Plotinus’ Enneads, Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell, The Sprits Book by Allan Kardec and Rudolf Steiner’s The Way of Initiation: How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. Obviously, these are just some representative samples of the vast literature on the topic but they do provide an overview of how intelligent human beings have tried to come to grips with the unavoidable. Nevertheless, honesty compels us to admit that these are mental images of the writers which may or may not have counterparts in our personal final reality as we shall individually encounter.

 As mentioned earlier dying has, however, two aspects. So far the discussion has dealt with thoughts on what happens to the dying person which apart from biological facts can never conclusively be established. But the other and equally important aspect is that of the survivors who find themselves deprived of the help and companionship of the deceased. It is a difficult process, especially if the departed was a person one loved. There will be a gap that cannot be filled and one has to make mental adjustments. There is grief. But one must now decide for whom one grieves. Is it for the departed or for oneself because of the loss one inevitably feels? Reason tells us that the dead, if they have led a decent life, no longer suffer and grief for them is inappropriate because, if they were to know about it, it would hurt them witnessing despair in their loved ones. But if we grieve for our own sake because we now have to cope with tasks the deceased did for us, or in case of children who died prematurely our hopes for their future achievements, we have to mend our attitude. This is best accomplished by the thought: what would our loved one have wanted us to do now? The answer is simple we carry on in the spirit of the deceased and conduct our lives accordingly. Under these circumstances when tears well up in memory of the person we loved, as they inevitably will, they are not tears of sorrow but of gratitude for having been allowed to share our lives with this caring human being.

Keeping the above in mind we can now ask: Is there a purpose in praying for the dead? It depends in part on our belief system. If they are in heaven they don’t need them and if consciousness is extinguished at time of death, like a candle that has consumed its wax, they are not needed either. But while prayers may not benefit the dead they are an act of caring and as such have value for the survivors because this simple act of caring may then carry over towards helping other living beings.

 Death, as mentioned above, has an additional societal component. Events of the past month were filled with scenes of human despair: acts of mindless terrorism, as well as displaced humanity seeking rescue from bombs and cruelty. Official America, that is to a considerable part responsible for having unleashed these disasters with the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions, is bereft of a sense of guilt. It refuses to acknowledge the consequences of President George W. Bush’s actions and can only think in terms of revenge that is carried out by bombs. We are intent to “destroy ISIS” and remove an “evil tyrant,” Bashar Assad. But this goal cannot be achieved in this way. Bombs, including atomic ones, never won a war! Wars end when either a given government surrenders, or both sides are sufficiently exhausted that they see no purpose in the continuation of the war. In addition, ever since Russia has entered into the fray, the situation has become even more complex. The Russians have no problem with Assad, because in their opinion any government is better than anarchy. Now we have three separate entities showering bombs on the civilian population: we and our “allies,” Russia, and the Syrian government. This is outright insanity and one should not be surprised when people are leaving in droves with or without the help of traffickers in human lives.      

We now must also be quite honest with ourselves and admit that Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the “caliph” of ISIS is our creation. We killed the “Al Qaida in Iraq,” leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, celebrated our victory, but at the same time bred his more vicious successor who was incarcerated in Abu Ghraib. It was our treatment of the defeated Iraqis that led to their uprising. The abominations we allowed to occur in Abu Ghraib further radicalized some of the inmates who might have been decent persons before their indiscriminate arrests. The same applies also to the Guantanamo prisoners who were never given an impartial trial. These facts make us hypocrites in the eyes of the world, especially those of our adversaries, but we fail to recognize it.

What we currently see in the Middle East is a replay of the European Thirty Years War which was fought ostensibly over Protestantism vs. Catholicism but behind it was the question of political control over the “Holy Roman Empire.” Its seat was in Vienna, but the Emperor was more or less subservient to the Pope in Rome. “Los von Rom,” liberation from Rome, was the banner under which the northern Protestant states fought the southern Catholic ones. The war, like all previous ones when religion was a factor, played itself out with excessive cruelty and displacement of human masses. It ended with the compromise of: cuius regio, eius religio; whoever is in charge of a given part of the empire has the right to determine its religion. This is also the way the Middle East, if undisturbed by outsiders, would find a peaceful resolution.

The Sunni-Shia conflict is the counterpart of the split in the Christian religion of the 16th and 17th century, and will have to be resolved within the overall Muslim community. Outsiders, the West as well as Russia, can only make things worse and prolong the conflict in a similar manner as intervention of other powers did in the Thirty Years War. But the West also must recognize that beyond the sectarian strife there is a nationalistic component which rejects our “modernity.” Instead of los von Rom a considerable segment of Muslim society wants independence from the West and its cultural domination, especially in some of its features that deeply offend the traditional societal code. This aspect can likewise not be suppressed by drones and bombs.

Since there is a “religious” component to the current upheavals, including the acts of terror outside the Middle East, the problem can only be solved when it has been taken out of the equation. We now must recognize that, as has been pointed out previously, ISIS’ religious philosophy is nothing else but a more vicious extension of Saudi Arabia’s dominant religious system: Wahhabism. ISIS’ money initially came from that country and subsidies may or may not persist. Currently one of the major income sources is the oil from the Mosul area which is illegally shipped to consumers via the good graces of our “ally” and NATO member Turkey.

The proper way to defeat ISIS would be to two-pronged. The religious aspect could be removed if Iran’s Supreme leader the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Saudi Arabia’s top cleric, Sheik Abdul-Aziz ibn Abdullah Al-ash Sheikh, were to sit down together and officially affirm that the Holy Koran does not allow Muslims to slaughter each other. Allah the “Compassionate and Merciful” in whose name the Holy Koran is written and Who is constantly evoked by both sides does not condone wanton killing and especially the murder of innocents. It is the latter that is carried out by misguided youths who are trained by evil adults to don suicide vests or explode bombs by remote control. If these two religious leaders were able to lay their personal articles of faith aside and meet each other not as Shia vs. Sunni but as Muslims with a common Holy Book they would first embrace each other and then issue a joint Fatwa. This would declare that anyone who incites or carries out an attack on another Muslim is immediately expelled from the community of believers (Ummah) and will not enter paradise upon death but hell instead. This would have an immediate salutary effect and influx of fighters from abroad would decrease to a trickle of mercenaries. These two leaders are aware of the dangers ISIS presents to Muslims around the world and have already criticized that group but never in a joint communiqué which is currently needed.

The second prong is finances. If the Saudis and other Sunni Gulf States were still to supply ISIS with needed funds they should first be warned to cease and desist and if the warning were to be ignored economic sanctions could be taken. The Turkish government could likewise unequivocally be told that tolerating oil shipments through their country is unacceptable and if they were to persist, NATO membership would be reconsidered. Under those circumstances ISIS’ income would be reduced to confiscatory taxes from the citizens under its control. This is, however, the best way to create dissent and an uprising against the regime, especially when the religious aspect has been removed. The political borders within the Middle East could subsequently be redrawn by the people living there rather than by outside powers.  

I believe that this would be a rational way to end the current war and its concomitant refugee problem. But as we also know the majority of our fellow citizens around the world, and especially those in positions of power, have not achieved a mental state that would justify the title “Homo Sapiens.” They are driven by emotions and desire for gain and in this manner cause as well as prolong immeasurable suffering. Throwing bombs is much easier and also makes money for the armaments industry. If our leadership were, however, to consider for a moment the implications of the previously mentioned law of karma, it would change its thinking and conduct. Although karma is the word for just retribution in Hindu/Buddhist thought, the idea was known to the ancient Egyptians who said: the deed returns to the doer. This was the basis of the concept of Maat which has been discussed in previous installments (Our Need for Maat August 1, 2007; Counter-Religion September 1, 2007)). If we now were to apply this concept to our conduct as a nation one would begin to shudder at the fate that may befall our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. The bombs which we so liberally dispense over most of the globe will fall on us! From this point of view the so-called War on Terror has to be stopped now and our ruling powers need to think of better ways to deal with the evil ISIS undoubtedly represents.

The next installment will continue the discussion of current events in the Middle East because the problem of “religious fundamentalism” is not limited to ISIS and “martyrdom” for political ends also requires constructive assessment.







January 1, 2016

ADRIFT

          Traditionally Christmas is supposed to be a time of good cheer and the New Year celebrations filled with expectations of better things to come. But although the economy is improving, according to the people who are supposed to know, it is certainly not on a solid upswing for most of us. Wages are stagnant and since interest rates are so low saving accounts are not producing a yield that will compensate for inflation. Retirees can no longer rely on the interest of their savings but have to spend whatever capital they were able to accumulate during a lifetime of work The stock market is supposed to compensate for the inability to save one’s money in the traditional manner, but since this amounts to gambling, that especially older people are adverse to engage in, it cannot provide financial security. In addition, market analysts foresee at best stagnation while more pessimistically inclined ones, point to the unsustainability of the current financial system because the causes of the 2008 crash have not been eliminated. Speculation by banks, with our savings, is as rampant as it ever was. In addition, further mergers of banks and industries have occurred leading to monopolies and the few remaining banks are again “too big to fail.” Are we supposed to bail them out a second time when the next crash comes?

          This sense of unease was given voice, among other publications, in TIME magazine that placed the German chancellor Angela Merkel on its cover as Person of the Year. The selection was appropriate and the article well written. She is indeed the only one who at this time can hold Europe together and thereby the Western World. TIME called her Chancellor of the Free World which was correct but also a slap in the face of our ruling circles. We boast of leadership but are unable to provide it because of the massive political polarization that has taken place in the past few years. Leadership would require that the President and Congress agree not only on principles but also on the major aspects of their execution, which is currently not the case. The House of Representatives and the Senate are in Republican hands but the party is badly splintered. The election of so-called Tea-party candidates has led to a massive shift towards the extreme right that rules out cooperation with the Democrats, let alone the President whom they intensely dislike.

President Obama tried to retain some momentum in the foreign arena during the past year, as for instance with the conclusion of the Iran nuclear issue. But even this success hangs on a thin thread and the upcoming November elections can cut it. He has been relegated to “lame duck” status and if he were to wield his pen with executive orders they could readily be undone next January if the Republicans were to win. In addition, he has already been threatened with impeachment if he were to overstep his authority as determined by his Republican adversaries. Under these circumstances the practically year-long presidential campaign will continue to paralyze the country which has lost its moorings. The USS America is now drifting on an ocean of uncertainty; a toy of diverse conflicting interests driven by currents that defy control.

We are, however, not alone in this predicament because the world has become so interdependent that what hurts one is felt by all. Our 2008 financial crisis had repercussions in Europe that came to a head last year in Greece and threatened to tear the EU apart. It was temporarily solved and Chancellor Merkel deserves the credit for steadfastness in adversity. But this was then; the “now” is different. The Syrian refugee crisis with a tsunami of displaced humanity has strained resources in the neighboring countries and spilled over to Europe. The picture of two-year old Aylan Kurdi, who had drowned with his mother and four year old brother during the parents’ escape from war and destitution, aroused compassion and the newcomers were initially welcomed in some European countries, especially Germany. The country absorbed about 800,000 arrivals but it is highly unlikely that it will be able to tolerate more Muslims. In order to retain the chancellorship Merkel’s compassion has found its limit. This is likewise true for the rest of Europe, which still has not fully recovered from the 2008 crash. Compassion and good will are now replaced by fear, which is stoked by irresponsible politicians in their quest for office. The method is what is called in German: den Teufel an die Wand malen – to paint a portrait of the devil on the wall of the living room. He no longer sports horns and a cloven hoof, but is currently represented by the twin specter of “Terrorism” and “Islamization.”

As all of us know this phenomenon is not limited to Europe, but is also in full force here in the US.  The Christmas message of “Fear Not” has been replaced by a steady onslaught of the imperative: Fear! The future is no longer to be welcomed as an opportunity for personal and societal growth but we have to be afraid of everything and anything that might possibly befall us. We are, therefore, urged to “protect” ourselves. Domestically, the political representatives of the arms industry tell us that we have to protect our lives, homes and property by a variety of guns including semi- or fully automatic assault weapons. When these are then put to their use by irresponsible crazed individuals, as in the San Bernadino shootings, the blame is not placed on the ready availability of these weapons but on Muslim fanaticism. While the latter is indeed a potent motivating factor the means to create such havoc should not be so readily available both here and abroad. There is absolutely no reason why possession of assault weapons should not be outlawed for their use by private citizens and even police. They were never needed for personal safety or hunting in all of the past centuries and they are not needed now.

The only reason I can think of why possession of assault weapons is legal in our country is the cowardice of Congress where some of its most influential members are supported by the arms manufacture industry. The New York Times International section carried on December 26 an article headlined: Arms Deals Ensure U.S. is Top Seller. Sales to Countries Increase 35% in 2014.”  The main message was: “The United States controls over half of the global arms trade.” The actual number for 2014, as reported to Congress, was $71.8 billion. But there also was an inconsistency that characterizes our time and may have escaped the attention of the typesetter who was responsible for formatting this page. The report on what can only be called the “merchants of death” was placed as a column on one side for the entire page while the main center portion showed a picture of Pope Francis blessing the faithful who had assembled for Christmas at St. Peter’s square. The caption was: “A call to the Peacemakers. Pope Francis delivered his Christmas message from St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican on Friday, calling for peace in Syria and elsewhere, and praising countries that have taken in refugees. Religious leaders around the world issued similar messages calling for peace. Excerpts from them are at nytimes.com/world.”

The article above the picture carried the headline: “Rugged Afghan Region Lies Beyond Reach of Aid and Time. As Billions Are Spent Elsewhere, Nuristan Province is Deprived.” The bottom section, below the picture, was devoted to: “In Blow to Syrian Insurgents, Airstrike Is Said to Kill Rebel Leader. The head of a group seen as terrorists by the Syrian and Russian governments.” The article also had an insert showing a picture of the victim, Zaran Alloush leader of the “army of Islam”, speaking at a wedding in July of last year. But there is more to it. He was a terrorist only in the eyes of the Russian and the Syrian government. Our government regarded him as useful in the quest to remove President Assad from power. Alloush controlled an outskirt of Damascus. It was assumed that he would have checked encroachment by ISIL and might have participated in peace negotiations.

What this page tells us is that war and its consequences are more important to report on than efforts by religious leaders of the world to create an atmosphere that could make peace possible. Those have to be excerpted and can then be found only on the Internet. Let’s face it; war makes money while the pursuit of peace does not yield this commodity which obviously rules this world.

Apparently the “War on Terror” also requires that we have the means to terrorize ourselves by the mentioned proliferation of assault weapons. As past experience abroad has shown, fear of chaos is the best way to abolish a democratic government in favor of an autocratic one where power can be wielded so much more readily. Let us remember that without the economic depression, and the concomitant street battles between Nazis and Communists, Hitler would never have been appointed Chancellor. With impending chaos most people bite their lips and submit to the only alternative. There is no reason to expect that what happened in Europe in the 1930s cannot happen here because human beings are the same throughout the world. On the other hand in America the picture of the “Wild West” is still retained in television shows where every male has a gun and uses it with minimal provocation. Some of us are, therefore, arming themselves against the consequences of potentially impending chaos and, if need be, an autocratic government. Although the latter attempt would be obviously useless.

For our politicians who stoke fear it is also necessary to have a foreign enemy and ISIS/ISIL/IS is now being portrayed as an existential threat to the U.S. This is ludicrous. Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, who was the runner-up for first place as TIME’s Person of the Year just doesn’t have the wherewithal to defeat us on our shores. Yes, he can sponsor terror attacks that might kill hundreds and if he were to get his hands on a “dirty bomb” even thousands. He can create havoc, but he cannot destroy us unless we follow his script and become an outright police state. This is the real danger we are facing. We saw a preview after 9/11. Instead of a proper criminal investigation to find the culprits, wars were started abroad and domestically the “national security state” emerged. It created the deliberately mislabeled Patriot Act and a “Department of Homeland Security” which, because of its far-flung bureaucracy, cannot possibly achieve the goal that is supposed to be accomplished. It not only absorbs tax money that should be spent on infrastructure and other programs that benefit the citizenry but also makes life more ornery because of ever increasing regulations that are camouflaged as enhancing our “security.”

One enemy, such as al-Baghdadi, clearly is not enough to create sufficient fear; we also have to fear the Russians and Chinese. In order to make this credible we engage in deliberate provocations as for instance removing a Russophile government in Ukraine, with its attendant Russian countermoves (Ukraine Crisis; March 15, 2014. Ukraine: Let truth be told; April 1, 2014), and patrolling the South China Sea’s artificial coral islands, thereby inviting accidental shootouts, with the possibility of escalation.

We have succeeded to some extent to demonize Russia and its economy is faltering. The value of the Ruble is steadily sinking and has not yet hit bottom. This is partly a result of sanctions, lower oil prices and a fair amount of corruption within the ruling elite. President Putin tries to divert attention from a looming crisis to foreign affairs and the Syrian plight. For this endeavor he might even get some help from our John Kerry who seems to be indefatigable and together with Russia’s Sergei Lavrov would certainly be a candidate for a Nobel peace prize. But Kerry is handicapped by our official stance that President Assad, who has now reached in propaganda terms the status of Saddam Hussein, must be deposed.

It seems that our ruling circles in Washington are incapable of learning. They know, but refuse to acknowledge, the chaos we created in Iraq by removing a dictator who held a diverse country together by force and we seem to be determined to repeat this failed experiment in Syria. It should be abundantly clear that we can’t get Western style democracy in the Middle East by executive fiat. So what is our choice: swallow our pride and make do with Assad for some time or continuing chaos with an ever increasing refugee problem and the danger of war with Russia? Our, as well as Russia’s, fighter planes are flying separate missions in the relatively small Syrian airspace and it is only a matter of time for some accident to happen when both sides will accuse each other of deliberate provocation. The Turkish air disaster was already a preview. The fact that we don’t share intelligence information on our targets with the Russians, although they repeatedly asked for it, is not only harmful to a successful prosecution of the war but amounts to criminal negligence because accidents are bound to happen under present circumstances. Is our leadership really too stupid not to understand this danger or are other more sinister efforts at work?

With intolerable living conditions some people who can will emigrate while others, who either don’t have the inclination or the means, will be radicalized. This may take the form of random violence or a “return to basics;” a fundamentalist type of religious thought. The latter has now come to dominate the Middle East. ISIS, to stay with one of the common abbreviations, was born in the chaos of Iraq when John Bremer, our “Vice-Roy,” ordered “de-Ba’athification” and dissolution of the Iraqi military. Hundreds of thousands were overnight deprived of income and literally thrown out on the streets. When one adds to this the indiscriminate incarcerations at Abu Ghraib and other jails one should not be surprised when previously relatively decent human beings are subjected to these experiences turn to their image of God and become fanatics.

   Sections of the Holy Koran are then taken out of historical context, pasted together and, in disregard of others which proclaim the opposite, are formed into an ideology that justifies killing in the name of God. When this is coupled with the assurance that to be killed in the service of god amounts to martyrdom and ensures instant accession to paradise one has a mental state that will defy not only reason but also threats and bombs. When initial fear is turned into hate it cannot readily be stifled. When one adds an expected heavenly reward for this conduct it is not hard to see why disenchanted young people would want to join “jihad.”  This is so obvious that one may even regard it as a “normal” i.e. “common” human mental mechanism.

While our media concentrate mainly on the efforts of ISIS in Syria, Iraq and various African countries there is an additional battleground in the making which will hit the headlines if not this year then soon thereafter. The plight of the Palestinian people under Israeli rule is not properly recognized by our media and ruling circles because the “Jewish vote” is more important. Yet, it is an incubator for violence which has to erupt sooner or later. Intelligent people, both here and in Israel, know that the current status of the West Bank and the Gaza strip is untenable. Yet the “two state” solution, as initially accepted to in the Oslo agreement, is now dead and buried without an alternative in place. There is no “peace process” and even John Kerry had to give up on it. Therefore, Israel although it still has a leader in the person of Binyamin Netanyahu is also adrift because he is not a free agent. To keep his post he has to make compromises with the religious parties of the country some of whom are just as “fundamentalist” as their Muslim counterparts although they do not export their violence to the rest of the world. The reason is not that they are adverse to violence, as the early history of the State of Israel shows (Bowyer Bell: Terror out of Zion). But it is currently not needed and would be counterproductive, except as a “false flag” operation. The Likud government and other Israeli rightwing parties live in a fool’s paradise because the status quo is unsustainable. 

Our official media stay away from reporting on events in the Gaza strip where 1.8 million human beings are crowded into an area that measures 25 miles in length and eight miles at is maximal width. It is an open air prison where the borders are sealed, the air space is filled with Israeli drones and the coast patrolled by Israeli gunboats. Ask yourself now: how long do you think it will take for this powder keg to explode? How long can unemployed young males be expected to tolerate these conditions? The recent wars with Israel with their attendant destruction of lives and property, have led to increasing loss of hope for outside help and some youngsters are now turning to ISIS as the answer. In their eyes HAMAS, which we regard as a terrorist organization, is not radical enough because it has negotiated a truce with Israel that has brought no benefit to the inhabitants of Gaza. There are to be no further negotiations and Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, has to yield to the Old Testament God of Vengeance. The January 14, 2016 issue of the New York Review of Books carries an article by Sarah Helm that describes the situation.

Many, if not most, people in our country are not aware that the Holy Koran is a composite of Old and New Testament ideas rather than a completely separate document. Yet, this is important to realize because under those circumstances the Muslim religion is not something that is fundamentally alien to Western thought. It derives its legitimacy from the legend of Abraham and his first-born son Ishmael. Depending on political circumstances the Koran emphasizes either the Old Testament wrathful aspect of the Deity, or the Christian benign and merciful Father.

The “fundamentalist” aspects of the OT religion are, for good reason, currently not emphasized in our country but they are inextricable interwoven into the concept of the “Jewish State” of Israel. The country is not, in spite of protestations to the contrary, a Western type of democracy because a separation of Religion and State does not exist. To appreciate the full extent of current Israeli fundamentalism it is important that one reads “Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel” by Israel Shahhak and Norton Mezvinsky. It is available on the Internet in book form on amazon but also free of charge as a pdf document. Unless one is familiar with this aspect of the Jewish religion one cannot understand the Israeli political position in regard to what in the West is regarded either as the “West Bank” or occupied territories but in Israeli parlance Judaea and Samaria. Political Zionism has taken the Jewish religion back about 2300 years, to Maccabean times, and is enacting policies of that era as documented in Whither Zionism? that can be downloaded from this website.

The cornerstone of the Jewish-Palestinian debacle is the OT with its insistence that the Lord, is first and foremost the God of Israel, “who brought thee out of the land of Egypt.” Concern for “goyim” (other ethnicities) does not belong to his priorities. The Christian church tried to change this view but it is rejected by the true believers in the Jewish faith. For them the statement in Ex. 14-12 is still divine revelation:

 

Behold I am driving out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perrizite, and the Hivite and the Jebusite. Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, whither thou goest, lest they be for a snare in the midst of thee. 

 

          When put into modern parlance: the Lord will engage in “ethnic cleansing” and whoever remains in the land given to the immigrants must not be fraternized with. Strict segregation or in modern terms “apartheid” is to be enacted. Lest one think that the Exodus quote was an isolated occurrence please consult Deuteronomy chapter 20:10-20. It deals with how the inhabitants of besieged cities are to be treated. If a city that does not belong to Israel’s patrimony voluntarily surrenders the males are to be killed. The women, children and cattle are the “spoils” of war and to be used accordingly. But if the city is in the land “the Lord, thy God giveth thee as an inheritance thou shalt save alive nothing that breathes, but thou shalt utterly destroy them.” The quotes are from The Socino Chumash, an unimpeachable Jewish document rather than the King James Bible translation.

We now must remember that this is not just some man-made “Nuremberg law,” written by a secular government that can be undone. It is an order of God as expressed in the Torah which when translated into English stands for Law. It establishes an unbridgeable “them and Us” for all time. This has led in the past to the voluntary establishment by Jews of Ghettos for Jews in Christendom, and in this century Israel’s “Security fence” or ‘Wall of separation” behind which the Palestinians are forced to live.

It is, therefore, obvious that “racial purity” was not invented by the Nazis. They only adopted and adapted this aspect of the OT. We may now say that this concept has no validity in the modern world. But under these circumstances we avoid recognition of the power of faith which drives fundamentalist religious thought. Racial purity is alive and well in Israel where marriages between Jew and Gentile are not permitted. In ultra-orthodox Haredim society it reaches the level where according to Shahhak and Nemvitzky even the question of accepting blood transfusions from a non-observant Jew, let alone a Gentile is debated.  A similar situation exists for organ donations.

One may now say that this is an extreme example that is irrelevant for the conduct of Israeli policy. This is true, but the separation from native Palestinians and the question to whom this land belongs, are the prime movers of the conflict. Americans who limit their information to the popular media are not aware of the views of Israel’s current Deputy Prime Minister Tzipi Hotovely on this topic. She was appointed by Prime Minister Netanyahu after the 2015 elections and, according to Wikipedia:

 

Hotovely rejects Palestinian statehood aspirations, supporting a Greater Israel spanning over the entire land of current Israel along with the Palestinian territories.[12] She later reiterated her hardline position in a speech to Israeli diplomats on 22 May 2015, rejecting criticism from the international community regarding the West Bank settlement policies and saying that Israel has tried too hard to appease the world and must stand up for itself. She has also stated that she will make every effort to achieve global recognition for West Bank settlements (a move which is widely opposed by the international community), as well as asserting that Israel owes no apologies for its policies in the Holy Land towards the Palestinians. She justified her position as she referenced religious texts to back her belief.

In October 2015, in an interview with the Knesset Channel, Hotovely said: "It's my dream to see the Israeli flag flying on the Temple Mount." She added: "I think it's the center of Israeli sovereignty, the capital of Israel, the holiest place for the Jewish people." Despite the government's insistence that it has no intention of changing the status quo at the site.

           

            The British people were informed of this stance in The Guardian but America’s media are silent on this obviously important topic. One might now argue that she is “only” the Deputy Foreign Minister and policy is made by Netanyahu who is not only Prime Minister but also Foreign Minister, and that Mrs.  Hotovely is merely responsible for the bureaucratic functions of the Ministry. But this would ignore the fact that Netanyahu appointed her and, therefore, either agrees with these views or regards them as sufficiently wide-spread that he has to placate this segment of Israel’s citizenry. It is obvious that this attitude can only lead to a radicalization of the Palestinian population not only in Gaza but also in the West Bank and Jerusalem. The Jewish Temple Mount is for all Muslims the “Noble Sanctuary” and any attempt to change its status would lead to a world-wide catastrophe. Hotovely’s statements are, of course, known in the Arab world and thereby provide an excellent recruiting tool for ISIS.   

When one keeps all the mentioned facts in mind one can see that ISIS was created by despair and that the obviously barbaric conduct of its troops is simply a regression to OT laws as incorporated in sections of the Koran. Cutting off hands is, of course, also the way thieves were to be dealt with in that document. In regard to the severing of the head of one’s enemy it needs to be pointed out that decapitation was the method of choice for centuries and the guillotine was used routinely in France, for instance, until the death penalty was abolished in 1977.

Under these circumstances it is obvious that although the “ISIS Caliphate” can be driven out of its strongholds with sufficient military force, this will not affect the hate and religious fervor that gave rise to the organization in the first place. The daily reports in our newspapers in regard to ISIS leaders who have been killed by us and our allies evoke memories of the body counts during the Vietnam War. They were useless then and killing “leadership” now is based on a concept that does not take religious fanaticism into account. The Romans couldn’t kill all the Christian martyrs and we can’t kill all the Muslims who are sacrificing themselves for the “greater good.”  There is an inexhaustible supply. When in 2006 we announced that we had killed Abu Musab al-Zarquawi in Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was already in the wings.  

The only way to end this war, with all of its attendant human misery, will be when Sunnis and Shiites put their sectarian differences aside in the manner presented last month and Israel releases its stranglehold on the Palestinians. But for this outcome we would need Divine intervention because the ruling circles on all sides of the conflict have no such interest and there is no one who is likely to initiate and can subsequently enforce such an agreement. Whether or not this inherently unstable situation will come to a head during this year or in a subsequent one cannot be foretold. But that some type of catastrophic reckoning will take place looks increasingly unavoidable. Political events that impact our society, and thereby our public lives, are truly adrift. All we can do as individuals is to bring our inner house in mental and spiritual order so that we can weather the oncoming storm. In that spirit I wish my readers a healthy and personally satisfying New Year.  







February 1, 2016

THE AGE OF DELUSION

The title of this essay was inspired by two documents. One was the encyclopedic History of Civilization by Will Durant and the other The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. As will become apparent these two authors represent opposite poles of human thought and, therefore, suggestions for societal change. I have discussed the Dawkins book in the May 1, 2010 installment (Our Atheists) but the monumental work of the Durants has so far not been properly addressed.

          Will Durant was born in November 1885 of French Canadian Catholic parents and received his early education by the Jesuits. Initially he became a newspaper writer but his inquisitive mind and social conscience led him to teach at Seton Hall University. In 1911 he became principal of the Ferrer Modern School that was intended to serve the educational needs of the working poor, where he also taught classes. He fell in love with one of his pupils, Chaya Kaufman of Russian Jewish parents, and they married in October of 1913. Since the bride was only 15 years old, Will resigned from the school and a life-long bond was established between the two. It was only broken in 1981 when Chaya, whom Will had nicknamed Ariel, died on October 25. Will followed her on November 7 of that year. Together they first explored our world and its civilizations by touring the globe and their first-hand experiences of the various cultures they encountered formed the background for their monumental work.

          The History of Civilization consists of 11 volumes with the first one, Our Oriental Heritage published in 1935 and the last one The Age of Napoleon in 1975. The other volumes where “The Age of …” appears in the title are Volume IV The Age of Faith, Volume VII The Beginning of the Age of Reason, Volume VIII The Age of Louis XIV and Volume IX The Age of Voltaire. All of them, in addition to a few others, reside in my library but I must admit to not having found the time to fully read even one of them because each one exceeds at least 800 pages and the Age of Faith required nearly 1200. Nevertheless, they are available and can serve not only as reference for certain aspects when needed but also as inspiration. They are written in a compassionate, informative style which distinguishes them from the writings of some fervent atheists, especially Sam Harris’ The End of Faith and A Letter to a Christian Nation.  These books, as discussed in Our Atheists (May 1, 2010), are a polemic not only against all religions but also against religious tolerance. Dawkins on the other hand made his impassioned plea for equal rights of atheists by adding useful scientific information with a certain degree of British humor.

          With this as background we can now explore the meaning of the key word in the title of this installment “delusion.” Although all of us commonly use the word in conversation, frequently to criticize someone else’s utterances, it deserves to be further discussed. One of the definitions is by Merriam Webster: 1) A belief that is not true: a false idea. 2) A false idea or belief that is caused by mental illness. Let us leave mental illness aside and stay only with normal, i.e. common, human ideation. The key words are belief and the true-false dichotomy. The latter is perfectly appropriate in the description of concrete objects, usually as apprehended by vision. Since all of us have essentially the same brain visual processing equipment any deviation from what others might experience will readily be obvious and labeled as false. But the delusion definition does not deal with physical objects. It has to do with mental events “a belief” and under these circumstances the true-false dichotomy can become considerably murkier.

          In regard to mentation we deal not only with rational thought but there is, in addition, a constant interaction with past memories that are already emotionally flavored, as well as with current emotions. This biologic fact tends to be ignored, but it is essential to realize that unconscious bias can be co-responsible for conscious ideation and its verbal result. This is why one should not only listen to the message that comes from a given person but also investigate the reliability of the messenger who wants us to believe what is being asserted. But belief, especially when it rises to the level of faith, cannot be objectively verified and is inaccessible to scientific endeavors. It is a purely intrapersonal rule book upon which the individual operates.

          Prior to Hitler’s arrival in Austria we were taught religion in high school as one of the subjects. The definition of faith, which I remember to this day, was: Etwas fest für wahr halten – to firmly regard something as true. Please note that although the term faith, even in the Durant example, is usually restricted to religion, this is not correct. Faith moves all of us throughout our lives. It is only the mental content faith is attached to that differs among individuals and can change during life. Thus the dichotomy between faith and science for instance is a spurious one. Dawkins as well as Harris expressed just as much faith in their atheistic belief system as they condemn in others who do not share it.

          In The God Delusion Dawkins vented his most intense disgust with what has been called the “Abrahamic religions,” i.e. Judaism and its offspring: Christianity and Mohammedanism. He characterized this belief not only as a delusion but a pernicious one. His reason for calling it a delusion is the conflict with scientific data and pernicious because of religious wars which are perpetrated with a great deal of ferocity. But it doesn’t need religious dogma for that, secular ones will perfectly adequately suffice as we saw during WWII. Although the atheistic establishment is fond of pointing to the current wars in the Middle East as an example of the evil caused by religion we shouldn’t forget that they were unleashed by secular motives on our part.

Now we come to another aspect intolerant atheists apparently do not want to recognize: the difference between religious feeling and religious dogma. All the battles against religion are not necessarily against the rules for human conduct but the stories and fables that have evolved over centuries and achieved equal validity as “the Word of God” enshrined in the Bible. Dogma, unquestioned belief in what is being proclaimed, is the real problem. Not only must one not question it but if one does one will at minimum be regarded as a crank, as long as one limits the spread of one’s views to a small circle, and as a menace that has to be eliminated if one attracts too much attention.  In former centuries punishment was meted out by the Church and now the State has taken over this role.

Secular dogma has replaced the religious one in the political-societal arena especially in our country. Yet, in spite of the fact that we practically worship science, we completely disregard its principles when it comes to adherence to officially proclaimed “truth.”  I can write the way I do in these pages not only because this is “a free country,” but because I am sufficiently old, living on my savings, and the readership is quite limited. If I were still employed my superiors would have taken me long ago to task and given the choice of either to stop writing and/or dismissal from my job. Let me say it quite openly: our free society has quite narrow limits when it comes to believing and asserting views that go contrary to officially sanctioned “truth.”

The most pernicious current false belief in our country is the government’s version of what happened on 9/11. One must subscribe to it because if one publicly raises questions there will be adverse consequences. This occurs in spite of the fact that the government’s theory, which has risen to the level of dogma, is contrary to the laws of physics as has been pointed out repeatedly on this site and a spate of books. (May 1, 2012; America’s Galileo Moment)Fire, originally from plane impacts and subsequently office furniture cannot bend steel beams and reduce buildings to dust clouds. But when a respected professor of physics stated so and gave lectures on it he had to accept premature retirement. When an engineer of the company that had certified the steel of the Twin Towers for safety standards stated that other factors than fire must have brought down the buildings, he was fired from his job. So was Professor Judy Wood who published the book Where Did the Towers Go? It contains extensive photographic documentation for her belief that other weapons of some type must have been used.

In The Vancouver 9/11 Hearings (September 1, 2012) installment I presented information on my participation at a conference that dealt with all the improbabilities of the government’s 9/11 theory. But I did not mention that there was an additional motive for attending. The NSA “Data Center” was about to open in near-by Bluffdale and I was quite concerned about this misuse of our lovely valley. Apart from the purpose, which I disagree with, the center’s computers use an inordinate amount of water for cooling, which we as a desert state should not waste on this ignominious project.  I, therefore, thought that I might organize in the winter of the following year a two-day conference here in Salt Lake City on “9/11 and its Aftermath – To what Extent are Freedom and Security Compatible?” Martha agreed in spite of the fact that a personal financial commitment would be needed. The Vancouver meeting was, therefore, intended to sift the attendees for individuals who were sufficiently level-headed to present their data at our projected meeting. It was to be held at the Marriott Hotel in the Research Park area of the university’s campus; a very pleasant facility with reasonable prices. I then contacted a considerable number of persons with academic degrees who had shown themselves knowledgeable in their area of expertise and the recurrent question was: Is it sanctioned by the university? When I told them that it was a private function for the purpose to raise awareness of an important topic the conversation frequently ended at that point.

Inasmuch as I still hold a professorship at the university, albeit without financial compensation, I thought it wise to also enlist members of other relevant departments for the meeting. The result was surprising. Some were indeed willing to discuss the national security aspect but not its mental parent the 9/11 disaster. When I mentioned the project in private to some of my senior colleagues in the neurology department the uniform response was: “Do you really want to do that?” and if so “Proceed with great caution.” Since university tolerance, if not sponsorship, was important and we have a Hinckley Institute of Politics I thought the conference could be held under its auspices. But the director insisted that 9/11 is off limits and anyway his personnel would have to choose the speakers. This speaks volumes about academic freedom in our country.

Stubborn as I am, I went ahead with plans anyway and at the end of the San Diego American Epilepsy Society meeting in December of that year I was scheduled to discuss the plans with members of the 9/11 Truth group that is very active in that city; some of whom I had met in Vancouver. But, what I regard as a higher power intervened and I severely fractured my right femur on the preceding evening. There was no apparent reason for the fall; it just happened. I was incapacitated and all the plans and commitments had to be canceled. I am mentioning this personal story here to demonstrate the difficulties one encounters when one tries to elevate the 9/11 events from the government conspiracy theory of the 19 hijackers having been responsible for the entirety of the events, to the level of science. As such the government’s theory can now be called a delusion as well as a dogma because it flies in the face of established facts yet adherence to its veracity is required.

          Why did universities succumb to State proclaimed public opinion? The original purpose of a university, in contrast to a trade school, was to encourage free dialogue in a search for truth about a given topic. But this is no longer achievable in this country because universities now depend on federal government funding and have thereby become slaves of the State that sends the checks. That this situation can only have disastrous consequences when an entire “educated” generation has to lap up what the government declares as “the truth,” does not require the gift of prophecy.

Previously I have presented the Merriam Webster definition of delusion but there are additional ones. The New Columbia Encyclopedia defines it as: “a false belief based on a misconception of reality” and the Oxford Dictionary states: “An idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder: the delusion of being watched.” We, therefore, have an additional key word that requires discussion: “reality.” We use it constantly without thinking about its implications. As with the true-false dichotomy there is no problem in regard to objects that we are aware of through our senses. It comes again when we deal with abstract mental concepts. This is the area we know least about but are prone to argue the most.  

Physical reality is experienced when our eyes are open and we apprehend the happenings in the outer world. These are universal and can readily be verified by others. But this is not the case for the eyes closed state when our thoughts and feelings are purely private and unverifiable by others. Nevertheless, the mentation in the eyes closed state, in which we spend nearly half of our lives, carries over into our thoughts and actions of daily waking life. This fact is ignored by those of us, who regard science as the ultimate arbiter and insist that God does not exist because science rules out this belief. Let me now be quite concrete. Science is measurement and measurement requires vision. What we can’t see we can’t measure and quantify. In the human being vision is by far the most predominant sense, as can readily be demonstrated in neurophysiological laboratories, but this should not blind us to the importance of the other senses. In addition, all of them operate only within a given frequency range and anything above or below that is inaccessible to us. To base one’s opinion about reality, as is so commonly done, purely on vision - science is contrary to reason and when one firmly believes that reality is limited to the human eyes open experience one can regard this also as a delusion.

We, therefore, have to come to grips with what is and is not believable when the eyes open and the eyes closed mentation are given equal value. Under these circumstances we will look for possible motives that led to the actual events we experienced. There are occurrences in all of our lives which we have to regard as misfortune because they run counter to the plans we have made. We then try to find reasons for them and our subsequent conduct may not be determined by the actual cause of the event but by the reason we assign to it. Needless to say this assigned reason may be quite wrong. Our government’s response to the 9/11 is an example for the deliberate misuse of a crime to further its preconceived policies. More commonly we are confronted in our private lives with untoward events such as accidents, illness or death for which we want to find reasons. Depending on the character structure of the individual one may want to extract vengeance by legal action against some potential perpetrator of the presumed cause or it may lead, especially in religious persons, to introspection about the possible meaning of the event for one’s future life.

The Christian religion posits an all-good Father and the obvious existence of events in everyone’s life that may well be regarded as an evil seems incompatible with that notion. But my own life has taught me that what was a serious “evil,” that nearly drove me to suicide in adolescence, was actually a blessing in disguise; a lesson I had to learn for a successful future life. Since I have mentioned the details in War&Mayhem, which can be downloaded from this site, they need not be repeated here. In retrospect a meaning could be assigned to the event as the best thing that could have happened to me at the time because it brought me face to face with a “reality” which required different sustained effort.

Another example might be the fractured leg that prevented the above mentioned planned 9/11 conference. In retrospect, the timing was not appropriate for my life situation. As a member of a university department and respected by investigators of the neurophysiological/epilepsy community I would have become “radioactive” for them to the detriment of future work in the field. Furthermore, apart from gaining notoriety it would not have achieved its aim of leading to an international criminal investigation of the tragedy. As any good physician knows for the successful treatment of an ailment three factors have to be considered: the correct medication, in the proper dose, to be taken at the right time. If one neglects any one of these three components, the hoped for outcome will not be achieved. Right timing of one’s planned actions is, of course, the most difficult to ascertain. It may only retrospectively become apparent but the notion can become important for future conduct as well as an attempt to make sense out of the apparent senseless.

In America we currently live in an era of socio-political turmoil and uncertainty as pointed out in last month’s installment. That of America’s “lone superpower” has come to an end and efforts to recreate the past century’s glories are doomed to fail in spite of the promises our would-be presidents are currently making during their debates. But for students of history this is not unprecedented. All empires give way at some point and the attendant dislocations are always painful. The Western Roman Empire decayed after Constantine and was first replaced by the so-called “dark ages” and subsequently medievalism, The Eastern portion held out longer until it succumbed to the Muslim onslaught. The glory of the “Roi-Soleil,” Louis XIV, gave way to the more somber assessment by his successor, Louis XV, who commented on the coming revolution with: aprés moi le deluge.    

The way for “the Flood” was paved by the philosophes of whom Francois-Marie Arouet, pen name Voltaire (1694-1778), and Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) are best known. For the current context Voltaire is more relevant. In his most popular novel Candide, ou l‘Optimisme he satirized the notion that regardless what happens in life it is always for the best. It is now called called the “silver lining” of untoward events and as noted above I look for it in my own life, although it can only be perceived in retrospect. There are numerous bon mots ascribed to Voltaire but for the current purpose 

ÉCRASEZ L’ INFÂME

is the most important. The phrase has been translated in the Merriam Webster dictionary as “crush the infamous thing,” which merely shows the difficulties translators have to express the meaning of a succinct French statement. The verb écrasez provides no problem because it does mean crush, L’Infâme is more difficult because it exists in French dictionaries only as an adjective where it stands for: infamous; vile; or base. What Voltaire meant by elevating an adjective to a noun was the abuse of power by the church and royal absolutism as expressed by Louis XIV “L’Ėtat c’est moi    I am the state. These revered institutions had to be crushed in addition to any kind of dogma that limits the human spirit from free interrogation and discourse. Since this is precisely what is needed today I have capitalized and set off the phrase in its original French.

In the West the Church has largely lost its power to physically punish its “black sheep.” Although in certain Christian denominations, such as the prevailing one in Utah, it is basically in control of the legislature. In private lives malcontents are not only expelled from the faith but also frequently ostracized by their family members. The power of misguided faith in the Muslim world is, of course, today’s worldwide problem. But as mentioned above, it is not only religious dogma which is L’Infâme. In the West it is the secular dogma with which the religious one of the Middle East is to be defeated. This will never work because violence, regardless of cause, tends to breed further violence in the never ending spiral of ever more devastating wars. 

What would be needed to bring this disastrous state to a halt is for us to finally heed the message of compassion as taught by the Buddha, and of agápē by Jesus. I am deliberately using the Greek word of the New Testament that is translated as love because the translation includes erotic love while agápē deals exclusively with love’s spiritual component. There will be no peace for Americans unless or until we as individuals and subsequently our elected leaders make the mental quantum jump from Christi-anity to Christi-amity as discussed here in the December 2010 issue.

We now have to ask ourselves if this is obvious why people, and especially our leaders, are not doing so. The reason is quite simple. It requires the effort of independent thinking which is regarded as a luxury one doesn’t have time for. In addition it can, of course, be dangerous as the statements in regard to 9/11 showed. While loss of job tends to be the punishment in our current society it was worse under the Nazi regime. This is why we were told in the Wehrmacht: leave the thinking to the horses, they have the bigger heads. Karl Pribram who recently summarized his neurophysio/psychological lifetime work in The Form Within, used a quote by the educator John Dewey:

 

The man in the street, when asked what he thinks about a certain matter, often replies, that he doesn’t think at all, he knows. The suggestion is that thinking is a case of active uncertainty set over against conviction or unquestioning assurance.     

 

When one now considers that these are America’s voters, who decide on who will become president of the country one can only shudder at the consequences of this state of affairs. But it does explain the dire straits our country is in as has been documented in previous installments.

The physician has not only to make a correct diagnosis he also needs to suggest the right treatment. In the case of our society we urgently need to rethink our relationship to “the other.” Specifically each one of us should answer the question: Who am I? Am I apart from others, or a part of others? The answer will be fundamental for the future conduct of the person. If we were to truly believe and actually were convinced that each one of us is only one part of an immense whole to which one has to constructively contribute we would become caretakers instead of exploiters.

Will Durant firmly believed in the “one part” aspect. According to Wikipedia, he was approached in1944 by a prominent Christian and a Jewish leader to start “a movement, to raise moral standards.” Durant suggested instead that they start a movement against racial intolerance, which at that time included foremost the persecution of Jews. He then began to formulate in his mind a “Declaration of Interdependence” which was formally read in March of 1945 at a gala dinner in Hollywood’s Roosevelt Hotel. For good measure it also was read into the Congressional Record the following October. A copy can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Interdependence. It is obviously modeled after the Declaration of Independence with the “Whereas” preamble followed by the “Therefore.” Although the title emphasizes Interdependence that can be broadly interpreted to include the entire organic world, the actual content was limited to mutual tolerance of all human beings regardless of race, color or creed. 

This was necessitated at the time by the war effort but now we have to stress Interdependence in its broadest sense. Pope Francis and likeminded others are trying to hammer it into our conscience, but judging by the response he receives, as seen by the actions of our political leadership, success does not seem to be in the immediate offing. Nevertheless we need to persevere because in contrast to what our politicians want from us, namely to live in fear of what “the other” will do to us, this is an effort upon which our survival as a species may well depend. I am not the only one who feels this way. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has restarted its Doomsday Clock which was stopped at the end of the Cold War. It is now 3 minutes before midnight when human life is supposed to terminate on our planet if the current political course is maintained. http://thebulletin.org/three-minutes-and-counting7938. Obviously this is another inconvenient reminder by scientists that will be ignored by the media and our leadership. But listening to the debates of our Republican presidential contenders and their plans for our country, if one of them were to be elected in November, the clock may then well have to be reset to one or two minutes before midnight. Time is running out and “business as usual” simply will not do anymore; metanoia - rethinking is urgently required.    

Faith and its counterpart, doubt, are part of the human condition. But we must guard against falling into either extreme to the exclusion of the other. The danger lies in intolerance that breeds mental aberrations, including delusions, which are presented as “reason,” “science” or both. Voltaire’s crush infamy was an attempt to abolish the misuse of authority but when we look at the result it must be regarded as a failure. The subsequent French revolution led not only to the erection of the statue of the “Goddess of Reason” in Notre Dame Cathedral, but in in the same year, 1793, La Terreur was initiated when thousands were sent to the guillotine. This was followed by the Napoleonic wars, nationalism, as well as numerous other “isms” in defense of which wars were fought. Their attendant evils far outshine those that were committed by the Church and absolute monarchs.

“Crushing” convictions that run counter to one’s own is still the preferred method of dealing with them. Yet it is counterproductive because, as history has abundantly shown, the end of each war contains the seed for the next one. The time may have come to replace Voltaire’s “crush infamy,” with “expose infamy.” This was theoretically the function of the press, but since it has been bought by the ruling circles it has become a propaganda tool for their pet delusions. Nevertheless, we have the Internet where freedom of thought and speech still exist. While it also provides patently false information, it does offer the opportunity to look at a large variety of opinions from which an informed judgment can arise. Once a conclusion on a given topic is reached and before action in word or deed is advocated one should consider the physician’s prime directive: nil nocere. Whatever course of action is advocated one must first consider the potential harm to others rather than one’s own benefit. Slogans such as: “the end justifies the means,” and “right or wrong my country,” need to be exposed as false thinking and then abandoned in whatever guise they night make their re-appearance. I am specifically referring to the obsession of our current crop of Republican presidential aspirants with “national security” regardless of the means to achieve it. If we had an “educated public” it would reject these notions and eventually a nucleus of responsible people would emerge that would then reset the course of our country in the direction our founders had in mind. This fervent wish may also be a delusion, but at least it is a noble one and ought to be worked towards.







March 1, 2016

DOOMSDAY

          In the February installment I mentioned that the “Doomsday Clock,” which graces the cover page of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, currently stands at 3 minutes before midnight which symbolizes the advent of a global catastrophe. The Bulletin was founded jointly by Eugene Rabinowitch, professor of Botany and Biophysics at the University of Illinois, with physicist Hyman Goldsmith in the aftermath of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The date of the 1st edition was December 10, 1945 and its rationale is expressed in the first sentences. Under the headline: PEARL HARBOR ANNIVERSARY and the MOSCOW CONFERENCE they wrote:

 

On this fourth anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, American public opinion seems to be much more concerned with assessing the responsibility for the disaster which occurred four years ago, than with preventing a future “Pearl Harbor” on a continental scale which may occur four years from now. … This catastrophe will be inevitable if we do not succeed in banishing war from this world.

 

          The contributors to the Bulletin represent academia, including 18 Nobel Laureates, and they intend to warn our political leaders of the foreseeable consequences their decisions will have. It appears bi-monthly and by 1947 this informal group had become so concerned about the political direction the United States had embarked on, that they put a symbolic clock face on the cover of each issue that estimated the time left before a global nuclear catastrophe could be reasonably expected to occur. The clock was initially set at 7 minutes before midnight, and it has been updated on a yearly basis ever since. Originally the clock setting depended entirely on the nuclear issue but in 2007 the threat associated with climate change was added.

          The June 1947 date for adding the clock on the cover was not arbitrary but in response to the American foreign policy course that had been set during the previous 12 months, and especially in the first five months of that year. Let us now briefly review the antecedents. In February of 1945, at Yalta, Churchill and Stalin had agreed on mutual spheres of influence in Europe; the Eastern portion would be allotted to the Soviet Union and the Western to Britain. Churchill had assumed that Stalin would allow free parliamentary elections in Eastern Europe but when Stalin instead established “Peoples Democracies” in all the countries where the Soviet Union had soldiers on the ground (with exception of Germany and Austria which were occupied by the four wartime allies in their respective zones), he felt himself betrayed. His famous Iron Curtain speech at Westminster College on March 5, 1946 was intended to alert Americans to the danger they faced if the Soviet Union were to be allowed to persist in its efforts to subvert the “free world.” He was, of course out of office, and Clement Attlee had to deal with the problems Churchill had left behind.

Toward the end of the European phase of WWII a civil war erupted in Greece. The communist side was supported by Albania and Yugoslavia while the government received aid from Great Britain. Stalin honored the Yalta agreement and did not interfere. But the war had left the British nearly bankrupt and the Attlee government did not have the financial resources to keep up these costs. Foreign expenditures, which also included the ongoing war with the Zionists in Palestine and the turmoil in India, had to be drastically reduced and the U.S. had to step into the breach. This was the cause of the Truman Doctrine (March 1947) which initiated what later became known as the Cold War. Truman asked Congress for $400 million to support both Greece and Turkey against potential communist take-overs and his view was shaped by George Kennan’s (Ambassador to the Soviet Union at the time) “Long Telegram.” The content was classified but Kennan published his opinion in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs under the pseudonym X. Détente, a relaxation of tensions, was to be replaced by containment, although a “rollback” was not necessarily envisioned. Nevertheless the Soviet system was seen as being permanently at war with capitalism and that it would use any and all means to gain the upper hand. This was to be avoided at all cost. That this was an assumption rather than fact and that the Soviet Union had prior to WWII peacefully co-existed with the West, even under Stalin’s rule, was not taken into account. As has been so amply demonstrated here and elsewhere, politicians and their propaganda machines elevate assumptions to dogmas that have to be adhered to. Thus 1946-1947 was the time frame when America embarked on its mission of preserving the “free world,” which also included military dictatorships as long as they were right- rather than left-wing. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, containment had lost its purpose and the time had come for “roll-back” with the destruction of any government that did not conform to Washington’s desires.

These years were also the origin of America’s current military strategy which pretends to have the ability to win wars on the cheap by strategic bombing. During WWII the U.S. also had accumulated a massive deficit and the military budget had to be reduced. The ensuing battle between Navy and Air Force commanders has become known as the Admiral’s Revolt. The Air Force insisted that future wars would be won by atomic annihilation of the enemy and there was, therefore, no need to spend much money on the Army and the Navy. The admirals obviously did not relish having their budget cut to the bone, especially when they already had commissioned the building of another aircraft carrier the U.S.S. Forestall. They insisted that the Air Force’s plan of strategic bombing, which foremost destroys civilian lives, is not only immoral but cannot achieve its objective of winning a war. Regardless of the merits of each case, bombers vs. carriers, the real question was which branch of the Pentagon should get the lion’s share of limited funds. The Air force won and the Forestall contract had to be canceled.  The National Security Act, which turned these policies into law, and also gave us the CIA, was introduced in the Senate in March of 1947 and signed by Truman in July.

It is important for our citizenry, most of whom were not yet born when these fundamental policy decisions were made, to understand this background. The faulty doctrine of waging war by air power alone, with or without nuclear weapons is still with us and is likely to lead to the catastrophe all of us want to avoid. As mentioned, initially the doomsday clock was set at 7 minutes before midnight. The shortest time span, 2 minutes, was in 1953. The U.S. had successfully tested its first thermonuclear device, and the Soviet Union reciprocated nine months later. Thereafter the clock readings varied with the political events. The missile crisis of October 1963 was too short to affect the clock setting although it would have to have been less than 1 minute. It read 7 minutes at the end of the Carter administration but was moved to 4 after Reagan’s election who had promised an arms build-up. The hand was moved to 3 after the decision to deploy Pershing and medium range ballistic missiles in Europe but moved back to 6 after the treaty to eliminate medium range nuclear missiles was signed. In 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union, it was set back to 17 minutes. But from 1995 on the slide to the current 3 minutes began because the nuclear issue, including its waste products, remained unresolved and global climate change has become a threat. As mentioned last month the atomic scientists may have to advance the clock to 2 or 1 minute, especially if one of the Republican candidates were to win the November elections because all insist that this is the “American century” and that we will bend the rest of the world to our will.

The Christian notion of a “doomsday” originated from The Revelation of St. John the Divine which forms the last chapter of the New Testament. I have discussed this document in The Jesus Conundrum as well as in “The Unholy Alliance” (May 1, 2002). Its antecedents were presented in Whither Zionism? and since this material is available on this site I shall procced only with a summary and some additional information that was acquired since the previous publications. The seminal text is the Old Testament Book of Daniel. According to Matthew and Mark its apocalyptic component was used by Jesus to warn his disciples about the impending disaster. The words are practically identical in these gospels indicating a common source. In the King James translation the key verse in regard to the event that will precede the disaster is:

 

When ye, therefore, shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel, the prophet, stand in the holy place (whoso readeth, let him understand). Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains … [Mtt 24:15-16] …, or … where it ought not … [Mark 13:14].

 

          The gospel of Luke omits the reference to Daniel’s prophecy and lists the warning as “And when you see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. …” (Luke 22:20). It is not contained in the gospel of John.

          Over the ensuing millennia a great deal of speculation, and subsequently scholarly investigations of this passage, has ensued. It is now agreed by the academic community that the Book of Daniel is not a “prophecy” in the sense the word is used today. Its author did not live in Persia during the Babylonian captivity predicting the future of Judaea, but referred to then current events in Palestine. Scholars observed that the apocalyptic portion of the narrative shows close correspondence to the persecution of the Jewish religion during the Maccabean wars and it ends just before the death of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (215-164 BC). The “fourth horn,” i.e. kingdom, referred to Greece and the wars of the King of the South against the King of the North were fought between Alexander the Great’s successors: the Ptolemy’s of Egypt and the Seleucids of Asia.

This leaves us with Jesus’ mysterious “abomination of desolation,” which Luther translated, from the Greek of the New Testament, as “Greuel der Verwüstung.”  It should be noted that the passage which occurs in Christian Bibles in Dn. 9:27 is now given various translations but the words “abomination of desolation” were taken from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament that was used by the gospel writers. Scholars agree that this passage refers to the erection of a statue of Zeus in the Jerusalem Temple that bore the likeness of Antiochus IV. The Messianic Kingdom for the “Holy People” was supposed to arrive when this abomination was removed and the Temple rededicated to the service of the Lord.

          This event did take place in 163 BC and the Jewish state was re-established as a theocracy. But states have limited life expectancies, and internal squabbles with continuing civil wars made the country ungovernable. When the Roman general Pompey arrived on an inspection tour of the Near East responsible citizens appealed to him to bring order to the chaos. Jerusalem’s gates were supposed to have been opened for him but when his emissary arrived he found them locked. One of the warring parties had promised more then it could deliver and Pompey felt betrayed. He captured the city and laid siege to the temple where the rebels had barricaded themselves. Upon its capture Pompey paid a visit, but didn’t take any of its treasures. Nevertheless, Jewish nationhood had ended for the third time.

Although these historical facts are not commonly brought to the attention of the public we should never forget them. In addition, we ought to remember that the original cause of the desecration of the Temple under Epiphanes IV was due to internal Jewish rivalries over the High Priesthood. Furthermore, we must realize that the Temple was not only a religious institution. It served as the central bank for the country and the High Priest was in control of finances. It is, therefore, no wonder that the position was highly desirable, frequently intensely fought, and occasionally killed for. The gospel narrative of Jesus chasing out the “money changers” needs to be seen in this light. It was probably this act more than any others that the Jewish authorities could not tolerate and which sealed his fate.

 The Roman occupiers had, like the Greeks before them, little taste for what may be called Jewish particularism. While they did not interfere with the religion they did not tolerate nationalistic aspirations. This applied also to their puppet King, Herod the Great, who rebuilt the Temple on a grand scale, and vigorously suppressed what we would today call “terrorists” or “freedom fighters,” depending upon which side one supports. His successors were incompetent and the Romans were asked to provide a procurator who would see to it that law and order prevailed again in the country. Augustus complied, but the Jewish petitioners had not carefully considered their request. The old saying: “be careful what you wish for because you just might get it” proved to be true. Some of the procurators cared little for the country and its people and were mainly concerned about enriching themselves during their tour of duty in that undesired posting.

Rebellions again arose which culminated in the Jewish War against Rome (66-73 AD) that was so eloquently reported by Josephus. This book should be a “must read” by every educated person, especially our politicians and current presidential aspirants. Although it is “ancient history,” human behavior has not changed in the intervening millennia and the current powers in Jerusalem seem to be bent on repeating the previous mistakes. Since the book is important in relation to current events I have excerpted the most relevant sections in Whither Zionism? and can be downloaded from this site. The destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. was not necessarily due to Roman malice; it again had been turned into a fortress where the rebels made their last stand. It was another self-inflicted wound.

It does not behoove us to blame the Romans for cruelty and lack of appreciation of cultural values because war is war. I have no doubt that the American forces would have destroyed Rome and the Vatican during WWII if the Germans had defended it to the last soldier instead of declaring it an “open city.” The leaders of Jerusalem’ revolt also had this option in 70 AD. They had previously used it on other occasions, but failed to do so at that time. A large part of the reason was their mental outlook. This is currently not properly appreciated, but highly important.

The rebellion received its spiritual nourishment through a variety of “prophetic” books that in retrospect can be regarded, from a secular perspective, as propaganda tracts. The apocalypse in the book of Daniel, written during Antiochus’ persecutions, was only the first of several other similar “revelations” during the 1st and beginning 2nd century AD; that of St. John was merely the Christian version. Their purpose was to strengthen the faithful during persecutions and thereby, directly or indirectly, create the mental climate for the wished for final result to take place. All of them painted the misery of the Jewish people in dire colors and foresaw a great war of “Good against Evil.” After much suffering and a variety of disasters it would end with the triumph of the “Holy People” and the messianic kingdom would then endure for eternity.

These nationalistic treatises fostered the hope that the Greeks, and thereafter the Romans, could be defeated. But this hope was unrealistic. It led to the disaster in 70 AD as well as the subsequent even worse one of the Bar Cochba revolt (132-136), who was hailed as the Messiah. His rule was short lived and resulted in the total destruction of the country which practically became uninhabitable. This was doomsday for the inhabitants of Judaea, except that the ending profoundly differed from what had been promised. Christians, for whom Jesus was the Messiah, refused to take part in the rebellion which cemented the final split between the two religions.

The St. John apocalypse follows the model of the preceding Jewish ones. It seems to have been written just prior to the Bar Cochba war and apparently refers to the era of Domitian’s persecutions. He did not distinguish between Christians and Jews and the former were merely regarded as a sect of the latter. When he titled himself Dominus et Deus noster - Lord/Master and our god, he became anathema to both Jews and Christians. For Jews the situation was even worse because rumor had it that he was about to repeat Antiochus’ mistake of erecting a statue of himself, under the guise of Zeus, in Jerusalem. This is regarded as having triggered the revolt.

When I first read St. John’s apocalypse, without awareness of the scholarly background that has been related above, I was struck that it consisted of two parts. The first one contains epistles to Christian communities in seven cities of Asia Minor, and the second apocalyptic visions. These conform to Jewish rather than Christian thought patterns. They are full of blood and gore and one meets a vengeful Yahweh rather than Jesus’ loving Father. Subsequent investigations showed that the author is indeed regarded as a Jewish convert who thought in Hebrew/Aramaic. Although the book is written in Greek the author had not properly mastered the language. This is in contrast to the writings of the gospel of John, the Greek of which is regarded as impeccable.

When reading the relevant literature I also noted that the St. John apocalypse bears a striking resemblance to that of Esdras and it seems that this book may have served as the main model. These studies of the origin of biblical writings are highly relevant for our time because our politicians are currently embarked on a course that will indeed lead to a similar disaster as befell the Jewish people nearly two millennia ago but on a much larger scale. The new Romans, the American people, have been yoked to the Israeli wagon under the term of the “Judeo-Christian” faith which demands our defense of Israeli policies regardless how harmful they may actually be, not only to their, but to our country and the world at large.

In the May 1, 2002 issue I described the “Unholy Alliance” between America’s “Evangelicals” and Jewish Zionists which is against our best national interest. We have forgotten George Washington’s admonition to stay away from foreign entanglements. We also have forgotten that the use of religion for political goals, especially nationalistic ones, has always led to catastrophes. Unfortunately, our Evangelicals have fallen victim to the same type of thinking that doomed Jerusalem nearly 2000 years ago. In the current presidential campaign the contenders chase not only after the Jewish but also the Evangelical vote with the latter group frequently acting more Jewish than Jews. There is dissent in Israel, as well as in our Jewish community, about its role towards the Palestinians and the world at large. But that no such thoughts are permitted in our political arena was made clear in the February 24 Republican debate. America must not be an “honest broker” between Jews and Palestinians but has to follow the dictates of the present day Maccabees. Yet, hardly any one of our politicians seems to have read what the Maccabean era was like and my effort to inform them by sending Whither Zionism? to all members of the Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees of the House and Senate, was a complete failure. I had spent my money on this venture because I thought that we have a Republic where the voices of citizens are listened to. The intention was to inform them that the unresolved conflict of the state of Israel with the conquered Palestinian people in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza was going to lead to a disaster. There was no reply to all these letters. But about a year and a half later I received a phone call from a senator’s aide who told me that the senator does not accept gifts and asked what he should do with the book: Read it! was my answer.

Most people watching last week’s Republican debate were probably unaware that the statements by four of the presidential aspirants reflected Zionist propaganda rather than facts, although it was proclaimed with great moral conviction. These would-be presidents of our country appeared to be completely ignorant of past history and that they were advocating a course that would lead to a re-enactment of past events. This bodes ill for our country. If as a result of these false policies a global doomsday in form of mushroom clouds were to arrive, our Evangelicals should now know that they would have had a major share in this disaster. The firm belief in the authenticity and applicability to our time of St. John the Divine’s visions is likely to become one of the catalysts for the catastrophe, since it includes the conviction that through these disasters the messianic kingdom will arrive. This is precisely what the Jewish leadership in the years between 66 and 136 expected and that outcome is known. Christians should not repeat this failed experiment. Global doomsday is not fore-ordained as St. John’s revelation wants us to believe. The future is still in our hands and we bear the responsibility for it.

Our Evangelicals, especially politicians, who claim to be “born again Christians,” should think again what the term actually means. A number of those who are in positions of power certainly don’t act according to what Jesus taught. Former President George W. Bush is a prime example. He publicly declared himself a “born again Christian” and refused to listen to the sage advice of his elders, including his father. He told us that he listens to “a higher father.” This could not have been the Father of Jesus because greed (Iraq’s oil) and pride (wiser than his father who limited the Iraq campaign to the liberation of Kuwait) are two of the seven deadly sins. The idea that once you have “received Jesus” you are saved for eternity, is a fruit of pride and should be abandoned. Our capacity to sin remains with us throughout our lives and only ceases at death. The “saving grace of Jesus” should be regarded as potential rather than an accomplished fact. It demands a conduct throughout our entire lives that makes us worthy of it. This is a day to day task rather than a single event of grace when thereafter it’s “business as usual.” Evangelicals, especially their leaders, should take these thoughts to heart, meditate on them, and then, hopefully, change their conduct to one that helps all and hurts none.

I have used the term sin, which may be objected to by non-religious persons, but this objection loses its value when one realizes that the New Testament was written in Greek and hamartánō, that has been translated as sin, means “missing the mark.” It can, therefore, apply to all endeavors that are commonly called misguided or wrong-headed. Jesus’ fundamental message was “Metanoéte, the kingdom of God is at hand.” Metanoéte was translated as “repent,” but it has a wider meaning in the sense of a commandment to “change thinking habits.” When one does so, one also realizes that the Kingdom of God need not be a geographic location somewhere in the universe but is an inner state of peace and contentment. It can then lead to a conduct, in Lincoln’s words, of “malice towards none, with charity for all.”  This is what we should strive for as it may be the only way to avoid the “prophesied” doomsday.







April 1, 2016

TWIN SPECTERS HAUNTING AMERICA’S POLITICIANS

          “It wasn’t supposed to have been like this, it wasn’t supposed to have been like this at all …” is the paraphrased theme of one of Gordon Bok’s ballads about the Sea. It referred to the fact that the fishing grounds had been depleted and that the fishermen now had to move on to another more distant bay. The upcoming November presidential election also was not supposed to have been like this. It was expected to be straight forward. The Bush-Clinton dynasties were to have been re-anointed by their respective parties and “business as usual” was to have reemerged. But as the proverb says: “none are so blind as they who don’t want to see.”

Our Republicans, especially, have misread the change in the mental attitude of the country that was heralded with Obama’s 2008 election, which I called at the time a “tectonic shift” (November 6, 2008).” They regarded it as a temporary aberration and vowed that he would not be allowed to succeed. The white middle and upper class establishment expected to regain power with the next election. It was not to be; Obama was re-elected. The Republican political leadership learned nothing from these defeats and thought that one of their candidates would easily win the nomination and then the presidency. But they lived in the 1980’s with Saint Ronald as their role model. More than thirty years have passed since Reagan’s inauguration and the country has fundamentally changed since that time. In addition the Republicans now live by the Reagan myth rather than the Reagan facts.

I owe the title of this essay to two young revolutionary atheists who met in a Paris coffee-house. They soon became friends, and with their combined intellects wrote pamphlets and books that profoundly changed the world. Discerning readers will, of course, immediately recognize that I am talking about Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who published on February 24, 1848 the Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei; better known, in its English translation, as The Communist Manifesto. Its first sentence reads: “Ein Gespenst geht um in Europa – das Gespenst des Kommunismus. A specter haunts Europe – the specter of communism.”  

The reason for bringing up this document now is to demonstrate that when ideas are first pronounced they are ridiculed as well as ignored but some of them refuse to die. They lie more or less dormant until times change sufficiently for their enactment. This fundamental fact also underlies the purpose of these essays: to put current events in their historical context. Americans are no longer taught history and are, therefore, incapable of learnings its lessons. This is why the country re-enacts European imperialism and the unbridled “Manchester capitalism” that gave rise to Europe’s revolutions of the 19th and 20th century.

The Manifesto was first published during the Paris Revolution of February 1848, but with the defeat of that attempt by students and manual workers to gain a voice in affairs of state it lingered in obscurity until the next French Revolution of 1871 when in March of that year the Paris Commune briefly established a communist regime. The Franco-Prussian War ended the rule of Napoleon III’s Second Empire in 1870, and a provisional Republican government was established. It resided at Versailles because the left leaning Parisian populace was regarded as untrustworthy to accept the financial burdens the country was forced to adopt in order to rid itself of German occupation. As the March 1871 events showed, this precaution was justified and the Paris spring rebellion was crushed by government forces within two months. Nevertheless, since the causes of the revolt had only been partially remedied the Communist Manifesto entered in the ensuing decades its glory days with translations into the world’s major languages. After Marx’s death in 1883, Engels brought the Manifesto as well as Das Kapital up to date and by 1894 these documents had achieved their final form. They became Vladimir Ulyanov’s and Lev Davidovich Bronstein’s Holy Writ. These two comrades in arms are, of course, better known by their nom de guerre as Lenin and Trotsky. Just as in the case of Marx and Engels the junior partner was actually the more effective one. Without Engels’ financial support of Marx’s writings as well as direct stipends to Marx and his family, the books would never have seen the light of day. A similar situation pertained to the other duo. The so-called October/November (depending upon which calendar one uses) 1917 Revolution that established the Soviet Union, and thereby provided the basis for the enactment of Marx/Engels’ political ideas, was actually a Putsch against the Kerensky government carried out by Trotsky with a handful of followers. They toppled the legitimate government within one night while Lenin was still exiled in Finland. The popular revolution which forced the Czar’s abdication had already occurred in February of that year.  

Marxist-Leninist type communism went against human nature and died a natural death with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Marx-Engels philosophy had, however, spawned a number of socialist movements that were less radical. They permitted some degree of private property and retained the family unit as the basis for a sound economy. In this manner the socialists achieved political equality with the more conservative elements of European society after WWI and especially after WWII. The specter of communism has been laid to rest in contemporary European society.   

The twin specters that haunt American politicians at this time go by the names of “The Donald” for Republicans, and “Bernie” for Democrats. The ascendancy of either one was quite unexpected and the respective party leaderships are at a loss with how to deal with these phenomena. Bernie Sanders, a senator from Vermont who competes with Hillary Clinton for the nomination, is an anomaly in American politics. Although running on the Democrat ticket he calls himself unabashedly “a socialist” on the European model. He does so knowing fully well that the U.S. by and large still lives in a mental framework that equates socialism with communism and that his chances of winning the presidency are next to nil. Nevertheless the huge turnout of young voters “for Bernie” in this primary season is an unexpected portent that sends shivers down the backs of the more conservative elements in the party even when they call themselves “progressive.” I shall discuss the Bernie phenomenon in a subsequent issue and now discuss only his “Republican” counterpart Donald Trump.

I have placed “Republican” in quotes because just like Bernie he only uses the party label as a means for election, since Independents, to whom he really belongs, have at this time no chance of winning. Not only is Trump truly independent of the party hierarchy but he also claims, as a billionaire, to be self-funding his candidacy. When he announced his candidacy the powers in the Republican Party laughed and were certain that this act of lunacy on his part was just a blip on the electoral radar screen that would vanish as soon as the first votes were cast. They were forced to have second thoughts when he systematically demolished his opponents in the debates on a one by one basis. On August 6 of last year there were ten presidential hopefuls that shared the stage at the debate. Now there are only three remaining with Trump enjoying a considerable advantage over his rivals in the delegate count.

I must admit that I did not watch all of the Republican debates up to now. There were too many, and the rhetoric soon became redundant. Those that I did see were, however, sufficient to form an initial view of how he acts and what he stands for. Trump clearly dominated the scene while being aided and abetted by the questioning media personalities. He got the lions’ share of questions to which he responded with gusto. His method of dealing with the co-contenders for the crown of nomination in the debates or on social media was simple and ruthless. He belittled them. Marco Rubio was “little Marco”, Ted Cruz “a pussy”, Jeb Bush “a stiff you wouldn’t hire in private enterprise”, Governor Kasich a “weak baby,” and Dr. Carson was faulted for his “pathological temper.” It is true, however, that some of his opponents likewise descended into the gutter and the debates, apart from the last one, became a circus rather than reasoned discourse. Governor Kasich remained on the sidelines while the others hurled insults at each other.

The demeaning of his opponents reminded me of Hitler’s characterization of Western politicians. They were “worms,” as he had found out during the 1938 Munich Conference. The campaign slogan “Make America great again” had its counterpart in Germany’s restoration to greatness and instead of Sieg Heil we are treated to fervent shouts of “USA, USA” by Trump’s supporters who also have started to imitate the SA by punching protesters at their meetings. The language Trump uses is likewise vulgar and designed to appeal to the passions of the underprivileged. He speaks off the cuff and fact checking is not one of his virtues. Trump has already been compared to Mussolini but the Hitler comparison is not yet en vogue because the latter is in American circles nearly exclusively identified with the atrocities of WWII. But there was a Hitler before 1938/1939 when the world woke up to the problem he presented. It behooves us to pay just as much attention to the factors that brought him to power as his conduct thereafter. For me there is simply no denying the déjà vu of my adolescent years I experience when I watch the rise of this new Messiah.

Hitler’s antisemitism finds its counterpart in Trump’s treatment of Muslims. No distinction is made between Muslim terrorists and ordinary people who either want to visit or live in America in order to better their lives. All of them need to be prevented from entry into this country. Other parallels with the Fuehrer’s conduct are the boasting about his achievements and the use of massive exaggerations to make a point. According to Trump, on 9/11 thousands of Muslims cheered in New Jersey when the Towers came down. Our media were quick to expose this falsehood but they failed to mention the source of this rumor. There was indeed some joy expressed on the Jersey shore at that moment, but it was not by Muslims. A New Jersey housewife who had a good look at the Towers from the rear window of her apartment had watched the disaster but noted something else that struck her as quite unusual. There was a white van in the parking lot with three people on top who were filming the event. They were not shocked by it but appeared happy and congratulated each other. This incongruous behavior prompted the lady to write down the license plate and notify the authorities. It was then determined that the van belonged to an Israeli moving company and the young men were Israeli citizens connected to some extent with the Mossad. After lengthy interrogations, which included lie detector tests, they were returned to Israel. This event has never been properly reported by our official media but there is considerable information on the Internet. An article based on recently declassified FBI documents can be found at http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/09/11/911-revisited-declassified-fbi-files-reveal-new-details-about-the-five-israelis.

There exists, however, also footage by MSNBC showing some Palestinians in the West Bank, especially children and young men, celebrating what was purported to be the destruction of the WTC.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMOZvbYJMvU.

It would seem that Trump had conflated and exaggerated these stories during his speech in Birmingham Alabama last November when he said that “thousands and thousands of people [Muslims] were cheering as that building was coming down.” The speech, which can be viewed on  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p14xqPjKNA, is a typical example of Trump’s oratory in regard to style and content.  The day after the speech George Stephanopoulos interviewed Trump and after showing the video clip dealing with the cheering Muslims he took issue with the statement. This interview is important because it shows Trump’s modus operandi. Here are the relevant segments from http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/11/22/abcs-george-stephanopoulos-fact-checks-donald-t/207020STEPHANOPOULOS:

“STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, the police say that didn't happen and all those rumors have been on the Internet for some time.

So did you meek -- misspeak yesterday?

TRUMP: It did happen. I saw it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You saw that...

TRUMP: It was on television. I saw it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: -- with your own eyes.

TRUMP: George, it did happen.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Police say it didn't happen.

TRUMP: There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down. I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down -- as those buildings came down. And that tells you something. It was well covered at the time, George.

Now, I know they don't like to talk about it, but it was well covered at the time.

There were people over in New Jersey that were watching it, a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down. Not good.

STEPHANOPOULOS: As I said, the police have said it didn't happen. …”

 

          Well, anybody can make a mistake but when it is pointed out one should correct rather than embellish it further. It should, however, also be mentioned that the official media were, and still are, remarkably silent over the affair of the Israeli “art students” in relation to 9/11 (9/11 Remembered. October 1, 2011).

On March 21 Trump used the invitation by AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) to assure this powerful lobbying group of his devotion not only to the state of Israel but also its Prime Minister Netanyahu. He was, of course, not the only one, all the current candidates for the presidency regardless of political party had been invited and all with one exception had accepted. Bernie Sanders, as a Jew, did not feel the need to spout phrases he did not believe in and instead of going to Alabama for the Conference went to Utah. The effort was appreciated; he received a rousing welcome and subsequently 80 per cent of the primary votes while Hillary had to make do with the rest.

To get the full flavor of what a Trump presidency would look like in his eyes I suggest that the reader not only views the essentially off the cuff speech in Birmingham, Alabama which contained the Muslim statement, but also the scripted one, read from the teleprompter, before AIPAC that has been referred to as: “The Most Presidential Speech By Donald Trump Ever. http://time.com/4267058/donald-trump-aipac-speech-transcript.

                Some key statements were:

My number-one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran. I have been in business a long time. I know deal-making. And let me tell you, this deal is catastrophic for America, for Israel and for the whole of the Middle East. I will adopt a strategy that focuses on three things when it comes to Iran. First, we will stand up to Iran’s aggressive push to destabilize and dominate the region.

Secondly, we will totally dismantle Iran’s global terror network which is big and powerful, but not powerful like us.

Third, at the very least, we must enforce the terms of the previous deal to hold Iran totally accountable. And we will enforce it like you’ve never seen a contract enforced before, folks, believe me.

Which brings me to my next point, the utter weakness and incompetence of the United Nations … An agreement imposed by the United Nations [on the Palestinian issue] would be a total and complete disaster. The United States must oppose this resolution and use the power of our veto, which I will use as president 100 percent.

We’ll get it solved. One way or the other, we will get it solved. We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem….The Palestinians must come to the table knowing that the bond between the United States and Israel is absolutely, totally unbreakable. And they must come to the table willing to accept that Israel is a Jewish state and it will forever exist as a Jewish state. I love the people in this room. I love Israel. I love Israel.

 

It is obvious that the speech consisted of declaratory promises without any indication how these objectives could be accomplished. He emphasized his negotiating skills, but he does not want to negotiate in the usual sense of the word; he wants to dictate. Negotiations consist of give and take and the outcome should be mutually agreeable. But that is not what Trump has in mind. What would he offer the Palestinians, for example, when Israel holds all the cards and is unwilling to give up any? The phrase “one way or the other” we will get it solved also comes right out of Hitler’s vocabulary who kept telling us that his solution to the political problems of the day would be so oder so. In other words, if the negotiating partner does not agree to his terms military force will be used.

There was a sequel to Trump’s performance. AIPAC’s President Lillian Pinkus apologized for his demeaning comments about President Obama because the theme of the Conference was unity instead of division. Several attendees were shocked at the applause Trump received and Haaretz’s reporter (Israel’s left wing paper) walked out in disgust. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/03/22/aipacs-apology-for-trump-speech-is-unprecedented. Trump’s oratory may have helped him in Likud circles, but American Jews are by and large liberal with little regard for the extreme right that currently holds power in Israel.

One may now argue that these are campaign speeches and one needs to look at his official program as laid out on his website. When one goes to https://www.donaldjtrump.com one finds under Positions: Healthcare Reform, U.S.-China Trade Reform, Veterans Administration Reform, Tax Reform, Second Amendment Rights and Immigration Reform.

As far as Healthcare is concerned “Obabamacare” would be repealed. Its place would mainly be taken by health savings accounts and all health insurance premiums would be fully tax-deductible. The “free market” would supply insurance coverage opportunities and “basic options for Medicaid” would be reviewed in order to ensure that “no one slips through the cracks simply because they cannot afford insurance.” In addition existing laws that inhibit the sale of health insurance across state lines would be modified and price transparency from all health care providers would be required.

While this sounds reasonable it omits the mindset of insurance companies which requires profits. It is highly likely that with the repeal of Obamacare insurance premiums would rise and in the interval before any new system can be put in place hundreds of thousands if not millions would lose their current benefits. All of us should remember that while Congress was still debating Obama’s proposals insurance rates already went up and they were not reduced thereafter. 

In regard to trade with China the website offered four goals: 1. Bring China to the bargaining table by immediately declaring it a currency manipulator. 2. Forcing China to uphold intellectual property laws and stop their unfair and unlawful practice of forcing U.S. companies to share proprietary technology with Chinese competitors as a condition of entry to China’s market. 3. Reclaim millions of American jobs and reviving American manufacturing by putting an end to China’s illegal export subsidies and lax labor and environmental standards. 4. Strengthen our negotiating position by lowering our corporate tax rate to keep American companies and jobs here at home, attacking our debt and deficit so China cannot use financial blackmail against us, and bolstering the U.S. military presence in the East and South China Seas to discourage Chinese adventurism.

          These statements are either naïve or cynical. He should have read Epictetus’ chapter on: What is or is not in our power? Only point 4 can be regarded as being within the power of an American president. In regard to the other three how will Mr. Trump react if he were to receive the Chinese equivalent of the Soviet Union’s famous: Nyet!

          The Veterans administration reform plan would ensure that all the health needs of veterans will be met in a timely and appropriate manner. Corrupt and incompetent VA executives would be fired. This is likewise easier said than done and the costs would yet have to be determined.

          In regard to tax reform individuals whose income is less than $25,000, or married couples whose income is less than $50,000, would pay no taxes. The current seven tax brackets would be reduced to four: 0%, 10%, 20% and 25%. Business taxes, regardless of size would maximally be 15% and inheritance taxes would be abolished. The site explains why this reform would be “revenue neutral,” but I have to leave this aspect to CPAs although the statements that most deductions and loopholes of the very rich will be eliminated, is open to considerable doubt. As long as there is a tax code and there are lawyers, the very rich will always find ways and means to evade taxes.  The only way to ensure that this would be impossible would be the introduction of a flat tax that does not allow any deduction whatsoever.

          The Second Amendment rights (i.e. carrying arms by individuals) would not be infringed and existing laws on the purchase of firearms strictly enforced. Violent criminals would have to be more seriously prosecuted and the mental health system “fixed.” “We need real solutions to address real problems.” That is true, but again: what would the “fixed” mental health system look like?

          Finally: Immigration Reform. All of us already know about the wall on our southern border Trump promised to build and that would be paid for by Mexico. In addition the number of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officers would be tripled, all criminal aliens deported, sanctuary cities defunded, penalties for overstaying a visa enhanced, and birthright citizenship would be ended. The ban on Muslims entering the country was not mentioned.

          In summary one can say that Mr. Trump hardly meets the qualifications one would hope an American president, especially in these perilous times, to possess. He comes across as an angry, narcissistic, boisterous person who believes that he can force his will upon the rest of the world. His fund of general knowledge seems to be meager and a statement that his book The Art of the Deal is his “second favorite of all time,” should give one pause. He allotted the number one spot to the Bible. But although he publicly stated that he was a “strong Christian,” his conduct casts considerable doubt also on that assertion.

When pressed for details or caught on a fundamental reversal of previously held positions he resorted to “unpredictability” as a virtue. While this may be appropriate for some circumstances in warfare, the American public needs to know where its future president really stands on vital issues and how he plans to enact his goals. Mr. Trump is not likely to meet this standard and should not be elected.

The Republican establishment knows this and is trying its best to exorcise this specter either during the remaining primary season or at the Convention in July. But they are confronted with another difficult problem. The heir they apparently want to anoint, Senator Ted Cruz, is also a deeply flawed individual who is disliked even by his senatorial colleagues. How a person like this can not only unite the party but win the general election in November is what is proverbially called “a good question.” The only Republican candidate who might be able to achieve this feat would be Governor Kasich but he consistently fails to get traction in the polls.

When one considers all of these various aspects in the context of the difficult state our country is in at present, one begins to think that we really are at the end of an era. Similar to what happened in Europe in the past two centuries this is likely to terminate either in a popular revolt or a general war. Let us hope that history will not repeat itself and that evolution towards a more sane and just society rather than revolution will take place.    







May 1, 2016

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY: BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

          In the previous installment I presented some of the reasons why I believe that Donald Trump should not be elected President of this country in November. They are common knowledge and Republican Party bosses are trying their best to get rid of this interloper and loose cannon they cannot control. But this seems to become increasingly more difficult. After Trump’s loss in Wisconsin there was hope in their circles that they could derail the Trump bandwagon by putting all their resources, and most of all the money, behind his only other viable challenger Ted Cruz. The strategy was, and still is, to deny Trump the required 1273 delegates in order to allow the Convention delegates to vote for an alternative standard bearer, who by the laws of delegate arithmetic would in all probability be Ted Cruz. But Trump’s triumph first in New York and subsequently the entire five northeastern states seems to be making this plan considerably harder to execute.

          We now must come to grips with the fact that the US, which regards itself as the paragon of democratic values, is in fact quite undemocratic because the popular vote, the expression of the will of the actual adult population, is meaningless. The most recent example is the 2000 election when Al Gore had won the popular vote but fell short of delegates in Florida where George W. Bush’s brother, Jeb, was governor at the time. Our fate lies in the hands of party bosses and when all else fails in the Supreme Court where nine unelected judges decide who should be President. Let us remember that the disastrous Bush presidency was bestowed upon us by one vote of the Supreme Court.

This is what Jefferson feared might happen but in his days when the vast distances as well as the desire to safeguard the rights of less populous States prevented a genuine democracy, where the plurality of actual votes cast is the deciding factor. The choice of Representative government was the only viable solution. But his was the 18th century and nearly 250 years later we are still saddled with a system that is outdated and may potentially paralyze the country. Let me now briefly explain the current electoral system because the full dimension of its arcane nature had until recently been unknown to me. I have previously discussed some aspects (March 1, 2008 Voting in America) but it bears repeating and to expand on some aspects. Nevertheless I must admit that although having tried to take a crash course in electoral politics I’m still not clear on all aspects of this arcane topic. But I am in good company in my relative ignorance. Last Sunday’s Parade section of The Salt Lake Tribune had a special section on “Does your Vote Count?’ by Kathleen McCleary where she quoted, Associate Professor of political science at Fordham University Christine Greer, “ For most Americans, even those who study it, the process is still a mystery.”

Keeping the above in mind I will try to unravel this mystery to at least some extent. The official election process starts in the beginning of February when the Democrat and Republican Party of each State, hold either a “Primary” or “Caucus” where delegates are chosen. The major difference between the two methods, which are anchored in the laws of the various States, is that the Primary voting process is essentially the same as in the general election with the exception that, depending upon the State one lives in, voting for a given candidate may be restricted to registered members of that Party. In Utah the Democrats allow any registered voter to cast their vote for one of the various democratic contenders. The voting results of a caucus are less representative for the district the caucus is held in because only the most stalwart supporters of a given party will make the effort to spend an evening being harangued by a number of speakers who extol the virtues of their contender for the nomination.

Every State is thereafter confronted with quite a number of chosen delegates but although they can go to the Convention not all of them are entitled to cast their votes. Each State is only allowed a limited number of voting delegates and these are no longer elected; they are appointed by the Party bosses. This is how “the fix is in” upon which the Cruz supporters at this time put their hopes. Trump in his victory speech after last Tuesday’s success kept pointing to how many more millions have already voted for him rather than Cruz or Kasich, which entitled him to the status of “presumptive nominee.” But those millions are useless unless he can come up with 1273 delegates by June 8 when the primary season ends. The Cruz campaign officials are, therefore, behind the scenes eagerly working in each State, so that the voting delegates at the Convention are Cruz rather than Trump supporters. Trump as a real-estate entrepreneur and TV personality may not have had the political savvy to see what was going on behind his back but may by now be learning the facts of life.

The beauty of the delegate process is, as Cruz supporters see it, that 1) it can influence who can vote at the Convention; 2) if they can get Kasich out of the way they may garner enough votes in the remaining Primaries/Caucuses to keep Trump from reaching the magic number of 1273, and 3) if Trump falls short on the first ballot even his delegates are then free to vote for someone else who, as they hope, will be Cruz. When one realizes that each party also has a given number of “superdelegates,” who are not bound to any specific candidate, it is readily apparent that Trump still has a fairly tough row to hoe before the “presumptive nominee” becomes the actual one.

Trump, by now, is obviously aware of these facts of life and that Cruz, whom he relegated earlier in the campaign to “pussy” status, has grown into a veritable tiger who might snatch the prize from him. He, therefore, resorted to threats.  If the party establishment were to deny him the nomination because he was a few delegates short of the required number and gave it to either Cruz or Kasich who have far fewer delegates, or even to someone from their party who has not even participated in the grueling campaign, all hell will break loose. I am sure that he means it and since his core constituents are what is in common parlance called “the street” he has the clout to make good on the threat. But before we go into the question of Cruz’s qualifications for the highest office of the land we need to remember that our byzantine electoral process does not stop with the November election.

After the votes of November 8 have been counted the Electoral College will come to the fore. This “College” has no domicile anywhere and consists of 270 stalwarts from the two political parties who will be doing the actual voting for our next president. This means that one can vote for instance for Bernie Sanders in November but this would be simply a protest vote because he will not have Electors who could vote for him after November.

Each State has a certain number of Electors allocated that is based on the population of the state. Thus California has the most with 55, next in line is New York with 29 and Utah has 6. These people are chosen by the Party who had received the highest number of votes in the general election in their State. In the case of Utah it will go the Republican nominee because our politicians have sufficiently gerrymandered the voting districts to effectively prevent a Democrat from gaining national high office. Barring unforeseen circumstances the electors will have a meeting in December where they cast their vote by paper ballot. The result will be sent to the Vice President, as President of the Senate, and other high officials. Their work is then finished and on January 6 of next year Congress will meet, tally the votes and announce who the President will be on Inauguration day. I have gone into this matter in some detail because this process, although no longer reflecting the realities of the 21st century is anchored in the Constitution and any genuine election reform would probably require a Constitutional Amendment that has to be ratified by three fourth of all States. This process usually takes years and is, therefore, only infrequently set in motion.

At present we only have a choice between two political parties who serve us nominees they approve of. Independents have no voice in this process and the only way to register disapproval is by casting a protest vote or not participating in the voting process. The goal of each Party is to promote their agenda and when these two agendas conflict stalemate occurs. This is the case today where the members of Congress hardly talk to their opposite colleague with resulting gridlock.

As leader of their Party, Presidents are faced with dual loyalty: the Party and the country at large. This can be a difficult task and the phrase “rule by the people, for the people” is fantasy that didn’t exist even in Lincoln’s time. Theoretically a third, more centrist, party could be formed but this effort has historically been quite unsuccessful in this country. Its formation would take time and money although in an era where social media have become powerful it may no longer be impossible. But even if there were to be large popular support the constitutionally required byzantine Delegate - Convention - Electoral College route would still have to be retained.  

Since we are faced with these realities let us now try to answer the question: Who is Ted Cruz? Rafael Edward Cruz was born in 1970 in Calgary, Alberta, of a Cuban father and American mother. At his age of four years the family moved to the US and Ted, as he now calls himself, diligently applied himself to his studies. He first graduated from Princeton and subsequently Harvard Law School. His professional life was largely spent in the political arena and his various appointments can be found on Wikipedia. He won the election for junior Senator from Texas in 2012 where he now chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Federal Rights and Agency Activities as well as the Commerce Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness. In addition he was appointed in November 2012 to Vice-Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. His eyes were, however, on the Presidency and in March of 2015 he set out on the path towards this goal.

His claim to fame in the Senate arrived in March of 2013 when he gave an impassioned 21 hour speech in favor of the government shutdown in order to prevent funding for the Affordable Medical Care Act or Obamacare for short. It was an exercise in futility that cost the government $20 billion and accomplished nothing. The Act was passed, the rest of the senators were annoyed by the conduct of this upstart and even some of the major Republicans voiced their disapproval. His subsequent conduct also did not endear him to his colleagues and he is probably the most disliked member of the Senate. He knows it and wears it as a badge of honor. Since he owes his seat to the ultra-conservative Tea-party (October 1, 2010. Season of Discontent) he views his obstruction of government as a promise kept to his voters, thereby disregarding that they represent only a small fraction of the extreme right wing of the party. He also seems to see himself in the light of the movie “Mr. Smith goes to Washington,” but without Jimmy Stewart’s engaging qualities.

The reason why he is disliked resides not only in his political beliefs but also his abrasive personality structure. He throws insults around without their even being grounded in reality. For instance: he accused Obama of “openly desirous to destroy the Constitution of the Republic” and the Iran nuclear agreement “will make the Obama administration the world’s leading financier of radical Islam.” His anger is, however, also directed at his own party’s representatives. They were labeled as “squishy” on gun control; Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, had been “telling a flat-out lie,” and the Republican majority in both Houses of Congress has an insufficiently conservative record. In sum and substance: people, and especially members of the Grand Old Party, don’t like to be scolded by an upstart of Cuban descent. This led to a couple of unsavory epithets such as by former Speaker of the House, John Boehner, who called him “Lucifer in the flesh,” or Representative Peter King of NY, likewise a Republican, who stated that Cruz “gives Lucifer a bad name.” Although this was hyperbolic rhetoric these voices of disapproval have been joined by others of his colleagues who include our senior Senator Orrin Hatch. His junior partner representing our State, Mike Lee, is, however, a fervent devotee who tries to rally support for Cruz in the Senate in order to lift him from the scant six, out of 54, who Cruz can currently count on.

The fact that Cruz was born in Canada might have made him ineligible for the Presidency as Donald Trump pointed out in one of the early debates. Article II of the Constitution states, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of the Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.” “Natural born” was the issue “the birthers,” including Trump, had raised against Obama, and this year it was used to abort a presidential run by Cruz. Several law-suits were filed in a number of States but so far all of them have been dismissed by the various courts.

Yet we are stuck with an ambiguous phrase. For a physician there is no problem: vaginal delivery is natural born while a Caesarean section is not. But to ascertain the intent of the framers of the Constitution, especially by lawyers, is not that simple. They don’t deal with facts but “opinions” and “interpretations.” These can widely differ depending on the political views and personal bias of the judge. Constitutional lawyers are aware of the problem and have noted that the Supreme Court has never issued a ruling on the topic. What we have instead is a series of laws passed by Congress as to who is a citizen.

The phrase natural born had its origin in English law which initially defined it as having been born in the country rather than elsewhere. But this presented a problem; initially for diplomats who were stationed outside the country and subsequently military personnel. The phrase was, therefore finessed into ius loci, law according to birthplace, and ius generis, law according to descent. The current terms are ius soli and ius sanguinis. The latter initially conferred the citizenship of the father automatically to his child. In 1934 it was widened by Congress to include mothers. In the Obama situation the objection by the “birthers” ran aground on ius soli as well as ius sanguinis. Hawaii is part of the US and Obama’s mother was an American citizen. In the case of Cruz the ius sanguinis of the mother’s citizenship is used by his supporters while ius soli is demanded by his detractors. As far as the Canadians were concerned Cruz had ius soli citizenship until he resolved this duality by renouncing it in 2013.

As mentioned earlier concerned lawyers filed briefs in various States for the court to decide the issue of Cruz’s eligibility for the Presidency. These well-meaning individuals were concerned that if he were to win the nomination and/or election and a successful challenge were to be filed thereafter the country would descend into a similar or worse turmoil than in the aftermath of the 2000 election. Better now than later was the motive. Yet all suits were dismissed for “lack of standing” of the plaintiffs. The courts commented that Cruz had not personally harmed the plaintiffs and it was impermissible to argue on what might happen in the future.

As mentioned the Supreme Court has never ruled on the issue, but after Mr. Walter M. Wagner’s suit was thrown out in a Utah court for “lack of standing,” he succeeded in having it placed on its docket. It is, however, highly unlikely that it will be taken up in the foreseeable future. The Court is currently crippled due to the refusal of the Republicans to allow a Senate vote to replace the recently deceased Judge Antonin Scalia and the eight judges are evenly divided among the two political parties. In addition even the full court may not want to address this “can of worms” with all of its ramifications.

Nevertheless the problem of ius soli versus ius sanguinis will have to be taken up at some point because it is also tied to the illegal immigration issue. The children of parents who have illegally entered the country are “natural born” and therefore US citizens. Illegal immigration is a serious issue in the current election campaign, especially by the Republican candidates, and Donald Trump said that he would deport all of the 11 million illegal aliens who currently reside in this country. Since one cannot deport American citizens this would mean that families would be sundered on a large scale, which is not likely to be tolerated. Trump has recently backed off this extreme position but the question lingers and will have to be resolved at some point. A complete discussion of “natural born” which shows the division of opinion by legal scholars on this matter is available on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural-born-citizen_clause.

At present the question is unresolved and the issue is dealt with according to political preference. Bloomberg reported on April 13 that “In the Texas case, Cruz argued the court system shouldn’t ‘“entangle itself in a political controversy’” and should steer clear of an issue the Founding Fathers reserved for Congress. The article also stated ‘“The Constitution commits decisions about presidential eligibility to the House of Representatives and the Electoral College,’” the senator’s lawyers said in court filings.” But the reference by Cruz’s lawyers to the Electoral College and the House of Representatives being responsible for these issues may not be valid. According to the Constitution, these agencies only come into play if the Electoral College is deadlocked and cannot agree on a presidential nominee. The question of what may be called a presidential eligibility challenge is not addressed in the Constitution and also would require an amendment. The meaning of natural born is indeed a serious problem because if the Republican Party were to nominate Ted Cruz as their candidate for the Presidency one can be reasonably certain that the issue will again come to the fore and especially if he were to win the November election, which is, however, unlikely.

There are several reasons why I believe that the Republican Party is not sufficiently suicidal to nominate Mr. Cruz as their candidate for the Presidency. The dislike of his personal characteristics has already been mentioned, but there are weightier issues because the real question is who can beat the almost certain Democrat nominee, Hillary Clinton. While she has likewise a great many negatives they are likely to shrink when compared to Cruz’s. His core voters are the Tea-party supporters and Protestant Evangelicals. While this may suffice for local and state-wide elections it is inadequate for the country at large which is mainly centrist in its political outlook. A Cruz nomination may well lead to a replay of the 1964 debacle when Barry Goldwater garnered 52 electoral votes and Lyndon Johnson 486, in spite of the beginning unpopularity of the Vietnam War. Goldwater’s “Extremism in the defense of liberty is not a vice,” was not a selling point at that time and neither is narrow dogmatism today.

We may now ask what Cruz’s policy positions are. His campaign website https://www.tedcruz.org/issues/ lists the following in this order: Restore the Constitution, Second Amendment rights, Secure the border, Stand with Israel, Religious liberty, Life marriage and family, Jobs and opportunities, Rein in Washington. They appear on the front page in block letters over a representative picture. The Chinese have told us long ago that a picture is worth a thousand words so I shall present the first six for flavor. Restore the Constitution shows George Washington standing on a podium facing a group of citizens with two of them seeming to want to get his attention. The second Amendment issue shows a rugged frontiersman standing on a granite rock overlooking a bushy hillside which presumably belongs to his ranch. Secure the border presents a fence for the southern side while on the northern there is an unpaved road with what may be freight cars behind. National defense has a picture of a bomber dropping his load. Standing with Israel depicts an earnest looking Cruz while he is being lectured by Netanyahu. Religious liberty shows a hefty open tome, apparently the Bible although the facing pages show blank inserts, with an American flag in the background.

These pictures suggest to a longing for an imagined past which Cruz intends to carry into the future. In regard to the Constitution he seems to disregard that his eligibility for the Presidency is actually in doubt by scholars of that document. The frontiersman with his rifle nowadays exists only on TV and in movies; today’s problems are assault weapons being used by mentally deranged people on innocent victims. The fence on the southern border is so rickety that anyone with a wire-cutter can get through onto the road and hop on a freight car. But it seems to be Cruz’s answer to Trump’s wall. Bombers cannot solve our national defense problem but they still lurk as a dangerous fantasy in the minds of those who have never realized that carpet bombing did not win WWII. It also was totally ineffective in Vietnam where victory was achieved by the North with their dedicated foot soldiers while its Air Force largely consisted of Russian MIGs rather than bombers. ISIS also achieved its conquest of Syrian and Iraqi territory without air power. The picture reflects, however, Cruz’s pronouncement that he would carpet bomb ISIS. This shows a profound lack of historical knowledge and dangerous naiveté. The picture with Netanyahu is also highly instructive as well as disturbing. Cruz and his followers equate the State of Israel with religious Zionism thereby utterly disregarding the secular left and centrist elements of that country. To ally oneself with one extremist political element of a given country is a prescription for disaster. To identify the Bible with religious liberty is obviously designed to gain favor with his Evangelical constituents while it ignores the religious rights of our Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and other religious minorities. I have dwelt on these pictures because they go to the heart of what we could expect from a Cruz presidency and there is no need at present to go into the explanation of all the issues as provided by the website.

Thus, the Republican Party indeed finds itself between a rock and a hard place. Trump is unacceptable for the reasons outlined in last month’s installment and the Cruz problems should by now be obvious. Nevertheless both contenders have something in common: they are stubborn and attention seekers. The major difference between them is that Trump is a pragmatist who will say anything that suits his purpose at the moment and rescind it the next when it is no longer useful. Cruz on the other hand is a dogmatist who will stick to his guns, regardless how nonsensical the effort may be, as his filibuster in the Senate proved. This makes him actually more dangerous for the country than his adversary. It will be interesting to see how the Party will extricate itself from this dilemma that it has created for itself by lurching too far to the right and obstructing the work of Congress in the House as well as Senate.







June 1, 2016

POSTPONEMENT

The customary first of the month issue does not appear at this time because I am scheduled for a month-long vacation as well as lecture tour in Europe on the extreme slow end of the brain’s electromagnetic activity. It will contain as yet unpublished data and, therefore, requires full time preparation. Since I shall be away, starting on June 6, the next installment is scheduled to appear on July 15 with impressions from Germany and Austria on the refugee crisis. August 1 is intended to cover the results, as well as the expected spectacles of the Democrat and Republican Conventions. 

In the meantime best wishes to my faithful readers

Ernst Rodin  







July 15, 2016

HOW A COUNTRY CAN RENEW ITSELF

          A few weeks before leaving for Europe we had dinner at a local Chinese restaurant and the fortune cookie, prepared by the Peking Noodle Co., promised: A  much needed vacation will bring a great deal of enjoyment. The Chinese were right and the trip to Bavaria and Austria, which had a professional as a well as personal component, was indeed most pleasant.

          Delta does not have a direct flight from Salt Lake City to Munich, which was the first destination. To reach the continent one has to go either via Amsterdam or Paris. I chose Paris and happened to come face to face with the fact that goodness exists in people everywhere. The flight itself was uneventful, but in order to make the connection to Munich one has to go once more through security which necessitates the placing of one’s belongings, watch, wallet, glasses etc., in a basket. Since I am no longer capable of walking the distances of modern airports I’m condemned to a wheelchair which has, however, the advantage that I don’t have to be scanned any more. A swipe of the hands with some specially prepared tissue is sufficient to convince the security personnel that I haven’t been engaged in making bombs. While the wheelchair attendant and I were sitting in a staging area waiting for a bus to take us to the gate up comes running one of the security officers waving my wallet in his hand. It had been left in the basket when I was handed back my belongings and I hadn’t missed it. It was a gift from heaven.

          The short hop to Munich was unremarkable and as promised my daughter, Krista, met me at arrival. She is a confirmed world traveler, had left the US about 10 days earlier, spending the time in Russia, Israel, Lebanon and Jordan. She had already arranged the rental of a brand new Ford at the airport which served us very well without a single mishap and since it ran on Diesel it got better mileage. We then set out in a steady drizzle on the Autobahn for Graefelfing. The latter is a little town west of Munich and not a tourist attraction but it served a professional need. The scientific program I’m using for analyzing the brain’s electro-magnetic activity is produced there and I spent the next day with the programmers discussing potential improvements.

          The next overnight stop was Innsbruck where I had an appointment with colleagues at the University Hospital. The city can be reached within a couple of hours on the Autobahn but we were in no hurry and planned to spend the day touring the countryside on the way. Of course, it drizzled and it was somewhat cool but Krista, who is an avid mountain hiker, wanted to show me the Zugspitze near Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Obviously, since I can hardly walk any distance on the flat I’m not able to walk up a mountain, but it’s not necessary in the Alps. Cable cars and Gondolas take even the most decrepit senior citizen all the way up to the top of the mountains where there is always a restaurant with good local food. But when we got there the lady at the ticket counter took one look at me and advised against the trip. I had only brought summer clothes (it was June after all) and she told us that up on top the temperature was at the freezing point and in view of the clouds no visibility. We abstained and went on south towards Austria.

Lunch was at a little restaurant in Mittenwald, which prides itself as housing Germany’s highest elevation brewery and invites one to spend some time there. We went on, however, and passed into Austria. All of us have heard about the phenomenal congestion at the border because of the refugee problem, but there were none in sight. We drove across as if we were going from Utah to Idaho and the only way of knowing that we were now in a different country was a sign on the road that had the EU symbol and the flags were no longer the German black-red-gold but the Austrian red-white-red. Borders, visas etc., are currently as obsolete as they were prior to WWI and one can only hope and pray, in view of the most recent political developments, that it will stay this way. 

In Innsbruck we stayed at the Hotel Sailer on a quiet side street with good accommodations. This and all the other hotels we stayed in have gratis Internet connections so that one can remain in touch with the rest of the world. I shall give the names of the hotels we stayed in because they can be recommended for Americans who intend to include Austria in their vacation plans. The next morning was spent at the EEG laboratory of the University Hospital and in the afternoon we headed up the mountain in beautiful sunshine. The Nordkette is on Innsbruck’s doorstep just like the Wasatch here at home. The elevations of the Alps are lower than the Rockies but they also start a sea level while our home in Sandy is already above 5,000 feet. As such the views of the mountains are comparable. A funicular railway takes one about a quarter of the way up then come gondolas and one ends up at the Seegrube where there is a fantastic view of the surrounding mountains and the city of Innsbruck below. Most impressive were the mountain bikers. One can rent a bike before ascending and it was amazing to see what narrow, steep, rock-strewn goat tracks they negotiate on their way down. Some intrepid souls even bike up, albeit on somewhat wider roads. In regard to goats. We didn’t see many but there were contended cows grazing or just passing the time of day as well as sheep on the mountain meadows, and I couldn’t help thinking that they must be providing better milk than their poor relatives who are penned up all day as is the case in our industrialized agricultural system.

          From Innsbruck we went to Zell am See of which I had fond memories from a 1965 visit when I spent an hour glider flying. The little town is overrun by tourists and more expensive so we stayed at “Zur Burg” a nice local hotel in nearby Kaprun. Next day via a series of gondolas we went up the Kitzsteinhorn where people were still skiing on its dwindling glacier.  Thereafter we headed for Schladming. I had never been there previously but knew about it from the international ski races that are regularly held and I wanted to see the mountain. We stayed at “Die Barbara,” in honor of the Saint, which is located right across the street from the gondolas the lead up the Patai. It’s not often that one talks about restrooms but the toilet at ground level of the lifts beats all expectations. One sits in the stall surrounded by wall paintings of a winter wonderland. Another feature of public toilets is that they are ecology conscious. There are two levers to push; the smaller one for liquid and the other for solid waste. By the way they are also installed in private homes when modernization is undertaken.

The next day was spent on country roads to Vorau, a small village in eastern Styria where a friend of mine (former Professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery at the University of Zurich) is spending his retirement in a house inherited from his parents. From there we went on to Mariazell, Austria’s biggest and best known pilgrimage center. We said our prayers for the family and the world at the basilica that dates to the middle of the 17th century.

In the afternoon it was off to the Salzkammergut via the Autobahn. This is the way to travel if one quickly wants to get from point A to point B, but it’s no way to see the country. Sound barriers or planted trees protect the locals from noise but this obliterates the view. On the other hand the road is superbly paved in striking contrast to what one sees in parts of our country. We wanted to be in the neighborhood of Salzburg where we have friends and were offered free lodging. But I also insisted on a lake because I’m addicted to open water. Krista had searched the Internet and found the Hotel Seegasthof Stadler near Unterach directly on the Attersee. That’s where we headed and found it an excellent choice. The facility has been in the Stadler family since the middle of the 19th century and is still run by them. The parents and adult children take care of the business as well as waiting on tables at mealtimes and in one of the hallways is an old photograph which depicts the original restaurant as built by their great-grandparents. It was refreshing to see that in some places the hectic pace of time has not produced profound changes, only improvements. The great-grandparents clothes were the same “Trachten” as today and only the quality of photographs has improved and complete modernization well as enlarging of the facility has taken place.

As mentioned, the hotel abuts the lake with a lawn one can spend time on. Mountain bikes are for rent, so are some small boats and there is also direct swimming access. But beware, the Salzkammergut lakes are leftovers from the last ice-age and bitter cold. This is not a problem for the locals but takes some getting used to by tourists. In order to keep the lake clean and avoid excessive noise only sailboats or electric power boats are allowed. I thoroughly enjoyed the warm sunshine on the lawn after days of drizzle but underestimated its power. Now a word of explanation. One can’t sit in the sun in Utah during spring and summer because at our elevation it stings to an extent that one has to head for shade. Since this was not the case in Austria I stayed a couple of hours and paid for it later with massive sunburn that still peels after nearly a month. Nevertheless the hotel and area were so pleasant that we decided to return after paying visits to friends in Salzburg and subsequently Vienna.

During our stay in Salzburg we toured the surrounding lake country and some of its historic sites in the Salzkammergut, which might be translated into Salt Chamber region. This alpine lakes area is shared by the provinces of Upper Austria, Salzburg and Styria and provides not only stunning views but also excellent recreational facilities. Its name is derived from the previously most important industry: the mining of salt. For our forefathers salt was white gold without which civilization was not possible because it was the only available food preservative. The salt-mines at Hallein and the nearby village of Hallstatt are reported to have been in operation since pre-Celtic times. A large burial ground from the early Neolithic was discovered near Hallstatt during the middle of the 19th century. From here salt was shipped far and wide, people became wealthy and the era from 800-500 BC has subsequently been named the Hallstatt Kultur for the distinctive artifacts they produced.

Since we had visited with the entire family the salt-mine at Hallein in 1965 we abstained this time, although I can strongly recommend a visit if one has never been there. It is an experience one doesn’t forget. Instead we went this time to Hallstatt where I’d never been. The weather was good and we took a boat trip on the lake amongst numerous Korean, Japanese and Chinese tourists who had arrived by busloads. Coming home I read on the Internet that Hallstatt now has a sister city in China. It is one of Austria’s most picturesque villages and a photo taken from the boat is pasted below.

 

 

After a three day stay in Salzburg we headed on the Autobahn to Vienna which is a trip of about three and a half hours. We stayed there free of charge due to the courtesy of the son of one of my schoolmates. The father, who actually was responsible for me having chosen the medical profession, had become an ophthalmologist and after his death the son converted the previous office into a guest apartment, which perfectly met our needs. While Krista visited museums I spent the time with family, friends and neurological colleagues. We intended to go up to one of our favorite restaurants the Haueserl am Roan in the Wienerwald but it rained cats and dogs so this was not feasible. Instead we headed for one of my other favorite must go-to restaurants in the inner city Zum Leupold.  Our evening dinner with another old school chum and his daughter at the Bristol ended this leg of the trip.

I had frequently returned to Vienna over the years and was impressed how well the city functions but I had not been in its outskirts the former workers’ districts of Simmering and Favoriten. Although there were no slums, just apartment buildings, nevertheless one just had no reason to go there. But on the taxi ride from the home of one of my colleagues at the outer edge of Simmering through Favoriten to Hietzing I marveled at the change that had taken place. The area he lives in has single family garden homes and then one drives along a thoroughfare that is dotted with brand new gleaming office buildings serving private as well as public functions including for the EU. American city planners might want to take a look how a city that started as a Roman military outpost has not only weathered all the disasters that befell it in the intervening years but has completely renewed itself. This was not done by tearing down the old structures but by cherishing tradition and renovating them to an extent that they look new and the truly new ones are made to blend in with their surroundings. In addition the interiors of old apartment houses were modernized to the extent that was feasible.  

With official functions and family business having been taken care of we returned to the Stadler Hotel which is now one of my favorite places. While there we further explored other lakes in the area and the town of Bad Ischl where Emperor Franz Joseph had his summer residence. The Kaiservilla is open to tourists and one can even see the desk where the old man signed the fateful declaration of war on Serbia which led not only to the carnage of WWI but all its ensuing disasters, which we still have not overcome. He had been duped and told that the Serbs had already opened fire at Austrian troops which was not the case. “Dann muss man halt zurueck schiessen” (Well, then we’ve got to shoot back) was his answer. This scenario was actually repeated on August 7, 1964 when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which led the US into the unwinnable Vietnam War. It was based on the report that American ships had been fired upon in the Gulf of Tonkin which was not true. These tidbits of history should give us pause and reflect on the current activities of our media and politicians.

While lounging at the Atterse Krista also suggested that we should go up the Untersberg which is shared by Austria and Germany. We tried, but the cable car was under repair. We, therefore, went on to Bavaria and Berchtesgaden’s Koenigssee. It is a short hop of a little over 20 miles and in Berchtesgaden one can’t miss the sign to the Obersalzberg. Having grown up in the Nazi era the Obersalzberg, where Hitler’s mountain retreat was located, had almost mythical connotations for us at the time. During the mentioned 1965 visit we had also passed through Berchtesgaden and I found a trip up to the Obersalzberg in our rented VW bus irresistible. The area was strewn with rubble and the Berghof obliterated, but one could enter one of the bunkers that had been dug into the mountain in case of air raids. We heard about the Adlerhorst – Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s “tea house,” on top of the Kehlstein Mountain but didn’t have time to explore it. 

This deficit was now made up and provided some surprises when compared with 1965. Tourism has become industrialized with German precision. One drives uphill to a staging area where buses await one for the rest of the trip. The reason is that this mountain road is so narrow that only one bus can go either up or down and congestion from private vehicles would be impossible to tolerate. There is a small parking space on the side of the road where a given bus can pull over when the driver is informed by radio that another bus is coming from the opposite direction. The buses have a convoy system of six at a time and these take one to another staging area up on the mountain where there is an entrance to a tunnel. One walks somewhat over 400 feet through the tunnel and then comes to an elaborate (and I mean elaborate) elevator that takes one about 430 feet through the mountain to the “Eagle’s Nest” or Kehlsteinhaus as it is currently called. Luckily the British bombs on their raid of April 25 1945, which severely damaged the buildings on the Obersalzberg, had missed the Kehlsteinhaus. It is in original pristine condition and currently serves as a restaurant and museum. The view from the top is magnificent with the Koenigssee nestled amid the mountains to the west and the Untersberg with Salzburg to the east.

Since world history was made at this mountain site I not only bought a brochure about the area but also a DVD at one of the staging areas. The DVD is excellent but the English language in the brochure definitely needs improvement. The Bavarian government would be well advised to commission another edition where the text is provided either by someone for whom English is the first language or an English literature graduate from one of the universities. When one glosses over the language and some misprints the content is quite informative. Since this information is not widely known I’m now going to present some highlights.

The idea to build a “tea house” on top of the mountain originated with Martin Bormann, who at that time was overseer of renovations at Obersalzberg, as a present to Hitler for his 50th birthday. Ing. Fritz Todt was charged with the project which had to be completed essentially within the span of one year. Houses on the top of mountains, especially as shelters for mountaineers, are commonplace in the Alps. At somewhat over 6,000 feet the Kehlsteinhaus would have been one among many. For instance the Ottohaus at 6,585 ft. on the Rax, one of Vienna’s closest mountains, was built in 1893. But it could be reached by cable car which transported the building materials. At the Kehlstein there was, however, neither cable car nor road. Todt was confronted with a steep granite mountain that previously had only been climbed hand over hand by dedicated mountaineers. The mountain was, therefore, first surveyed for a potential route and then about 3000 stone masons went to work to laboriously chisel away the rock into manageable blocks and create the road.  Apart from dynamite everything was done by hand and all the material had to be carried on one’s back up the mountain. The actual work started early in 1938 and had to be finished for Hitler’s birthday by April 20 1939. Time pressure was enormous especially when one considers alpine winters with snow, sleet and avalanches. Work went on in shifts around the clock and the brochure tells us that it was mainly Italian stonemasons who did the cutting job. They were well paid and promised life-time employment as well as social services. The mission was indeed accomplished in record time and as the DVD tells us even prior to April 20. The internet has a number of entries including pictures one may want to view.

A cynic now might well say: what a waste of time, money and energy on a stupid whim. Yes it was a whim, but the project needs to be seen in the light of the era. Massive construction was going on all over Germany at the time. To combat the depression, with its attendant joblessness, the German infrastructure was completely modernized. Roads were built, of which the Autobahn is simply the most famous, airports, vacation ships as well as decent housing for workers arose, in addition to public as well as private buildings. Germany was booming and it was a “New Deal” Roosevelt could only have dreamt about. Of course, there was also re-armament but it is wrong to assume that arms were the only or main commodity the Nazis produced. Obviously, all of this cost a phenomenal amount of money. In order to come up with it Hitler took the country off the gold standard (a practice followed by Nixon in 1971) and the printing presses at the Reichsbank  went into overdrive. Hjalmar Schacht, the finance minister, has been reported as having told Hitler in 1939 that this can’t go on forever but was told: There will be a war. If we win we’ll have plenty of money and if we lose we are all dead anyway. Judging from all I have read about Hitler this seems to be true to his character.

On the return trip to the Munich airport we went via the Chiemsee where we had lunch at a rest stop on the Autobahn while admiring the numerous sailing vessels engaged in regattas. The night was spent at the Seehotel Leoni on  the Starnbergersee. Although in the upper price range it was the only one Krista could find that was directly on the lake. As it turned out this would not have been necessary because it rained all afternoon and most of the next day. So we just took a three and a half hour boat tour in the morning which covered the major sights of the lake. Schloss Possenhofen is of special interest to Austrians because this is where Elisabeth the Empress of Austria, fondly called Sissi, spent part of her youth. On the East side of the lake there is a cross in the water to memorialize the spot where the bodies of King Ludwig II and his psychiatrist were found. The mystery surrounding their deaths has never been solved. With a 10 a.m. departure for the States on the following day the last night was spent in the neighborhood of the airport at the little town of Schwaig in a thoroughly Americanized hotel which had nothing to recommend itself except proximity and a relatively decent price.

All in all it was a memorable trip, and I marveled how Austria has changed since I left the country in 1950. At that time it was at its nadir. Partitioned between four occupying powers, three of whom warily watching the fourth, its cities largely in ruins and its people just making do with minimal prospects for the future, a pawn in the hands of the US and Soviet Union. But in the Christmas address of 1945 Chancellor Figl implored the people “… believe in this Austria!” What he meant was that the strife between the Socialists and Conservatives that had ruined the country and paved the way for Hitler’s take-over was now over, there was a coalition government which, conscious of past achievements as well as errors, will overcome all the enormous hurdles and re-emerge in freedom and prosperity. The people did and with American help (UNRRA and thereafter the Marshall plan), which will always be gratefully acknowledged, the country became once again free and independent. The State Treaty of 1955 demanded absolute neutrality on the Swiss model and with this anchor Austria can play a mediating role between East and West, especially since it is not a member of NATO.

This is Austria’s message to the US in its current turmoil: Stop demonizing each other, join hands across party divides and most of all stop warmongering. It could be done and the problem that prevents us from doing so is conceptual. I often think of Goethe’s greatest drama Faust where in the depth of depression he curses the world and all that is in it. I’ve taken the liberty to change one paragraph slightly because that makes it more relevant: Cursed be the deception of opinion with which the mind ensnares itself. This is the crux of the problem. It is our thoughts, and nothing else, that can lead us to prosperity or doom. This is the idea that should be realized and pondered upon if we truly want to create a better world.

I have stayed away from the political problems facing Austria and the EU after Brexit. They will be dealt with, including the outcome of the political Conventions, in the August 1 issue. For now I would just like to close with a most hearty THANK YOU to my daughter Krista who has helped her old father literally at every step of the way to make this trip not only possible but also most enjoyable.







August 1, 2016

BREXIT, THE REFUGEE PROBLEM AND AMERICA’S PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CHOICE

While lounging on the Attersee shore on June 23, admiring the view of the mountains, sailboats gliding over the lake, and the wind making small ripples on its surface, a seismic change occurred in the distant UK where voters decided that they no longer wanted to be part of the EU. Below is a copy of the front page of the Sueddeutsche Zeitung with its comments on the event:

 

 

 

A translation of the comments is as follows: “Europe is shocked.” “Great Britain has decided to leave” “What Now?” The headlines for subsequent detailed articles inside the paper include words like “Consternation;” “What happens to the EU now?” “The massive fall of David Cameron;” “Old against young” in the plebiscite result as well as fears for the financial markets and Europe’s economy as a whole. There was, however, not only shock but also anger that the Brits just shouldn’t have done that. Two camps immediately arose. One said: If they want a divorce let them have it, but don’t expect it to be amiable. Europe will insist on conditions that will make other European nations who might have similar ambitions think twice about leaving. The other group, represented by Merkel, in essence said: let’s not panic and think this through first. Some experts argued in the paper, let’s get rid of the Brits fast and then concentrate on making the necessary EU reforms, while others argued to go slow. The Brits haven’t left yet and it’ll take two years of negotiations on the terms once they have submitted their resignation.

Since the Scots and Northern Irish had overwhelmingly voted for remaining in the EU there was now talk in these countries of another referendum to decide whether or not they should stay with England and Wales or go their own way with the EU. This would, of course, be the end of the UK, and a result Cameron had hardly envisioned when he undertook this gamble with the EU referendum. It had turned into a colossal blunder, the consequences of which are as yet unforeseeable. On the other hand for the Scottish and the Irish people leaving the UK may not be as simple as it sounds even if they were to decide on it. The British Parliament would have to vote on the question, and what these politicians will do is anybody’s guess.

In the last installment I mentioned that we did not encounter the refugee problem, but it is simmering under the surface. We took cabs to get around in Innsbruck, because with all the one-way streets we would never have found our destination had we been driving. The cabbies were dead set against the asylum seekers of whom Austria had taken about 800.000 (Austria’s total population is somewhat over 8.5 million). This influx of predominantly Muslims into a Catholic country was not welcomed. In addition, the complaint was that tax money has to be spent on housing and feeding them while they are not working but loafing around all day.

 The Salzburger Nachrichten felt obligated to address the problem. The reason why nearly four times more young males than females arrived is that families expect them to work and send money home so that they in turn can join them thereafter. Not everyone who arrives is allowed to stay. The ones from Syria in nearly all instances, but those from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and other countries are more thoroughly vetted. To the key question: why don’t they seek work, the answer was that asylum seekers are not allowed to work for the first three months,  while their request is processed, and thereafter only in certain manual occupations where a need exists. Asylum seekers who have professional credentials are allowed to work in their field provided that no Austrian citizen can be found to fill the position. In regard to cost, the Land Salzburg budgeted in 2016 30 Million Euros for asylum seekers, out of a total budget of 2.88 billion (Milliarden). Asylum seekers receive health insurance, but this cost is regarded as acceptable.

I have gone into these details because the contrast between a nation with a social conscience and the US is, of course, glaring. We refuse to acknowledge any responsibility for the disasters the Bush and the subsequent Obama administration have unleashed. Colin Powell’s advice to President Bush in 2002: “If you break it, you own it,” went unheeded and the current tidal wave of refugees, especially from the Syrian war, is not our concern. This terrible human disaster could be stopped tomorrow if the US were to abstain from its insistence that Assad has to be removed. Let’s face it: he is a dictator; but so is Al-Sisi of Egypt with whom we have no problem, to say nothing of the Saudis and their abysmal human rights record. There are obviously other reasons for which we needlessly prolong this war. If our administration were to give up the demand for Assad to relinquish the presidency, a lasting cease-fire, that is supported by Russia as well as us, could be achieved right away, and with it the need for people leaving their homes. But this is obviously too rational for becoming America’s official policy.

Although Austria has generously absorbed a considerable number of refugees it is a fact that a great many Austrians are unhappy about the situation and this reflected itself in their Presidential election campaign. In contrast to former years when conservatives and socialists shared about 30-40 per cent of the respective vote, they were decisively defeated in favor of an Independent and former Green party member, Van der Bellen, and the Freedom Party’s leader Norbert Hofer. Van der Bellen achieved a narrow victory that was challenged by Hofer in the Supreme Court and a new election is scheduled for October. It should be noted that Hofer’s views on immigration are similar to Donald Trump’s, “Austria for Austrians” But Austria’s President, in contrast to the US, has been in the past largely relegated to a ceremonial role. It should be noted, however, that the Constitution does give him the power to appoint the Chancellor and, by extension, federal cabinet ministers, Supreme Court justices, military officers, and most major bureaucrats. He also may dissolve the National Council (Nationalrat). It is clear, therefore, that a determined person, like Hofer, could bring about a great many changes that will not necessarily be for the better.

          Apart from Brussels’ attempts to overregulate the EU, the refugee problem was one of the main reasons behind Brexit. The recent spate of terror attacks in France and Germany may well tilt Austrians toward Hofer, just as in our country they are grist for Trump’s propaganda mill. Young males without gainful employment are a powder keg, and we don’t know if Austria that was termed under its Jewish Socialist Chancellor, Bruno Kreisky (1970-1983), the “Island of the Blessed,” will be able to escape these looming tragedies.    

For the return to the US I did not choose to go via Paris again but took a direct flight from Munich to Detroit in order to visit with our son Peter and his wife in Grosse Pointe. Driving along I 94 from the airport one sees a freeway badly in need of repair, overpasses that are rusty, and in Detroit itself vacant lots where homes had once been that could no longer be repaired and were torn down. It looked as if about half of the houses on my previous route to work were now gone, with others boarded up and deserted. Closer to downtown efforts have been made at renovation as well as attempts at new malls, but since people have left (Detroit’s population is currently down to 677,000 from somewhat over 1.8 million in the 1950s), their prospects are bleak. The contrast between capitalist America and “socialist” Austria could not have been starker. 

Here the news was dominated by the random mass killings in a number of cities and the impending Republican and Democrat Conventions. The Republicans were faced with the “Trump problem” that was about tear the GOP apart and the Democrats were no better off with Hillary who was saddled with Bernie Sanders’ extremely vocal and determined supporters. During the Conventions I shifted between CNN, which favors Democrats and Fox News, which is firmly in Republican hands. It was interesting to see how these two networks handled the “Bernie” problem. CNN reporting on the Democrat Convention stressed the fact that Sanders had accepted the inevitable and not only endorsed Hillary but urged his followers to work for a Democrat victory because party principles are bigger than any one person. A “President Trump” was the nightmare and catalyst that should urge them to stand behind their standard bearer Hillary Clinton. Fox News on the other hand was happy about the split in Democrat ranks. But when it came to Sanders’ views, they were roundly condemned for turning America into a socialist country like the ones in Europe. Sean Hannity especially seemed like he had to wash his mouth after mentioning Social Democracy.

There is now another interesting parallel between the America of 2016 and Austria during the 1920s and the 1930’s. In those years the Conservatives and the Socialists were bitter enemies, even more so than at present in our country. Each one had their private militia: the Schutzbund for the Social Democrats and the Heimwehr as well as the Frontkämpfer (ex-soldiers of WWI) for the clerical Conservatives who claimed to have God on their side. The battles were initially limited to brawls, but in 1927 the “Sozis” (the abbreviation was subsequently applied to the National Socialists – “Nazis”), took en masse to the street. Vienna’s Supreme Court building (Justizpalast) was set on fire and the police dispersed the crowd with gun fire. That was the beginning of the end of the First Republic. The next event occurred in February of 1934 with a brief civil war. It was won by the conservative government which subsequently made the mistake of executing by hanging some of the lower leadership of the Sozis. The big bosses had already seen that the uprising could not succeed and had prudently left for Czechoslovakia. The Socialist party was outlawed and not only resentment but outright hate lingered in the workers’ districts. The Conservatives tried to rule autocratically but as a minority government they could not succeed in the midst of the world-wide economic depression. The country was roughly split between 30-40% Socialists, 30-40% Conservatives and about 20-25% Nazis. The latter also consisted of two groups. One was the Grossdeutsche, who felt that after WWI the mutilated country was not viable and only union with Germany would guarantee economic survival. Their ranks received a boost when they saw Germany flourishing under Hitler. The Nazi party’s anti-Semitic raving was dismissed with the proverb “that the soup is never eaten as hot as it is cooked.” The other group did subscribe to anti-Semitism because they saw that Jews were in leading positions in the professions that limited the goyim’s access to them. Thus, the common bond was not necessarily ideology but economics. By February of 1938 Austria’s situation had become untenable. The Chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, met with Hitler at the Berghof in the hope he would curb the unruly Nazis and guarantee Austria’s independence. This was, of course, a fantasy and Hitler extracted a number of concessions for vague promises that made the situation in Austria worse. In desperation Schuschnigg made David Cameron’s mistake and called for a plebiscite. This was intolerable for Hitler who demanded Schuschnigg’s resignation and the appointment of the Nazi Seisz Inquart to the chancellorship; otherwise the Wehrmacht would enter the country. Schuschnigg capitulated, the Wehrmacht marched anyway, and Austria ceased to exist. This success emboldened Hitler to go after Czechoslovakia as well as Poland’s corridor to the Baltic Sea, which separated the Danzig and East Prussia from Germany. This relic of the Versailles treaty was to be abolished and WWII was on its way.

Why did I go into such detail about “ancient history” and “a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing,” to quote Chamberlain of 1938? For me the years after 1931 are living memory and they present a lesson for America how not to proceed. Bernie Sanders, as an unabashed Social Democrat, achieved at least 46 % of the vote in this year’s Primaries (nearly 80% in Utah), while Donald Trump obtained the Nomination mainly with the help of disgruntled white males without higher education. This should alert our Republicans that there is a fundamental problem in America, which will not be solved by Trump’s Law and Order policy. It was tried in Austria and failed. Not only is a potential class war in the offing, but so is a potential race war. The unemployment rate for young black males is significantly higher than for Latinos and whites and this bodes ill for the future. With time on their hands these youngsters may not only seek recourse to the drug culture and crime but also to social upheaval. Instead of despising “socialist” reforms that in Sean Hannity’s words will “ruin the country,” essential ones should be carefully undertaken on a State by State basis. I mentioned “State by State” because California’s problems differ from Michigan’s or Ohio’s and these in turn differ from Utah’s or Idaho’s. A “one size fits all” solution is simply not feasible for our diverse country.

In the May 1 installment I discussed major concerns about Donald Trump’s nomination for the presidency and these will be further discussed in the next installment since he is now the Republican Party’s official nominee. But Hillary Clinton likewise, carries so much baggage that makes her election to the Presidency hazardous not only for our future but also that of the rest of the world. My main concern is her judgment. Throughout the Convention it has been praised, and her running mate Tim Kaine told us that he would entrust his son’s life, who serves in the Marine Corps, to her. I would not. Some of the reasons have been exposed by the Republicans, but that is “the pot calling the kettle black.” So let us be objective and list examples of her lack of good judgment in chronologic order.   

As Senator she voted for the Iraq war, although she now regards it as a mistake. She should have known that attacking a country that has not harmed us is since the Nuremberg trials a war crime, and the generals who carried out Hitler’s orders were hanged for it. If I, as a private citizen, know this, she with all her vaunted experience should have too. As readers of this site can check, I was even against the Afghanistan war because a formal judicial inquest into who perpetrated the 9/11 crime had not taken place. Both wars were started for reasons other than 9/11; this tragedy was simply the excuse. It is still used by both parties for their ulterior purposes because even after 15 years there has not been a single international unbiased investigation to ascertain the perpetrators and their handlers. The 9/11 Commission does not qualify because even some of its members repudiated the process.

As Secretary of State, Hillary pushed President Obama into the Libya debacle when she sided with the military as the decisive voice. To this day she has not admitted that this was a fundamental misjudgment that led to anarchy in a previously rich country. “Regime change” in Libya provided an additional lesson for autocrats around the world that is not discussed by our media. Kaddafi had voluntarily disbanded his nuclear arsenal and counted on the good graces of the West. That was his literally fatal mistake. France, Britain and the US would never have attacked his country if he still had the bomb. This is the lesson that was absorbed, for instance, by North Korea because the survival of its regime depends on a credible deterrent. The Republicans amply use the death of our ambassador and three service members in Benghazi for their propaganda against Hillary but don’t talk about this fundamental fact.

Another lack of judgment was shown in the use of a private e-mail server for official State Department business. She was warned not to do so because it had none of the security safeguards that were in place on the server for the State Department. Thus, her private server could have been, and in all probability was, hacked. On June 22nd of this year Fox News published an article dealing with the security problem that only recently has come to light. Mrs. Clinton had used her home-server even before she became Secretary of State and the first concerns were voiced in 2010 and 2011. For instance in August of 2011 she received “infected e-mails, disguised as speeding tickets from New York. Opening an attachment would have allowed hackers to take over control of a victim’s computer.” In the Senate inquiry she defended her action by stating that none of these e-mails had contained secret or top secret information. This was not true as the FBI investigation reported on by its Director, James B. Comey, on July 5. He noted that “Although we did not find evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in the handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” In spite of this finding he did not ask for a criminal investigation.

 

“In looking back at our investigation into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts ….

To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.”

 

          The FBI director found himself on a tightrope knowing fully well that asking for criminal proceedings against the nominee for the Presidency by the Democratic Party is virtual political suicide. He, therefore, sidestepped the issue. But let us look at the existing law that governs such cases as was mentioned by Mr.  Comey earlier in the report:

 

“Our investigation looked at whether there is evidence classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that system, in violation of a federal statute making it a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way [italics added], or a second statue making it a misdemeanor to knowingly remove classified information from appropriate systems storage facilities.

 

If a Ms. Hillary Rodham had engaged in this conduct as a cyber clerk in the State Department she would not only have been fired but criminally prosecuted. Yet, the Democrat Party found itself in this bind: they could not disavow the winner of the primaries and, therefore, had to promote her to nominee for the highest job in the country. Let me re-emphasize the extreme importance of this e-mail problem. Anyone who applied for a sensitive position in government, even as a clerk, would automatically be given a background security check. When this would have turned up the above mentioned facts, the application would have been denied. Now let us think about this: she would be rejected for a clerk position in the government but is regarded as qualified to be President. As it was said in one of the former Sci-fi TV series: This does not compute! It also tells volume about how our country is really governed.

There are two additional aspects in the e-mail saga which the official media side-step. On Monday June 27 Bill Clinton had a private conversation with Attorney General Loretta Lynch aboard her plane at the Tarmac of Phoenix’s airport. The former President had been in town for a variety of meetings and Loretta Lynch was scheduled to arrive later in the day. The ex-President’s plane was supposed to have taken off to clear space for that of the Attorney General’s, but Clinton was delayed and both planes were parked next to each other. When Clinton arrived, he walked up the stairs of the AG’s plane instead of his and they had a private 20-25 minutes conversation. We were told that they discussed travel, their grandchildren and golf, at a time when the FBI investigation of Hillary’s e-mails was nearing its conclusion. When we now consider that the Attorney General, as CEO of the Justice Department, is responsible for the decision whether not Hillary’s conduct warrants a criminal investigation, this impromptu meeting takes on a different flavor. One week later Comey presented his report where he did not recommend criminal prosecution and Lynch dismissed the case the following day. A skeptic may be forgiven if he suspects cronyism and Bill’s powers of persuasion to influence the issue.

The second aspect deals with unsung defenders of our freedom and wellbeing: Judicial Watch. This organization of lawyers had requested from the State Department access to Clinton’s e-mails on basis of FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act). This was denied, and Judicial Watch obtained them only after successful litigation. Hillary has never testified under oath why she used a private server. Judicial Watch, therefore, attempted to depose Clinton as well as several of her key associates on the matter. Seven of her colleagues took advantage of the Fifth Amendment that allows a person no to incriminate him/herself. When Hillary refused to testify, the matter was referred to U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan who had previously allowed Judicial Watch “discovery” of the e-mails. At that time the Judge stated that “based on information learned during discovery, the deposition of Mrs. Clinton may be necessary.” In a hearing on that topic last Monday before Judge Sullivan, Hillary’s lawyer, David Kendall, argued that the former Secretary of State has nothing new to say and the Judge should dismiss the request. He took it under advisement and stated that he would issue a ruling as soon as possible. We can expect a ruling whether or not Hillary will have to testify under oath within the next month. But this is not the only law suit against Hillary, there are several others pending which is unprecedented for a person who wants to be President.

There are two additional aspect of Hillary’s State Department conduct. One is the State Department’s conduct during Kiev’s Maidan protests and the other “The Clinton Foundation. Most of us know that the Maidan protests led to the toppling of the elected government of Ukraine with all the disasters that followed: Putin’s annexation of the Crimea, Civil war in East Ukraine, the downing of Malaysia’s flight 17, the plight of the Ukrainian people and the rekindling of the Cold War against Russia. But the conduct of our government that was discussed in “The Ukraine Crisis” (March 15, 2014) is not reported by our official media. Mrs. Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the State Department, was the key stage director who put the new government under Arseniy Yatsenyuk in place. This piece of “regime change” was likewise a disaster that can be chalked up to Clinton’s “foreign affairs expertise.” Don’t believe me; instead please “Google” the key words Victoria Nuland and you will be amazed to see how our government really works.

The Democrat Convention kept telling us how much Grandma Clinton cares about our children, but what they didn’t tell us is that she is trigger happy, under the influence of certain sections of the military, and has endorsed the “first strike nuclear option.” For my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren I firmly reject not only the first strike option but would insist that nuclear weapons be banned just as chemical warfare has been. It certainly is not good for children and all other living beings.

The Clinton Foundation is, in addition to Hillary’s e-mail problem, another pigeon that is bound to come home to roost. It has not yet made the national news but is likely to be raised by the Republicans in the upcoming weeks. She reportedly used the State Department as an extension of the Foundation for her family’s financial gain. This is the area where the e-mails and her conduct at the State Department intersect, and why a full disclosure of the e-mails is so important.

One may now ask, why an intelligent person, who she undoubtedly is, would continue to use a private unsecured server for conducting official government business even when traveling in countries we regard as hostile to our interests. Hillary’s answer was that it was simpler to use just one phone rather than several. But this is not true, she did use several but all were connected to the private server.  Judicial Watch came up with a more plausible answer: she wanted to avoid FOIA. The Freedom of Information Act had a turbulent history but emerged in its current form after the Nixon Watergate scandal and had the purpose to keep members of the executive branch honest. The basic idea was to guarantee free access to government business by any citizen of our country. As such it is also an invaluable resource for historians. Hillary, of course, knew this and deliberately chose to avoid this safeguard of the public. I have said deliberately because she was warned that continued use of a private e-mail server was inappropriate for official government business, but she ignored these concerns. It seems obvious that the Clintons, Bill and Hillary, regard themselves as above the law. This confirms that we are not, as commonly stated, a country of laws. Instead we are a country of lawyers and judges were the party that has more money and influence will win the case. This ugly truth must be faced if we want to be a “free” people. Documentation for these statements can be found under FOIA.gov, http://www.breitbart.com/hillary-clinton/2016/07/26/judicial-watch-goes-to-court-for-hillary-clintons-testimony and http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/weekly-updates/clinton-foundation-corruption-news.

It is obvious that none of these problems were touched on in Hillary’s acceptance speech. She appropriated Bernie Sanders’ program and portrayed herself as a strong, experienced, competent, responsible, and caring leader who can be trusted by Democrats, Independents and Republicans alike. The speech was well written, touched all bases, and promised the blue from the sky. It will undoubtedly lead to a boost in the polls but this is meaningless; the only reliable ones will emerge after the first debate at the end of September. Furthermore, intelligent voters will not be swayed by rhetoric but look at the person’s track record which is the only guide to predict future conduct. But this brings up the other crucial question. How many of our voters take the time to truly inform themselves about the people who want to lead the nation. The Internet does provide the data which allows us to sift facts from propaganda. But it is obvious that those who do so are a tiny minority whose voice is drowned out by believers in what is dispensed through the official news media.

I have abstained from further discussing her opponent Donald Trump at this time. Suffice it say for now that he also is embroiled in ongoing lawsuits and his conduct leaves just as much room for concern. Thus, a perceptive reader of Der Spiegel, the German newsmagazine I bought while still in Austria, hit the nail on the head. The author wrote: I don’t want to be in the shoes of American voters. They have the choice between cholera and the plague.

These crucial issues for our country and the world will be explored further in the next installment.







September 1, 2016

QUO VADIS AMERICA?

          There exists an ancient story the Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz has preserved for us under the title: Quo Vadis: A narrative of the Time of Nero. The novel was published in 1895 and has had several resurrections in motion pictures. It was based on the apocryphal Acts of Peter that were written in Greek during the second century AD. The pamphlet was soon translated into Latin and this is the version of which one aspect became the centerpiece of Sienkiewicz’s novel.

          Here is a brief synopsis. The Apostle Peter was in Rome to spread the “Good News,” but had only encountered tragedy. Nero ruled supreme and the wholesale slaughter of Christians in the Colosseum was daily entertainment for the masses. His own life was now threatened and he was urged by the faithful to leave town so that the “Rock” upon whom Christ had founded his Church would not perish and thereby seal the doom of the entire effort. He was implored to renew the work in Greece or Asia Minor where there were no persecutions and where the faith could flower into full maturity, rather than being nipped in the bud. But there was also his conscience. Should he really leave his Roman flock to the wolves? Was he a coward who was trying to save his own life under the guise of preserving the faith? What would the Master have done under these circumstances? How could he serve Him better: by leaving and spreading the Word, or staying and be killed?

          We are told that he opted for life and left the city. But on the Via Appia as the sun rose like usual for everybody else something special happened to Peter. The sun did not proceed on its usual course but came instead towards the old man who fell on his knees as he beheld Christ. “Quo vadis, Domine?”where goest Thou oh Lord – he asked in a broken sobbing voice. The answer was: “If you desert my people I am going to Rome to be crucified a second time.”

          The Master had spoken, doubt was gone. Rome was the center of the world and death was the way to conquer it. Legend has it that he was crucified head down because he felt himself unworthy to die in the manner of his Lord and Master. It took about 250 more years and untold suffering before Constantine saw the flaming cross in the sky and legitimized the Christian faith.

          Nearly 2000 years of so-called Christianity have gone by and we now may justly ask ourselves what all of this intervening tremendous suffering and bloodshed has accomplished? Jesus said:  “By their fruits shall ye know them.” We are the fruits and it is high time that we look at ourselves and ask the Quo Vadis question in a personal manner as well as for our country. The personal aspect has to be resolved by each one of us privately and we have no right to foist our answer on others. But we do have an obligation to act true to our convictions in the spirit of Christ whose message was to heal wounds rather than inflict new ones.

We are, however, not only private individuals but also citizens of a country to which we owe an allegiance and responsibility. Those of us who were born here may not feel strongly about it and simply “go with the flow,” but others who came here out of free will had to take an oath before they were granted citizenship. The formula starts with:

 

"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; …”

 

          We, because I am one of them, therefore, have a special obligation namely to take our citizenship seriously and whenever we see that our new home is in danger we have to speak out. We cannot vouch for the result, because that is out of our hands, but we must make the effort to declare the truth as we see it.

It is no secret that our country is in deep trouble at this time. The upcoming elections dominate cable news and we are told by the pundits as well as the print media that our choice in November will be crucial for the future of our country as never before. They admit that both candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, have serious characterological flaws but we are supposed to overlook them and simply vote “our conviction.” But when our conviction says “None of the above” what are we to do? In theory we could vote for one of the other parties either the “Greens” or “Libertarians” but that would be simply a protest vote which carries no weight in our Republic because the popular vote is meaningless. As has been pointed out again in the May issue, the President who will be inaugurated next January will have been chosen by the Electoral College whose members are appointed by the political party that carried their individual state. Under these circumstances the electors will be beholden either to the Republican or Democrat standard bearer. Although in theory they could “vote their conscience,” the party bosses in each State are likely to make sure that only the most faithful of the faithful will become electors.

When Trump declared that the election system was rigged he spoke the truth but applied it to voter fraud at the booth. As noted here the problem is much deeper and actually anchored in the Constitution. The current system was well meant by the framers but these men of good will could not clearly foresee the situation where two parties, who have become so hostile against each other that their members hardly exchange greetings in Congress. This stifles all constructive action and yet they are the only ones who supposedly represent us.

When we are told that our vote for Hillary or Trump is crucial for the direction of the country’s next four years this is also true only within certain limits. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that nothing seriously untoward happens between now and November 8 when Hillary will be elected President. Since she is widely disliked by Independents and Republicans, if not detested, she will be unable to enact pet legislations unless the Democrats win both the House and the Senate. But even if this were to occur the Republicans could still stymie her efforts by procedural votes and she will be just as hamstrung as Obama was and is during his tenure. She may then take recourse to “executive orders,” bypassing the quarreling Congress. The “executive branch” then also becomes the “legislative” and by appointing Supreme Court Justices that fit her ideology this third branch of government would also be fused into the same mold. All the “safeguards” the Constitution has provided for usurpation of power by one person, or faction, will have been obliterated. This is not fantasy but apparent historic inevitability due to the road our country has traveled on for the past decades. What is not fully appreciated by the majority of our people is that past actions have consequences that become apparent only after a considerable lapse of time when the abuses they engendered become obvious.

This is what is likely to happen on the domestic scene but world events will not automatically stop with Hillary’s election. She will be confronted with a number of crises in various parts of the globe at unforeseen times. The blame will be shifted to others, especially Russia and/or China, when in fact they will be just the pigeons that will be coming home to roost. It is important to realize that Hillary has always been a fervent interventionist. She subscribes to the neocons’ creed that it is America’s responsibility to rule the world and remove regimes we do not like. Her role as Secretary of State in the Libya debacle is well known. It is less well known that the ideology that was responsible for Libya was already at work in the nineties during her tenure as First Lady. When Bill  Clinton ran for President he promised us that we would get “two for one” because that seems to have been the promise she extracted from him for having saved his candidacy after the Jennifer Flowers crisis. Hillary “stood by her man,” but there was a price. Bill Clinton apparently had no particular foreign goals and would have been content with devoting himself to domestic issues.  But instead of developing friendly ties with crippled Russia he was pushed into the confrontation which now is bearing full fruit. Hillary cannot escape this responsibility because she helped formulate policy behind the scenes. She favored NATO expansion unto Russia’s doorstep, when that country was weak. She urged husband, Bill, to enter into the “liberation” of Kosovo, which subsequently turned into a “narco state.” She also agreed with the illegal bombing of Serbia.

Hillary’s involvement in the still on-going Ukraine crisis seems on the surface to be murkier because it unfolded after she had left the State Department. But the seeds were sown in the 90’s during the Clinton Administration. Strobe Talbott was a long standing friend of the Clintons and in February 1994 he was rewarded with the appointment as U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, a position he held until 2001 when the Bush administration took over. During Hillary’s Secretary of State Tenure he had privileged e-mail access. This is in no way remarkable, but while working for the State Department he had hired a young woman, Victoria Nuland, who had studied Russian literature, political sciences as well as history at Brown University and had received a B.A. degree in 1983. This appointment had ominous consequences.

Victoria Nuland was initially Chief of Staff for Talbott and soon moved into the position of Deputy Director for former Soviet Union affairs. Her political outlook was in line with that of her husband, Robert Kagan, one of the neocons principal architects and fervent supporter of the New American Century goals as discussed on previous occasions (April 1, 2003; The Neocons Leviathan. December 1, 2005; Albert Wohlstetter’s disciples. September 1, 2013; 9/11 Context and Aftermath). Kagan, by the way rejects the term Neo-conservative used by the founder of the group, Irving Kristol father of the better known Bill Kristol, and prefers to see himself as a “liberal interventionist.” This is actually quite apt because he does interfere “liberally,” in the popular sense of “a lot”, in the affairs of other countries which should be of no concern to him. Under these circumstances Victoria made a smooth transition from the Democrat Clinton to the Republican Bush administration where she served, according to Wikipedia, as the principal deputy foreign policy advisor to Vice-President Dick Cheney. For services well rendered, she was promoted in July 2005 to U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO, a position she held until May 2008. She with husband Robert and his brother Fred, who is likewise a fervent neo-conservative, was on the forefront of leadership that brought on the Iraq war. The U.S. has never formally admitted that this invasion of a country that had done us no harm was a war crime under UN Statutes for which German generals had been hanged at Nuremberg. Our politicians, regardless of party, also have never shown any inkling of guilt for the disasters they have unleashed in the Middle East and North Africa that resulted from this war. Condoleeza Rice, as national security adviser, wrote the Iraq debacle off as the birth pangs of a new Middle East. This led me to comment at that time that we shouldn’t be surprised if the baby were to come with a turban on its head. The idea became reality a few years later in the form of ISIS.

Mrs. Nuland never had any second thoughts about the wisdom of “nation building” in the image of U.S.’ neocons and when Hillary became Secretary of State she appointed her in May 2011 to Spokesperson for the State Department. In the summer of 2013, after Hillary’s departure, she was promoted to Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, a position she holds to this day. “Eurasia,” a term possibly adopted from George Orwell’s 1984, obviously is a polite term for the region encompassed by the former Soviet Union. Nuland then became the chief architect of the Maidan protests in Kiev, where she not only handed out cookies to protesters, but also State Department money to her favorite opposition leaders. The subsequent coup d’état which replaced, in the name of bringing democracy, one corrupt president, who was friendly with neighboring Russia, with another equally corrupt leadership whose allegiance was to the U.S. Regime change used to be reserved for the CIA, starting in 1953 with the removal of Iran’s elected leader Mosaddegh, but under Hillary’s tenure the State Department also assumed this role.

We keep blaming Putin for his aggression when in fact he was only responding to the situation created by Nuland at the State Department. I have discussed her role previously (Ukraine Crisis. March 15, 2014) including her feelings about our ally the EU. In a tapped phone conversation with our Ambassador in Kiev, prior to the coup, she gave directions on who should be appointed to the future government. When the ambassador raised a question about the feelings of the EU, the curt response was: “fuck the EU.” She has subsequently apologized, but I am mentioning it here because this spontaneous comment does reveal the true feelings of our “regime-changers.” This is not some old history but a potential preview of what we may see if Hillary were to be elected. The two are good friends and it has already been suggested that another job will be waiting for Nuland either as National Security Advisor, Chief of Staff, or Secretary of State. Under those circumstances we can kiss all hope for an understanding with Russia good bye and this new Cold War could readily spill over into a nuclear one. Not by design, but by ill-conceived provocations and/or an accidental firing of a nuclear missile by either side which would lead to a retaliatory response. It is significant in this respect that Hillary already has formally endorsed the “first strike option,” which had previously been repudiated. Since the past is prologue this is what we can expect if Hillary becomes President in January. To summarize: when Hillary talks of her extensive experience in foreign affairs we should remember that she has left nothing but disasters in her wake.

Let us now look at what a Trump Presidency might be like. Here the situation is much less clear because he never held public office that would allow one to form an educated guess as to what he might or might not do in the realm of foreign affairs and their most important decision on war vs. peace. In contrast to Hillary where the past is prelude private citizens can only comment on what Trump has done in his private life, to the extent it is known, and how he has conducted in himself in his business dealings. As far as private life is concerned he is currently married to his third wife which tends to show that marital vows are not particular meaningful to him. On the other hand we must admit that his grown-up children Ivanka, Donald and Eric appear to be solid citizens with sound judgment and one wonders how a blustery, narcissistic person accomplished this task. His family seems to be his closest advisors and whatever slurs the democrats will throw at him from now till the election anti-Semitism can’t be one of them. Ivanka, with whom The Donald is closest, married an orthodox Jew, Jared Kushner, and converted to that religion. Papa Trump likes his son-in law and appreciates his advice. The oldest son Donald gave an excellent speech at the nomination Convention and may well have a future on the political stage. His younger brother Eric is a nice affable person who is in charge of a section of Trump Enterprises and treats his employees well. I can testify to this with certainty because one of my granddaughters, Nicole, works at Trump National Golf Club-Charlotte. Eric Trump came to inspect the facility in the spring of this year and Nicole participated in a private luncheon with him at the time. Before leaving, Eric shook hands with all the staff including the kitchen help.  

  Papa Donald does not seem to have a firm political vision apart from keeping Mexicans and Muslims out, establishing law and order and “Making America Great Again.” These are campaign slogans which tell us nothing about how he would actually govern. During the past few weeks his advisors became terribly concerned about his off the cuff remarks which alienate just about every thinking person and tried to convince him to stay focused on attacking Hillary. He agreed, started reading his speeches from the teleprompter but since he seems to have an adult attention deficit disorder he can’t stick to the written word and keeps ad-libbing with insults that are now mainly directed at Hillary. Although he is no fool he certainly behaves in a foolish manner to the great delight of the Clinton campaign. As pointed out in the August installment Hillary is in a great deal of trouble over having made the State Department an arm of the family business called Clinton Foundation and further release of e-mails that have more than a whiff of corruption has been promised by Wiki-leaks founder Julian Assange for the next few weeks. Instead of staying with these issues, and explaining their importance to the average American, Trump resorts to name calling with “bigot” the latest epithet he hurled at Hillary. As such he is his own worst enemy and his staff can only cringe because as The Donald told us the other day: “I am what I am.” This is true and he just can’t help himself from going off script.

I have discussed my personal feelings why he should not be elected on November 8 in the April issue and there is hardly anything to add except two medical points and some information that has come to light from subsequent reading about the man. One is that he is chronically sleep deprived and brags that he doesn’t need sleep. This is not healthy, because sleep-deprived brains can do weird things for which their owner is not entirely responsible. We don’t know why he doesn’t get his 6-7 hours of night-time sleep and one wonders if chemical stimulants play a role. It would be up to the media to pay some attention to this self-confessed fact. For the second, he fits the official description of narcissistic personality disorder http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/narcissistic-personality-disorder/basics/definition/con-20025568. How this might impact on his conduct as President we have no way of knowing.

Another aspect we are woefully ignorant about is his actual wealth. For good reason he refuses to make his tax returns public because they are likely to be embarrassing. Although everybody repeats the formula of his being a billionaire, these billions may well be only on paper rather than cold hard cash and we don’t know his debt level. In addition, being a shrewd businessman, who likes money, he might well have some off-shore accounts he may not want us to know about. In business he seems to have been competent as well as ruthless. There are several articles I came across. Marie Brenner wrote “After the Gold Rush” for Vanity Fair which deals with the time of Trump’s pending divorce from Ivana and the impending collapse of his business fortune in the middle and late 1980s.  http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2015/07/donald-ivana-trump-divorce-prenup-marie-brenner. It is well worth reading because it provides an insight of how Trump handles adverse situations. The article ends with his testimony in one of the several civil law suits that had been brought against him.  Ms. Brenner wrote: “I wandered down to the press room on the fifth floor to hear about Trump’s testimony. The reporters sounded weary; they had heard it all before. “Goddamn it” one shouted at me “we created him! We bought this bullshit! He was always a phony, and we filled our papers with him.” That was in the 1980s, and viewing his performances on TV one gets the impression that this characterization still appears to be appropriate.

Another disenchanted reporter is Tony Schwartz who wrote The Art of the Deal, Trumps bible, for him. Jane Mayer of The New Yorker talked recently with Schwartz and her report can be found on  http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all. The essential point is that Schwartz deeply regrets having written the book for Trump because it painted a picture that hardly corresponded to reality. Coming forward now was Schwartz’s attempt to atone for his early sin and possibly help prevent a Trump presidency. Trump has threatened to sue Schwartz for his comments but seems to have abstained from doing so at present. In addition, there now exists a spate of laudatory as well as critical books about Trump but it seems that the essence about the person is contained in the mentioned two articles.

When one is aware of the facts as they pertain to these two candidates for the leadership not only of the country but the world one cannot help but shudder. I mentioned that if Hillary were to be elected she would have to govern by executive order because Congress dislikes her, the same would be true in even greater measure if Trump were to win in November. He has alienated just about everybody on the Republican as well as Democrat side and all attempts to present an olive branch are bound to fail, just as Obama could not overcome the prejudice against him. Thus, regardless who wins our Republican form of government is likely to die a slow death being replaced by autocracy as predicted in The Coming Caesars.  

The book was originally published in 1957 and its author, Amaury Riencourt, compared Greek culture with Roman civilization. He concluded that Europe is the heir of Greece while America that of Rome and that just as Rome lost its Republican form government when the Empire became too big, so will America. Although the Senate continued to exist during the Caesars, it was deprived of power. The same is about to happen here and Congress may soon assume the role of the German Reichstag under Hitler after he had achieved full dictatorial power. At present it is highly unlikely that Trump can win the general election but his supporters are hoping for an “October surprise.” This could consist of either profoundly damaging information about Hillary or an act of terrorism that will shock the country into voting for Law and Order.

Regardless who wins, the country is headed for a great deal of trouble during the next four years. The debt of  >$19 trillion dollars is unsustainable, the Wall Street created bubble is likely to burst again and if the current war mongering against Russia persists there may well be a major war in   the offing. If it were to be nuclear the few remaining pockets of humanity wouldn’t need to worry about global warming because nuclear winter is likely to have taken its place.

Even an amateur student of history can only wonder about the infinite stupidity of our politicians who keep provoking the Russians. All of us know the image of the Russian bear and our “leadership” assumes that it can be made to dance to our tune. This is not only fantasy but a serious mistake. A more realistic picture would be that of a Mama Grizzly who will do everything in her power to protect her cubs. Defending Holy Mother Russia was after all the rallying cry that defeated not only Napoleon but also Hitler. Stalin ditched his demand for the people to be good communists after the 1941 defeats and instead appealed to the masses through the Orthodox Church. It thereby became “The Great Patriotic War” and this should tell us what would be in the offing if our ruling circles were to persist in provoking the Russian bear. Thus, unless whoever gets voted in listens to impartial historians, rather than the military or self-serving politicians, she/he will inevitably repeat the mistakes of the past with an even worse outcome for us and the entire world.

The 15th anniversary of 9/11 is coming up and since it is this unsolved crime that brought about all the current and likely future disasters I intend to present a separate edition on September 15.







September 15, 2016

9/11 AND OUR CULTURE OF DECEPTIONS

9/11 AND OUR CULTURE OF DECEPTIONS

         

          As mentioned in the first of the month issue the events of 9/11, 2001 represent an unsolved crime that has now reached its 15th anniversary. Since its aftermath, in form of our response to this crime, affects people around the world it is essential that we remember not only the government’s explanation but the facts of that day. This is why I had intended to call this installment “9/11: America’s Mythos of the 21st Century.” But something happened during the Memorial Service on “Ground Zero” that may well again shape the future of our country and thereby the world. Before addressing the event, let me list again some of the facts of 9/11 that have led to the government’s conspiracy theory.

          One may now object to the term “government conspiracy theory,” because conspiracies are supposed to be hatched by people of ill will towards our government and what the government tells us is authoritative and, therefore, final truth. I did not invent the term “government conspiracy theory” but owe it to David Ray Griffin who has spent more than a decade in the attempt to elucidate what really happened on that day. He correctly pointed out that the bin Laden – al Qaeda guilt is not a proven fact and the enactment of the plan would have required secrecy among key participants i.e. a conspiracy. As mentioned in another installment Professor Griffin is well known for providing a corrected edition of Whitehead’s lectures on “Process and Reality,” which was a monumental task. The book is fundamental for understanding our world but cannot be read like any other. It must be studied and each sentence pondered. God willing I’ll write a separate article on Whitehead’s contribution to the philosophy of thought and thereby truth, because if his insights were to be enacted they would markedly change our mental framework for the better.

          Professor Griffin is, therefore, a serious person who has thought deep and hard about our world. After 9/11 he saw the flaws in the government’s explanations and took on the task to systematically explore the numerous aspects that now make up the Mythos of 9/11. This resulted in more than half a dozen books and vilification by the official media that dutifully dispense the government’s Pablum. So: What are the facts? In New York three, not two, World Trade Center steel constructed towers disintegrated into dust and bent steel. Two, the Twin Towers, did so within one hour of each other and the third, WTC 7, later in the afternoon. This is unprecedented in the history of architecture. Plane impacts with fires from jet fuel and office furniture cannot explain these facts, especially when one considers that WTC 7 was not hit by a plane. The buildings did not just collapse; they totally disintegrated within 10 seconds!

Whoever termed the area “Ground Zero,” which up to that time was reserved for atomic explosions, may well have been prescient, especially when one views the “mushroom clouds” that heralded the onset of disintegration of the Towers. We still don’t know how this feat was accomplished. The government’s models can be discounted because NIST never responded to requests to publish the details of the models they used for their explanation of the “collapse.” As every scientist and engineer knows a model depends on the assumptions that go into its construction and the NIST engineers, whose incomes depend on the government, had the job to prove a preconceived idea. Ground Zero has become hallowed ground and anyone who subsequently publically questioned these results was labeled a “nut case,” “conspiracy theorist” or worse. This also had real life consequences for some of them. They lost their jobs in industry and academia. These are the facts for the WTC.

AA Flight 77 that supposedly hit the Pentagon had its own set of problems. A maneuver of descending from 7000 feet to ground level with a low level turn at the end, although possible for a military plane with a trained fighter pilot, is not likely to have been accomplished with a commercial Boeing 757 and a pilot, Hani Hanjour, who reportedly had difficulty handling a Cessna. The hole in the wall of the building, attributed to the airliner, was too small to accommodate the plane. CNN as well Fox News was on the scene within an hour or so and reported on the absence of plane debris.

Major remains of the hijacked UA 93, supposedly brought down by heroic passengers in the vicinity of Shanksville PA, were likewise never found. On the day of the event there was only a hole in the ground with small fragments of debris but no recognizable plane or body parts. The coroner, Wallace Miller, left after about 20 minutes because there were no bodies in sight. Later “clarifications” i.e. retractions by Mr. Miller are open to doubt because first impressions of observable facts on the scene tell the truth. One must add to these facts that the airspace of the two most highly guarded cities in the country, New York and Washington DC, presented no problem for the hijackers who also passed security at their respective airports without major difficulties. Furthermore, none of the eight pilots who were in charge of their planes activated the hijack code, the planes just “went missing” on radar.

Surely, these events in their totality require a better explanation than what is now regarded as the final truth, which not only no longer needs further discussions but must not be questioned. This is literally lethal because in the name of preventing a new 9/11 a vast “national security” apparatus has been created and wars are being waged on foreign soil. Yet, unless we really know for a fact who organized and abetted this crime we cannot be secure, regardless of time, money and effort, because these individuals have never been identified, let alone brought to justice.

When President Bush told us immediately after the disaster that “Justice will be done,” he may well have meant it; having Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden on his mind. But there is also a problem with this theory. Bin Laden stated that he was not guilty of this crime. Doctored videotapes which appeared later can be discounted because the FBI never firmly connected him to 9/11. He was wanted only in connection with the Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings. The previous “Most Wanted” FBI poster that showed this fact was removed from the Internet. Surely we must ask why this was the case. Furthermore, as soon as the Afghanistan war seemed to be over and eyes were riveted on the next one in Iraq, Bush lost all interest in bin Laden because Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9/11, “had to be brought to justice.” This is so outlandish that future historians, if there will be any left after WWIII, will only marvel at our gullibility that accepted these government stories and what is worse made them the blueprints for conduct.

If we were indeed “a country of laws,” as our politicians including President Obama assure us, President Bush would have immediately tasked the justice department with a criminal investigation as to the perpetrators of this crime. The crime scene would have been cordoned, the steel beams investigated for the potential presence of explosives and subpoenas issued for persons in high government positions as to their actions, or inactions, on that day. This was never done. Instead war was declared when the Taliban leadership said that they would procure bin Laden if we could provide reasonable proof of his guilt. The Bush administration refused to do so.

In absence of judicial proceedings Congress initiated an inquiry which had the limited goal to ascertain measures dealing with security aspects and how to prevent future terrorist attacks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Inquiry_into_Intelligence_Community_Activities_before_and_after_the_Terrorist_Attacks_of_September_11,_2001. The article documents that the White House, instead of supporting the investigation, blocked the proceedings to the extent it could and blacked out sections of the final report. We now know that some of them implicated Saudi citizens in high positions.

The Bush administration was not only disinclined to investigate the crime but even efforts by citizen groups, foremost relatives of WTC victims, to obtain further information were stonewalled. We surely ought to ask why this was the case. Only later in 2002, under duress, did the administration allow the creation of the 9/11 Commission. As one of the Chairmen subsequently wrote it was “set up to fail.” It was underfunded, its term limit dictated by political considerations, access to crucial material was seriously curtailed and as Commission Staff Team leader, John Palmer, wrote they found “either unprecedented administrative incompetence or organized mendacity on the part of key figures in Washington.“

The Obama administration, and especially Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, now takes credit for having Osama bin Laden brought to justice. What are the facts? Navy SEALS conducted a raid on a compound in Islamabad which supposedly harbored bin Laden. It is undisputed that five persons were killed in that raid including one who was regarded as bin Laden. For the rest of the events we have to believe the government. His body was supposedly taken to the USS Carl Vinson where a DNA analysis confirmed his identity and the body was then committed to the deep. For the Obama administration this meant that “justice was done” and the chapter could now be closed. But was it really? We have not seen the DNA evidence and the person killed might have been one of bin Laden’s brothers. I am saying this because there is information that Osama had already been seriously ill from kidney failure at the time of 9/11 and his death was reported in early 2002 by foreign media.

No, justice was not done; this was a lynching in the tradition of the American West where no trial was required. The person should have been taken captive and placed before an American court as was done with Ramzi Yousef, for placing explosives in  the basement of the South Tower in 1993, and Zacarias Moussavi for his participation in  the 9/11 plot. Justice demands that the accused has a right to testify in his own behalf and this was denied not only to bin Laden but to all persons who still sit in indefinite detention at Guantanamo. This is not justice but akin to Nazi concentration camps and Soviet Gulags. There is a saying in the German language: man muss das Kind beim richtigen Namen nennen – you’ve got to call the child by its correct name. The euphemisms under which we hide our misconduct should no longer be acceptable.

The documentation for the statements made here can be found in previous installments on this site as well as the voluminous literature that has accumulated over the past 15 years. The information is available but one has to make an effort to educate oneself and sift the wheat from the chaff. A good start, apart from Griffin’s books that delineate the scope of the problem, is: Painful Questions by Eric Hufschmid which provides a series of pictures about the disintegration of the Twin Towers. One can ignore the later chapters and let the pictures speak for themselves. Disconnecting the Dots by Kevin Fenton is also important because it provides evidence for “How CIA and FBI officials helped enable 9/11 and evaded government investigations.” In addition the websites of “Pilots for 9/11 Truth,” as well as “Architects for 9/11 Truth,” including their respective video discs can be consulted. The first one raises several important aeronautic questions about the government’s explanations and the second one deals with the physical structural issues involving the buildings. The videos of the 2011 “Toronto Hearings,” or a shorter version “9/11: Experts Speak Out,” are also important. They don’t deal with “who did it?” but the more fundamental issue: what happened? For the historical background and context the DVD by the Italian filmmaker Massimo Mazzucco: The New American Century is important. It demonstrates the attempt by a small group of intellectuals to assure American dominance in world affairs for this century. It ought to be viewed by every American because our future is at stake. The DVD is available on amazon.com and is allowed to be copied for free distribution. As George Orwell put it: He who controls the past, controls the future. This is true and this is why the Mythos of 9/11 is so important.

I owe the Greek term Mythos, rather than simply myth, to none other than the Nazi party’s philosopher Alfred Rosenberg. During the 1920s he collected his thoughts on what the German nation should be like and published them in 1930 under the title: Der Mythus des Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Nazi literature is, of course, looked askance nowadays, but how can you know your adversary’s thoughts without making the effort to read what he wrote? Rosenberg had a model for his book, Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s: Die Grundlagen des XIX. Jahrhunderts. Grundlagen could be translated either as bases or foundations. Chamberlain, in spite of his British birth, had become a profound admirer of what can be called Germanic virtues, and in the book he traces the development of German thought through the Greco-Roman civilizations to its culmination in Christianity. The book is, however, imbued with a hefty dose of what is now called racism. Jews, who were regarded as a problem from the middle of the century on, were to be respected for the tenacity with which they had kept their race pure by forbidding intermarriage. But they also had sufficient other undesirable traits that were contrary to Germanic values (Chamberlain always used Germanen and germanisch rather than Deutsch) that made them aliens on German soil. The problem of Jesus’ “Jewishness” was solved by making a distinction between race and religion. One is a Jew by race i.e. two Jewish parents regardless of which religion they adhere to. Since Jesus came from Galilee, which had only recently been conquered and consisted of different ethnic groups, he was a Jew only in the religious rather than racial sense. But race – “blood,” or in modern terms DNA, was the factor that made one what one is. The two volumes are of historical interest because they provided the intellectual background for the Nazi movement after WWI. Rosenberg subsequently elaborated further on the racial aspect and the qualities of honor and duty were to be the key words to live by. His Mythus involved the 2 million German soldiers who had fallen on the field of honor during WWI. Their sacrifice for Germany’s freedom and honor must never be forgotten and a state must be created that incorporates these values for all future generations. This state would put an end to the hedonism, pacifism, and internationalism, attributed to Jews, in the Weimar republic.

Thus, the meaning of the word Mythos, differs from its English shortened counterpart myth, which has the connotation of a lie. It presents an elevated vision of heroic memory that should guide future action. As such it also has the quasi-religious component of dogma, which must not be challenged. This is precisely what is happening today in regard to 9/11.  On national holidays the Boy Scouts (for a donation) plant American flags on the front lawns of the subdivision where we live. This year was the first one where flags were also planted on the weekend of September10-11. The victims of 9/11, who can now be counted in the millions by the wars President Bush unleashed, with the ensuing turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa, surely deserve better than pious speeches at key sites and flags on our front lawns! 

Some of us who voted for President Obama harbored the hope that he would institute the necessary investigation into the 9/11 tragedy. We were sorely disappointed. He told us early on that he will not look back but forward, which in essence amounted to acceptance of falsehoods. One can understand his reasons but that does not remove the fact that as long as the 9/11 Mythos is not exposed the country cannot recover its moral compass. The exploitation of the tragedy is a cancer which may well destroy us in the long run.

Americans tend to have short historical memories and for the most part see themselves as innocent victims of malignant outside forces. This trait is encouraged by skillful propaganda. Mexico’s “aggression” had given rise to Mr. Polk’s War, as it was called at the time, and led to the incorporation of the current southern tier of states from Florida to California and extending all the way north to Utah. “Remember the Maine” was the slogan that started the Spanish American war that moved America’s borders into the Caribbean as well as to the Philippines. The evil Kaiser blew up innocent American lives on the Atlantic and then wanted to help the Mexicans regain their lost territory. WWI was entered and what would have become a stalemate with a compromise peace became the recipe for the next war. The Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in peace-time was fiendish and Hitler had to be defeated because he intended to destroy America.  

This is how Americans see their history. Yet, all of these events had causes that were hidden by a propaganda machine with ulterior motives. Thus, we have a string that always produces the same sound when certain key events strike it: the call for revenge through war. One should not take this as specific for America, it is universal, and I have merely used the American example because the events are familiar here. Underneath this universal phenomenon of either shrinking from the truth, or deliberately falsifying it, resides in an aspect of humanity that accompanied the acquisition of language – the ability to lie. I currently believe that this is inborn and associated with the fight or flight reflex. We try to counteract it by prohibition and various degrees of punishment. But this has never fully worked because it is so much easier to lie than to admit an unpleasant or unpopular truth which is regarded as having serious consequences for oneself. The lying person does not consider at the time of the lie that, although punishment can for a time be evaded, its maintenance requires a series of additional lies which compound the original problem. This refers to what may be called the defensive lie. The other one which is regarded as more harmless is the exaggeration of a given event. Initially we may be aware that we are exaggerating but by repetition it becomes automatic and will then be regarded as truth, which defies rational explanation when offered.

A good example for the latter is Donald Trump. When confronted with evidence that there were not thousands of Muslims dancing in the streets of New Jersey celebrating the disintegration of the Twin Towers, he brushed it off with having “seen them.” Trump habitually exaggerates various aspects of life to the point where the border between exaggeration and lie becomes indistinguishable. For him the exaggerations seem to have become facts which he believes. This attitude is aided by our culture which dangles before us “the American dream.” It consists either of material wealth and comfort or achievements in the public arena resulting from intense personal effort. While this “dream” is common to human beings around the globe the specific American aspect is, what I have called on another occasion, “you too can be a Michelangelo.” Well, we can’t! With hard effort we can excel in a given field but the degree of excellence that was achieved by a Michelangelo, a Shakespeare or a Mozart, to name just a few, is foreclosed to the rest of us. While this should never deter us from striving it should also not lead to ideas of greatness, which when translated into the political sphere are called “American exceptionalism.” Once the American experiment with an unbridled capitalist economy is over we will recognize that there was nothing exceptional about it because it had the ancient names of pride and greed.

In the meantime our politicians, media and advertising agencies delude us with a variety of exaggerations as well as outright hucksterism. “There’s a sucker born every minute,” has been attributed to the showman P. T. Barnum and seems to be the unacknowledged background idea behind most of the current deceptions. Childhood trust is inborn, we love to believe and when our belief is sanctioned by society we are comfortable. When it is challenged we get angry and either walk away, resort to name calling or worse. A brief example might be as follows. This past summer, after my return from Europe, I had a very pleasant conversation with an American business man who had been successful in his field and was now retired. But when it veered to 9/11 and I pointed out the various inconsistencies in the government’s theory he clammed up and any further conversation was impossible. It was as if I had suddenly become radioactive and needed to be avoided. Yet, for scientists questioning assumptions is our daily bread. Where is the law that says “Thou shalt not question your government,” in our supposedly free society? It is not on the books but exists in fact and even Obama has enforced it. Whistleblowers who point to mischief in government should be rewarded; instead they are denigrated and prosecuted. An open society abhors secrecy, but secrecy is fostered in the name of national security, and maintained by lies.

Last Sunday 9/11 may have claimed another victim to be added to the roster. Not in the sense of physical death but that of aspirations. It is far too early to issue a death certificate but the proverbial handwriting seems to be on the wall. There had been rumors for some time about Hillary Clinton’s health but I never paid attention to them because she looked sufficiently vigorous on the campaign trail. She did have a serious fall with a concussion and a “cerebral venous sinus thrombosis” in December 2012 but she had bounced back and seemed to be doing “just fine.” Sunday evening I received an e-mail from one of my former co-workers who urged me to view a video clip showing a Dr. Ted Noel whose Internet claim to fame results from his opinion that Hillary suffers from Parkinson’s disease. I was asked to provide a professional opinion on the presumed diagnosis. After viewing the video I wrote back that if Hillary has Parkinson’s this is the weirdest case that has come to my attention. She does not show the characteristic masked expressionless facies, the pill rolling type tremor and there is no good evidence for muscular rigidity. On Monday morning I found out that this video had gone viral and one of my sons sent it to me. I merely reiterated my opinion, but now curiosity took over.

The morning edition of the papers (I get the SL Tribune, as well as the NY Times) carried articles on Hillary’s difficulty during the previous day’s Memorial Service on Ground Zero. Consulting the Internet I immediately found two video clips. One showed her standing on a curb, supported by another lady, while waiting for her van. When the door of the van was opened she made a few cumbersome steps and then fell into the van while being held by three persons. The official explanation was that it had been hot; Hillary was dehydrated and in addition was suffering from pneumonia for the past two days. Well, the temperature had been in the high 70s rather than 90s and there was no obvious reason why someone who has pneumonia should be up and about attending ceremonies instead of resting in bed. The diagnosis had been arrived at by her personal physician, Dr. Lisa Bardack, and this terse statement again opened doubts. I believe it was proffered to explain her coughing fits but that would require that her pneumonia was present for a long time; an unlikely occurrence.

The mystery was then compounded by another video clip. We were told that Hillary did not want to go to a hospital after her collapse into the van but be taken to her daughter’s apartment. Lo and behold we can see on that clip, likewise taken by a bystander, a healthy, rejuvenated vigorous Hillary coming out of the apartment building. She is greeted by a little girl whom she hugs and then strides off with unimpeded gait towards her van, apparently unaccompanied by a cohort of Secret Service agents. To shouted questions about her health she replied feeling fine and “it’s a beautiful day.” To a physician who witnesses miracles only rarely in professional life this was about as miraculous a recovery as might ever have occurred. The condition of the Hillary we saw in the first clip was that of a seriously ill person with some neurologic difficulty while a few hours later she is supposed to be fit as the proverbial fiddle. The fall into the van might not have been due to loss of consciousness but merely a stumble. The troubling aspect is the gait that preceded the fall. It was clearly impaired and this type of gait hardly ever resolves itself within a few hours. This incongruence immediately brought up the question did the second clip really show Hillary or a look alike? A few seconds of browsing led to websites which show that Hillary indeed has a double, Ms. Teresa Barnwell, who bears a striking resemblance. But she is nine years younger and not quite as hefty. Rense.com has the videos as well as still photos where one can compare the two “Hillarys” and make up one’s own mind. Just as with the 9/11 events I can only point to incongruities of the official account and will have to leave a definitive diagnosis for later when hopefully her full medical chart becomes available. But the whereabouts of Ms. Barnwell on that Sunday should be readily ascertainable.

Hillary’s campaign staff immediately issued an apology for not having made the pneumonia diagnosis public and promised to be more forthcoming about her medical condition in the near future. Hillary herself added in a phone interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday that she “didn’t think it was going to be that big of a deal,” and since the Memorial attendance was important she had hoped “to power through it.”

Yesterday Dr. Bardack released a letter about Hillary’s health that contained these salient features:

 

In March of this year a CT scan of the brain was performed that showed mild chronic sinusitis and no brain abnormalities.

On Friday September 2nd a low grade fever was noted. Clinton was placed on a short course of antibiotics and advised to rest.

Friday September 9 a noncontrast chest CT scan revealed that Clinton had a small right middle-lobe pneumonia that was treated with antibiotics and she was advised to rest. Her current medications are: the antibiotic Levaquin (for ten days), Coumadin to prevent blood clots, Armor thyroid for hypothyroidism, Clarinex for allergies and Vitamin B12. Dr. Bardack also added: “she has remained healthy is recovering well and is fit to serve a President of the United States.”

 

Hillary returned to the campaign trail this afternoon in North Carolina. She appeared neurologically intact, read the speech well from the tele-prompter, and there were no stumbles. During the subsequent press conference she seemed to tire, but this is understandable. On the other hand the earlier mentioned “miraculous recovery” on Sunday, in combination with the history of fainting episodes, now raises the question of some episodic central nervous system disorder for which an EEG would be indicated. Our information base is still too sketchy to suggest a specific disorder, so as the saying goes: stay tuned; the show has just started.







October 1, 2016

A DEBATE AUTOPSY

          The much anticipated debate between our two contenders for the highest office in the country came and went last Monday. Both had been “prepped” by their advisors but while Hillary took the advice to heart, her counterpart, “The Donald,” could only partially follow it.

For Hillary success was a must because her poll numbers were sliding. Among the reasons were the unresolved e-mail issues and the state of her of health. In the September 15 installment I had referred to the mishap at the 9/11 Memorial Service where she had to leave prematurely and then collapsed prior to entering the van that would take her to her next destination. If a bystander’s video had not caught the scene we would never have known about it, and this shows how important citizen participation and documentation of important events can be in the era of high technology.

Since the video raised serious questions about her health I consulted the Internet and found that the issue had already been raised by a number of physicians. Parkinson’s disease was advocated but I dismissed this presumptive diagnosis because coverage of her campaign events showed none of the classical features. More recently a left sixth cranial nerve palsy, which leads to a deviation of the eye towards the nose, as a result of the cerebral venous sinus thrombosis she had suffered in December of 2012 was suggested. I assume that this event was probably the reason that led to her resignation from the office of Secretary of State. I, therefore, paid close attention to the way she handled this obviously stressful test of a 90 minute debate with a formidable adversary.

          She passed it with flying colors. Her demeanor remained calm throughout, she frequently smiled in a genuine manner, her thought processes were coherent and her memory appeared to be good. She had carefully prepared herself, and as she said not only for this task, but that of the presidency. This should put to rest the diagnoses of Parkinsonism as well as sixth nerve palsy, for which I likewise found no evidence. But this leaves her intermittent “fainting spells” unexplained. She does seem to suffer from some type of episodic disorder which is not accounted for by “dehydration” or “pneumonia,” as advanced by her personal physician.

          Let us remember: she is 69 years of age and on Coumadin, a blood thinner.  This carries the risk of bleeding with hemorrhage in the brain as the most serious side effect. A person with this type of history should not be elected to the presidency of this country, especially in these perilous times. Americans don’t like to “look back,” but knowledge of history is essential to prevent future disasters. Woodrow Wilson was 62 years old when he suffered a stroke that incapacitated him for the rest of his presidency. The country was essentially run by his wife who ferociously guarded access to her disabled husband. This prevented Wilson from getting his pet project, the League of Nations, ratified by Congress. It is an open question how America might have changed the course of history had the League become a functioning organ for world health instead of a debating society.

           The 63 year old President Roosevelt was seriously ill at the time of the Yalta Conference in 1945 that sealed the fate of Europe for the next half century. Because of already existing health issues, beyond his poliomyelitis, he had been advised not to run for a third term. But with his stamina he thought he could, in Hillary’s words, “power through it.” These mental blinders even prevented him from informing his Vice-President, Harry Truman, about the major issues including the work on the atomic bomb. The office was thrust upon Truman unawares and he did the best job he could thereafter. Roosevelt’s conduct was irresponsible because all of us arrange our private affairs, especially in advanced age, for the benefit of our family and other heirs. Should this not be essential for the person who is not only responsible for the family’s well-being but the fate of the country and the world?

          From all the issues Hillary has deftly deflected attention, health is the most critical one and we, the voting public, need an accurate accounting. It was not brought up by the moderator but will undoubtedly surface in one of the two subsequent debates. To put all rumors to rest, Hillary should have a complete medical and neurologic work-up at one of our leading medical centers and all the results need to be published. Contenders for the presidency have forfeited the right to privacy because their actions directly influence the lives of all of us. This applies in equal measure to Donald Trump. A few days away from the campaign trail in a hospital, to accomplish all the necessary tests, would be time well spent and show that the candidates are in fact concerned about the well-being of the voters rather than just spouting pious phrases about the good they will do when elected. This would be the reasonable thing to do, but politicians are not known for putting reason above the will to power.

          Donald Trump had a different task last Monday. His poll numbers were rising, not necessarily because he was an attractive choice but probably because of Hillary’s woes. He needed to show himself “presidential” similar to his appearance with the Mexican President earlier last month. He was advised to stay calm, explain the reasons why a Hillary Presidency would be a disaster and not let her needling get “under his skin.” He was apparently also told to be respectful of her gender and refrain from bullying.

He did not do well. He came across as unprepared and thought that he could “wing it.” Apart from that he made several mistakes. First of all he stumbled on the gender issue. While he addressed Hillary first as “Madame Secretary” and subsequently as “Secretary Clinton” she did not reciprocate with Mr. Trump, but Donald. At this point he could have changed the tone of his address, called her Hillary, and stated outright that gender will not be a point in this race. This would have established equal turf and cleared the air once and for all. Instead he brought the topic up in a tangential manner at the end of the debate when he first said that she neither has the looks nor the stamina of a president. He quickly corrected himself on the “looks” issue but persisted with lack of stamina, which was clearly wrong because she has plenty of it. The issue is not whether or not we should elect a woman as president. Most Americans have no problem with that; it’s only this particular woman we have misgivings about. Character is and should be the issue, not gender. But Trump’s pretended respect for Hillary, as shown by the appellation of Secretary Clinton, was not genuine. Next day on the campaign trail it was back to “crooked Hillary.” 

Hillary’s body language was appropriate for the circumstances and she even attempted to portray Miss Sunshine. Trump’s was that of the person we saw on campaign events. The split screen images did him no favor. When Hillary was talking he tended to revert to his usual squint, which does not make him more endearing, and intermittently there was a smirk on his lips. He also kept interrupting Hillary’s allegations with “wrong, wrong.” This was ineffective. He should have made a note of each statement he objected to and if she went over her allotted time ask the moderator to give him the same amount for point by point refutation. He must have known that these issues would come up and should have been ready with the answers. His conduct was not “presidential” and regardless what the media pundits say it is not likely to win him undecided voters.

So far I have concentrated on the physical aspects of the candidates as they came across on the screen because these influence the judgment of viewers. The much vaunted “issues” play a secondary role. When it came to those both candidates merely rehashed their campaign speeches, with the few key words we have repeatedly heard. Trump was especially perseverative. He also made the mistake of readily taking Hillary’s or the moderator’s bait as for instance with the race issue for not renting to minorities in the 70s, and joining the “birthers” who claimed that President Obama was not entitled to the presidency because he had not been born in the United States. He tried to put the blame on the Democrats for the latter, but people don’t care about who started this particular piece of nonsense. In addition, as one of my sons pointed out in a recent conversation, it goes beyond race. It is a constitutional matter that was also raised for George Romney’s (Mitt’s father) presidential run, McCain’s and most recently Ted Cruz’s.

Racial bias is, however, a major issue that requires intelligent discussion above and beyond the “law and order” mantra. Different people will have different opinions on the topic which depend to some extent where they live and with whom they interact on a daily basis. Let me now provide a few personal examples. When we bought our first house in Grosse Pointe in 1957 the area was not only “Lily white” but even Jews could not move there. My Jewish physician colleagues had to buy either in Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills or the “Village,” an affluent historic section near downtown Detroit. Sailors could not join any of the Yacht Clubs but had to found their own. The situation began to change for Jews in the late 60s and when we now say “race” African-American citizens are mainly meant. As a result of the riots in the late 1960s there was “white flight” to the suburbs, but for our family that was something one read about in the newspapers and magazines. The nursing staff at the Lafayette Clinic in downtown Detroit, where I was in charge of Neurology and EEG, was African-American and the head nurse had an additional dose of Sioux in her genes which made her an excellent administrator. All of us had mutual respect for each other and race was no problem.

Thus, I thought that we were above bias but it was not entirely true. On Saturdays we used to intermittently go downtown to a movie and I vividly recall the feeling of one evening. It was in 1971 and the movie was “Willard.” We were slightly late and the auditorium was already dark when we entered. When the lights came back on after the movie we found out that we were the only white family in the entire audience. People stared at us, we stared at them and I felt distinctly uncomfortable. Some unconscious deep fear of “the other” had come to awareness. Nothing happened, nobody bothered us, but it was a lesson for life. We were not aware that Detroit had profoundly changed and since we are not integrationists who are out to make political statements that was the last movie night in Detroit for us. I had learned the truth of the proverb: birds of a feather flock together.

One more anecdote and its counterpart are also revealing. While working at the University of Michigan’s EEG laboratory in 1957 its Chief, Dr. Bagchi, took a six month sabbatical to study the EEG of Yogis in his home country, India. I was in charge of the lab for that period and when the secretary left I had to hire a replacement. A pleasant, competent African-American applied and I hired her without any second thought. When Dr. Bagchi returned he was obviously miffed and I was not immediately aware of the reason. Later on I was told that Indians had at that time a bias against “Blacks.”

The corollary happened in the late 1980s when I was in charge of Harper Hospital’s Clinical Neurophysiology laboratory. In one particular year I had two physicians in training with one from Pakistan, who appeared white, and the other from southern India who was ebony black. The interaction between these two physicians was quite interesting, with the Pakistani looking down on the Indian. On occasion I had to intervene and remind the Pakistani that we are in America rather than Asia. But this was not all. The Indian, a very kind and compassionate person, had wanted to buy a house in one of the western Detroit suburbs but was rejected because he was taken for “Black.” Needless to say he was deeply hurt and gave up on the idea of staying in this country at the end of his training. 

These are inconvenient truths to which one must add another. The feelings described above exist on both sides of the racial divide and when they are exploited for political reasons, to gain special privileges e.g. reparations for slavery, the majority of white people automatically bristle. Conscious attitudes have changed over the decades and housing barriers have largely fallen, but for the unconscious ones it will require more time. If we really want to change ourselves, and thereby our society, we must not shrink from this truth but face it and resolve to improve our conduct. The past cannot be undone and harping on it without considering the reasons for past conduct is harmful. The future is what we should be concerned about. But it can only lead to improvement if there is rigorous self-inspection on both sides of the divide with the goal of mutual respect and the avoidance of past mistakes.

Due to my profession we have always lived in the somewhat more affluent suburbs rather than inner cities and I can, therefore, not render an opinion on what life is like for the majority of our African-American citizens who want to make a decent living under adverse circumstances. I have mentioned this issue in “Barack  Obama’s Problem” (July 2008). Since it is highly relevant for Trump’s law and order cure I’ll re-insert it here:

 

Malcolm [X] had once said: “What is the name of a black PhD walking at night in a white neighborhood? Nigger!” Or as Reverend Wright, who also has a PhD, had put it to Obama on their first meeting: “We don’t buy into these class divisions here. It’s not about income, Barack, cops don’t check my bank account when they pull me over and make me spread-eagle against the car.”  

 

          These day to day experiences of the black community in our inner cities are real and we must listen to reasonable voices for reasonable changes. The solutions advocated by either party have failed, and the inner cities are again about to explode with the furor of the sixties. It may well become worse because youth unemployment is rampant. Trump’s visit to black churches and listening to the concerns of the members was a good start but following up with endorsing the “frisk law” will not solve the problem.

          We can skip over the other domestic issues of the debate such as immigration because the positions of the candidates are well known and they simply repeated their campaign slogans. In regard to job creation Trump wants us to believe that lower tax rates for businesses and import taxes on American wares produced abroad will stimulate the overall economy and that this money can be used to repair our decaying infrastructure. This is likely to remain a fantasy especially if defense spending is increased as both candidates have promised to do. By exclusively blaming outsourcing by American companies to factories abroad where there are cheaper wages, no health insurance costs and no vacation or pension payments, he ignores another even more important outsourcing for which we have as yet found no cure. I am talking about automation where we human beings progressively outsource ourselves to computers. Their labor is likewise cost-free and their massive spread, that already has invaded all aspects of life, is bound to continue. Millions of jobs will be lost right here, unemployment will soar and with it social unrest. We won’t need Muslim terrorists to create havoc; we are creating a social scene that will make it inevitable. This is what intelligent politicians should address because this is the looming future, which inevitably has to impact on race relationships. But since there are no ready answers for this impending crisis, time is frittered away on political infighting.

          There were other key aspects of the debate where both candidates missed the boat. They deal with an American fact of life that is known but not allowed to be talked about. Hillary as well as Trump agreed that the nuclear issue is an overriding concern and even more urgent than climate change. While the latter proceeds slowly but inexorably, a nuclear disaster can hit us tomorrow. It could be inflicted with a “dirty bomb” by a rogue terror unit that is unaffiliated with a recognized nation state or we can drift into it in the way Europe drifted into WWI. The dirty bomb, would be a local issue and although hundreds if not thousands may die it would not alter the structure of the country unless we permitted it. As I said in regard to 9/11, it was not the event itself that caused the subsequent misery of millions of people but our response to it. A rational approach would have been to immediately start a criminal investigation, but instead the tragedy was exploited for ulterior purposes thereby unleashing much greater disasters. When one extrapolates from this event it is safe to predict that if a major terrorist attack were again to occur, with significant loss of life and property, martial law would be declared and the last vestiges of our freedom would be gone. There exists a faction within our country that aspires to despotism and it will exploit whatever opportunity may arise.

          The dirty bomb may initially be the lesser of the two evils the nuclear issue presents, although it is likely to lead subsequently to the grater one: outright nuclear war between us and our adversaries. Kim Jong Un of North Korea is an international pariah and we are told that his nuclear tipped rockets are about to hit our West Coast. I regard this as propagandistic nonsense because he has not shown suicidal tendencies. To the contrary he seems to love life and it appears that he uses his nukes to warn us off from our favorite task of “regime change,” which we repeatedly promised him. He learned from Saddam Hussein’s as well as Muammar Kaddafi’s example what we do with countries that give up their nuclear ambitions, or actual arsenal, when they subsequently don’t toe Washington’s line. In my opinion Kim wants to keep his job and the good life. If we were to continue with the status quo for a while longer his regime is likely to implode similar to the Soviet Union. Starving one’s people forever, does not succeed forever.

          These considerations lead to the key question of “first strike” that was brought up at the end of the debate by the moderator. The question was directed to both candidates:

 

HOLT …. On nuclear weapons, President Obama reportedly considered changing the nation's longstanding policy on first use. Do you support the current policy? Mr. Trump, you have two minutes on that.

TRUMP: …. We are not -- we are not keeping up with other countries. I would like everybody to end it, just get rid of it. But I would certainly not do first strike. I think that once the nuclear alternative happens, it's over. At the same time, we have to be prepared. I can't take anything off the table.

CLINTON: Well, let me -- let me start by saying, words matter. Words matter when you run for president. And they really matter when you are president. And I want to reassure our allies in Japan and South Korea and elsewhere that we have mutual defense treaties and we will honor them. It is essential that America's word be good. And so I know that this campaign has caused some questioning and worries on the part of many leaders across the globe. I've talked with a number of them. But I want to -- on behalf of myself, and I think on behalf of a majority of the American people, say that, you know, our word is good….

For the rest of her two minutes she went on in a similar vein without ever answering the question. Yet we need and deserve an answer because it is crucial and has to do with preventive war. Uncertainty should not persist because our adversaries will take note and may employ the first strike option before we do. This is literally a matter of life and death for humanity. Our current policy as enunciated by the Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, on September 27, 21016 is: “The doctrine of nuclear deterrence that leaves open the possibility of launching a "’first strike’" before an enemy attacks, will remain the basis of U.S. policy even as new generations of nuclear weapons are introduced. This is not “deterrence,” but the road to mutual suicide because Russia has already responded in the same manner. This situation puts us one accident away from disaster and it should no longer be allowed to persist. While we can do nothing about rogue factions and their dirty bomb, the first strike option should be completely off the table for nation states and this position should be anchored in law by the United Nations. The survival of civilized humanity is at stake.

Hillary’s reply brought to mind, however, the crucial problem which American diplomacy over the past half century has bestowed on us. We have ignored the farewell advice of our Founding Father, George Washington, who had admonished us to stay out of European entanglements. Through NATO, SEATO and other treaties we now have defense obligations for a host of countries that can involve us in a major war at a moment’s notice. These are the implications when Hillary said that “our word is good.” We also have ignored President Eisenhower’s warning in regard to the dangers the “military-industrial complex” presents to our society. It now has assumed proportions, which not only no longer enhance our security but instead threaten to destroy us. We have allowed a monster to grow in our midst that can no longer be tamed and is bound to grow further, regardless of who wins in November.

This brings me to Trump’s mantra of Making America Great Again. He seems to have the country of the 1940s and 1950s in mind without realizing that the world has profoundly changed since that time. These years were an anomaly because the major industrial centers in Europe and Japan had been destroyed, China was involved in a civil war and Israel had not yet assumed the role it plays today. Trump brought up the fact that he had met with Netanyahu and the latter “was not a happy camper,” probably over the Iran nuclear treaty. But let us be realistic who feels threatened by Iran’s nukes if and when they decided to get them? They won’t send them against us, Russia, China etc. If they were to use them at all, which is not necessarily likely because they may want them for defense rather than offense, it would be against Israel who is, as we are repeatedly told, our staunchest friend and ally. But is this really the case?

When we look carefully, we find that this friendship is predominantly a unilateral one on our part. The Israeli government needs our support, but is perfectly willing to pursue its own policies in the Middle East and elsewhere. They live by Moshe Dayan’s maxim: “The Americans give us money, they give us weapons and they give us advice. We take the money and the weapons but ignore the advice.”  In the 1950s Eisenhower could pressure the Israelis to give up the Sinai and return to the pre-June 1967 borders. This changed in 1967 under Lyndon Johnson’s aegis when our naval intelligence ship the “Liberty” was attacked in international waters with significant losses of American lives. The event was hushed up by the press and there were no adverse repercussions for Israel.

Officially our government has continued to decry the steady continuation of West Bank settlements, which are illegal under international law, but we still give Israel’s government money, supposedly for defense, which promptly goes into further settlement building. This policy of Israel, which has persisted since the 1967 war, has unleashed the killings during the Munich Olympiad and the hijackings of planes by Palestinians who tried to raise the world’s awareness to their plight. The efforts were useless and the Israeli government continues to paint itself in the colors of innocent victimhood.

Over the years AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and some of our Jewish billionaires have successfully hijacked Congress as well as the election for major office to an extent that candidates, including presidential ones, now have to tailor their policies to the wishes of the Likud government and its local supporters in our country. The Israeli position is perfectly understandable from their point of view, but why we should give up our freedom of action for their sake is not. While it is noble to help a friend in need, it is silly to provide an alcoholic with drink even if he is one’s friend. Instead, one has to show one’s friend the error of his ways and if he persists in his conduct, for whatever reason, it’s time to part ways. Not a single one of our presidents, starting with Johnson, had this moral courage. It has become even more difficult now as the $38 billion Obama promised Netanyahu last month prove. It seems likely that he may actually have been blackmailed by Netanyahu who may have threatened to “go rogue” with destroying Iran’s nuclear program.

Hillary as well Trump also have shown their bona fides to Bibi by assuring him that Jerusalem is indeed the eternal  capital of the Jewish people und our embassy would be moved there from Tel Aviv where it currently resides with that of other countries. This move would add fuel to Muslim anger at us and is a sure recipe for the continued growth and well-being of our military-industrial complex. I would greatly appreciate it if Mr. Trump would explain to us in one of the forthcoming debates how he intends to Make America Great Again in the foreign arena when we have allowed our country to be tied down like Gulliver by Lilliputians, but this is not going to happen.

In regard to national security the moderator had also raised the question of cybersecurity which will indeed become an increasingly important issue. We no longer need bombs to inflict serious harm on other countries; we can do it in cyberspace. The candidates agreed that this is a problem and as usual blamed Russia for nefariousness. They should have talked about the documentary Zero Days which demonstrates that we, jointly with the Israelis, started cyberwar with a computer virus that blew up the Iranian centrifuges. While we were still perfecting the method the Israelis put a cruder version to use that infected not only the Iranian targets but other installations around the world. The documentary ought to be watched by everybody because cyberwarfare will affect all of us and “Stuxnet” was simply the beginning. This type of warfare by nation states needs to be outlawed just as chemical weapons were and atomic ones should be.

In summary: Trump has not only lost the debate but probably also a significant portion of the American people. I am saying this, although there are still two debates during which he could rectify his mistakes. But his post-debate conduct, including an interview with Bill O’Reilly, showed that he seems incapable of learning. He suffered from logorrhea, where ill-considered words came streaming from his mouth in a torrent, and he appeared to be under such internal pressure that he ignored the wishes of the interviewer to stay with the question at hand. Instead he kept reciting what we have heard a dozen times. We witnessed, what I believe, is the “real Donald Trump.”

As it stands right now he is going to lose the election because it is not a two but a four person race. The voters who are disenchanted with both of the leading candidates are going to endorse either Gary Johnson’s Libertarian or Jill Stein’s Green Party, unless they stay home altogether. Since neither Johnson nor Stein can win outright this will give the race to Hillary Clinton and, barring unforeseen circumstances, we are likely to see a replay of 1992 when Ross Perot became Bill Clinton’s enabler.







November 1, 2016

AN AGONIZING CHOICE

          Originally I had intended to postpone writing the customary first of the month issue until the country had cast its votes and we have an inkling of what the future might hold under the new president. But I have a professional meeting in the middle of the month, that requires a great deal of preparation, and there won’t be sufficient time to discuss the pre-election situation in the depth it deserves. This is why I decided to stay with the routine and prepare the data for the first of the month. It was providential because, like everybody else, I had no idea what the afternoon of Friday the 28th would bring. It takes me about two days to write the Issues, proofread them, have them once more independently proofread before they go the webmaster on the last day of the month, which this time happens to be a Monday. Since I didn’t want to completely spoil the weekend with work I started on Friday morning without any inkling what the afternoon would bring. Instead of writing a completely new version I shall present what had already been written because it can serve as background for the new revelation that will shape the election campaign up to November 8th and beyond. 

          In previous issues I have already presented the reasons why I feel that neither of the current nominees has the appropriate qualifications one would expect from a President of the country and thereby the “leader of the free world.” Instead of repeating myself, the reader is invited to look at the installments starting with April 1, 2016 because nothing has happened in the meantime to invalidate these assessments of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The earlier prognosis that Hillary’s e-mail server and the Clinton Foundation problems would become headlines has proven correct and so have the statements about Trump’s character flaws.

          Let me, therefore, just briefly summarize last month’s events and why so many of us have such great difficulty deciding for whom to cast their vote, or why a great many will not participate in this process at all. The highlights until October 28th were the two debates, allegations of Trump’s sexual impropriety and a steady stream of e-mails, via WikiLeaks, that throw an unfavorable light on Hillary.

Although Trump had clearly lost the first debate, he was gaining momentum prior to the second one and the Hillary campaign, that was already beginning to suffer from the e-mail scandal, had to do something to reverse the momentum he was gaining. For this reason they rolled out a 2005 video where Trump and Billy Bush, a cousin of George W. and Jeb Bush, engaged in highly graphic banter. Trump boasted that due to his fame and popularity he can sexually molest good looking women and get away with it. He was clearly egged on by Bush and one comment, where he bragged that he could grab women in their genital area, was regarded by the Democrats as their ticket to win the election because he could now, in addition to his other flaws, be portrayed as a sexual predator. During the rest of the month up to 11 women came forth with allegations about Trump’s sexual misconduct and the media had a feast. The video clip was played over and over again and even Megan Kelly on the Fox News channel, which is reliably pro-Republican and supports the standard bearer of the party, couldn’t resist venting her distaste on a daily basis of such an unsavory character. Yet, let us put this event into context. Boasting about sexual exploits is common among some men when they are by themselves and is regarded as “locker-room” talk. Trump’s bragging is legendary and one only needs to remember his statement during the primary season that “I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and people would still vote for me.” Nobody in his right mind suggested at that time that he is a born killer.

Since distortions as well as outright lies are such a prominent aspect of all aspects of life in our society let me now digress for a moment and discuss this prime evil of our time. Both candidates accuse each other of lying and both are right. But there are several types of lies that can tell us something about the person. The most common is defensive where one professes innocence when confronted with proof to the contrary. The most recent example is Hillary’s lying about her private e-mail server, where she now claims that it was a “mistake.” Of course it was a mistake, but the evidence also shows that it was apparently a deliberate evasion of the guidelines governing the conduct of State Department personnel. She did so, in all probability, to prevent the public from gaining access to the contents of her conversations via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This law was enacted by Congress in 1966, over President Johnson’s objections, precisely to ensure some degree of accountability by government officials to the public. Hillary, as well as her staff at the State Department, knew fully well that she was circumventing the rules; they informed her about it, but she went ahead anyway. Earlier this year she testified before Congress that there were no State Department confidential e-mails on her server but FBI Director Comey proved this to be untrue.

The second type of lie can be called the offensive lie. This has been used by all governments as an excuse to start a war. Hitler manufactured the Gleiwitz incident to justify the invasion of Poland and most recently our war on Iraq also was based on a lie. Saddam Hussein did not have WMDs. The UN inspectors searching for them were still in the country when the Bush administration ordered them out because they were in the way of the impending invasion. An honest administration that had no hidden motives would have let the inspectors complete their job and subsequently deal with the result within the UN framework.

To their credit the British investigated the events leading to Tony Blair’s assistance in the promotion of, and subsequent participation in, the Iraq war. The final Chilcot Report rendered a blistering indictment (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/06/iraq-inquiry-key-points-from-the-chilcot-report). This brings up the question:  Why can the British honestly investigate the reasons for the mistakes made by their leadership but Cheney and Bush, who can be regarded as war criminals by the standards of the Nuremberg trials which America instigated, are free from public scrutiny and accountability? Yet it is this war and the urge for “regime change” which has created all the disasters in the Middle East and North Africa that are still unfolding, as well as the refugee crisis that floods Europe. Hillary now says that her vote in the Senate for the war was a mistake. But it was not simply a mistake, just like the private e-mail server for government business was not simply a mistake. These actions are evidence of poor judgment and disregard also of international law. The war was a crime and I warned against it in these pages starting on December 2001 (War on Terrorism).  It is indeed frustrating when private citizens, on basis of their limited information, can see disasters unfolding and find themselves unable to effect meaningful change, while elected officials, who clearly should know better, pursue policies that are bound to be ruinous.

The third type of lie can be called the Muenchhausen lie and is used extensively by Trump. Baron Muenchhausen (1720-1797) was of German nobility and had experienced an adventurous life including service in a campaign of the Russian army. During retirement on his estate he regaled his dinner guests with tall tales of his exploits. They were essentially harmless massive exaggerations to portray himself in a heroic light and it is unclear how many of these he really believed. His tales were subsequently fictionalized and became a favorite children’s book. In Trump’s case he not only exaggerates his effectiveness but also misinterprets events he has heard about and when confronted with facts he refused to accept them. The “dancing Muslims” at the fall of the Twin Towers as described  in Twin Specters Haunting America’s Politicians (April 1, 2016) is a typical example.

On the other hand, Trump does have a streak of honesty which comes out in unguarded spontaneous eruptions that are then distorted by his adversaries. A typical example occurred during the second debate. When Hillary commented that “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” He interjected: “because you’d be in jail.” He had insisted for months that the system was “rigged,” by which he not only meant voter fraud at the polls and the media bias against him. Furthermore, the Justice Department and the FBI also had not properly carried out their duty in regard to Hillary’s e-mail server as well as potential malfeasance in regard to the Clinton Foundation while she was Secretary of State. In the August 1, issue (Brexit, The Refugee Problem and America’s Election Choice), I mentioned that if Hillary Rodham had been a lowly cipher clerk in the State Department and had used a private e-mail server for official correspondence, she would not only have been fired but probably imprisoned for sharing state secrets. The media were appalled by Trump’s outburst and told us that if elected President Trump would put Hillary behind bars. But what he had said in a spontaneous manner was the truth. If our justice system had not been corrupted by political pressures, FBI director Comey would in all probability have recommended criminal investigations to the Justice Department in July of this year. Instead, he closed the case with merely pointing to Hillary’s extreme carelessness.

Does it matter if government officials or persons who want to be President lie to us on a daily basis? Of course it does; it erodes trust and breeds fear which can become paranoia. In the case of President, or Secretary of State, it is even worse because they have to deal with foreign governments. If they lack respect at home how can they expect to earn it abroad? This is the situation our country finds itself in at present. President Nixon, when confronted with the Watergate scandal, looked into our collective eyes and said: “I am not a crook.” Well, he did obstruct justice and had to resign. President Clinton wagged his finger at us exclaiming emphatically: “I did not have sexual relationships with that woman; Miss Lewinsky.” But when her blue dress with presidential semen stains appeared that was the end of that lie and under oath he lawyered: “it depends on what the definition of is is.” Although the impeachment trial went nowhere, Clinton did lose his license to practice law for five years and he had to pay a $25,000 fine. While running for his first term Bill Clinton told us that by electing him we’ll get two for one, indicating that Hillary would be a full partner. With Hillary’s election we’ll again get two for one. The sleaze, as well as the misjudgments of the years from January 1993-Jauary 2001 is likely to return with a vengeance because the world has changed since then and become far more dangerous.

In the 1990s Russia was prostrate and suffered from the effects of “privatization” which created billionaires, while throwing the masses into poverty. China was not yet a full-fledged player on the world stage and Europe an obedient listener to her master’s voice. America reigned supreme and behind the scenes the neo-cons, of whom nobody knew anything, were plotting on ways and means to keep America’s dominance for all time. The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was hatched and the world was regarded as theirs for the taking. With the Bush- Cheney administration they emerged into daylight. The Obama administration forced them somewhat into the background again but the idea of regime change was not beholden to party labels. Hillary had pursued it in Libya as well as in Ukraine (Ukraine Crisis March 15, 2014, Ukraine: Let Truth be Told, April 1, 2014) and now is eager to achieve the ultimate price of forcing Russia back into her helpless Yeltsin type period. But Putin stands in the way and this is the reason why he has to be branded as a current source of evil. Since Trump had said that he wants to make some kind of accommodation with Russia, especially over Syria, Hillary called him in the third debate Putin’s puppet. He objected, but to no avail. In the current issue the Editors of The New Yorker wrote, under the title of “The Choice,” a paean for Hillary combined with what amounts to a hatchet job for Trump. A picture of the front cover is shown below.       

       

 

 

 

The issues in this campaign, apart from the sex interlude, revolve mainly around the economy, taxes, health care, immigration, lawlessness, composition of the Supreme Court, and similar ones that may be called bread and butter concerns of the citizenry. While these are indeed important the one issue which overrides all others has so far hardly been touched by either one of the contestants or the media. It is the foreign arena where forces in and out of government are working for regime change in Russia and Iran. If President Duterte of the Philippines were to keep insisting that American troops should leave his country he is likely to be added to the regime change list. Although this idea has taken root in the leadership of both political parties it is the most dangerous for our future and should have been extensively aired in the debates. We know where Hillary stands, she is for regime change, but we have no idea what a President Trump would really do.

          Donald Trump is a master of evasion. When confronted with a direct question he does not like, he changes the topic. He is also not beholden to his own previous firm statements. For instance, he insisted over and over again that Mexico would pay for the “beautiful wall” he intends to build between our two countries. Reality is beginning to sink in and he has changed the mantra to pointing out that the Mexicans will pay later. The deporting of 11 million Latinos who have moved illegally into our country has also been pointed out to him as a non-starter, so he changed his rhetoric to immediately deporting only the criminal element and he would deal with the others depending upon circumstances later. Initially he declared climate change a hoax, but is now willing to listen to both sides of the debate. His fund of historical information seems to be non-existent because similar to George W. Bush he has never found time to read substantive books. Maybe the clue to his conduct is that he is both a business man and an entertainer. During the primary campaign he rejoiced in the role of entertainer where he liberally fed the media with his antics. He carried this conduct over into the Presidential race, but when his poll numbers started to fall precipitously after the third debate he seems to have begun to listen to his friends who urged him to stay on message. There might, therefore, be at least the hope that as President he would regard himself as America’s CEO who strikes deals with foreign leaders instead of applying a pseudo-moral compass that labels everybody who disagrees with us as evil.

          Hillary tells us that she has tirelessly worked for women and children throughout her life in and out of office. She also advocates equal pay for women, but apparently this policy has not reached the Clinton Foundation, where it could most readily be implemented. http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/21/news/clinton-paid-women-less. Her conduct as Secretary of State certainly was not good for the women and children of the Middle East and Libya who are now exposed to privations they had never before endured. We should not condone a policy that advocates further regime change when the results are nothing but disasters for the people of these countries. Our moral outrage over the conduct of certain governments is also highly selective and involves only countries with which we have disagreements. Where, for instance, is the desire for regime change of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and numerous other countries that also treat their people, and especially women, abysmally? It, therefore, appears that the noble phrases of “free trade,” “human rights,” etc. are the excuses to hide the real purpose. It is to create, what may be called, an “Amerocentric planet” where all other nations obediently cruise in the orbit we have assigned to them. This vision is abetted by the arms industry which reaps hefty profits, and has Hillary’s full support. Yet it must be exposed as a highly dangerous fantasy because, barring unforeseen events, neither China nor Russia will stand for it and has to lead to global war.

So where are we in regard to next week’s election? The Democrats’ Bernie supporters will bite their tongue and vote for Hillary regardless of her obvious faults. So will even some Republicans, simply because they viscerally hate Trump. He has alienated the Republican leadership during the primaries and he isn’t a Republican anyway. Philosophically he is unaligned who runs on the Republican ticket because an Independent can’t win the election. The Republican leadership knows this and is afraid that it would lose its clout if Trump were to win. The current strategy is to concentrate on retaining control of Congress and then subvert whatever program Hillary might put up for a vote including Supreme Court nominees, while hoping for a better standard bearer in 2020.  This strategy while sounding reasonable on the surface has a serious flaw because prior to 2020 Hillary’s continued baiting of Putin may have led to a shooting war with Russia.

          Early on Trump had a chance to win the majority of Independents but as the saying goes in this country “he blew it.” His boisterous erratic conduct turned many of them off to the extent that some regard Hillary as the lesser of the two evils, while others will either vote for one of the third party candidates or abstain altogether. These seem to be reasonable options but in fact they are not. As Mike Pence, Trump’s Vice-Presidential nominee, has recently pointed out here in Utah, they actually amount to a vote for Hillary. Anyone of the third party candidates cannot win and therefore would only dilute the Trump margin. Staying home likewise would deny Trump a vote he needs to win and give Hillary the advantage.   

That was the reason for the “agonizing choice” of the headline up to the early afternoon of October 28 when the stakes for Hillary were raised even higher. More e-mail pigeons had come home again. On that Friday afternoon FBI Director Comey sent a letter to Congress that, although he had previously testified that the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s e-mails was finished, new e-mails from an unrelated case had come to the attention of his office and are currently examined for their potential content of classified information. “Although the FBI cannot yet assess whether this material may or may not be significant and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work, I believe it is important to update your Committees about our efforts in light of my previous testimony.”

           This is a serious blow to the Clinton campaign. Previously it could dodge the issue with the comment that the FBI had not found evidence for potential criminal conduct and the case was closed. The WikiLeaks were relegated to Russian hacking and falsification of the material. It was, as usual, all Putin’s fault, in spite of the fact that the admission of hacking indicated the vulnerability of the data. Now the case has been re-opened and this is bad news for Clinton. She is no longer fighting just for her political life but even her personal one. This means that she must win the election regardless of cost. President Trump would immediately appoint a new Attorney General who would order a thorough investigation by the Justice Department, impanel a Grand Jury, or appoint a special prosecutor to look into all aspects of the Clinton’s dealings during her tenure as Secretary of State.

We are now in the unprecedented situation where the presidential candidate of the likely to win party is being investigated for potential malfeasance by a government agency. If the November 8 vote were to turn into basically a draw it is likely to be challenged by the party with the minority vote. We will then be back in 2000 but this time the Supreme Court is evenly divided with only eight judges. Since this is now a do or die fight for Hillary her campaign is likely to go into overdrive trying to find some evidence that members of the Trump campaign not only have business dealings with Russia but got paid for political services.

          We may now ask what motivated FBI Director Comey to reverse himself 11 days before the election. Speculations abound, but Director Comey would be well advised to follow the request by Hillary as well as members of Trump’s campaign to give us a full account of the reasons for his letter to Congress at this critical time. He is an intelligent person who must have known that this would create turmoil with the election and beyond. He should tell us the full truth regardless of personal consequences, in order to put all rumors to rest.

Let us look at the enormity of what was done. A large segment of our population is already voting for a candidate who is under active investigation by the FBI for potential criminal behavior and who may face indictment some time next year. If Hillary were to win it would be impossible for her to bring the country together, as she has vowed to do, because Republicans in Congress would continue looking into the charges and block all her legislative proposals. The gridlock that currently exists in Washington is child’s play compared to what is likely to follow after Hillary’s inauguration.

The current situation reminded me of the summer of 1972 and President Nixon’s re-election campaign. In June of that year the “dirty tricks” brigade broke for a second time into the DNC’s campaign headquarters in the Watergate complex to fix listening devices and plant new ones. They were caught and criminal proceedings were instituted. Nixon, who had not known of the break-in, dismissed it as “a second rate burglary” and went on to win the November election in a landslide. But it soon came out that the burglars had been paid by the Committee to Reelect the President, which clearly implicated the governing party. Nixon stood by his staff, tried to dodge this potentially lethal bullet to the extent that he dismissed the Special Prosecutor who had been appointed to look into this affair. This led to the resignation of the Attorney General as well as his deputy and became known as the “Saturday Night Massacre.” Nixon’s reputation was shattered and by August of the following year he had to resign to avoid guaranteed successful impeachment.

This is a precedent, and the shoe is now on the other foot. But the Trump campaign also has a real challenge. It can gloat over rising poll numbers and hope for a win while their standard bearer keeps putting his foot into his mouth on the campaign trail. Or it can come to grips with the seriousness of the situation, as outlined above, and convince Trump to literally put his money where his mouth is and follow the advice from commentators on Fox News. He should buy 20 minutes TV time and address the nation, reading from the teleprompter without sarcastic asides, about the type of government he intends to form. It should be inclusive with Republicans as well as Democrats and Independents and consist of persons known for their effectiveness in their professions rather then career politicians.

Those of us, who do not want a Hillary Presidency, with the consequences outlined above, deserve to know what he intends to do. The usual “trust me” no longer suffices. The world is too dangerous, and while our attention is riveted on the election, Russia’s one and only aircraft carrier, the Kuznetsov, has passed Gibraltar and is sailing with its battle group towards Syria. Can we protest when we have the USS Boxer amphibious assault carrier in the Persian Gulf and the USS Harry S. Truman in the eastern Mediterranean? Why is Putin doing this especially at this time? I believe he wants to tell Obama that Russia is not just a “regional power,” as he had called it, but a force to be reckoned with. His country spans two continents and he has more than enough nukes to wreak global havoc. These are realities and to avoid a catastrophe we cannot continue with business as usual but new thinking is required.

This week will be another one for the history books and we ought to pray that sanity will prevail. 







December 1, 2016

PRESIDENT TRUMP?

          At 2:30 a.m. of November 9 our political establishment received a wake-up call that they will ignore at their peril. By that time Donald J Trump had received 306 electoral votes while Hillary Clinton had garnered 232 and the Associated Press pronounced Trump winner of the election. Soon after 3 a.m. he greeted his faithful, who had stayed up half the night at the New York Hilton, with the good news that a few minutes earlier Hillary had conceded and congratulated him on the victory. The crowd exploded in delight and Trump gave a remarkably conciliatory speech, which emphasized that the task now was for the country to get together in order to build a better future for all. The mood at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, Hillary’s headquarters, was decidedly different: stunned disbelief. Hillary herself was too distraught to face her supporters and the disastrous message had to be conveyed by John Podesta, the campaign chairman. Later in the morning she gave a private speech to her staff and campaign workers which likewise was as conciliatory as Trump’s had been earlier in the morning.

          After thanking the attendees for all their efforts she said:

 

Thank you so very much for being here. I love you all, too. Last night I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country.

I hope that he will be a successful president for all Americans. This is not the outcome we wanted or we worked so hard for, and I'm sorry we did not win this election for the values we share and the vision we hold for our country.

But I feel pride and gratitude for this wonderful campaign that we built together. This vast, diverse, creative, unruly, energized campaign. You represent the best of America, and being your candidate has been one of the greatest honors of my life.

I know how disappointed you feel, because I feel it too. And so do tens of millions of Americans who invested their hopes and dreams in this effort. This is painful, and it will be for a long time. But I want you to remember this.

Our campaign was never about one person, or even one election. It was about the country we love and building an America that is hopeful, inclusive, and big-hearted. We have seen that our nation is more deeply divided than we thought. But I still believe in America, and I always will. And if you do, then we must accept this result and then look to the future. Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead. Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power…

 

          The following day Trump was invited to the White House by President Obama and the meeting that had been scheduled for about 20 minutes turned into one and a half hours. Trump seemed properly subdued by the surroundings in the Oval Office and the enormity of the task he had undertaken appeared to be sinking in. Obama was gracious and pledged his full support for the transition period, which ends with the inauguration on January 20. This was a welcome surprise and those of us who had been disgusted with the status quo and constant infighting that had reached the gutter level breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe, they thought, Trump will rise beyond the campaign rhetoric and surprise all of us with a government that is free from sleaze and operates on sound business principles rather than political expediency. Maybe, they hoped, Hillary meant what she said and her supporters would heed her message.

          Hope springs eternal but it is always dashed. Reality immediately set in. Regardless of what Hillary and Obama had said, some of Trump’s opponents went from stunned disappointment to fury. Protests, involving thousands, broke out in many of the major cities and all the official news media, with the exception of Fox News, went into overdrive to stoke popular discontent. Trump’s victory had been totally unexpected. All the major news organizations had endorsed Hillary including Atlantic magazine. The latter had stayed above the fray in previous years and from its inception in 1857 had only endorsed Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson. Barry Goldwater’s “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” couldn’t be stomached in 1964, just as Trump’s vituperations in 2016. The pollsters also were wrong. Although the race had narrowed in the last weeks, possibly aided by the FBI Director’s announcement that the Bureau was not yet done with looking at Hillary’s e-mail problem, they still predicted her victory. 

          What had happened? The answer seems to be that the elites who try to shape public opinion had misjudged the mood of the country. The economic doldrums, the never-ending wars, the seemingly unlimited illegal immigration, the stalemate in Congress, and the push for “progressive ideas” by the Democrats had alienated about half of the country. An additional section of our people also would not condone the rapid ascendancy of “LGBT” (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transsexuals) from a ridiculed minority to a potent political force that enacted legislation, and homosexual marriages were regarded as an abomination. The big cities on the East and West Coast were seen as Sodom and Gomorrah that had to be chastised. They also resented media enforced politically correct speech: euphemisms that mask the truth with the word “gay” for homosexual and “progressive” for the enactment of the 1848 Communist Manifesto as prime examples (May 1, 2009. Looking for Answers). They, therefore, welcomed Trumps’ clear unequivocal speech patterns, even when they offended less radical ears. 

          Let us now consider the actual poll number and voting patterns. The turnout of eligible voters was remarkably low at 55.4%. This was second lowest for the past 10 years, topped only by the Clinton Dole contest in 1996. Highest voter participation was in the 2008 Obama-McCain rivalry where 63.7% cast their ballots. Hillary won the popular vote with 48.0 % vs. 46.3%. But these are not final numbers because some states are still counting votes and Hillary’s margin keeps increasing slightly. As all of us know, this situation also pertained to the 2000 election results when Al Gore won the popular and George W Bush the all-important electoral vote. This time Hillary’s margin is larger than Gore’s was but, as mentioned, this is irrelevant because only electoral votes are legally binding.   

The following figures from exit polls are still preliminary and may be revised to some extent when more information becomes available, but they do tell a story. The country split largely between urban vs. suburban and especially rural with the latter going to Trump. It also split on racial lines. Whites favored Trump by 58 vs. 37% and the pattern was even clearer for white men with 63 vs. 31%. For white women the figures were 43 vs. 53 %. Hillary had banked on the women’s vote, especially in the last week of the campaign, but they did not vote as a block. The subdivisions are of considerable interest. Republican women couldn’t stomach Hillary and voted with 89% for Trump. The marital status also made a difference. Married women voted for Hillary with a margin of only 2% (47 vs. 49%) but for unmarried ones the numbers were 62 vs. 33%. For married men the choice was clear, Trump won by 58 vs. 37%, but unmarried men leaned toward Hillary with 46 vs. 45%. Educational status as well as age also played a role. College graduates and those with additional university degrees went mainly for Hillary. But even within this group the racial split with whites favoring Trump was apparent. The age of 40 years also was a watershed; those of less than 40 went for Hillary, over 40 for Trump. In addition religion was a factor. Members of Christian religions (Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, others) voted with 57 vs. 37 % for Trump, while Hillary received the Jewish vote with 71 vs. 24%.

In summary: only slightly more than half of the country voted because the rest could, to a major extent, not accept either one of the two nominees. Of the votes cast they were about evenly divided with 26.5 % for Trump and 26.3 % for Hillary. In other words neither one of the contestants received a mandate and for the country to function it would be essential that the conciliatory note struck by Trump as well as Hillary and Obama be heeded. But this was not the case. Human emotions again overwhelmed reason.

The media, after expressing their disappointment, continued with attacks on Trump repeating his campaign oratory as if this was now enacted legislation. His cabinet appointments are lambasted and comments made years ago are held against them. This attitude denies a fundamental principle of human nature that allows the changing of one’s opinion when new evidence becomes available. This was well known to the Romans who used to say: tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis – times change and we change with them. To deny change is a fundamental mistake, which unfortunately is being repeated now. They threw down the gauntlet at Trump. A typical example is an article by Charles M. Blow in the The New York Times of November 26 headlined: “No, Trump, We Can’t Just Get Along.” The insert stated: “You don’t get a pat on the back for ratcheting down from rabid.” This is incendiary language that cannot possibly be good for the country.

An added complication arose on November 23 in the person of Jill Stein MD, the presidential nominee of the Green Party who obtained 1% of the total votes cast on November 8. Up to 2006 she was a respected physician but at age 56 exchanged her work of helping individual patients for curing the country and the world. She became a full-time political activist. While one might applaud her for this career change at the height of the Iraq debacle, she apparently forgot the physician’s Prime Directive: Nil Nocere – First of All Do No Harm. On Wednesday of last week her website started to collect funds for a recount of votes first in Wisconsin and subsequently Pennsylvania and Michigan.

At present it is still unclear what started Dr. Stein on this quixotic expedition for recounting votes but some disturbing elements in regard to fund raising have emerged. Initially she asked for approximately 2.5 million dollars for the recount effort in Wisconsin. This proved to be no problem. The sum arrived within 12 hours and more money came in torrents. The dollar amount needed for the three recounts was, therefore, raised to about 7 million and this was met by Monday November 28, which was prodigious feat. Although her website states that the money came in small amounts from grassroots supporters, this was not readily believable. It was immediately pointed out that her entire campaign that extended for more than a year had only raised somewhat over $3 million, while she now obtained essentially the same amount within a 24 hour period. It was also noted on the Internet that identical sums of money, $160,000, had arrived on an hourly basis for 24 hours, even throughout the night when donors were bound to have been asleep, suggesting a computer operation. By November 28 it was reported that the recount effort had reached over $7 million. Obviously we can’t trust everything that appears on the Internet, but there is certainly enough smoke to warrant an official investigation. We should find out where this money comes from.

There are additional problems with the recount fund drive. There is no guarantee that the states in question will actually perform a recount and in some it may be meaningless because the electronic voting machines did not issue paper receipts. This makes it impossible to check individual votes. Furthermore, Stein’s website explicitly states that surplus money will not be refunded but used for “election integrity efforts and to promote voting system reform.A statement, which like so many others from politicians, we have to take on faith.

This continues to be an evolving story as an Internet report of Monday November 29 showed under the headline “Stein sues after Wisconsin refuses to order hand recounts.”   

 

The Wisconsin Elections Commission agreed Monday to begin a recount of the presidential election on Thursday but was sued by Green Party candidate Jill Stein after the agency declined to require county officials to recount the votes by hand.

It will be a race to finish the recount in time to meet a daunting federal deadline, and the lawsuit could delay the process. Under state law, the recount must begin this week as long as Stein or another candidate pays the $3.5 million estimated cost of the recount by Tuesday, election officials said.

 

The Hillary campaign initially distanced itself from this “grassroots” effort but on November 26 lent its support in spite of President Obama’s expressed wish not to do so and its conflict with Hillary’s statements made on November 9. This adds a new dimension and makes ascertainment of funding sources even more important.

We may now ask what and who is behind this effort to deny Trump his victory. The “Who” is as yet unclear but not the “What.” The recount effort is a sideshow, the real purpose is to bring pressure on the Electoral College to deny Trump their vote. Let us, therefore, remember: on November 8 we did not vote for a person but for a party! The party appoints the electors who cast the actual vote for the person. This leads to the anomalous situation that in a country of somewhat over 324 million, of whom somewhat over 135 million cast their ballot, 538 electors decide who will be President.

I have previously discussed this situation but it bears repeating. This indirect voting process is anchored in the Constitution because the framers had a problem with the so-called slave states. The popular vote would be a decisive disadvantage to them because a) slaves had no vote, and b) there were too few white voters to counterbalance the greater numbers of the North. This led to the compromise that individual Negro slaves were to be regarded as 3/5th of a person. This raised the number of inhabitants of a given state to an acceptable level. It now would require a constitutional amendment to change the situation. Although slavery is no longer relevant, geographic factors still remain and less populated states would in essence be disenfranchised. The more numerous East Coast combined with California would dictate the outcome of the popular vote. But there is an additional anomaly of the current system: the country spans four time zones. If the eastern and central states were to procure the needed 270 electors we who live in the West need not bother to vote because the election was already decided before some of our votes had been cast, let alone counted.

Californians, because of their large number and Democrat political leanings, resent the current situation. It is therefore no surprise that Mr. Daniel Brezenoff, Deputy Chief of Long Beach’s mayor, availed himself of Choice.Org to start a petition drive to pressure individual state electors to change their vote from Trump to someone else. The petition was an immediate success and to date has more than 4.6 million supporters. The names of the electors are available on the Internet and individual pressure can readily be applied. James Evans, Utah’s Republican Party Chairman who by the way is the first African American to serve in this capacity, wrote: “I have had electors reach out to me about the statute saying: do I have to vote for Trump?” For Utah the situation is clear: all of our six electors are duty bound to cast their vote for Trump. But unquestioned obedience to the party’s champion is not necessarily the case in the rest of the nation. About half the states allow their electors to change their vote. It has been estimated that if about 37 Republicans deny Trump their vote he will lose the election. Although this scenario seems far-fetched at this moment this election has been so full of surprises that we can take nothing for granted any more. This is why this month’s headline carries a question mark.

What are Jill Stein’s vote recount effort as well as Mr. Brezenoff’s petition drive supposed to accomplish? Stein says that she is not doing this to get Hillary the presidency but only to know if Russia had hacked the voting machines. Although there is no evidence for this it would make no difference at this point. This is, therefore, obviously not the reason for her action and this is why we should, as soon as possible, find out where those 7 plus million dollars she has so far collected came from. Brezenoff wants to remove Trump from the top of the ticket.  He insisted that the Constitution gives him the right for his actions. What does the Constitution really say? Article II Section 1 spells it out and we are currently at the third paragraph of that section. The electors have been appointed and they will cast their vote on December 10.  The list of names will then be forwarded to the President of the Senate, Joe Biden. On January 10 “the votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of votes shall be President …” But this is not followed by a period. There is a comma and the sentence continues with semicolons attempting to cover all contingencies that might arise. One of them may well become reality on January 10 and is the reason why I am now continuing to quote from the American Civil Liberties Union pamphlet with where I had left off

 

, if such number be a Majority of the whole number of Electors

appointed; and if there may be more than one who have such Majority and

have an equal number of votes, then the House of Representatives shall

immediately chuse (sic) by Ballot one of them for President; and if no person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List said House  shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of the States shall be necessary to a Choice.

 

Unless the Left were to desist from its current course of action, which is unlikely, this may be a glimpse into January of next year. Since this document is open to legal interpretations, especially in regard to the definition of majority, the November election might end up in chaos. Although Republicans currently have a majority in the House with 247 seats they do not have the “super-majority” of two thirds which Democrats might filibuster for. So let me ask again: who is the real force behind this potential road to chaos?

 Obviously, the recount situation did not sit well with Trump who called it a scam and more recently he alleged that millions of illegal aliens had voted for Hillary, which in his mind accounted for her margin. But the people who are now shaping Trump’s appointments should take notice. The pride of having received a mandate from the American people is misplaced and far from the truth. Although they have achieved a majority in the Senate, the House and on the grassroots level, where most of the counties are now in Republican hands, this masks the deep split between average citizens which extends down to the family level. The dislike of Trump is visceral and conciliatory attempts to the effect: well, let’s see what he does rather than what he said, are of no avail. At Thanksgiving dinners a rule of “no politics” had to be enacted in a number of instances, in order to keep the peace.

There is no doubt that a considerable number of our citizens have been frightened by Trump’s campaign rhetoric. His staff should recognize this and forcefully bring it to his awareness. This fear of Trump turning America into an autocratically ruled exclusively white, working class country applies not only to minorities but even grips members of academia and is fostered by the media. While Trump would probably like to see bygones be bygones, their continued efforts to discredit him prevent this from happening. I regard this as seriously ill-conceived because it aggravates the current split in our country instead of leading to a healing process. The media’s actions, thereby, may well produce what they fear.

The current situation is unprecedented in the 66 years I have lived in this country. There had been close elections starting, before I came, with Truman and afterwards with Kennedy, but the current degree of negative reaction and outright panic had not occurred. Truman became an object of jokes as “haberdasher” and when he fired MacArthur a cartoon appeared: Who does Harry think he is; the President? In those days I found myself in the anomalous position of the Austrian visitor having to defend the American President against his countrymen. The dubious Kennedy election was taken in stride because Nixon conceded in spite of knowing that Papa Joe had bought it for his son. During the Primaries in 1960 authorities in West Virginia were paid to vote for Jack and during the election the mayor of Chicago as well as the Mafia were the beneficiaries of his largesse. This was the way business was done and nobody got too upset. But 2016 is clearly different and now some citizens are even talking about the specter not only of chaos but of civil war.

In the April 1 edition I suggested certain similarities between Trump’s and Hitler’s attempts to gain power over the State. They are still valid but the differences between them are equally important. When I saw, as part of the preparation for the preparation of this essay, an article on the Internet, http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/it-can-happen-here-has-it-1933-scenario-no-longer-hypothetical, I thought that it might have further relevant information. The article also appeared on Salon.com which describes itself as “progressive/liberal, while Alternet regards itself as a “liberal activist news service.” The author was Andre O’Hehir, the critic writer for Salon, and any hope for substantive data was immediately quelled. The article consisted of an anti-Trump tirade. Here is an excerpt:

 

We don’t know whether the election of Trump is an American echo of the winter of 1932 in Germany, when a fragile democracy collapsed into tyranny and an infamous demagogue rose to power on a promise of economic renewal and restored national pride, with an unmistakable racial subtext. It’s an inflated comparison in many ways: Trump is too lazy and stupid to be a good Fuhrer (sic), and lacks any semblance of a consistent ideology; his true believers are nowhere near a majority, and are unlikely to participate in any form of mass mobilization that involves leaving the sofa. Kristallnacht is more likely to come back as a hashtag than a physical event. But if you’re anything like me, the parallels seem far-fetched first thing in the morning and way too plausible in the middle of the night.

         

Articles like these do a disservice to the genuine study of what Germany’s winter of 1932-1933 has to teach us. As will be pointed out in a subsequent edition, that will deal with these events, our “progressives” make the same mistake Germany’s left-wing parties did after January 30, 1933 the day when President Hindenburg bestowed the Chancellorship on Hitler. Hindenburg had no choice: the National Socialists were the largest party in the Reichstag and all the others had proven themselves unable to govern the country. The cartoon shown below was copied from Hitler in der Karrikatur der Welt. It was published by the Nazis in May of 1938 and tells the story. The original publication was by the St. Louis Globe on February 2, 1933.

 

 

Trump is not likely to ignore the constant taunts and eventually will strike back, especially if he were to sit in the Oval Office with the power of the pen in his hand. Retaliation is anchored in human nature and forgiveness “seven times seven” appears only in the New Testament rather than the conduct of politicians. If the situation were really to get out of hand Trump is likely to declare a state of national emergency and suspend certain aspects of the Constitution, among which freedom of the press would be one of the first. He could even cite Lincoln as precedent for having suspended habeas corpus in the first year of the Civil War.

The “progressive” Left is playing with fire and if the conflagration were to break out they would have achieved a self-fulfilling prophecy. It happened in Germany and there is no reason why it can’t happen here unless saner heads start to study the mistakes of the 1930s and act to prevent their repetition. But it is not only the Left that is making mistakes so is Trump. He still remains his worst enemy by sending tweets that go counter to facts and the announced “Thank-you tour” that will start today in Cincinnati cannot possibly heal the divide that exists in this country. On the contrary it is bound to exacerbate the split between “Us and Them.” This does not bode well for the future.

The Christmas season is upon us and should inspire us with good will towards all. While there might be a Christmas truce between the warring factions in our country it is not likely to last beyond a few days. Human ingenuity seems to be at its wits end and we may be reduced to praying for Divine Intervention.  







January 1, 2017

A TIME FOR PRAYER

          During the Christmas season it is customary to send greetings to friends and distant family members that include wishes for a “Happy New Year.” Although the phrase did show up again this year many of us have a sense of foreboding. There is major concern, if not outright apprehension, that our political leadership is likely to drastically interfere with our “inalienable right” to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. The year 2017 is likely to become a crucial one for our country and over its entrance portal hang question marks as to where the Trump administration will lead us. On a personal level this will be the 18th presidential inauguration I will have witnessed since coming to this country and none had been accompanied by this extent of unease around the country.

          The question mark I placed in the headline of last month’s installment can now be removed unless some disaster was to befall the President-elect prior to January 20. The vote recount effort has fizzled and so did the attempt to sway Republican electors to change their vote. Although the official electoral vote count will have to wait till January 9, when Congress reconvenes, the media have already told us the result and the January 9 ceremony will be just that, a ceremony. It is time to get used to the thought of a President Trump, which had been unimaginable a year ago. As I wrote on February 1 in these pages after President Obama’s last State of the Union address it was obvious that Republicans had already assigned him to “lame duck” status and whatever he wanted to achieve during his last year was irrelevant. To prove the point John Boehner, speaker of the House of Representatives, invited Prime Minister Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress during early March, just prior to Israeli elections. The purpose was to give him an opportunity for a blistering attack on the Obama administration’s impending nuclear agreement with Iran. There was to be no cooperation with their Democrat colleagues and when Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia died in late February the Republicans blocked Obama’s effort to appoint his replacement. They were waiting for the November election that would bring them the hoped for Republican victory. The old saying “be careful what you wish for” proved again true. They did win in November, but their new standard bearer was hardly what they had imagined.

          In last year’s April 1 issue, entitled Twin Specters Haunting America’s Politicians, I mentioned the unexpected rise of Bernie Sanders on the Democrat and Donald Trump on the Republican side. The issue then continued with a comparison of Trump’s “movement” with Hitler’s “Bewegung” prior to his appointment to the Chancellorship on January 30, 1933. There are indeed some parallels, as shown in that essay, but to round out the picture the differences also need to be mentioned.  This will be done in the February installment because for now we have to discuss the President-elect’s activities during the past month.

          Mr. Trump was quite busy. He conducted a “Thank you” tour through the states that had awarded him the sought after prize and some of our Utahn’s were disappointed that he did not include our state. But others, although Republican by mental outlook if not party affiliation, were less pleased with his election and there was talk that the Mormon Tabernacle Choir would not participate in the inauguration ceremony. The issue was resolved that those who felt that their conscience would not allow them to attend would not be forced to do so and the Choir has a sufficient number of other volunteers who would do President Trump the honor.

          The major portion of Mr. Trump’s considerable energy was devoted towards filling the positions for White House Staff as well as Cabinet and Ambassadorships. All in all about two thirds of them have so far been filled and some of the persons who have been named have raised serious concerns. It is becoming obvious that much of the campaign rhetoric cannot readily be discounted because the people he is surrounding himself with are mostly in agreement with it. Since too little is known about some of the nominees I’ll concentrate here on those who are likely to become major players on the international scene. This is, after all, the arena where the most important decision of peace vs. war will be made. The following information comes from Wikipedia to which I express my thanks.

Vice-president Mike Pence is a solid Republican conservative who represents Tea party values and is against the closure of Guantanamo. Internationally he expressed unqualified support for Israel’s current policies and is against a Palestinian state. He also favored the Iraq war as well as Kaddafi’s removal. He is against the Assad government in Syria and Russia’s help to keep it in power. The Iran nuclear treaty should be “ripped up.” He believes that Israel has the right to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities if its politicians felt the need to do so. In spite of all this belligerency he regards himself as not only a Christian, but “a born again, evangelical Catholic.” How his political convictions square with the teachings of Jesus is a question nobody seems to raise but goes to the root of our problems. We are probably, without even realizing it, the most hypocritical country the world has ever seen; although the British Empire was its close second.

          White House Chief of Staff will be “Reince” (Reinhold Richard) Priebus who graduated with cum laude from law school and is Chairman of the Republican National Committee. He seems to incorporate middle of the road Republican sentiments and tries to build bridges rather than blow them up. He may provide a voice of sanity in what is bound to be a turbulent White House. But how he will be able to get along with “Counselor” Steve Bannon, over whom he has no control, because Trump made them co-equals, is an open question. If Priebus is the man I believe him to be his tenure may be reasonably short lived.

Steve Bannon seems more in line with Trump’s ideas about what the world should look like. He clearly is what one may call a “colorful character.” He graduated from Virginia Tech in 1976, has a Master’s degree in National Security Studies from Georgetown University as well as in 1985 a Master’s of business administration with honors from Harvard Business School. He served for seven years in the US Navy, part of which was spent on board of the destroyer USS Paul F. Foster before becoming special assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon. Thereafter he worked at Goldman Sachs in the Mergers and Acquisition Department. With colleagues from Goldman Sachs he then launched Bannon & Co. a “boutique investment bank” specializing in media, which turned out to be quite lucrative. After its sale he became an executive producer in the Hollywood film and media industry. But while managing Bannon & Co. he also became acting director of “Earth-science research project Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona. Under his aegis the emphasis was shifted from research on space exploration and colonization toward pollution and global warming. Through his media contacts he met Paul Schweizer and publisher Andrew Breitbart. Thereafter Bannon became a founding member of the board of Breitbart News, an ultra-right wing publication. Bannon commented: “We regard ourselves as virulently anti-establishment, particularly ‘anti-’ the permanent political class.” In August he joined the Trump campaign as its chief executive officer. He likes to regard himself as a villain and in a November 18 interview he remarked in regard to negative comments about him: “Darkness is good: Dick Cheney, Darth Vader, Satan. That’s power. It only helps us when they get it wrong. When they are blind to who we are and what we’re doing.” All one can say is that at least he’s honest and that hypocrisy is not part of his character. On the other hand how a person of this type will be able to get along with his partner Reince is a good question and this is why I feel that the latter’s White House stint may not last the four years of Trump’s presidency. This expectation receives additional likelihood when one considers some of the other White House appointments, which by the way do not need congressional approval.  

National Security Advisor Mike Flynn seems to be a kindred soul to Bannon. He is a retired US Army Lt. General with combat service, conventional and special operations assignments, as well as those dealing with intelligence matters. In April of 2012 President Obama nominated Flynn as the 18th Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The assignment was short-lived and he resigned from the position two years later. Resignation was the polite word for having been fired. Rumor had it that he had been “abusive with staff, didn’t listen, worked against policy, bad management and other non-specified complaints. He was also “loose with facts” and his repeated questionable assertions were regarded as “Flynn facts,” which would also be applicable to his new boss, Mr. Trump. Flynn stated that he disagreed with Obama’s policy of removing Syria’s President Assad because his agency’s intelligence reports concluded that radical Islamists were the main force in the Syrian insurgency. His constant stream of warnings in this regard to an administration that in his words “didn’t want to hear the truth,” led to his dismissal. He also stated that the drone war, as conducted by Obama, is futile and fuels the conflict. While I agree with these assessments his views on Islam cannot be condoned. He is reported to have said on Fox News that the Muslim faith is one of the root causes of Islamist terrorism and he described Islam as a political ideology and a cancer. On Twitter he stated that fear of Islam is rational and that Islam wants 80% of people enslaved or assassinated. These notions reminded me of the years I lived in the Third Reich where “the Jew” was assigned the role of ultimate evil.   

Since not enough is known about the political views of other White House staff appointees I shall now mention some key nominees for cabinet positions and ambassadorships. In contrast to White House staff positions these will require Senate approval. Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon, was named Secretary of State. He has no experience in the diplomatic service but his extensive business contacts around the world are felt as an appropriate substitute. He has friendly relations with the Russian government and was awarded in 2013 the “Order of Friendship” by President Putin alongside his Italian colleague Claudio Descalci, head of Eni.

For Secretary of Defense retired Marine Corps General James N. Mattis was chosen. He was greatly respected by the troops because he shared their hardships and was also known for having carried Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations at all times with him. He never married, does not have children, and was nicknamed the “Warrior Monk” for his devotion to literature on war and other aspects. His political views can only be described from my perspective as mixed. He admonished his troops that the civilian population has to be respected because “whenever you show anger or disgust towards civilians, it’s a victory for al Qaeda and other insurgents.” For the Israeli-Palestinian conflict he supports the two state solution. He regards the current situation as: “unsustainable” and that the settlements are harmful for the peace process and could eventually lead to an apartheid state. He appreciates the work Secretary Kerry has done for wisely focusing laser like on a two state solution. Iran rather than ISIS, he feels, is the principal threat for stability in the Middle East but the nuclear accord, in spite of being flawed; we will just have to live with. As far as Russia is concerned he sees Putin as wanting to dismantle NATO and that the President-elect’s conciliatory statements towards Russia are ill-informed.

As head of the Department for Homeland Security Marine Corps General John Francis Kelly was chosen. Wikipedia only tells us about his successful military career but there is no information on his political views. 

For the position of head of the Energy Department Rick Perry, former governor of Texas was nominated. It is ironic that in one of the debates during Primary season he listed government departments he would abolish if he were to be elected but couldn’t recall “Energy” which contributed to his early withdrawal from office seekers. The department is actually a hybrid for civilian and military affairs. The six volumes of the 2017 budget request that had been submitted to Congress lists in the first two items related to the country’s nuclear and other defense programs. In regard to political views he severely criticized the Federal Reserve for printing money that serves partisan political purposes. He was also opposed to Trump’s Wall on our border with Mexico and would treat undocumented immigrants and their children more leniently. He is skeptical about the human contribution to climate change but is in favor of clean energy, especially “new” coal. In regard to foreign affairs he is a supporter of the state of Israel with apparently little sympathy for the Palestinian’s plight and also favors water-boarding to extract information from prisoners.

In regard to ambassador positions there are two that could have a major impact. One is to the United Nations and the other to Israel. For the UN position the governor of South Carolina, Nimrata “Nikki” Haley (née Randhawa) was proposed. Her parents immigrated from Punjab, India, via Canada and she holds a BS degree in accounting. She is married to Michael Haley in a joint Methodist-Sikh ceremony and identifies with both faiths. Politically she is regarded as “a strong supporter of the State of Israel.” Yet her personal background might suggest that this may not automatically include unqualified acceptance of Likud policies towards Palestinians.

The nomination for ambassador to Israel, on the other hand, can only be regarded as highly problematic. Mr. David Melech Friedman is a bankruptcy lawyer whose only qualification for the job seems to be that he is a long-standing friend of Donald Trump whom he rescued from disaster during the bankruptcy proceedings over his Atlantic City properties. If he were to be confirmed by the Senate a new Palestinian uprising would be unavoidable.

Mr. Friedman is an ardent Zionist who is regarded as standing even to the right of Benjamin Netanyahu. He has a home in an affluent section of Jerusalem, and makes considerable financial contributions to Israeli charitable institutions. Concerns for Palestinians or sentiments in regard to Arab feelings do not exist and he strongly favors the continuation as well as expansion of the settlement program. He also favors the relocation of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to indicate America’s support for this city’s status as “the eternal capital of the Jewish people.” Not only are Arabs discounted in his view so are American Jews who do not subscribe to this concept and who feel that their first loyalty is towards the US rather than Israel. Their political headquarter is on Washington’s  J Street and Friedman labeled them as “worse than Kapos.” These were Jewish inmates of concentration camps who had been put in charge over the other Jewish inmates to keep the system running. Their official title was Funktionshaeftlinge i.e.  prisoners who served the regime, thereby reducing the number of SS troops that would otherwise have been required to keep order and oversee forced labor. They did their level best in regard to brutality to please their Nazi superiors in order to keep their jobs and with it their perks. This is, therefore, the worst insult a Jew could hurl against a fellow Jew.

David Remnick Editor of The New Yorker and secular Jew addressed the problem a Senate confirmation of the Friedman nomination would present for the US as well as the rest of the world. http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trump_daily_bankruptcy_israel_ambassador_david_friedman. The  article appeared in the  December 16 issue and was headlined: “Trump’s  daily bankruptcy and the ambassador to Israel.” It is worth reading but I don’t think his conclusion that whoever is appointed to the ambassadorship is really irrelevant because “the Palestinians have given up anyway,” is necessarily correct. A US ambassador is expected to represent American interests rather than those of a political party. Our country, as a whole, is judged by the locals on his/her conduct on the scene. Trump, as well as in the past Mitt Romney, have promised the relocation of the embassy but neither one has considered the backlash against our country that would result. One cannot think of a better present to ISIS because they could rightfully state that America has sold out Muslims, and especially Arabs, to Jewish interests. Their only possible answer would be more Jihad. It seems likely that volunteers would flock to its banners and terrorism would intensify world-wide because it is the only weapon at their disposal at this time. Let us not forget that Osama bin Laden created al Qaeda in response to the Saudi government allowing us to establish bases in his Holy Land as part of the first Gulf War under President Bush 41. Jerusalem is the second holiest city for Muslims and permanent exclusively Jewish occupation, that threatens access to the Dome of the Rock and the al Aqsa mosque, is likely to be regarded as intolerable. One truly wonders how Trump and his supporters can be so blind to what is obvious to anyone who is not biased by political or religious prejudices.

While Trump may backpedal on other campaign promises, Zionism is a family affair and he is likely to get caught in its snares. He owes his electoral success largely to his son-in law Jared Kushner. But Jared is not necessarily a free agent. His father is a fervent Zionist and the fact that Ivanka had to convert to the orthodox branch of Judaism prior to marriage is testimony to the father’s influence over his son. Even if Trump might see that unquestioned support of Zionist aspirations is not a wise course for America, he will run into opposition from some family members as well as some of the people he has appointed or nominated.

During the last week of December President Obama attempted to throw up two roadblocks to the Trump bandwagon. He instructed our ambassador to the UN to abstain from vetoing a UN Security Council resolution that condemned Israel’s settlement policy and he also placed further sanctions on Russia for its cyber meddling with our election. One obviously wonders about the timing because the President has only three weeks left in office and will be unable to follow up on his convictions. It seems that the Israeli vote abstention was designed to make his views clear for posterity while the Russian initiative was intended to show that he is not in favor of any rapprochement with that country. To emphasize the importance of the Israeli-Palestinian quagmire secretary Kerry gave an impassioned speech in which he expressed his frustrations over the failure of bringing the two sides to the peace table. He criticized both for lack of faith and while he appreciated Israel’s security concerns there was no excuse for the settlement program because it will make the two State solution impossible. Yet it is the only way to achieve a permanent peace. If Israel were to continue to pursue its present course towards a single Jewish State it could no longer be democratic because nearly half of its people would have been disenfranchised. The speech was a cri de coeur and an attempt to set the record straight. But he found no echo in the media who roundly denounced him for being critical of Israel.

What does all of this tell us about the incoming New Year? One thing can safely be predicted: it will be turbulent. The different opinions in his administration on fundamental policy questions will be hard to reconcile and any hope that he will be able to rally Congress and the majority of the American people to his decisions is likely to remain unfulfilled. All we can realistically hope for is that he will be prevented from inflicting further harm on us and the world by rash, ill-considered actions. This is the major danger. He would need to realize that any action he undertakes will automatically lead to a reaction by the other side. My father taught me an ancient Roman admonition: quidquid agis, prudenter agas et respice finem. Whatever you do, do it wisely and consider the outcome. It is truly staggering to consider how much evil could have been avoided if our political leadership had adhered to this simple statement.

The book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament sums up the wisdom of the day: “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to be born; a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up, that is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal ….” So how should mankind conduct itself? Basically the advice was carpe diem: “Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy and drink thy wine with a merry heart, for God now accepteth thy works.” But it was not quite as simple as that because the final conclusion was: Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil.” Prayer to the Divinity, which is so essential for Christians, seems not to have been in the preacher’s vocabulary. Nevertheless now is the time to pray for our country so that the abyss may yet to be avoided.

It is remarkable that at the end of life I should be reliving, on the other side of the world, some aspects of early adolescence. I shall never forget the evening of March 11, 1938 when the family sat at dinner, the radio played classical music and the program was interrupted by an announcement that Kurt von Schuschnigg, the chancellor of Austria, was about to address the country. He told us that the German government had demanded that Sunday’s plebiscite in regard to Austria’s independence be cancelled and a Nazi government installed. Failing to do so would have resulted in Austria’s occupation by the German Wehrmacht. After urging the citizenry to avoid bloodshed he concluded with: We yield to force. May God protect Austria! We were stunned; life had changed from one moment to the next. Regardless of Schuschnigg’s abdication the Wehrmacht was actually already on its way. For Austrians the “thousand year Reich” lasted all of eight but it took about another 25 before the country recovered to some extent from the ravages Hitler had inflicted.

For America the lesson is that we, the private citizens, will be in no position to avert looming disasters. We can talk, we can write, we can protest, but it will be of no avail. Greater powers are at work. In Goethe’s Walpurgisnacht scene Faust, and Mephistopheles find themselves amidst a mob on the Blocksberg that strives to get a glimpse of Satan who holds court at the top. The memorable phrase is: Du glaubst zu schieben und wirst geschoben,” You believe that you are pushing but are being pushed. This seems to characterize also what can be called our Trumpistas who believe they’ll find salvation in their attempts to rectify the system. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan is supposed to have answered a journalist as to what is most likely to blow governments off course: “Events, my dear boy, events.” Yes indeed. They will inevitably befall President Trump just as they did all previous ones. How he will react to them cannot be predicted but it is bound to profoundly affect all of us.

 For politicians it is customary to finish some patriotic speech with “God bless America.” They may or may not mean it, but not to say these words would get them into serious difficulty with the media. But in these troubled times it behooves us to be more humble and pray that God may protect us from the foolishness of our political leaders in this year and hopefully even enlighten them as to the likely consequences of their actions.     







February 1, 2017

TRUMPED

          In Washington DC January 20 was a cold overcast day with intermittent drizzle when our 45th President took the oath of office. An event that was so improbable that nobody expected it a year ago. Yet, there was Donald J. Trump standing at the podium repeating after Chief Justice Roberts that he will  “… faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. So help me God.” Some of us, watching the event at home on our video screens, might have added “and may God give him better judgment than he has shown in the past.” Against all odds he had literally trumped all his competitors and was now in charge of our country.

          Our inauguration proceedings are the counterpart of coronations in monarchical societies with a considerable degree of pomp and circumstance. They require benediction speeches by members of the clergy, choral performances and usually exude serenity. To gain the highest office by democratic means in a country like ours is, of course, a major achievement the person could reasonably be proud of and some degree of happiness would certainly have been appropriate. But Mr. Trump does not play by the rules of ordinary mortals and his idiosyncrasies were again on public display.

          During the proceedings prior to taking the oath of office our new President showed his usual dour face and one had the impression that he wanted to get the whole thing over with as soon as possible. He became more animated during his 16 minutes address which can be summarized as a declaration of war on Washington’s elites of both political parties, lobbyists and the media. The tone of voice was defiant, the facial expression suggested anger and to emphasize the points he had made he concluded the speech with a raised right arm and clenched fist. The moment was saved for world-wide distribution and posterity by Time magazine which used the picture for its January 30 edition.

 

 

Americans might remember this gesture as a modified “black power” salute but its history goes much further back. I remember it from my childhood days in Austria where the Social Democrats, Sozis, used it accompanied by the words of either Rotfront or Freundschaft.  The gesture is clearly not a sign of friendship and Mussolini, who originally had been a socialist, changed it by opening the raised hand. This was supposed to have been the ancient Roman salute but some historians beg to differ. Hitler copied it and this salute, at times accompanied by the words “Heil Hitler,” became obligatory for all citizens of the Reich especially  when confronting authority figures. Everybody had to submit to this ritual and Joachim von Ribbentrop created quite a stir in February of 1937 at Buckingham palace when he greeted the King in this manner during the presentation of his credentials as ambassador to the Court of St James’s. It was apparently routine for him, and he may not even have realized how inappropriate the gesture was for the occasion.     

The key points of President Trump’s  Inaugural Address as published by CNN were:

 

“…today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another, or from one party to another -- but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the American People. For too long, a small group in our nation's Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished -- but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered -- but the jobs left, and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation's capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land. That all changes -- starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.  .… At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens…. The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans. … From this moment on, it's going to be America First. … We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth. … We will follow two simple rules: Buy American and hire American. … We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world -- but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow. We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones -- and unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth. … The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action. … We will not fail. Our country will thrive and prosper again…

 

          Watching this performance on TV reminded me of a speech by another person who had legally gained the chancellorship over his country against apparently insurmountable odds. In the April 1, 2016 Hot Issue I mentioned that Mr. Trump’s conduct and goals bear a certain similarity to some aspects of the Hitler regime. This opinion was based on his attitude during the presidential debates and his campaign website. The commonalities I noted at that time were: boasting over his achievements, disdain for his opponents whom he smeared with epithets, massive exaggerations of actual or imagined problems, an aversion against Islam as substitute for anti-Semitism, an attitude that problems will be solved “in one way or another,” obviously meaning by force. The latter has its counterpart in Hitler’s oft repeated statements that solutions will be achieved “so oder so.” I concluded at that time that he comes across as an angry, boisterous, person who believes that he can force his will upon the rest of the world. The intervening months and his conduct in office during the past few days proved this assessment to have been correct. His spat with Mexico over financing the wall he intends to build on our southern border now led its former President, Vincente Fox, to publicly express his concern over some similarities.

Since the Hitler comparison is likely to become commonplace it behooves us to study, what can be called, the Hitler phenomenon with an unbiased mind. The German historian Max Domarus has done us a great service by publishing practically all of Hitler’s speeches from 1932-1945. The four volumes, with appropriate commentaries, are a valuable resource in our understanding of this person. History repeats because politicians, who are in charge of countries, either have not taken the time to study it or have failed to read those books which provide original documents from the time the events happened. Many if not most biographies of political leaders are laced with bias, which may well be unconscious. For my own assessment of important individuals I rely mainly upon what a given person has said or written, whenever published original documents are available. For the Nazi era the public as well as private Hitler speeches are, of course, the most important. The public ones were published in 1973  by Domarus and the private ones in 1981 by H. R. Trevor Roper under the titillating title: Hitler’s Secret Conversations. The book covers lunch and dinner conversations with his staff between 1941 and 1944 and is a translation of authentic shorthand notices taken at the time. Due to form they are monologues with an occasional question or comment by the guests. Henry Picker’s personal notes were published in 1993 as Hitler’s Tischgespraeche im Führerhauptquartier and they cover the period of July 21, 1941 to March 11, 1942. The two books complement each other; some conversations Trevor Roper omitted appear in Picker’s book and vice versa. Jointly one gets a firsthand impression of Hitler’s thought processes and since he had few inhibitions about expressing his ideas in public or private (another joint characteristic with Trump) one can get some insight into how his mind worked. For the actual public events during that era I have found the two volumes of Nazism – A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, edited by J. Noakes and G. Pridham most informative. They should be read by anyone who is interested in that era and especially by media personalities who genuinely want to prevent a repetition of the ultimate disasters that resulted from Hitler’s decisions. It is inappropriate to limit one’s appraisal of this unusual person to the years of 1939-1945. An unbiased observer also should review what he accomplished in his first five years until February 1, 1938. This is important because I believe that if some higher power had shown him what his beloved Germany would look like in May of 1945 he would probably have recoiled in horror.

I have presented President Trump’s inaugural address above let us now look for comparison at the most salient excerpts of Hitler’s  first radio address to the German public on  February 1, 1933 when translated from Domarus’ book. I shall omit his rhetorical flourishes, which in part defy accurate translation and concentrate on the essence. But first three points of clarification. When Hitler talked about the new government, which included members of the other major parties except socialists and communists, he used the term Regierung der nationalen Erhebung  – government of national uplifting, in order to clearly delineate the break with the past and the rebirth of the nation. Furthermore, as Domarus pointed out, in contrast to most politicians he always wrote his own speeches and thirdly this one was remarkably free of rancor. The word Jew did not appear.

 

                   “We are assuming a terrible inheritance. The task we have to solve is the most difficult German statesmen have confronted since time immemorial. Our first task will be to re-create the unity of our people. Our government will firmly protect Christianity as the basis of morality, and the family as the germ cell of our people and nation. Unemployment will be abolished within four years and this will be accompanied by economic revival. The concern for the daily bread will also lead to the implementation of our social duties for illness and old age. In foreign affairs the government’s highest mission is to establish the right to regain the freedom of our people. By ending the chaotic conditions in Germany the government will join other nations with equal values and equal duties. The government   is imbued with the conviction of the duty to work for maintaining and strengthening the peace as a free and equal nation. We would be happy if the world were to limit their armaments, which would not necessitate an increase in our own. We want to establish unity among our people; we don’t recognize classes but see only the German people: the millions of farmers, burghers and workers who will either jointly overcome the problems of this era or be overcome by them. We now appeal to the German people to endorse this act of reconciliation. The government wants to work and will work. The Marxist parties had 14 years to show what they can accomplish; the result is a shambles [Trümmerhaufen]. Give us four years and then judge us. May Almighty God provide us with his grace in this work, point our will, as well as judgment in the right direction and bless us with the confidence of our people because we do not want to fight for ourselves but for Germany.

That had been Hitler’s goal but what he accomplished was quite different and therein lies the lesson for our government. Let us remember that many, if not most, Germans did not vote for Hitler in November of 1932 and April 1933 because they liked him. He was simple the lesser of two evils. Ask  yourself how you would vote if confronted with the choice of a Communist government that will “nationalize” your private property and a  Nazi government that promises full employment, retention of  private  property, and restoring the country to the status it held in  the world prior to November 1918. For most, the fact that Jews would bear the brunt of the burden was regrettable, but of little concern because their own needs had to come first. In last year’s November election we had an equally unrewarding choice. Hillary Clinton was not only disliked on a visceral level by a great number of people, but also for her perceived untrustworthiness as well as belligerency against Russia. The latter was bound to lead sooner or later to war with that country. Trump’s negatives were well known but there was the hope that he might improve the economy, keep whatever peace we have by not pursuing “regime change” around the world, and his aversion against Muslims was to many of us just as little a concern as Jews were in 1933 for Germans.  

What I am trying to convey by describing these similarities is that epithets that are used to describe Hitler, such as: monster, arch-criminal etc., say more about the person who uses them than who they want to describe. They merely repeat stereotypes, emphasize total depravity of “the other,” and prevent genuine insights. As I wrote these sentences a recent statement by the Dalai Lama came to mind:

“In Buddhism, one can be grateful even for one’s enemies, ‘our most precious spiritual teachers,’ as they are often called, because they help us develop our spiritual practice’ and to cultivate equanimity even in the face of adversity.”

 

   I owe this information to The Book of Joy, a Christmas present by our daughter. Although Martha is no longer physically with us I can’t bring myself to say “my” about our children because they were a joint product and Martha still lives mentally with me on a daily basis.  The book recounts dialogues between the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Both of them had experienced a great many hardships and adversities in their lives. They had not only overcome them, but their suffering had led to the status in life they now occupy. The meeting in Dharamsala between these two spiritual leaders was organized and narrated by Douglas Abrams, a secular Jew. As Abrams wrote “… it sounds a little like a joke: A Buddhist, a Christian, and a Jew walk into a bar …” This little book should be read by our leadership because the content, when taken to heart, is the only way to prevent the Trump administration from turning into a catastrophe for our country and the world.

America today stands at the cusp of an era that could lead to good will and prosperity for the world or a disaster which can be worse than what Europe and Japan in experienced in 1945. The choice is really that stark. When confronted in private conversations by some of Trump’s detractors I used to say: “I realize that what he has so far said raises serious concerns. But words are not actions; let’s see what he actually does. I give him three months and then we’ll know how he conducts himself in office.” His conduct since he took the oath of office suggests, however, that we won’t have to wait three months and that one will be able to render a reasonably informed judgment by the end of the current one.

On the afternoon of the inaugural ceremony he started to issue executive orders and they have continued at the rate of about three a day. This hectic activity, which involves the fulfillment of campaign promises, is aided by his inability to sleep more than a few hours, which in turn raises questions as to how this will affect his judgment. Chronic sleep deprivation is not healthy and although people might point to Napoleon’s four hours of sleep they should also remember that he led Europe into disaster and ended up on St.  Helena. Hasty political decisions, which in the long run affect all our lives, are to be shunned because time is needed to weigh the pros and cons of each one of them.

I’ll now discuss just a few of the more weighty ones that have so far been made. The one dealing with repeal of Obamacare lacked the two most important words “and replacement.” Although he does have the latter in mind he apparently fails to consider the legal difficulties that will be encountered and the time it will take for a replacement that will be acceptable especially to patients and physicians. Repeal is easy and takes a few minutes, replacement difficult and will take months, if not years. Worried patients ask themselves how they will fare in the meantime.

The concerns over the Obamacare directive were followed, on an international scale by the one about the wall on the Mexican border. A meeting between President Trump and Mexican President, Enrique Peña Nieto, had to be canceled because of Trump’s insistence that Mexico would have to pay for its construction. This is, obviously, unacceptable not only for the Mexican government, but since it involves national pride, all its citizens. A unilateral solution by placing an import tax on goods from Mexico, as Trump envisions, will have bilateral results because Mexico will retaliate to the detriment of both country’s peoples. The uproar over this ill-considered move towards “securing our borders” was predictable and attempts at damage control are currently in progress. This public affront to Mexico was completely avoidable but set in motion by Trump’s inordinate need for “twittering.” The fact that he has not yet, even as President, abstained from doing so speaks volumes about his character. It demonstrates his impulsivity and he seems to crave the limelight.

One also needs to point out that the ostensible reason for the wall is false. We are told that the purpose is to keep criminals and most of all drugs and their dealers out of our country. While this is laudable, the vast majority of Mexicans who crossed our borders without a visa were and are otherwise law abiding persons simply in search of a better life than their own country could provide. Drug smugglers can avoid the border either by air or sea and to prevent the latter Trump would have to build walls along the Atlantic as well as Pacific coast. This is obvious nonsense and still leaves aircraft landing sites open in our vast deserts.

Efforts to rid the country of illegal drugs need to be directed towards joint efforts with the Mexican government and the consumers in our country. The “coyotes” who bring the illegal immigrants would soon find themselves out of a job if they were not aided by Americans who want cheap labor for their agricultural needs. It is a wrong assumption that the Mexicans are taking jobs away from our citizens. To the contrary, they perform vital services for our economy which Americans by and large disdain because it is hard, back breaking manual labor. Instead of keeping them out we should give them green cards so that they can work legally and are not condemned to exploitation by their employers. A guest worker program would accomplish this. It would not only save the total waste of money spent on the wall but also create good will among neighbors. 

Another example of a completely unnecessary blunder is the ban of Muslims to enter the US from seven designated countries. National security is touted as the reason but Trump has undermined rather than enhanced it with this executive order. Last Saturday we were treated to pictures on our TV screens that showed the protests of US citizens when they found out that relatives or spouses were detained upon their arrival at airports nation-wide in spite of having valid visas. This executive order was widely condemned even by Republican members of Congress and General Mattis, our new Secretary of Defense, also voiced his disapproval. Seeing the chaos this ill-considered order had produced, a Brooklyn federal judge issued a nation-wide “a temporary stay” of further implementation. Other judges around the nation issued similar orders.  

These self-inflicted wounds were not only completely unnecessary but also point to a deeper problem that is rooted in Trump’s character. Since it is characterological it will continue to haunt him because no one can control his impulsivity and lack of insight. Warnings existed before his inauguration and that is the reason why I entitled last month’s issue with “A Time for Prayer.” We do need prayer and even Pope Francis called for it during the past month, but that is not enough. Nationwide protests over various issues will increase but again this is not enough. While there is still time Republicans in Congress will have to get together with their Democrat colleagues and start reasonable legislation both sides can agree on. If the Democrats were now to play tit for tat with the Republicans for their attitude during the Obama administration when Republicans reveled in non-cooperation, the country will suffer potentially irremediable damage.

It is again useful to consider the events of February 1933. Earlier during that month Hitler tried to strengthen his leadership by amiability towards the other government members and the country at large. But when the Reichstag building went up in flames he grasped the opportunity for obtaining dictatorial powers. People say, well that was Germany and the Germans were always autocratic people while we have a long and strong democratic tradition. But this is only partly true as President Bush’s reaction to the 9/11 tragedy showed. Instead of immediately starting a judicial inquest into how it had occurred, he started war in Afghanistan and Iraq. To its shame Congress gave him the authority just as the Reichstag conferred on Hitler the authority to institute “emergency measures” in March of 1933. The real behind the scenes perpetrators of the Reichstag fire were never ascertained and neither were the enablers of the hijackers in 2001. In both instances a tragedy was used for ulterior motives.

The 9/11 tragedy established an opportunity that had been long wished for by the neo-conservatives in our country. Their manifesto “Program for the New American Century” had outlined how American power could be enhanced and made to last for the current century. They realized the reluctance of the American people to endorse the proposed program unless “a Pearl Harbor type” of disaster was to occur (The Neocon’s Leviathan April1, 2003. 9/11 Context and Aftermath. September 1, 2013). Whether or not some groups in and out of government aided in the creation of this event will never been known. Our government is singularly disinterested in pursuing the truth which will become increasingly difficult to ascertain. Knowledgeable persons are dying and documents have been shredded. Nevertheless 9/11 is the precedent and we have to warn against the repetition of our response to disaster. Let us always remember that whatever disaster may happen, it can be contained and dealt with. But the knee-jerk response to it magnifies the evil a hundred and thousand fold. Official America has never shouldered the responsibility for Bush’s wars and with them the unleashing of the turmoil in the Middle East accompanied by the immense refugee problem. This makes us vulnerable for a repetition. 

President Trump undoubtedly has an authoritarian streak in his character and the torrent of executive orders proves that he relishes being in charge. Currently he is still restrained by the other two branches of government. This can change, if a major terror attack were to occur. It does not have to be initiated from abroad. We have more than enough disaffected people right here who are willing and able to commit it. We now should realize that we actually stand on the brink of martial law. There are forces in the Trump administration, as well as factions which represent what Professor Peter Dale Scott has called “Deep State politics,” that are longing for it to be enacted. Under these circumstances certain aspects of the Constitution would be “suspended.” Most prominent among them would be freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. Since our prisons are already full, public dissenters would have to be sent to specially created “detention centers” that were called concentration camps in the 30s and early 40s. All of this is likely to be labeled as “temporary measures” to save the nation. This is the most imminent danger our country faces and in order to defuse it we need to openly talk about it at all levels. The foregoing should not be regarded as “crying wolf” on my part, other clear thinking individuals are aware of it. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan administration has also come to the conclusion that Trump has “declared war” on Washington’s ruling circles in his inaugural address (http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/01/20/trumps-declaration-war/). Some of our leading scientists and Nobel laureates also have voiced their concerns about President Trump’s ideas and last week The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists advanced the Doomsday Clock by another 30 seconds to now read two minutes before global midnight.

Currently our President is afflicted with a serious case of hubris and he should be reminded of the old adage that “pride comes before the fall.” Regardless what further governmental powers may be bestowed upon him in the short run, he is bound to be trumped in the long run. Let us hope that some of his advisors have sufficient insight to prevent him from acting on his worst impulses and save us from disaster. Time will tell, and by March 1 the direction the country is moving will probably be obvious to most people.

           







March 1, 2017

Ernst Rodin 1925-2017 In Memoriam



Floating off onto the next adventure, Dr. Ernst Rodin, MD, b. Vienna, Austria Aug. 30, 1925 passed away suddenly on Feb. 5th at home. Dr. Rodin was the former President of the American Clinical Neurophysiology Society and had received the association’s Jasper Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015 for his extensive contributions to the field.  He was Adjunct Emeritus in the Department of Neurology at the University of Utah and had earlier been a faculty member at the University of Michigan and Wayne State University. Following his residency at Mayo Clinic in Neurology and Electroencephalography he became the long-standing director of the Epilepsy Program at Lafayette Clinic in Detroit, in addition to holding hospital appointments at Children's Hospital and Harper Hospital. He became internationally known for his work in epilepsy and published extensively in the field. He was actively publishing and submitting new research papers until his passing. He wrote a monthly blog documenting his thoughts on current events that can be found on his website “thinktruth.com” He loved the mountains and the oceans and was an active skier and sailor for many years. He and his family moved to Sandy, UT in 1990. He was preceded by his wife, Martha, and is survived by his children, Krista, Peter and Eric and their children and grandchildren.  A memorial service was held on Saturday, Feb. 25th at 3:30pm at the family home.





Dad's Memorial Service – Peter Rodin

 

  It is always hard to try to capture the essence of one's life in just a few short words.  If there was one phrase that best describes Dad it would be that he spent his whole life trying to impart knowledge onto others; granted it wasn't always met with a receptive audience, but as you all know he was tenacious in getting his point across.

 

Dad requested that at his memorial service the poem by Richard Kipling "If" be read as it held for him special meaning and significance, and he made sure all of his family not just read it but lived its virtues.

 

If

IF you can keep your head when all about you 
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools: 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings 
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_if.htm

 

Dad had a significant influence on all our lives almost every day starting very early in our youth.  For me the quality time we spent sailing racing various yachts on Lake St. Clare had a profound influence.  He always said you learn a lot about a person including their character on a boat especially racing since it encompasses almost every human emotion and there is nowhere to escape in a small craft- trust me I got to experience the whole gamut of his wide repertoire of emotional responses both the good and the more challenging.  It was always entertaining being around Dad because you never quite knew just what next would pour out from his incredible brain and out his mouth; filtering his comments was strictly not an option.

 

I recall one time when we were out for just a peaceful Sunday cruiseon a beautiful summer day on the Lake with just the two of us.  Dad was very concerned about my future as I hadn't quite settled on a career path.  Options had narrowed somewhat as I spent my first couple of years in college enjoying the sailing life on the Michigan State University Sailing Team and had as my crew my companion who would become my wife, Laura.  Needless to say studying during that time was not paramount in my life.  So Dad being a concerned parent was pushing me to pursue medical school over in Europe as he still held a strong affinity for the European lifestyle.  I gave it some thought but then said to him, "you know, Dad, don't worry I will be okay, but for right now I'm having too much fun  just being kid." Then in one of those rare moments of reflection he said to me, “you are right, Peter; enjoy this time as you will never have your youth back.“ I took that to heart and certainly enjoyed some of the best years of my life.

 

When the time did come to getting serious, I did go into medicine but the next dilemma was what discipline to pursue.  Both Mom and Dad were brilliant and true luminaries in the field of neuroscience.  They were unique, and I felt we did not need another Rodin in the same field.  There was also a comment that always stuck with me regarding neurology (no offense to those here in the field) where he said "neurology has allowed me to use my intellectual capacity to study, research and diagnose various neurodegenerative disorders of which I can do very little to change their outcome.". Well, that didn't sound very encouraging to me, so I settled on family medicine and I think my parents came to appreciate that choice of disciplines especially in their later years as they frequently consulted me on the various medical maladies that afflict us as we age.  There were so very proud of all the accomplishments of their kids and there grandkids and it gave him and Mom great peace in their last years here at 3 Mountainwood .

 

Finally sometimes you get glimpses of a person’s heart where you least expect it.  One of those moments came just the other day here in the kitchen after Dad's passing, Kris, Eric and myself were discussing some house renovations with Fabian who my parents had come to rely on and truly appreciated for all his efforts for the house maintenance and he recalled a statement that stuck with him. He and Dad had been talking about life experience and Fabian mentioned to him that he must be very proud of all he had accomplished. Dad reflected and commented back, "it's not so much pride (as that might indicate a touch of arrogance), but I am grateful, grateful to have been given the skills in order to do what I have done.”  Doesn't that say at all.

 

Dad we are all very grateful that you were our Dad; we will miss you, may you  sail on in peace  -sail on.




My Journey with my Father – Eric Rodin

Dad was an exceptional and brilliant man.

Yes, he stubborn in his ways, but he taught all of us the meaning of work,
and as he would always say when a decision must be made, the path to take is the hardest one.
He said that things would work out better in the long run that way. 

I did not know Dad on the professional level as I took a different career path but as you know and can see, he was world renowned.  To this day I still don't understand how he could look at squiggly lines on EEG or MEG files all day long.

Dad was full of stories, and he would tell them       nonstop!!!.
He actually got a kick out of it when I finally made the statement to him, “ Dad, you talk too much.”  
That then became one of his many one-liners.

Dad grew up in Europe in the heart of the war and that shaped his many views on life.  He fought on the Russian front and he had all his tank stories but the biggest mission was just trying to get home to Vienna after the war just finished.  That was a true survival story.

After the war he worked his way into Med School and then came to the US with just a couple of dollars in his pocket and his medical degree but no job and a very bad accent!  His only way to find a job was to knock on doors (a lesson I later used as well ). But he was asking if anyone needed a physician.  He found a position in Staten Island and low and behold on his first day at the hospital an angel took him under her wings and taught him the ropes.  My Mother. They met in his first two weeks in the country and are now together again.  He loved her dearly and forever. 

That was a life lesson. 
I grew up knowing Dad in Grosse pointe by sailing in the summers and skiing in the winters.  The stories are many. At first I actually did not liking sailing as I was forced out every weekend to race against HIS peers and Dad was just a little competitive to say the least.  It was not until later in life that I realized the great opportunity this gave me to spend time with him.

One day I remember watching Detroit disappear under a squall line and Dad racing to make the windward mark so we could then take all the sails down and race to the downwind mark on just the mast.    Well, it worked, and we won that race. 

Another time racing down to the Detroit River we had to cross the freighter channel when we suddenly  ran out of wind in the middle of the channel. The current was going to make us miss the exit on the other side, so Dad threw out the anchor right there and plays chicken with an oncoming freighter just so that we would not forfeit the race by putting on the motor. 
Quitting something that he had started was not in his vocabulary.

I remember being out in a complete fog where you could not even see the other side of the boat and hearing the voices of other boats and Dad yelling at them from the top of his lungs to “Poof, Vanish and Evaporate,” simply because they were in a position to blanket us from any air that might develop. That became another of his famous lines.

When I was older and fell in love with sailing myself, I was able to go on many sailing adventures to the waters down South with Dad.  When we were sailing our boat, Flybaby, down to the Florida Keys I remember one very miserable day in Ft Lauderdale when it was 30 degrees amidst heavy rain and wind. Dad finally showed me a different side of his personality as he yelled, “GET ME OFF THIS BOAT!!! “     That was not like him, and we always kidded each other about that later. 


We also had a crazy night off of St. Thomas island where we thought we were in good shape when we set anchor, but within a couple of hours the wind and the waves really started to howl, to the point that Dad, who was sleeping in the forward berth, and was being lifted up and levitated on each wave. 
The funny part was the radio show we had on was a Rock station and their tag line was we were 
“ GOING TO ROCK AND ROLL ALL NIGHT LONG. “   Dad was not amused at the time, but we joked about it for all the years after. 

Skiing with him was also entertaining
One day when I was young we were at a breakfast dinner and this  guy happens to pull in driving a Hurst to the slopes.  That began the conversation whether he was the optimist or the pessimist.
You have to know Dad to understand that one. 

Dad took us on some great skiing trips.  We started with trips up North to Boyne Mt. every year.
One year when I was 11 we were coming out here to Utah but our schedule changed and he could not make the new date so Pete, Mom and I made the trip out here as Kris was in Europe. 
I fell in love with this place.  The next year Dad took us to Austria on a ski trip and I really hurt his feelings as he showed off his homeland , as this kid kept telling him the skiing was “NOT LIKE UTAH”
He did not take that well.   Years later, after I had lived out here for a year while flying and skiing in ‘82
Dad was retiring and looking for a place to be as he wanted out of Detroit.
Well you can imagine what I said.    “ UTAH is pretty nice.”  
They both agreed, but it was Mom who found this house and told him he needed to pack  and that he was moving right away.  

They both made a great place here for all of us to come to, and let all of the expanding family spend some great times together. 

Dad truly loved Mom, she was his anchor in many ways.  After Mom’s passing Kris really stepped up to the plate and tried to fill Mom’s shoes as best she could.  She filled Dad’s last year with huge amount of activities.  From having the nightly dinner dates and weekend drives up the canyons, to taking him back to Europe for a month, glider flying and even got him in a snow cat to groom the slopes of Alta. 


Kris we can’t thank you enough for what you provided for him. 

Dad was working right up to the day he died, but he was ready to go.  He had published and submitted both his last blog and his research paper on Saturday, and was able to spend a wonderful last dinner date with Amber and his great grandkid, Weston, and even served by his favorite waiter, Carter, Saturday night.  

To his last day he lived by his motto of “you finish what you start.”
    Mid day Sunday he passed from a broken heart from the loss of Mom. 

Dad,  You taught all of us so much, not only world history but real life stuff too, like 
“Happiness is a Bow wave “ 
meaning you always need to be moving forward and growing in life, don’t settle for average.

Safe Travels Dad,
May your seas finally be calm and your winds fair.

We love you and will miss you.   You were a Great Dad.




Dad’s Memorial – Krista Rodin

It seems that everyone has their own memories and experiences of another person, no matter how close they are to each other and the person with whom the interaction takes place.  Our experiences of each other are uniquely our own. Peter, Eric and I grew up in the same household, but while we have some common memories, most of them are deeply individualized.  In contrast to the boys, my relationship with our father was fraught with problems for the first almost 30 years of my life.  We basically couldn’t stand one another. This may well be because, as my mother said, we were so similar in some significant ways. While we did not share sailing as my brothers did, and skiing with him was a frightening experience as one or the other of us was always in the other’s icy thread on the t-bars which threw us both off, we did share a fascination and love for history, cultures, philosophy, opera and, of course, Austria. Both of us immersed ourselves in Buddhist as well as Hindu and Christian sacred texts.  One of the key statements in the Buddhist doctrine that directly applied to our relationship was that “Your enemy is your greatest teacher.”  This realization, that we were supposed to learn to see through the other’s eyes, forced us both to reevaluate our reactions to each other as well as reflect on why we did the things we did and why we believe what we do.  In later years, I came to realize that his penchant for lecturing, which he dearly loved to do, was his way to stimulate reflection and that he was in fact a modern day guru.  Gurus may be charming to the general public, but are often not perfect or even nice people to their students; instead their job is to push their students to confront a reality they may not want to acknowledge. They often cut their students to the quick in order to force them to reevaluate what they take to be reality.  Any of us in the family who was at any time called into the den on Balfour Rd, or here at 3 Mountainwood, know of the wrenching humiliation that was left after those ‘discussions.’  I want you to know now, that he did mean well and that his intentions were always the best, he just wanted us to cut through a materially based world to an inner strength that he knew we all have. He firmly believed that we are spiritual beings stuck in physical bodies, and that the body and our senses inhibit our ability to find “The Truth.” His quest for understanding was a livelong pursuit.  One of his favorite poems was from Walter von der Vogelweide, a medieval German poet, that badly translated goes something like: ““I sat upon a rock and covered one leg with the other, upon it I placed my elbow, I had my cheek and chin in one hand, then I thought with great concern about how one should live in this world, and I could not figure out how to achieve three aspects without doing violence to one of them.  Two are honor and wealth, which are practically mutually exclusive, the third is the grace of God which surely surpasses the other two. “  He was constantly torn between doing his duty, by which he felt he (& all of us) would ultimately be judged and the hope for God’s grace. He struggled to reconcile Michael’s sword with Mary’s mercy, coupled with the Buddha’s first principle that all life is based on a state of unsatisfactoriness and that to overcome that state one needs “Right Thought, Right Speech and Right Action.” This quest to understand “Right Living” led the scientist to study near death experiences, and various religions’ concepts of what happens in the dying process and after the body has died.  He could quote from both the Egyptian and Tibetan Books of the Dead, as well as recite the Catholic Requiem Mass.  When our mother passed, he was in awe of her grace and fortitude, repeatedly saying that she showed us how passing from one state to another should happen.  Since she died, he intensified his studies. He put his affairs in order, had finished his current affairs blog on his “ThinkTruth” website with the inauguration, had finished and submitted his last scientific paper on Saturday, had read the Sunday paper and neatly folded it on the counter and put away all the dishes.  The conference he was supposed to attend on the Wednesday after he passed, would have taken him on a new tact, one that he was not sure he would be able to conclude.  He had had a wonderful time with Amber and baby Weston the night before when he joked with them and was in a good mood. I had had to go to Flagstaff for meetings and was in contact via email. The last message was joking that he seemed to want to enter the 4th stage of Hindu life, into the Forest, although the Forest was the House.  He said “Yep”. He was done.  He was lonely. He wanted his Martha, and felt she was calling him and he followed his Beatrice, who was love and grace personified, to the unknowable world beyond with the strength of Will that had characterized his entire professional career and personal history. He was an amazing and complicated man. I’m very glad to have had this past year and a half with him when we both found a bit of peace and joy with each other and deeply honored to have had him as my father and my teacher.

 

We now have a memorial video to share with you, starting with his time growing up with his older brother, Erwin, in Vienna, from whom the flowers on the tables have been sent.  The Viennese family send their greetings to everyone here as well.










"The Fruit of Silence" - Mother Teresa

The fruit of silence is prayer.

The fruit of prayer is faith.

The fruit of faith is love.

The fruit of love is service.

The fruit of service is peace.





 
 
 
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